Katheryn Journal

This is Marius's Journal

 My Starting Point

•Pressures of work, life and longing for calm and Simplicity.

I want to create a series of
Surrealist Digital paintings following the progression of a man that reflects the feeling of leaving an oppressive establishment behind and just moving away from it.


My Two artist models are
Shaun Tan- Surrealist Illustrator
Peter Mohrbacher- Surreal concept artist


I chose this question because the concept of people grinding trough life not forfilling any of their goal was a very real feeling for me at one point. I also had an initial interest in creating images that carry a feeling to the audience without explicitly showing them the message.

 Key words 

My series of four images should effectively encapsulate these key descriptors

1- post-assimilation

(fear, pressure, sickness, undernourishment, time, industrialness)

2- separation

(release, 

3-  reflection

(sadness, fear, anger)

4- freedom?

( sadness, hope, wonder)

Some words that I want to remain relevant throughout all the works are…

Vagueness, fantastical, symbolism, imagination, dreams.

Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan Has a unique way of portraying Industry and Establishment. The worlds he creates in his illustrations have relevant real world parallels usually as powerful visual metaphors.

I would like to capture

-His use of visual metaphor storytelling

-Shape language that combines animalistic properties to machines to make it seem as though the machines have personalities and agendas.

-Dreamlike creatures and buildings grounded in reality 

 

Shaun Tan has a very interesting way he constructs his cities and buildings in his illustrations. Its almost as though you are looking at multiple things at the same time. He produces images with vivid vagueness that inspire imagination in the viewers mind. An example of this is in the large triangular building on the right hand side of the image. My Brain understands that in the context of the picture, that it is a large building but I cant help but shake the feeling that it is the cone of a spaceship nose or even a birds head. The structures in the middle of the image feel like plates stacked on a dishrack effectively blurring the line between mundane and everyday with fantastical.

 

This Adaption of ordinary items are carried into this image by scaling up common house held animal pottery that may have been placed on a shelf now pictured as the focus of a city scape. While the scale of these items are being stretched scale of the city is still preserved through atmosphere and juxtaposition of the birds flying around. It the previous image the behaviour of the smoke out of the chimneys helped establish the size of the objects around it. These observations will help me greatly when building my own interesting environments. 

These pages help me deconstruct proportions, shapes and recurring details in Shaun Tans work.

 Examples are his use of pottery inspired creatures such as the tea pot crab, and his use of real animals made out of metal plating such as the metal warthog on the left.

After I have created a list I will go through and analyse what each thing symbolises.

This drawing is a long study of Shaun Tan that will keep me thinking about his use of imagery and juxtaposition while I work so I can then incorporate similar aspect into my own work when it is finished. I will do a couple of drawing like this just so when it comes time to produce my own piece, I will know if my work feels like it adequately reflects my artist model.

Peter Mohrbacher Art Studies 

      Peter Mohrbacher Incorporates surreal elements in his work but stylises 

      it in a modern 

     way that reminds me of concept art pieces. His work usually focuses on

     an individual character or being with a scale, setting and design that inspires an awe in the viewer aka me. 

      Things I like about his work and want to capture in my work

-Elegant poses and compositions

-Accurate knowledge of the forms present in the image like the anatomy of the fictional characters.

-Holds an element of thought or wonder that an audience can look at and find new meanings and story from.

-Character designs

-His use of colours

Colour Theory

Peter Mohrbacher has a very appealing colouring style which I found falls under a colour triad when applied to a colour wheel and the colours are mostly desaturated except for the focus points of the images, where the colour and tonal value is more vibrant. This will be helpful when trying to create a palette for my final images.

I did a study in photoshop of one of peters drawings this is the result i want to do study into realistic values and fine detail textures.

I hope to gain an understanding of how Peter handles his Tonal ranges and textures. Also his use of atmospheric perspective and compositional elements that produce a sense of awe and scale that I want to create in my own work.

here is my study of realistic rending i thought was pretty successful i learned some things about breaking up the specular light to create the illusion of different types of surfaces.

the sense of scale in peters work was impresive to me so i tried to get a similar feeling with this rendering of a rock formation on the beach. its scale is established not by the things surrounding it but instead by the placement of the horizon line.

 Gradient Maps

Peter Mohrbacher Has a youtube channel which I found. In one of his videos he does a PSD breakdown where he goes into all of his drawing layers to give his viewers a sense of his process. 

some interesting things i found was his starting off in black and white before moving into the colour. his reasoning for this was because he said he didn't have the time to worry about colour and tone at the same time. so he makes his values solid before moving into the colouring side of his process which is based on a gradient map base.

Starts off with a sketch 

adds a quick pass of greyscale values to make sure the thumbnail of the image is strong.

tightens up the grayscale rendering 

creates a colour base with gradient maps.

in this example the gradient map makes his dark values become purple, his middle values are green and his lighter values are orange.

after that he uses a series of color layers and normal layers to add colour to his image.

EXPLORATION

I took one of my images into photoshop and had a play with gradient maps myself.

Greyscale rendering

Gradient maps are much too intense in their default exposure for the best results it is important to only used it in subtlety. 

These last two images were with the Gradient map layers reduce to about 15% opacity.

Artists Work

By Peter Mohrbacher

This pictures use of many hands creates a feeling of suffocation for me as they seem to be coming out of smoke and grabbing at the main subject. I like the idea of him being taken apart by these hands. When applied to my works it could be a metaphor for life taking away dreams or aspirations leaving the shell of what you were.

By Shaun Tan

This Image is creepy in its use of scale, shadow and repetition of the wined up birds. The birds are scary because they look like they are alive but are not, they are wind up toys with blank looks that remind me of predator insects that don’t process empathy but instead react on their predatory instinct or mechanism. The use of light in this piece is clever because it makes the viewer have to squint into the darkness to reveal the next disturbing element, the amount of the Birds continues to the horizon line. An Ocean of unsettling, emotionless beings. These elements I could use to create the initial unease in my first panels to provoke action by my main character. 

 Idea Exploration

This is an example of the type of thumbnailing I will be doing. I am still looking into Shaun Tans Symbolic imagery and will be putting more of that knowledge into the thumbnailing in the future.

I found this book about a man who escaped from one of the tightest run establishments in the world.

North Korea gave me further inspiration to focus my project on a particular injustice that of the North Korean Government on People born within the walls of what is essentially a contemporary example of a concentration camp.

•Escape from Camp 14

•A true story about the modern day concentration camps in North Korea and the escape of Shin.

•

•Harden, B. (2013). Escape from Camp 14.

“No one born in a north Korean political prison camp had ever escaped.”

From this quote I decided to base my works around a child in this environment. I did this to push the fact that these are not criminals but vulnerable and mostly innocent people.

“Stunted by Malnutrition, he is short and slight… His lower back and buttocks are scarred with burns from the torturers fire. The skin over his pubis bears a puncture scar from the hook used to hold him in place over the fire”

This quote has some powerful imagery that I wouldn’t have thought of by myself and is worth considering  in the design of my main character.

“Because his blood was tainted by the perceived crimes of his father’s brothers.”

This is a very thought provoking idea that spreads into other aspects of life in the wider community. In the Christian ideaology you are inherently a sinner because you are born into sin due to the acts done by Adam and Eve. Even though you are your own person and had no impact in the event you are still expected to account for these wrong doings. In the current day people are inheriting the conflicts established by their ancestors even though the people you conducted the acts of hate are dead and gone, the two groups will continue to hate each other because they were told to. but they are completely different people now. I would like to evoke this emotion in the viewer when they see the image and think these things. 

Animal Symbolism 

the use of symbolism in peoples work is something that i admire it presented a sort of language that gave peoples art works another layer of interest and thought.

I found a book that dedicated itself to animal symbolism and found two animals that i thought fitted the tone of the works i wanted to produce and were also found in the North korea area.

The First is a ferret 

 the second is a lynx 

•Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art

•Is a breakdown of the uses of animal symbolism in art

•

•Werness, H. B. (2006). Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art. A&C Black.

I found this information about Korean based animals that I thought would be interesting to use in my works.

Least weasel

In Medieval Bestiaries, the weasel is said to resemble an elongated mouse Living by stealth and thievery. Pg 429

Eurasian lynx

The Lynx stood for sight, because of the perception that it had extra ordinarily acute sight, and was even able to see through solid objects. pg94

from these two animals I took what i learned from my Shaun Tan studies and applied those skills in combining them to create a new creature that embodies attributes from both 

this was not my final image. the final was printed for the gallery but the digital file was misplaced before i could attach it to my blog.

Artist’s name: Marius Urban

Title of work: Out of Bounds

Medium: Digital Painting

Price: $50

Statement

I am a first year animation student studying screen arts at Southern Institute of Technology. My interests are in storytelling and animation. These areas appeal to me because they embody the next step towards giving life and purpose to my art.

My pictures are influenced by Escape from camp 14 by author Blaine Harden, a biography of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only known man to escape a North Korean concentration camp. Shin is an example of one of the children born into these North Korean concentration camps who are judged against the actions of others and then sentenced to live and die within the camp walls. This idea resonated with me as I linked it to a strong feeling in my past. I had spent substantial time within an establishment that diluted my personality and aspirations to a husk of what they were.

I saw myself contained in a loop of days identical to the last without anything to show for them. Finding a way out was one of the most liberating things I have experienced and by combining these feelings, I have created a series of images that end in a more hopeful way. I intended for these images to help others identify walls within their own lives by asking the question "what do I want to accomplish with my life?" I hope this question fuels an empathy that should highlight the problem with North Korea at the moment.

Inspiration for the style came from artist Shaun Tan notably his illustrations in the book The Arrival. 

These images were created using an Intuos drawing tablet where I could paint by hand in the photo manipulation software Adobe Photoshop.

In The Future I aim to create visual entertainment in whatever form that takes. (comic book, picture book, Animation, video games, movies and other).

Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art

Is a breakdown of the uses of animal symbolism in art

Werness, H. B. (2006). Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art. A&C Black.

Escape from Camp 14

A true story about the modern day concentration camps in North Korea and the escape of Shin.

Harden, B. (2013). Escape from Camp 14.