ILLUS5020: Communicative colour research

For this brief we were each allocated with a set text we had to follow and produce a final piece for. The text I was given was a ghost story by M R James. I was supposed to communicate unease and a sense of being followed by something unknown and perhaps dangerous. For this I took a look at different artwork produced alongside the story itself.

These pieces although really interesting and rather spooky are often monochromatic or just black and white, which in itself does convey this sense of old and decrepitness which reminds me of the Victorian's obsession with ghosts and the occult. However that is not what was our brief was about, so I simply used these as composition influence.

I actually took inspiration from M.R James' looks for the character I designed and came up with for the cover. I sort of thought his looks suited this professor protagonist shown in the story and I thought it would be a funny kind of reference to the author himself.

This image was supposedly taken from an old BBC short about the book I was given to draw a cover of. Even though it is also monochromatic I could feel and see the colours that would be there, the bright sun and the gloomy dreariness of English beaches came to mind immediately, you can almost smell that stale seaweed smell and the ocean. 

This was also a main inspiration for my final outcome, surprisingly enough. I was initially almost confused about the use of warm colours for the beach but then I realised those warm colours could have an entire other meaning than the one I would immediately come up with. The reds and oranges convey this sense of danger, starkly contrasted with the ghostly white figure in the centre of the composition surrounded by the dark gloomy clouds which give this sense of a storm brewing in the distance and darkness creeping in closer and closer as day turns to night. I started to appreciate this piece a lot and I would say it was my main influence for my drawing. 

Another artist I could base my work around thematically is Trevor Henderson. Trevor Henderson creates artworks which are probably what I could only describe as anyone's sleep paralysis demon. When viewing his work I get a genuine sense of unease, mainly because the creatures he draws and creates seem like they could definitely be real, there is a found footage feel to all his pieces, like they are images of ghosts he found himself and it genuinely fills me with horror seeing his pieces. The sense that a majority of them are so close to being human and so far as well, it is the definition of creepy and it sets something off in our tiny monkey brains that tells us to run. The dark gloomy atmosphere is astonishing in his pieces and I love them as much as I want to hate them for the amount they terrify me. 

This piece in particular stood out to me for the same reasons as the painted one above, the warm colours contrasted by the gloom. The bright red sun that almost looks like an eye, the sense of danger looming from the dark surroundings and in the centre a being you can't quite make out. It is truly the kind of horror you see in your nightmares and it made for perfect reference and influence for my final outcome.