"Confuzzled" i.e Confussed!

Well, where to start after the whole fruit tattoo embargo, which in all honesty I don’t believe will work; because the images I have come up with so far are quite detailed and are A3 size which is bigger than the surface of a standard fruit (ie orange, grapefruit etc). Trying to tattoo one of my illustrations onto a fruit would be like trying to put a full sleeve tattoo onto half an arm.

Throughout my tutorials the one thing that as been mentioned thought out them all except my tutorial with Johnny, is that the tutors have not been fans of my painting style. Even though I’ve doing it for year, got commissions and never had any complaints. Yes, this is my first time using acrylic inks so It as taken some adjusting, to create the effects I wanted. So my first few illustration (from previous blogs) and the one that follows below was not has good as they could of been.

After Pete stated that he did not like the painting style and we came up with the tattooed fruit idea, I have been left feeling frustrated. Even though I loved the idea of tattooing for a project, after thinking about how it could work more in detail, it wont! The only way it could work is if I selected small sections form each illustration to tattoo onto a piece of fruit. My only reservation with this is that you would not be seeing a full illustration just a character or  a small part of the background; so would this really be illustrating the book?

The following painting style came about when I was chopping up my illustration to see if just seeing certain sections would work. Around this time I had a visit from the parents. My mom was looking at my work and suggested me just painting the outline of my illustrations. (See below image).

 

I know it is not just the outline I’ve painted. I did to start with but I felt like it wasn’t enough. The forest didn’t appear heavy/solid enough.

I really like how this style turned out so I went on to re do one of my other illustrations. Before I completed that illustration I had another tutorial with Derek.

Tutorial with Derek - Well this was frustrating. I had not seen Derek during this project so he had know idea what I was doing with this project. I proceeded to tell him, how I got started and what had happened. Before I  could get half way through what I was saying Derek interrupted, to go on for over an hour, with a few moments of me trying to explain. A few ideas got thrown about about doing more in photoshop to create the images. He wasn’t keen on the painted images either (He said I’ve never done any painting before so why know?, well yes I have just not for uni! Even had commissions and had my paintings displayed in a couple of exhibitions outside of uni. I haven’t done any photoshop stuff either but it's ago to do images that way!!)
Another idea, because Derek liked my illustrations as line drawings. I came up with the idea of having the line drawn illustrations and transferring those drawings onto the body with carbon paper (like you would before you tattooed an image) and photographing them. 

I came away more frustrated and more confused than I was before having the tutorial.

After a day of not knowing where to go next, I decided to try the transferring onto skin and photographing them. The below images are the results of this experiment.

I only transferred Rae’s wings, because they are quite detailed so it would give a good indication of how much of the detail would show up once transferred to skin (and not touched up) and then photographed.

I have mixed thoughts with this, I like it because it looks like a tattoo (which is my obsession) but does it work as an illustration? Would this work in a book, and could it be sold or published as the illustrated version of The Demon Girl? I am not sure.

I really am unsure on where go from here. There are a few different processes and ideas, but with me having mixed opinions and thoughts on all of them, I don’t know which one would be the best one to use. I am also not completely ready to give up on the painted illustrations idea.

I have also just been informed by my housemates Becca (who is also on my course) that her tutorial this week was not about her FMP but about which pieces of work would be good to use for the degree show catalogue. We have a double page spread each to show several pieces of our work, which all have to be flattened and CYMK set. Derek did not discuss this at all during my tutorial, so I only know what Becca as told me. Luckily I know how to flatten images and set them to CYMK. I’ll have a play around, select a few pieces of my work and then try a speak to a tutor during next week to sort it out.

Let the stress continue!