Little White Lies

Okay, so over the Christmas holiday, my brief was to design a magazine cover for the London based magazine; Little White Lies. There was a choice of 5 different films to be illustrated; Super 8, The Tree Of Life, Drive, Black Swan and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The front cover had to include the main character of the film, the title of the film and the LWL's masthead and this was my first response..

Just a portrait of Natalie Portman for the Black Swan cover. Due to being away from tutor/university, I resorted to my comfort zone; therefore this piece is completely tonal. However, after completion I decided to Google LWL's previous covers and saw that their Black Swan cover was similar to this piece so I decided to try again...

Natalie Portman again, this time as her alter ego in the film. To change my style a little, I decided to use colour on her facial features, particularly her eyes and lips to create emphasis. I tried to perfect her features as much as I could, to relate to her character's need for perfection within the film. Also the shape of her face itself is slightly thinner compared to my first attempt, this is to reflect the change in weight between her two characters.

My final composition..

In photoshop, I scanned in my second response, flipped the canvas to change the typical portrait and created a mirror image to represent how vain the character is in the film. I added the Little White Lies masthead in response to the brief and I added my own type. I chose calligraphy in particular to reference the ballet aspect of the film. Drawn in black fine liner; to reinforce the 'Black' Swan and feathers added onto the type to reflect the 'Swan' characteristics.

Elective

At university I chose an elective project to fulfill the first year of my course. Out of a number of briefs, I chose the one that was the most appealing to me which I believed I would be most comfortable in. The brief I chose was to design a tattoo for the first line of the poem Ode. Ode is an 1874 poem written by the English poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy to which the opening line is 'We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.'  

I was firstly influenced by anything I saw that could relate to this project, however after a few experiments I decided to not take the typical route of drawing something musical or music related. I explored several beginning ideas and then expanded them by selecting the best aspects of different sketches and combining them together. I also played around with different typography due to the fact that certain imagery needed a particular font to suit each other. My personal opinion; I'm not really fond of coloured tattoo's so I decided to keep everything black and white, either in black fine liner or using tonal pencils. I worked mostly within my comfort zone, drawing things that I wouldn't neccessarily draw myself however I kept them of a small proportion and quite detailed. I'm uploading a select few which I believe are the better images from the project so here are my ideas;

A key, shaded in using tonal pencils, with additional floral detail in the background.

A rose, drawn simplistically in black fine liner, some broken lines to give a delicate effect.

A skull attached to butterfly wings, the main outline drawn thicker in black fine liner. I was originally planning to use tonal pencils to finish this sketch, however I just preferred it the way it was.

 

A skull surrounded by roses, shaded in using tonal pencils. Added leaves for detail.

A flower (shaded in using tonal pencils) and the Ace of Spades. Decorative swirls to added more detail. I saw something like this browsing online and regardless of whether I was going to use it as a final piece, I still wanted to create this anyway.

A peacock, drawn in black fine liner, simplistically drawn with detail in the feathers.

A different styled key, with added wings.

A peacock again, shaded in using tonal pencils, added swirls at the end of the feathers for detail.

A heart, drawn simplistically in black fine liner, added swirls for effect. Kind of a Si Scott moment.

Previous skull and roses, with typography added to suit the image.

Previous rose, with calligraphy style type to give a more delicate effect.

Second peacock, slight change in detail to the end of the feathers (I prefer this way) and typography added to suit the imagery.

Heart again, this time shaded in using tonal pencils, with a calligraphy style type to suit.

 

Full wings, a tattoo ideally to cover the back. Drawn and shaded in using tonal pencils and the typography was added at the end of the sketch.