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In my last post about my collaboration with Connie Cubitt, a UEA creative writing student, I mentioned some final imagery which I had created. Before print the next day I made some small changes and arranged the images into the ‘traditional penguin spreads’ of which we were instructed to do. I placed the quotes which I’d chosen to focus on on the spreads with the images. The quotes were ones which had really caught my attention in the narrative. What stuck out for me was the descriptive language and the way an atmosphere was created. When I read the story it was easy to imagine the life of the protagonist and the eerie but magical setting they found themselves in.

(Above: My images alongside other students at the final exhibition / meet-up)

(Above: My images- The final story on the left, the initial story which was changed on the right)

As a set, these images are very experimental as mentioned before and even through I was a little uncomfortable about that, I believe it was the nature of the project. With the final outcomes, I’d created all of them by scanning in imagery and collaging it which I was quite pleased with in the time I had. This was something I can take away from the project. I think my imagery represents the way that I look at a narrative or approach illustrating a narrative perhaps: in a less literal way of course but by picking out certain things in the language that were most interesting to me. For example the description of damp.

Below are the final spreads:

This image differs a lot from the one seen in the first blog post about final images! I added a darker area to the corner of the room to emphasise that it was a room and not the corner of a box which someone suggested to me. This quote was one which stood out for me because of the description of the faded colors and how they had become ‘dusty shades of grey’. I wanted this image to evoke this- seeing how the walls were once bright but are now faded and old.

In this image I played with the type as well as the nature of the image was quite abstract. I really liked how damp had been described as having ‘spread it’s watery limbs’ which is so accurate and just an interesting quote that stood out for me!

I wanted this image to be quite creepy and reflect upon the uncomfortable presence of the character in the books through the fact the eye is looking at the viewer. This is probably the most abstract of the images!

This image is possibly the least abstract of all I have done. I wanted to reflect upon the information mentioned in the text. A library is a strong setting in the narrative and the main character loves reading and learning. I hoped this image and the ‘note like text’ would reflect upon this and almost represent the character’s notes in a book…

In this image I wanted to get a sense of how much ‘Aunt Dolly’ hates her home and with the inky, tonal, textured elements of the image represent how she wishes it were burnt down. I thought the ink had liquid elements to it also which could represent how she was prone to dramatics when she drank. Looking at this image now I wish I had made the silhouette smaller and altered the shadow a little to make it more subtle.

Below are images from the first narrative we worked with. I wanted to create images that gave a feel of loneliness and isolation.

With this image I hoped to get a sense of character as well as setting. The setting was described as having autumn arrive like an unfriendly guest so I tried to give the image some movement to suggest wind. To emphasise loneliness and possible lack of self identity and confidence I decided to include the characters feet and shadow and also show the walking mentioned in the quote.

I created this image on suggestion from my collaborator by looking through images of John Milton’s old house which was rather decayed. I hoped this piano and the distorted and  ‘unstable’ way in which it’s painted would signify the strangeness personality of his aunt as well as suggesting that the family are rich as they lived in a manor house.

Here I wanted to create a feeling of loneliness as well as a literal view of ‘a horizon with no boundary’. I wanted to create quite a sad feeling also through the watery elements of the painting.

Here I wanted to show the tiredness and illness of the characters through a simple image of an eye. This image was taken from one of our workshops at uni called ‘software’

Overall I’m quite pleased with the final outcomes of this project. It was interesting and I was able to learn some new technical skills on the way as well as reading a really interesting text!