As narrative has been a primary driving force for me throughout this module, but particularly in Printed Pictures, it's important for me to try to visually communicate a sense of the story of each play I've chosen to illustrate. Screenprinting is the perfect method of conveying disjointedness and irregularity (as its so bloody hard to line everything up right and far too easy to ruin everything), so the visuals of this particular print align with the concept of Romeo and Juliet as imperfect in their relationship. The romanticising of their relationship in culture is so far from the source material, and they have become the household name for idyllic lovers.
The play is brimming with bloodshed and prejudice, and ultimately, these factors destroy Romeo and Juliet's childish, naïve vision of what love is, and they both kill themselves thinking that the other is dead. (Well, Romeo IS dead when Juliet kills herself so really it's Romeo's fault for spending too much time lamenting in verse over the unconscious Juliet to check if she was actually breathing or not. Which she was.) I wanted to highlight the tragedy of their love with the imagery of the intertwined puppets. The two characters are so embroiled in one another that the other factors of the image, the poison and their shrinking bodies (*cough* DEATH *cough*), are of little consequence to them. Of course, this blind adoration and ignorance is what dooms them both in the end, as in the end, they are both little more than puppets of their rival families, with strings tangled together so closely that they aren't aware they're slowly being cut.
I hope the gist of this comes across in the tone of this image, I really didn't want to romanticise them any further, but instead try to deconstruct that trope a little and show the much more sombre side of their love.
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