Uncanny Dreams

 Marika Maijala

Writer's block and how all of us struggle with self-doubt.

I was reading the picturebook blog and I found this interesting illustrator. I was interested in the method that she used to create these incredible picture books but she wrote candidly about her struggles to come up with ideas, self-doubts and how this process is really painful.

I saw myself in this post. I also walk with a sketchbook that I do not use, I do not like my drawings and I feel like an impostor. It was really important to for her have the support and feedback of another artist. This is very difficult to find on an online course but I think it is important to find a way to share your work with people who encourage your creativity. 

The story was created based on a question about the character like “Was he happy?” This is interesting why to create a story. 

it is very important to create a group of friends that can encourage you and help you when you need help but also do the same with other people.

I want a feeling of the past but contemporary (I know confusing but this is more or less what I want to do) so I need a bit of writing so I started to research and practice with a bit of calligraphy and markings

Cola Pens

Cola pens create marks that are just fantastic. I wanted to experiment and see how this work and use it to break the page a bit. Experimental Calligraphy is very chaotic and rich, which is fascinating but can obscure any other element on a page. So I tried to control it a bit without taking away the richness of the marks. 

The videos below are the ones I used. In the next post, I will add the work I did and how I felt about these pieces. Secondary research

How to make Calligraphy pen (Calligrascape, 2016)

This is a very simple way to create more traditional pens. The mark is closer to the traditional instruments that calligraphers use but not really what I wanted but I still made them and work with them (I will show the pages for the experimentation on a later post)

How to make a cola pen for calligraphy ( Calligrascape, 2016)

This video showed a cola pen that is simple and can be used quite easily. I made this pen also. As the video shows, the nib has problems like inking it a lot and a more straight line but I think you can experiment with it.

Homemade Cola Pen How-To // Modified Design for Better Calligraphy ( tinlunstudio, 2020)

This type of pen is an improved design for the regular but it is more bulky and difficult to use. I love the texture and hold more ink but the clarity of the letter is in question. There is more chaos and more richness in this pen and also the way the creator uses the pen is more expressive but difficult to imitate but I will try. Another important issue with this pen is the need for big paper (A3) to write simple sentences. if you want to be legible. This is impossible if I want to use a small space for the project.

Victorian Letter-Writing Etiquette Rules ( The StudyTube Project, 2020)

This video is quite different. She talks about how to write a letter in the victorian time, which is fascinating and fun. I also notice that there is no mention of how the language was used by the average person and I always wanted to know if all the rules she mention were used for the average person. The etiquette in Spain is quite different but they share the formality and the intention of being published. I have never imagen that a private letter should be so well written that can be published. I would have never written in my life if that is the standard. In my research, many personal letters were published in the papers or on books, I thought that letters were just a literary technique to make the story more interesting but it seems that "real" letters were done with the idea of getting published.

Summary There will be a second post with examples of these pens and my attempts to make them into the final piece of work. There will also be some posts with notes of the "Victorian and Edwardian" research that I did for this project.

Assigment 4: Research

Serge Bloch

I was looking for children drawing, a more visceral and intuitive way to construct a page. Bloch was an interesting artist at the beginning but as I was looking, his work is not intuitive, it is well plan ahead (which is great) but while looking at his work, I found how he incorporates objects into his work and creates a satirical piece. This was more interesting. 

There are also collages with his own work, like two drawings simulating a collage. He is a great illustrator and I love the simplicity that is not that simple. 

These are ideas that were suggested by Koi Samsa in a Domestika course called artistic sketchbook. This note complements the post that I did base on Paula Bossio course. A difference from the Bossio course, Samsa techniques are created for abstract content, no for narrative, which is interesting. Here is the summary and my comments on those ideas:

1. Three acts: this is the classic beginning, middle and end that is used for writing stories. She used it also a way to tell a story. 

2. Progression of an element: From the smallest element to the biggest one. This can be created by perspective or angles in the composition of the page.

Dior Parfums by Koi Samsa

Because she works with abstract content, I think this is very useful to see when you used a concertina or different drawing on a page but I am not so sure how it will work on a zine or other medium. 

In the concertina book of the perfume, she talks about the complexity of the smells and how the last pages have a combination of the previous elements. I love this work but the notations at the bottom are distracting to me (just a comment)

3. leitmotif: “a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation”

I love this idea and I have seen examples in mangas and comic books and give the reader a sense of familiarity. I have found small topics or ideas that appear through the book and might not be the centre of the zine. Perhaps this can be a colour or an object.

4. Q&A: The question and answer can hep to progress the narrative (koi Samsa, 2020)

sketchbook by Koi Samsa, 2020

I do not think this is really Q&A but more like a puzzle and this idea is quite inspiring. The missing element, the person who is not there, the one you do not know. I think is interesting.

Visually is also a missing element, like opposites.

Assigment 3: Research 

Power Paola

She is a Colombian Illustrator that started her career in the 90s. She studied fine arts and printing. 

I think her work is interesting but I found her aesthetics fascinating, liberating. What I like the most about her is the way she transforms a very mundane reality into a fascinating and different reality. 

Virus tropical is my favourite

Virus Tropical by Power Paola, 2011 ( Timbo, 2017)

Virus tropical as the author said is a “ very colourful autobiography ” (Castillo, 2018) and to me, this work was more than colourful, was out there, different, surreal. She builds her story with many different elements from emotional, social, ethnical but there is also an element of fantasy that does not take away anything but add something interesting and engaging. 

José Antonio Suárez Londoño

As I was looking into the work of Power Paola, accidentally, I found the work of Suarez. I felt connected to his work. I have not idea why but it speaks to me. He has these small drawings with small changes. They are clever but his drawings with only one colour and a lot of texture are lovely.

Untitled #259. 2008 In the MoMa Collection. ( Suárez Londoño, 2008)

Dibujo 2019, mixed technique on paper, wooden frame, 8 x 9,6 cm (framed: 22,8 x 30,5 cm). Photo: Miguel Suárez Londoño (Galleria Continua, 2021)

The simplicity of the drawing and the natural element in them is fascinating. They look similar to botanical drawings but at the same time different. I also like the comments in the margin.

The drawing below is also another interesting piece (several pages of sketchbook) that are concentrated on one idea. This is something that I like. I think it is fascinating to see the development and remind me of my “strange” blueprint that I never did.

Dibujo 2019, mixed technique on paper, wooden frame, 98 x 61 cm. Photo: Miguel Suárez Londoño ( Galleria Continua, 2021)

Personal research

Pablo Picasso

I have mixed feelings about Picazzo. It is was today, I am certain he will be cancelled. He was not tormented, he was just an abusive man. As an artist, I do not connect with his more popular work and when I do, it is from the knowledge that is Picazzo, a more educated eye and understanding of the context of his work, which is a valid perspective but not my normal approach to art. 

In this entry, I am going to show a work that I found interesting and Intriguing. Picazzo creates in this period sculptures that are quite fascinated.

1911-1920 Cubismo: Bodegones

The first picture is called “Avignon, summer of 1914″ 

PIcazzo create hybrid propositions in which the pictorial enhances its image condition in sculpture (“a proposiciones híbridas en las que lo pictórico potencia en la escultura su condición de imagen” Museo Picazzo Malaga, 2021). Basacally, he used elements normaly associated with painting and drawing to crate a less scupltural and more illustrative sculpture.

Guitarra by Picazzo 1912 in the Museum of Modern art in New York

La Guitarra (The sculpture above) is lovely. It is fun and different. Capture your attention for the right reason. Different from the Guitar, the other two are quite intriguing. If you do not read the title you can not understand the idea behind the piece. They are quite abstract.

Copa, periodico y dado 1912, Museum National Paris-Picazzo

Copa, Periodico y Dado (1912) and Avignon, summer of 1914 were created with recycling materials and industrial ones. using recycling materials was not common at that time.

Summary of a curse in narrative techniques for illustrators.

There are plenty of resources for writers but illustrators. I guess because you will normally use techniques design for movies or animation. I do believe that both mediums are different and there is a false equivalence. This is the reason I took a course in domestika that work on narrative techniques for illustrators on books (I will put the link to the course). The notes are my own research, done over the years for writing. 

I will also complement this research with books, exercises and other sources that I feel are necessary to improve my practice. 

What are the elements of a story?

1. Theme: the main idea. What happens?

I struggle to comment on a topic. This is the reason why writing for me is so difficult. Perhaps in a small story, I can come with a better idea and stick to it. 

2. Idea: How you are going to develop your theme.

The aesthetics are always a problem but I am sure I can work well in ink and a bit of ink so I do not need to worry much

3. Conflict: This is what moves forward the story. 

I am terrible at creating conflict, perhaps psychological conflict is easy that conflict with other people and creating horrible events is not my style but I know is necessary.

4. Plot: The outline of the idea. step by step what happened in the story.

If I have an idea, I can work out a light plan. This is not bad.

5. Characters

I love characters. how to create characters in the drawing is a bit of a challenge. I feel that cloth can be a taping of stereotypes but there is always a creative way to tell a story and make the characters unique.

6. Character’s relations: This is how the characters interact with each other.

If you can create convincing characters there interactions are natural. they should fit. 

7. Reality: This is the story’s universe. 

Each book, each movie have a set of rules that are fixed at the begging of the book and any addition to close the book or movie is called the hand of God and it is always a bad idea. 

8. Genre: this is the type of book it is. 

This is the only thing I wrote that does not do. I think you write a story and the story fit a genre but not the other way around. An author can specialise in a genre but most of the time the story can take a turn or change the genre or have a mixed one at the end.

Type of storylines

1. Traditional: In chronological progression.

2. In Media Res: When the story starts in the middle with a flashback to the beginning and the end.

3. In Ex trema Res: this is when the story starts at the end.

4. Contrapunto: three different stories that mix at the end.

Ways to alter a storyline

1. Racconto: The story starts at the beginning and starts to tell a story in the past. The story that came to my mind is the story of the rose of Humberto eco. It started with a secondary character telling the story of someone in the past. 

2. Flashback and flashforward: this help to go back to the past or to have a premotion about the future. 

3. In extrema res: the structure started in the end. This is common in crime stories.

4. Cuts: This is where you have different moments in time. winter, summer or time. An example of this is the comic "las Mininas". The cuts from the main stories to other references to a famous artist are their pieces inspired by the Mininas. 

5. Parallel times: Events that happen at the same time in different places. 

6. relative time: This element is easy to see in a novel, I am not sure yet how to create this effect on a comic, basically is the idea that no all the characters in a novel have the same pass of time. A Sci-fi novel can easily describe a 1000 years pass for people outside the black hole but for the enterprise only a couple of hours has passed. 

7. Puzzle: The story is built by clues. 

8. Stories inside stories: This is also normal in sci-fi. It is a bit like a parallel universe 

8. Cycle: It ends where started. This is a resource use in stand up comedy a lot to give closure to the show, where the comedian goes full circle to use the same phrase he used at the beginning. I know is used in literature too.

The book as an object to help with the narrative

This part is using the book characteristic to improve the narrative. From a landscape to a portrait format can change the way a story is told.

There is no denying that a clever book is always welcome. I saw “antimalarial Universal” by Revillod and I fell in love. He uses the spiral of the book as a way to create an infinite form of animals. Dividing the pages in three-part help making an infinite number of animals. This is quite clever. 

How the book opens. 

This was pretty evident when I started working with my tomato story. I clearly started to realise that I need continuation to create an idea of living there. 

The concertina format help a certain type of storylines to grow.

Pages

The pages are the scene for the book, are the frame. They are also continuity and back and forward.

The image’s elements

Level of detail: The more detail a piece has the closer it is to reality. 

The line: Lines can reflect emotions so this is important when drawing a story

Perspective: There are two interesting ideas that I can take from this is the atmospheric perspective where the most distant elements are blueish is interesting but curiously, the fadest elements are at the top of the page is also quite unique to work with. 

Technique: help the story, create a more childish or realistic idea, horror or playful.

Light: This help with the storytelling. 

I started to research into create a model for a character rather than draw it. I also wanted to create a background to add to the character. I bought the Domestic course. I think it was a fantastic course (You can see the model that I did based on the course) and I learn a lot.

Photography

This is the main element of the dioramas. You take pictures of the object in other to create an illustration, which is fascinating to me. Change the light, move the object and many other things like angles.

Thomas Demand was using different angle to create different feeling like power in his work presidency (tate,2019), which you might not have thought of you do not need to work separately.

You can see my analysis of Thomas demand’s work here.

How to Make a Wheelbarrow - DIY Realistic Miniature Wheelbarrow

This is a simple tutorial but help you to understand the things you can use or not.

How to Sculpt an Ear from Polymer Clay and How to Sculpt a QUICK & EASY MOUTH  by Ace of Clay

Ace of Clay is an interesting channel, which is like the idea I have for this project so I will watch as much as possible before I start this project.

Sculpting maquette in clay

This is a more comprehensive video but no exactly what I want to do for this project but never the less it is quite interesting.

  20 Polymer Clay Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Interesting but basic. I added here because I think it is useful to have a list of products that you can use for different part of the project. I am not use if I am going to use polymer clay, but I might for some things.

Making a Magical World in a Shelf (a Shelforama!) 

This is interesting in using resin for water, I also not sure if I am going to use resin for water but I might. I love this video and the step by step is quite interesting.

Paper tutorials

3D Paper Model Techniques

6 beautiful box ideas | Cardboard ideas| Paper craft

This is not exactly modelling but help you to see how to build objects with cardboard and finish them with different techniques. This video is one of the many I saw from this channel to have an idea how to build objects.

The Movie Diorama Paper Model

The detail the use to create the diorama is incredible and I love it. This has a lot of useful tips.

1 to 1 sculptures in paper.

I went to see his work in 2021. I had seen his work online but the way he printed his work make a different experience to see it in person. The size of the pictures have a big size so it is easy to see the details and sometimes guess how he makes it. They also have a glass in from of the picture. The effect that the glass has on the pictures is quite strange to me. It makes it less real, more like an advertisement.

Presidency   

Thomas Demand – Presidency by tate, 2018

Thomas does not try to convince you or trick you into believe he took the picture in real life so why to build real places. This question bothers me a bit because I do believe this is not as interesting as creating a fictional place.

He tried to recreate a “fictional” white house that took different elements from different presidencies. The pictures represent power, family.

“we are influence by pictures and the decisions that we made based on pictures” this was enormously powerful to me. I have never seen pictures in that way but create a reality to influence reality might be the ultimate challenge. There was another interesting element on the second floor where the pictures were about fashion patters. The level of detail. The patters seem used and make and remark so you might think this is the place where he will put the focus on the picture but not, the focus was on places where was not much detail or closer to you.

This creates a feeling of real. The idea that everything is sharp is artificial, you need to focus to see properly or the detail. I think he creates that, but this is just my interpretation.

“My pictures give you an image of your future memory”: Thomas Demand (Boddington, 2019)

He makes these sculptures based on current affairs and challenge the idea of true (Boddington, 2019). This is quite interesting because the realism of the pieces are striking but you can see they are not the real thing. There is a game between the scale 1 to 1 and the fictional of current affairs. It is like he is trying to bend the borders of our understanding of real and true.

Book Review: Un jardín y cuaderno de vacaciones Illustrated by Isidro Ferrer.

(A garden and book for holidays Illustrated by Isidro Ferrer)

A Garden is a beautifully done book. When you open it, it is very surprising the biding. The artwork is like a dream and careful done in a way that never get cut or interrupted so you have a feeling of continuity. The text is always on the right side so you need to stop and read, that allows you to enjoy the art. The small (I cannot stress how small is my criticism is the  text on the top, I wonder if this can be place on other level so it does not seems to put of place)

This idea of building a river of images is no new to me. I have done this before but always in a concertina way of folding. In a concertina de in folders are less visible, in this way (the garden book) all is predominant, but you cannot display upward.

Un cuaderno de vacaciones by isidro ferrer

This is an exercise book. it is a mix of photography, photomontage, illustration, and clever ideas. The aesthetics are lovely. it is a very pleasant book. the colour palette is incredible calm. I love it.

The format is a simple book with white pages for doing the exercise. I am not sure the age bracket for this book but the letters are small and the illustrations can make it difficult to understand the exercises (only some pages)

Assassin's Creed Paper Parkour 

Mount Fuji 360 Book

“Yusuke Oono, born in Germany and trained as an architect, has designed a surprising twist on the pop-up book. As its title suggests, unfolding this petite book in a circular fashion results in a 360-degree panoramic scene of layered silhouettes. Here, Mount Fuji is unveiled in all its majesty, surrounded by curling clouds and a fiery round sun, and with graceful red-crowned cranes alighting on its slopes”

Designer: Yusuke Oono Size: 125x125mm Pages: 40 Publication: 2015 Binding: Box with 360 book

Bodies in Spaces Dr Catrin Morgan, Parsons School of Design 

Where are you talking from?

“You cannot be clear in your message if you are not clear with who you are (to others) … I am a white middle age woman, middle class from England that live in the USA”

Thinking in those terms are quite foreign to me. I have always debate if I should think of myself as a woman of colour or not. Latin American or not. Privilege or not. So, on and so forth. If I were to speak to people from where I was going to speak them from.

This is an example of how difficult for me is to talk about those issues (This is part of a post that I did a couple of years ago and I never posted because I did not consider it relevant)

I have lived in the UK for many years and I did not like to talk about politics because I seems to have a different point of view that the people around me. I am Venezuelan and for many years, my perspective of Chavez was censure by the left because it did not fit the romantic idea of a lefty dictator and used by the right to criticize socialism and communism which Venezuela was not.

This attitude let me angry and frustrated. Took away my voice and identity because I started to deny that I was Venezuelan so people did not ask me and when I used a story or something that was a direct influence by my culture, I washed it so much that no one could tell.

Everyone deserve a voice; I did 10 years ago. Venezuelan people who are suffering today: poverty, famine and police repression deserve to have a voice. The question to answer is simple, I am the person to give them a voice, I have lived here for so long, I am comfortable in my home, safe, can I really relate to their suffering or I am just another person in privilege imposing my views onto people who are less visible.