Part 3: Exercise - Image Development

Final picture:

Graphite pencil, colour pencil crayons. I added a bit of red to the mouth of the woman in the background, I wondered if this would suggest something startling or wrong by adding this. I wanted to diffuse her position as the pickpocket and suggest her as the possible victim also. The woman in front has secretive hands and her own belongings, but a sly look on her face. It's anyone's guess. I hope I've achieved this, I'll have to ignore this exercise for a while and come back later for a fresh perspective.

Note to self: This picture lacks fluidity and expression. I seem to have laboured over it and I think it shows.












The Third-Class Carriage by Honoré Daumier, 1862-1864
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third-Class_Carriage
[Accessed on 01/05/2012]

I chose to work with this piece because of its active foreground and background. I exploited the relationship between the main character and an arbitrary person in the background by cropping only them. I highlighted their relationship with the word 'PICKPOCKET'. This has changed the entire meaning of the painting and I wanted to challenge the viewers point of view about who the pickpocket actually is. 



I chose these fonts from www.dafont.com, a fab website for lots of free fonts. I spent ages roaming through oodles of styles and settled on these. I thought that the spiky, discomfort of the letters of the top one that I chose had a slightly enchanted, fairytale feeling with a bit of mystery in the decorative curls. Also my main character is almost a cliche of the protagonist in many fairy tales. Not all fonts were easily readable for a poster. A few were too sane. 

PICKPOCKET

Pickpocket

PICKPOCKET

PICKPOCKET

PICKPOCKET

Pickpocket

PICKPOCKET

Out of ten different croppings, I chose this one because it held mystery and I wanted to draw the main character and alter the meaning of the visual. I stuck the 'L' shapes down and squared up the drawing. This really helped because in my sketches, below, I noticed how my own observation altered the characters and I wanted them exactly as Daumier painted them.

 Practicing with different eyes, the sneaky eye of the main character is almost lizard like. The light green tone of her iris emphasises the pupil and I thought this conveyed a glint of coldness in the eyes regardless of whether she is the pickpocket or not. We as the viewer, must doubt her, and I felt that if I didn't do this, the subject matter wouldn't work with the word.