CalArts Image Making and Composition Workshop
Brief: Think about the subject selected (gecko lizard) in different ways. From simple to complex, hand to digital, realistic to abstract and consider different modes of representation. In the final week, we will pull together your work from the previous weeks to make spreads using all of your imagemaking work and compositional experiments into a single 8-page booklet.
What I took away from the Project: The connotative and denotative meanings of representation, and how the same idea can be conveyed through multiple meanings. The importance of not getting caught up in getting the form right, as opposed to getting the meaning across and how it results in getting a far more complex, fresh image.
The final treatment for the spread ended up being an amalgamation of the various explorations, and the forms were simplified for the narrative and are presented below in the three spreads.
My process began with trying to find a suitable narrative that would utilise my images, and only a minimum of added background solid shapes. I tried to use the idea of foreground/space to try and create a sense of environment in the negative space using only the colours/forms of the lizards. I tried, through the connotative meaning of the forms, to create a sense of the current physical space the animals might be in at that given moment. E.g. The first spread uses imagery of foliage to try and create a sense of nature, attempting to suggest the natural environment of the lizard.
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