Emma Reale

On a mind map I wrote out my favorite quotes and song lyrics and decided to focus on a quote from ‘The Twits’ (in my bio)

I looked at ways of representing ‘inner beauty’ or ‘inner happiness’ through symbols and logos of things like hearts, lightbulbs and facial expressions

I decided I wanted to display something conventionally ‘positive/wholesome’ in an unpleasant way because I wanted the message to be that this symbol still has good meaning despite its looks

My drawing of an anatomical heart looked like a traditional tattoo to me/ something ‘old school/ vintage’ so I looked in that direction for research

My book cover - The Twits by Roald Dahl

Final decisions:

I decided to leave the background blank white to let the colours stand out

I let the heart be transparent looking (lack of a better word) like the Dave Darcy “The North is Next piece” rather than opaque green because it’s brighter looking with the white coming through

I chose to make my heart luminous green. Although green is my favorite colour I want this to be gross and green will suit that much more, while also being eye catching

I picked a colour scheme. I was deciding between colours inspired by the traditional ‘seafaring’ tattoo style with muted and vintage looking colours inspired by my artist research Karl Martz, or more bright pop-art colours influenced by my artist research brokenfingazcrew

Dave Darcy is an Irish letterpress artist from Dublin, who works for One Strong Arm which is a letterpress studio. He has a degree in Graphic design but became interested in this print style as a child because of his families history in the printing industry. He creates typography focused designs for a number of organizations.

It was recommended to me to look at his work when speaking with Lorraine in a zoom call. I think the colour of the heart pops and is very effective against the white background. This made me want to simplify the colors of the heart I was designing into one colour instead of multiple. I think this will be more eye catching for a book cover which will have text

The Broken Fingaz Crew (BFC) is a collective of artists from a city called Haifa in Israel who collaborate and create pop-art murals, album covers, posters and flyers among other things, and have worked around the world.

The artists names are Unga, Peso, Kip and Tant.

“They draw their ideas from American comic-book covers, old-school skateboard graphics, and tattoos to create their visual striking iconography of brutal pictures in funky colours” (urban-nation.com)

I was drawn to these artists work because it looked so old fashioned yet different to me. It reminded me of old advertisements you would see in a pub but also related to my other artist research I used which was a tattoo artist. I think visually it’s a similar traditional style and I wanted to experiment with some of the typography they use

Experimenting with an “ugly love heart” shape instead of the biological looking one

I think the biological one has a more interesting shape

In a zoom meeting people suggested making it look more gross so I switched the cross hatching style for pointillism which makes it look dirtier and grittier. I also made the veins thicker and added growths

I chose my favorite of my heart logos and decided I liked how it looked without colour as I think it brings out the line and the texture.

The way Basil Wolverton uses line effectively makes his drawings gruesome looking so I decided to try his style of shading

Basil Wolverton is an American cartoonist and illustrator, born in Oregon in 1909. He is most famous for his gruesome depictions of people. His work gathers mixed opinions as some find it unbearably ugly.

His work has been published by Marvel and Mad Magazine

“Several cartoonists have been influenced by Wolverton’s ‘Spaghetti and Meatball’ style” (Lambiek Comiclopedia, 2019)

“A person who has good thoughts will always look lovely”

This is my favorite part of the quote I chose. So far I have been developing things that are known signs of positive traits like a love heart, which in my opinion would represent kindness, warmth and love.

I have been exploring these things by making them dull looking and hairy etc, which would be conventionally less appealing.

However I think the meaning isn’t lost when I try to make my ideas unattractive, I still see the good traits in them, which correlates to the quote

Kyler Martz is an illustrator and tattoo artist in Seattle, Washington. He began making prints and then commissioned murals, posters, and has illustrated branding campaigns for Starbucks, Hermès and Levi’s. There became a demand for him to become a tattoo artist because of his traditional style, so began to practice tattooing and has grown a following.

His style is ‘nautical surrealism’ that he describes as being influenced by 1930s illustrations, using a very minimal colour palette.

(Seattlemag.com)

Typography