Project: Fiction

The first project of the year was a relatively interesting brief- illustrating a short story or poem from a reading list. This seemed more free than the Great Expectations project from the previous year though in another way was a lot more narrow, as the illustration created had to have a much more narrow function: rather than just an illustration it was an editorial gif, or a bookplate, or a book jacket.

I chose "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl", mostly because I'd read the writer Yiyun Li's work previously- she writes a lot about Chinese history in an empathetic yet weirdly standoffish and melancholic way, as though telling an anecdote about her late neighbours. It's the story of an arranged marriage but also looks at single parenthood and the clashing of tradition and modernity. Weirdly I think a lot of people missed the latter, although that's always seemed quite an obvious part of China's identity to me.

I started by reading the book and researching imagery related to the themes, to get an idea of the feel and ideas explored. Siyu is what's called a "leftover woman", expected to have already married and considered weird and even socially outcast for being in her 30s without a husband. 

Hanfeng, on the other hand, is potentially gay (I was told, I didn't pick this up in the text despite actually being gay so I'm not sure how much water that holds) and is being pressured to marry by his mother. This is essentally the only thing they have in common; otherwise the relationship seems cold, empty, and lifeless, a marriage only of convinience with the figure of Professor Dai and social expectations looming over it like a dark cloud.

 

I also found a photographer who does pictures of urban China in black and white who seems to capture the emptiness and blandness I could convey in the landscape surrounding their relationship.

I then started to find similar places in London. Thankfully I have been to Beijing so I had a relatively clear idea of what I was looking for, as well as some places that I personally thought of whilst reading the book.

I did some digital layouts using sketches drawn on-site and put into Photoshop, where I used the polygonal lasso tool to draw what I hoped would be dispersonal, almost clip-art-y shapes. The first one came out OK but this was quite a challenging and new technique for me so once I made the compositions more complicated, they lost the effect and I didn't finish the third one as a result.

The last sketch I was going to use as a digital drawing I instead turned into a pen drawing in order to focus more on detail.

These were of the university and around the gentrified parts of Elephant and Castle, but I also wanted to see the more traditional side of the book, which conviniently is the only side of Chinese culture you can find in London, so I did some drawing in Chinatown. I started in the Candy Cafe, which isn't entirely what I would consider the teahouse Siyu and Hanfeng to look like, but it's always really quiet and melancholy and has really dispersonal furnishings, plus they serve my favourite flavour of milk tea.

I also drew Jess, who I ran into. She's not really what I thought Siyu would look like, since Siyu is older, has longer hair and I assume is Chinese not Taiwanese, but since I had to collect drawings of people and I thought the studies of epicanthic folds and East Asian facial features would help somewhat, even if they weren't exact.

I then went to Jen Teahouse, a much more traditional teahouse where I also thought I could draw some food and drinks. Also their dumplings are to die for and I'm very motivated by nice food, if you can't tell!

I also did drawings of bikes in the street, as although it personally didn't particularly sway me as a theme (evident from what I ended up choosing to draw) it was very pervasive in the past imagery relating to the book so I felt like I should cover it.

I also drew some portraits, some from life, some from the internet, which wasn't optimal but I felt I needed to flesh out my research.

I felt my sketchbook research was adequate but potentially a bit lacking for this project: a lot of the other students seemed to have less exact but more emotive observationals and therefore I think I focused too much on form and less on getting more of a metaphorical and atmospheric feel for the story.

We then had a workshop which I feel forced me to loosen up more, using collaging and quick booklets to explore different aspects of the story. For example, I did a small and inexact flipbook of Siyu focusing on "emotion" and "small details".

Although far from perfect, this was an interesting exercise and quite new to me, and was also apparently quite liked by other students.

I then did a series of unrelated collages within a handmade booklet focusing on "background" and "colour". These vary in effectiveness, and towards the end I began to run out of ideas; however I believe being forced to make work even when I felt I was at a dead end was a good exercise in working through art blocks etc, and forces improvement.

Part of me wanted to extend on these, to further explore this visual language and actually get it right, but by this point we were pretty constricted on time and as I had an idea of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to to look in my head, I thought it better to move onto that and trying to get it right. I decided to do an animated gif, which I've never done before (I've done gifs but not animation) so I wanted to put together some quick tests.

These are OK; I really didn't have much time to learn animation more intensely, or in fact learn Flash, which I think would've helped make this an easier task, as I instead did it on Photoshop Elements. It'd be nice to go back on these and learn to do them properly, as well as improve on the final.

"The teahouse where Hanfeng and Siyu were meeting, at a hillside
pavillion in the Summer Palace, had been chosen by his mother..."

I'm not satisfied with my final piece but I feel like it's one of the stronger things I made in the Autumn term. I wanted to do their first "date" because I've been on arranged dates before and they're really awful and awkward. I also thought the teahouse could be quite dispersonal and was therefore a better place than say, Professor Dai's apartment. Their body langauge is tense, the atmosphere cold and the furnishings uncomfortable. In the background I've tried to contrast modern and traditional China, and the extra chair is supposed to be for the presence of Professor Dai in their relationship, but I've been told it looks more like it's part of the window, so maybe another angle needed to be used to make it look more 3D. The animation is a bit clunky (something that could be improved on Flash) and the form of the characters makes them look too young, and has some mistakes: Hanfeng's face looks a little off, for example. 

All in all though, this was one of the first projects where I tried to integrate my own style into university work and hile it may not have been entirely successful, I'm still glad I took that leap.