Assignment 3: Colour Me

Assignment 3 is all to do with Colour. I had to produce 4 posters for a specific colour. The colour I chose was Red. Inside the brief, it does say that you should choose a colour that means something to you, for example, 'golden brown' because you love beer. Now I do love beer, but I didn't really have a special colour. Red is my favourite colour, but not because of any specific reason just because I really like it.

In the brief, it explains that the posters should celebrate the colour of choice and capture what the colour represents and any emotions it can evoke. The first thing I did was brainstorm what red represented, not only as a colour but in society as well as create a mood board I could look back on to keep on track whilst sketching. Now I didn't use many of the things on my initial mood board but it was helpful none the less.

As you can see red is an emotionally intense colour, and from the previous exercise, I had a lot of information on red already. It is associated with: Power, War, Strength, Determination, Passion, Desire and Love. Physically red is featured in lots of food, cars and gemstones. I thought these things could be used as features of the poster. For example a red Ferrari for desire. I know it would be near impossible to include all these elements into one A3 poster, or just cluttered at least. So I split them up into sections, the first section I chose to experiment with was 'Determination' and 'Strength'. 

I explored Pinterest for and google for images of 'Determination' and Strength'. I knew Strength would be quite easy, I could use a person lifting weights or someone fighting, but the determination was a little harder. I trifled through google and found this awesome imagery of a man pushing a rock up a hill, apparently, it's quite a famous piece of artwork. However, once I saw it I knew it captured exactly what I wanted. This man was determined to get this rock up the hill. I drew my own version of the man, however, instead of using skin colour, I used black and red. Red being the highlights and Black being the shadow. I did this not only because its a way of including red in the poster but given red represents strength I thought that it was fitting having his body in red as that is what is doing all the heavy lifting. 

On this sketch, you can also see some other ideas I had that didn't make it, and others that I used later on, these were just ideas I had in the moment and had to get them down. For example, I wanted to use the ventricles of a human heart to represent love.

To create this first piece I wanted to create an impactful background, something that isn't just plain red but has some real depth to it. What I did was follow a tutorial on youtube on how to physically paint a deep red background. I knew that by utilising the blending brush and layer opacities I could replicate the look of a real painted canvas in Photoshop.

Here is the final painting, it took about 20 minutes to produce and although there are elements of yellow in the painting it was for highlights and apart from that it is created with just different tints and tones of red. I just love how it goes from a deep dark red to a brighter warmer red, and it does so very naturally, that is due to the gradual opacity adjustment and layering. It starts off quite aggressive and ends in a calming 'bubble'. I think most of all it looks 'nice' it's not jarring and the choice of reds that ive used compliment each well. There are also some deeper meanings to it, the first is that the dark red at the bottom represents the pain and struggle of pushing the rock up the mountain, this is because darker red is associated with anger and willpower. Then the light red is the elated feeling of finally pushing the rock up the hill, light red and light colours for that matter are happier and more joyful than there darker counterparts. 

To add some more depth and meaning to this background I took the image of a mans back, this on its own represents strength and physical power. 

I then took the image of the back and adjusted the: contrast, saturation, hue and brightness. This gave a pattern I could overlay onto the background. The adjustments also made it red as well so it fitted into the project.

I did the same thing with the veins of someone's eye, this represents the strenuous struggle of climbing the mountain and how the body reacts to being put under incredible pressure. 

The last element I wanted to create was the rock the man was pushing up the hill, because of the limitations of the brief and how we could only use the chosen colour what I decided on doing was to have him pushing the blood moon, it was in the news recently so it was on my mind and thought it fitted perfectly into this assignment.

I then compiled all these features together to produce my final piece of artwork.

Overall I adore how this came out, I think it represents red as a colour perfectly. Red is an emotionally intense colour and just initially looking at its incredibly bold and striking. I love the contrast between the red and black as both are very intense colours on their own. Also, the lack of any other colour apart from red gives it a sense solitude and a chilling presence. Also regarding the composition, the main focus is the man, given the contrast between the red and black it is the first thing my eyes are drawn to, I've also purposefully offset the man by using the rule of thirds, the brain is so used to symmetry, it often goes unnoticed, however making the subject asymmetrical it sends a signal to the brain that something is different which makes us as the viewer more likely to engage. 

Now although that was the process of completing my first piece of artwork, it wasn't the only sketching I did, as I had a creative flow going I kept sketching out ideas I could use in other areas of red. I even began noting down ideas on a blank reciept at work.

An unused idea I had was this illustration of a fist symbol, it represents power and strength, I even scanned it into illustrator and created a vector of the symbol but ultimately it ended up not really fitting anywhere.

With the first idea I had, after finishing it I had my suspicions that It would be the one I chose to submit as my final piece, however, I still wanted to experiment with rest of the ideas I had and to do them justice. Here are my 4 other variations utilising different meanings of red.

Now ultimately this pink and not red, however pink isn't a colour but rather a tint of red so technically this allowed. After reading up on the meaning of red in the other exercises I know It had large correlations with sexuality and love. I wanted to go down down two routes with that. First is raw passion and excitement and the other the more pure innocent and sensitive version of love. I started to construct another mood board based on this.

My direction was to include imagery that wasn't flaunting sexuality massively ( not that there's anything wrong with that) but rose pink is the universal colour of love, it is mature, feminine and pure. I also took lots of inspiration from old VOGUE covers, these covers were for a mature audience and featured beautiful women that weren't used purely for their body and sexuality as that can be considered inappropriate and too raunchy for the audience and is often considered tacky. I also included doves as they are a universal symbol for love and have been associated with love way back to Greek mythology, I also think given that they are a white they have connotations of pureness innocence and beauty.

The two above aren't really 'different' pieces but combine main elements and ideas from each other. The first was created as a way of expressing the danger associated with the colour red. I used the red desert as the conditions of the desert are dangerous in themselves. Deserts are cruel merciless wastelands and the isolation scares people.

This was the first project I used the complimentary colour I was allowed to use. I thought cacti were perfect for this, they are sharp and dangerous plants and coincidently found in the desert. I wanted to make this my focus, I took a small bit of inspiration from the 'Son of a Man' and made the cactus huge and covering a large part of the desert. I did this because it's striking and bold and because of it being the main focal point it sets the tone for the whole piece and as I've already discussed its a sharp dangerous cactus so on the viewers first look they already have this notion of danger.

Given I began with an actual image of the desert which I adjusted to look red, I really wanted to add another element of danger. I decided on using photo manipulation techniques to replace with sky with a red lightning storm. Lightning (like cacti) is scary and dangerous, not only can it physically harm you but its jagged edges just look menacing and dangerous.

The 2nd image is a slight variation of this, I actually think I prefer this one, it takes the focus away from the cacti and instead places them offset in the corner. I made the focus a giant bold 'RED'. I did this because signs of danger need to be bold and noticeable, especially things like warning signs so people can see them. The font I used was Arial Black.

I wanted to convey the feeling of 'passion' in this piece. It was the final one I did and I wanted to be as creative and inspired as I could. The original idea for this took place in one of my initial sketches. I had the idea to put human lips on animals ( you can find this one of my sketch pages I included). Lips are a universal symbol of love, originally the lips were going to be placed on a lion as, to begin with, I was going to produce a whole piece based on 'Red' and the lion was going to represent courage. However, when I scrapped that idea as it would be too cluttered, I reused it in this idea. Now because I couldn't use a Lion for my animal of choice I did some research on the most romantic animals. I had a couple of options, I could use penguins as they tend to mate for life, however, I went with the Lovebird, not only do they have vibrant red and green feathers which fit perfectly into my theme but are very affectionate birds. I was inspired by my time completing the photomontage exercise to overlay the human lips, they add an abstract feel and is a fun and playful addition. For the text I went back to my Visual Diary, I thought the electric nature of this text style fitted perfectly into my theme as its loud and exciting. I then paired it with some neon rings which can be seen on the peep show signs in Amsterdam's red light district. I wanted to include elements of the whole unit and this was the perfect opportunity to include the symbol I created for Love in the 'Signs and Symbols' exercise. I edited the rings to look like they were attached and used the same layer style to make it appear to have this neon-like effect on it which is prominent in the red light district and I thought would be at home in this particular artwork.

Overall all of my finished pieces of artwork capture the meaning of red and ultimately celebrate it in my opinion. However, I feel the one I chose to submit as my final piece captures red the best. I've tried to utilise colour and visual dynamics to really strengthen the limited palette I have at my disposal. There are so many tiny details I've included that just enhances the feel of the image, I still love the depth and emotion that the background conveys and the imagery of the man represents the: determination, willpower and resilience of the human spirit and these are all feelings represented by the colour RED.