Frida Kahlo research

For my First female artist I decided to look into Frida Kahlo as she is one of the only female artists that most people will know. She has had a very interesting life so I thought that there would be lots of impressive information and facts about her that younger people would be inspired by. I watched a full length documentary to get a full timeline of her life and to make sure that the facts I had were correct. Here are some of the facts that I found interesting. I have also included a photograph of Kahlo and a self portrait that she created. 

Full Name: Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón
Born: July 6, 1907,  Coyoacán Mexico 
Died: July 13, 1954 (age 47)
Movement: Magic realism, Surrealism, Modern art

• At the age of 6 Frida got polio, resulting in one of her legs being thinner than the other.
• When she was young Frida wanted to break the stereotype of being a girl so she would dress like a boy and play boys sports such as wrestling and boxing.
• At 19 years old Kahlo was in a serious bus accident, the bus collided with a street car. As a result of this collision Kahlo was impaled by a metal hand rail, it went into one side of her hip all the way through and came out the other side. She also suffered many other injuries including fractures in her spine and a crushed foot.
• After the accident she spent a lot of time in a body cast and she was bed ridden. She would paint to occupy her time. 
• She has a trademark unibrow that gave her a very distinctive look. She painted it in all of her self portraits.
• When Kahlo grew up she wore lots of Jewellery covered in bright bold jewels, and big flamboyant flowers in her hair. She had a very individual look that made her very interesting to look at.
• The house she was born in was called the 'Blue house.'
• She married fellow artist Diego Rivera in 1940. They stayed together but had a vary turbulent relationship. He had an affair with her sister and other women, Kahlo also had a few affairs.
• When Kahlo was 37 her health started to deteriorate and her back became very weak she wore many plaster braces that she would paint and decorate with bright patterns and shapes. 
• At 47 Kahlo passed away as a result of her ill health in the 'Blue house' that she was born in.

Vincent Van Gogh Research

As the book I aim to create will have information and facts about artists I decided to find out some interesting things about Vincent Van Gogh. I started with finding out the basic information such as when he was born and died and his artistic movement. I then went into finding more interesting focused facts about him. Here is the information that I have found so far, I may add more facts or replace some if there aren't enough or I find better ones in the future. I also included a self portrait of Van Gogh

Born: 30 March 1853, in the Netherlands
Died: 29 July 1890, (aged 37)
Movement: Post-impressionism  

• Van Gogh wrote over 800 letters in his lifetime, most of these letters were written to his brother Theo, who was also his best friend.
• In his short life he created the astonishing amount of 2000 pieces, this is including drawings and sketches as well as paintings. 
• Van Gogh only became famous after his death because his brothers wife set out to get him the recognition that he deserved. 
• Within 10 years Van Gogh created approximately 900 paintings! some of which are known as the greatest works of art ever created.
• Van Gogh committed suicide by shooting himself and dying of blood loss two days later.  
• He suffered greatly from mental illness and spent part of his life in the Saint-Paul Asylum. This is where the famous painting 'starry night' was created, it is thought to be of the view from his room. 
• Part of Van Gogh's ear lobe was cut off, no one knows the real truth about how this event took place there are a few different stories as to how this happened. Many people think that he cut it off himself but there are other theories that his artist friend Paul Gauguin cut it off in a row.
• Van Gogh painted 30 self portraits between 1886 and 1889.

Self portrait of Vincent Van Gogh

Artists to consider for the book

As I wanted to include a collection of both male and female artists within this book I decided to compose a list of both male and female artists to consider including in the book. I found this quite difficult because there were a lot more male artists as in the past the artistic industry was very prejudice towards women and as a rule females were not artists, there are a few exceptions and women will have created art they just were not given the credit or recognition that they deserved. Despite this I have managed to find an equal amount of artists from both genders. After researching the artists separately I may revise the list and add or take away some of the people on it but this is what I have for now, as a starting point. I have done the lists as two separate ones so I know how many of each gender that I have. I aim to keep it as equal as possible (the lists are in no particular order, I just wrote them down in the order that I thought of them)

Males

• Salvador Dali
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Pablo Picasso
• Leonardo Da Vinci 
• Henri Matisse 
• Andy Warhol 
• Johannes Vermeer
• Michelangelo Buonarroti 

Females 

•  Frida Kahlo
• Georgia O' keeffe
• Artemisia Gentileschi
• Lavinia Fontana 
• Rosa Bonheur 
• Paula Rego 
• Giulia Lama 
• Hilma Af Klint 

Negotiated Module

Because the new project is negotiated, I can decide on whatever I want to do for this module. When I first thought about this brief it was pretty overwhelming as I could literally choose to create anything that I wanted as long as it could have some sort of commercial application. First of all I thought it would be good to create some sort of zine along with a few other illustrated products that could be sold online in a store such as Etsy, as lot of illustrators that I like do this and it seemed like a fun sort of project to do. I decided against this though because after a little chat with my tutor Amy I realised that I could use this opportunity to create something that could potentially lead to better opportunities for myself. She suggested creating a children's book because I love children's books and how beautiful that they can be. I agreed that this would be a good idea so I am planning on going down the route of creating some sort of book that would be suited to a younger audience.

As I like to come up with stories but am not too confident on wording a story correctly for a children's story/picture book I have decided to go down the route of creating factual, educational book about historical artists. I felt as though this was a good route to go down because I have been thinking about considering a career in education lately and this ties in with that as well. I think it will make the book really fun and quirky if I add strange and creepy facts about the artists, a bit like horrible history books. I have decided that this will appeal to children from the ages of about 10 all the way up to whatever age really, anyone who is interested in artists and interesting facts are  likely to be drawn to the book. I also plan to create the book using tasteful but interesting illustrations and colour palettes so that adults and children alike will be drawn to the book.

I will now start to research which artists I will include in the book, I want to attempt to have an equal amount of female to male artists although this may be challenging as in the past women weren't seen as equally as men within art and even if they did create something they often weren't credited for it. I also need to think of a title for the book but i feel like that will come with time and ill think of it whilst i am creating the images. I will also look at influences to help me decide on how I would like the book to look.

oranges are not the only fruit concept

The concept for this book cover was to bring an older story into the modern age attracting a younger audience to the book. I wanted to create a clean modern look whilst not referencing directly that it was a particularly modern story. I also wanted to get across the girls feelings of sadness so the audience will know the overall tone of the book. I wanted to portray idea of thoughts and writing down notes as this is referenced a lot throughout the book. I feel that the angle that I have decided to go with for the concept is quite risky because it doesn't focus directly on the story but more the main character and the feelings that she has. 

Carries war book cover concept

The overriding concept of this book cover was to focus on a part of the story where the two main characters go to visit their friend’s house. They go quite regularly so I thought that this would help children to picture that part of the story in their heads, It is also the part of the story that I found most interesting, it was very descriptive and gave me this wonderful magical but also creepy scene in my head. I wanted to create this scene in real life then photograph it in the hope that it would draw children into the scene, making them want to read the story themselves. I also thought I would make the scene have a slight orange glow to crate a warm feeling of nostalgia which would also draw adults into the book to buy it for their children. I feel although my concept brings an added element into this story helping children to expend their imagination and in turn be more interested in the story.

Module evaluation part 2: Oranges are not the only fruit

Alongside creating the carries war book cover I began to read and develop ideas for the book Oranges are not the only fruit. When I was reading this book not one single image stood out to me that would work well on a book cover because there were so many topics and themes covered in the book. The main themes are religion and lesbian love but alongside this there are a lot of stories and bible verses. Because no images came into my mind I started to sketch lots of different thumbnails out to see what came from it. This proved very beneficial as it helped me to decide what I liked the look of most. 

I started off by creating a silhouette style image using my own profile for the girl head. I then added the title of the book within the silhouette, I think the design was okay but nothing really special. After completing this cover I realised that this cover idea was very similar to the cover for ' The colour Purple,' another lesbian love story, I would not be able to use something so similar to something that already existed. I am glad this happened because it allowed me to think more and expend my ideas and designs.  I went back to my thumbnails and had a look through the other ideas that I had, I saw a sketch of a girl at the bottom of the page and the title above her head as if it was her thoughts. I really liked this idea but my next decision was to choose the style that I wanted to create the book cover in. At this point, I don't really know why but the Eleanor and Park book cover popped into my head and it gave me the idea to create a really modern book cover for a quite old dated story, a similar thing to what the Eleanor and Park book cover did. I thought that tis idea would attract a new more young audience to the book, a market that usually wouldn't even think to pick this book up. I thought it would be a good idea to refresh the book and bring it into this age. 

I then started on designs. As the brief specified a strong use of typography I decided to make this the focal point of the book I wanted to create a really nice quirky hand written title for the book. I’m not too great with digital fonts so I thought I would do what I know and just draw the letters. I kept it in quite a loose style so it looks as if someone could have doodled it down onto paper because there are a lot of notes that get written throughout the book and I feel as though this fits with the story. I also decided to have the books background as lined paper so it really looked like a note.  I am pleased with how the text turned out considering I don't think I'm that good at typography. I then drew the design for the girl at the bottom of the page, I wanted her to look sad because throughout the book that seems to be the feeling that she feels the most. I decided on a simple line drawing to keep the design clean, simple and modern. After scanning it in and putting it on Photoshop I decided to colour the hair and eyebrows with a light orange to reference to the title and the oranges from the story.  

I then added all of the digital text such as the author name and quote. I put the authors name in a band the same colour as the girl’s hair, I think this contained the name nicely and brought the image together and balanced it out so it was no longer bottom heavy. I continued the orange band onto the spine and the back page. I think this makes the back and front of the book work together as a cohesive piece. I decided to use my hand writing for the blurb so that again it looked like a note that someone had written. I think that it balanced out the use of digital and hand written text nicely making it look professional as opposed to a hand made DIY book cover. After adding all of the text to the back cover  I decided that it did feel a bit plain and it needed something extra. I decided to then add some doodle style motifs referencing themes in the book, I decided to keep them in the orange accent colour that I used throughout the design. 

Overall I am really pleased with how this book cover turned out because I think it looks really modern and quirky and I would probably pick it up if I saw it on a bookshelf. I also really like the illustration style, I would like to play around with this style a lot more in the future. I feel as though it is a real risk for me to enter this as a cover as it is so modern for a story set in the 60's but who knows it could really work as a re brand of the story and bring it into the modern day. I think that a cover like this would really attract a new audience to the book. If I was to re do this project I think that I would maybe spend a little bit more time making sure everything is tidied up and polished to an even higher standard But I am quite pleased with how professionally it has came out compared to previous projects. Personally I really think that I am improving with creating a more professional finish compared to last year, I think that I can keep up with this and be even more meticulous to create projects with the an even higher standard in the future.  

Module evaluation Part 1: Carrie's War

At the beginning of this module I was pretty overwhelmed with the amount of amazing briefs that we were given to choose from. It was quite a challenge for me to choose which one I wanted to do, so I thought really hard about what will benefit me most in terms of experience and opportunities that I could gain from it. I narrowed it down to the traveling man zine and the Penguin book cover competition briefs. After a lot of thought I decided that I can always work on zines and self publish them in my own time where as the penguin competition only comes around once a year, plus its only for students to enter meaning that when I leave university I cant enter it and I might as well make the most of it whilst I can. So in the end I decided to go ahead with the Penguin book cover competition. One thing that helped me to decide to do the penguin brief was the opportunities you could gain from winning the it or even getting short listed because it would definitely get you noticed within the industry.  I also thought that I would like experience in designing a book cover as I really love to read and it would be good to work alongside books in some way, in the future.

When I started to look more into the brief, the next thing to do was choose two from the three books to design a cover for. The three choices were: Oranges are not the only fruit, Freakanomics and Carrie's War. I decided quite quickly to do Carries War (the children's book) and Oranges are not the only fruit (the adult non-fiction book) because these were the two novel style books and I thought that I might enjoy reading the books anyway. Ill start with evaluating my Carries War book cover because that’s where I began. I started off reading the book pretty quickly, I soon discovered that the book was about evacuated children in World War 2. Although I enjoyed the book and it brought me back in time feel as though the story definitely lacked a gripping storyline especially for a children's book. All of the previous covers that I looked at didn't really represent the story at all because they showed scenes of war and destruction in London where none of that happened within the book. After reading the story it struck me that it was going to be hard to make such an empty story look exiting for children and make them want to pick it up off the shelves. Then it hit me, I thought why not just create the creepy woods that the children walk through throughout the story because that was the main part of the story that had a lot of description.

I started out with a few sketches of how I imagined the cover in my head and thought it would be appropriate to include the two main characters and the house that the children are going to (Hepsibah's House.) I wanted to create a woodland scene with lots of depth, my idea was that this would draw children looking in the bookshop into the scene and make them want to read the book. To make the image look really interesting and unique I decided to take my illustrations to a 3D medium. I have done this before and I really liked the look that it gave but it wasn't finished to that high of a standard so I thought that I could really push this technique and really improve it I looked at a few different artists for inspiration such as Hari and Deeppiti, they were a big influence. I then created illustrations of the trees and people that I wanted to make the scene from and I cut out a tester using cartridge paper and it took me a pretty long time to get all of the intricate detail that I wanted in the trees, after realising how long this was going to take I thought about my options. I was then given the idea to try out using the laser cutter. I really liked the idea of using it and was really exited to learn a new tool that I could use to create 3D illustrations. I then created my illustration outlines digitally using Adobe Illustrator. I then booked a session to use the laser cutter and the technician helped me to achieve what I wanted. I really, really love the finish that the laser cutter gives and it helped push my design to another level I was very pleased with my outcome. I wasn't planning for it but the laser cutter left slight scorch marks around the edge of the cuts and I really liked the colouring that it made on the white mount board it added real character. The look of the scorch marks also referenced war time really well because there will have been a lot of destruction and devastation from bombs and of course fire so there would have been a lot of scorched debris around at this time in history.

After using the laser cutter the next challenge for me to conquer was for me to photograph the scenes to create the final images. This was by far one of the hardest points of creating this book cover. As I don't have that much experience with photography or lighting it was very hard to work out the best way to light the scene. After a lot of trial and error and some help from the photography tutors we finally figured out the best lighting angles, and it took a while but in the end we got the perfect shots. I think when we got the lighting right it really transformed it to a magical scene and drew you in. This is exactly what I wanted. If I was to have any criticisms it would be that the photograph on the front cover was lit slightly differently than the front because it was harder to lighting right as a lot of shadows were being cast onto the house. I am still really pleased with the result though. After deciding on the two final images I then took them to Photoshop to edit the levels and the hue/saturation. I wanted to make the dark bits slightly darker and the light parts lighter, I did this by editing the levels. I then added a warm orangey/yellow hue to the whole image to make it look more inviting and warm. I think this really helped the image to look more like a children's book because it had a nice nostalgic look to it, It reminded me a bit of when you think of a happy memory and in your head the image has a whole warm glow to it.

Finally I added the Title, author name, Blurb and spine to the book design in Photoshop. I feel as though the front cover looked really nice and the title and author really completed the look of the front cover. I then added the blurb, this was also laser cut but it was engraved into a square piece of mount board rather than fully cut out of it. I really liked the look of the laser cut blurb but i'm not too sure how well it worked on the back of the book because it was very square and it was covering up a lot of detail of the trees. I tried other ways of placing the blurb and I tried a few ways of improving the look of it like changing the transparency and size of it, I even tried making it look like it was amongst the trees but a lot of the text was not readable. I think I will just have to deal with the way that it looks because a blurb is a very necessary part of a book back, even of its not the best designed part its one of the most important elements so I feel that its not that big of a deal that it stands out quite a bit because it does its job. 

Overall I am really pleased with how this book design has turned out, I was not too sure initially how good I would be at creating a book cover that worked with the story but I feel that I really have. Its hard to tell if it will be what the judges are looking for but I certainly think it will be unique against other entries so it will hopefully catch a few eyes. If I was to do this project the only thing that I would change is the slight issue with the blurb on the back of the book, I think I would plan for it to fit better within the image. Other than that I feel as though I have completed this module to a pretty high standard with no real major issues. I even feel as though my time management has even improved as I have finished everything with a little bit of time left to tweak things as opposed to working right up to the deadline. I also managed to complete it whilst keeping on top of all my other written work, which I am quite proud of.   

Oranges are not the only fruit: Final design in template

This is the final design for Oranges are not the only fruit in the temple that Penguin set.

Overall I think that this book design turned out very modern which was what I was aiming for and I think it works for the story but i'm not sure if people judging it will agree but its just a chance that ill have to take. I will now write an evaluation and post that in a different post.

Carrie's War: Final design in the template

Here is the finished design Within the template that penguin set.

Overall I am pleased with how this design turned out, I might still play around with the blurb a bit before deadline to see if I can improve it in anyway.  I will now post an evaluation of this module in a separate post.

Carrie's War spine

To create the carries war spine I simply used the text from the front of the book and chose a colour foe the background that I thought brought the whole book together. I decided on a dusty brown colour as the front and back images had an orange/warm glow to them and I felt as though this colour was a nice  warm tone complemented the rest of the book. It looks quite plain on its own but with the rest of the book I think it works well.

Oranges are not the only fruit: Spine

For the spine of the book I decided to keep it simple as there is not much space to work with so I used the same style of text that I used for the authors name on the front, on the spine.
I then, for the book name, used the same font that I used on the blurb. It is a hand written style so I think that it fits in well with the rest of the book design. I then decided that it looked quite plain and it might not catch someones eye in a shop. To target this I decided to use the little motifs that were on the back of the book on the spine as well, I think this adds another element of interest . I also added the vintage logo that penguin specified had to be on the spine.  

Editing the Carrie's War photograph in photoshop: Front cover

I started off with the original image that i took in a studio with studio lighting.

 I then straightened the image up and changed the levels to make the lighting and shades look how I wanted them to, This involved mainly darkening up the image a bit and lightening the back of the image more. I then changed the hue/saturation to make it have more of an orangey/yellow glow like the back page does. I think changing the levels helped me to achieve the look that I wanted.

 I then added in the title of the book I decided to have it at the bottom of the design because I thought that this made the perspective look good, the text actually looks like its in front of the scene. I then added a little bit of colour like the image but I wanted it to be slightly lighter so it showed up well against the background.

I did the same to the author name but added it to the top of the image to balance it out. I think this cover turned out well after some editing on photoshop. It looks how I originally intended so I am pleased with it.

Oranges are not the only fruit: back cover

I decided that I wanted to use the same lined paper on the back cover of 'oranges are not the only fruit' as I did on the front. I also decided to keep the same style that I did the authors name for the back cover quote, I feel as though this ties the back and front cover together. 

 This is the back cover with only the quote. The next step is to add the blurb and anything else that has to be included on the back cover.  

 I then thought about how I wanted the font of the actual blurb, I decided that It would be good if I could use my own hand writing as I did for the front of the book. I created my own font and then typed up the blurb. I think this worked out quite well because it looks like someone has just wrote it on the lined paper, this is the look that I was going for because it ties in with the story quite well as the mother in the story writes Janette a lot of notes. 

 I then added the other quote I wanted to do this in a different font yet again just so it was clear that it was not part of the blurb. I think it adds balance to the page and makes it look more interesting because there are different styles of type to look at. 

After looking at the back page I decided that it looked too top heavy, The bottom would be slightly cut off anyway because of the template provided by penguin but there was still too much blank space. To combat this I decided to draw some little doodle style motifs using subjects covered in the story, I think it worked out well and gave a few more clues to what the book is about without having to read the blurb.