Mike Mignola is someone whose work has definitely had a massive impact on the way I think both aesthetically and conceptually since his talk in first year. I really like the way he uses the dark and negative space to tell as much story as what he draws. Shadow is something that I still don’t properly understand in my work, but it's something that I feel definitely gives a lot of atmosphere and character. I’ve started to utilise negative space a lot in my COP work right now but I thought I should talk about the work that's fuelling those decisions in regard to my studio practice.
The noir look of Mignola’s work is something that gels quite well with the aesthetic themes I’m looking at in developing this concertina book, so I’ve started to combine the two in early roughs. Still finding it quite hard to balance this with COP, not sure how much time to dedicate to each module, but I think it will be a lot easier to focus and think once I’ve finished the work I need to do for the dissertation and that module.
The idea behind this cover was to communicate the duality of a relationship. One viewpoint is romantic and organic, represented by the photograph of the rose. And the other viewpoint is colder and pragmatic, represented by the harsh shapes making up the silhouette of the rose. Making the flower angular was a way for me to tell the story about this colder view of a relationship, while still keeping the obvious connotations of a rose present in the overall design. This cover was also featured on the band’s Instagram account, which was great because I was able to look at the work in context, and have the people who actually made the music see my interpretation. On the flip side of that, as soon as it was posted I immediately thought of ways I could have made the design clearer or more expressive. I might work further on this design before really thinking it's finished.
