Response: Helen Oxenbury

As part of the course we have to produce a Personal Study which focuses on an idea from symbolism. So far my line of enquiry has lead me to the idea of Fairy Tales. When I was developing this idea I looked at a collection of artists concerning two main themes; editorial photography and narrative. I have previously done some work on Annie Leibovitz an editorial photographer  so I wanted to explore a narrative artists work. One artist which I was heavily influenced by was Helen Oxenbury. I have explored her work in more detail and produced a response to it.

Research

As part of a ten hour work piece I have to choose a inspirational artist and researched them before producing work which is based upon them, I chose Helen Oxenbury as my artist.

Previously I have explored the illustrator Helen Oxenbury, however I wanted to look at her work in more detail rather than just focusing on her Alice in Wonderland work but looking at all her work. The reason I have chosen to study her more is because I find her work to be very different to other representations of fairy tales. I want to experiment further with Adobe Illustrator and try to produce work similar to her illustrations. I love how she captures a young audience with illustrations which they can relate to and understand due to them being so simplistic.

I find her inspirational as she presents a basic childlike illustrations which I find to be beautiful and also I have had her book Alice in Wonderland since a young age and have admired her work for years. I feel if I can create work much like hers then I could produce a interesting representation of fairy tales. The quotations below are taken from the Alice in Wonderland book which she illustrated in 1999:

"For over a hundred years, Lewis Carroll's classic story of logic and lunacy has delighted young and old alike, with many outstanding artists turning their hand to it's illustrations. Here, at last, is Helen Oxenbury's interpretations, which bears all of the special qualities that make her picture books so well-loved. Indeed, though unabridged, more of a picture book, than previous editions  of the story. The topsy-turvy world of Wonderland and it's memorable characters - the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Chesire Cat, the Queen of Hearts - are depicted with distinctive warmth and humor. The whole approach is contemporary and accessible: Alice herself is a child today - casually dressed, personable, spirited, a true Oxenbury child. This, then, is Helen Oxenbury's vision of Wonderland - and what a wondrous vision it is!" - This quotation is at the beginning of the book and introduces the reader to what they are about to view. It discusses how she wanted to keep memorable characters easily recognizable and  create a interesting picture book to accompany the traditional story.

"Helen Oxenbury says that her mother read Alice in Wonderland to her as a child. When she came to it as an illustrator, she wanted to make it accessible to today's children. She also wanted to set the scene more and to create a stronger peripheral characters. Awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1979, Helen has  been Highly Commended several times since, as well as thrice winning, the Smarties Book Prize - for Farmer Duck, We're Going on a Bear Hunt and So Much." - This quotation is taken from the back of the book and tells the reader all about the illustrator. We learn she read the story as a child and wanted to make her illustrations accessible for a modern audience.
One key piece of hers is the first page of the book she illustrated. Below I have deconstructed this image explaining what parts I feel more interested by and the techniques she used. Also I have listed a few things I like about her work from the research I conducted. As well as this to explore her own work further I have created a mood board of a selection of her illustrations.

Analysis 

Key things from her work

Mood Board

Planning

From the further research on Helen Oxenbury i need to develop a response to her work. I want to produce something similar to her but with a more mature twist so it's aimed at young adults as opposed to teenagers. From the mood board and research above I have created a secondary mood board which shows some more specific things I like from and about her work.

From the above information I have now developed the idea of capturing photographs of a girl in a natural environment before transforming it into an illustration.

I am using a teenage model as the subject for my piece as I feel having someone older posing as someone younger can make an interesting concept. Also she has brown hair as opposed to the traditional Alice in Wonderland who has blonde hair this will add to the idea of changing the original template of Alice in Wonderland.

Testing
However, I need to test this firstly to see if it will work. Therefore before placing the girl in a natural environment I went into a small space and photographed her. Below are a few drawings of ideas which I could photograph before making them into illustrations

I will go onto photograph a girl in the style I have drawn up. Below is a contact-sheet of all the image I took of the girl(s) in these positions.
Photographs

Chosen images
From the contact sheets above I have chosen the three images below to follow on with.

This is the image I have chosen as it portrays the idea well due to her looking trapped. However it is slightly blurry which isn't too much of a problem as I'm going to illustrate over it but if this was a photograph I would have to re-shoot. I wanted her to look happy even though she was trapped to avoid this portraying a sad or dark theme but rather a happy and up-beat emotion. 

The image of Helen Oxenbury's which I copied in producing this emulated friendship. Therefore I used two girls who had been friends for a long time when capturing this image. This meant that they had natural chemistry so could be happy and connect with one another in a natural way. Also both of them are smiling and 'Alice' is helping her - communicating a emotion of happiness a key theme consistent throughout Helen Oxenbury's work.

This image is playful and fun. I wanted the model to feel comfortable and relax to try and make her look more childlike and younger than she actually is. There is blur but it is only on her hand, foot and hair. This meant that it showed speed something Helen Oxenbury shows within her version of this. Additionally the girl smiling makes her happier containing my theme of happiness. I want the viewer to try and see this as the start to the novel and as if she is growing. It shows her true character which prevades the other images. 








Editing process
I used the same editing process for all the images. I started by taking all images in Photoshop and adjusting the curves and levels so I had a good clear base for the image.

I found after taking the images that they worked together as a series. Starting by introducing our character than showing her going into this bizarre place before meeting a friend. This is something I could work on when creating my response and when looking at Fairy Tales in the future. As although a narrative should be clear in each photograph showing a story through a series of images is something interesting additionally. 
Next I took them into Illustrator. Using a dry brush I sketched around the outline and the models then added blue colour to only the girl. This mirrors her style as she would produce childlike and simple illustrations using basic colours. 

Response Photos

Evaluate

From the images above I feel I have successfully replicated Helen Oxenbury's work. However, I found placing a teenage model in the position a young child would be put in makes is more surreal and look fake. Therefore in my response piece I will still use a teenage model but illustrate her in the clothing she is wearing rather than faking it. Additionally I found photographing it in a studio situation reduced it quality as it didn't look as real whereas a natural situation would make it look more real and allow for more interesting photography. On the other hand, I found the use of dry brush created a good sketch effect and this is definately something I will use when creating my own response. Yet the lack of detail does draw away from the concept and doesn't allow the viewer to become emerged within the work. So I will add more detail into my final piece rather than worrying about colour. The colour works well with regards to Helen Oxenbury's work but in my own work the one dimensional colour looks bad and reduces the quality whereas if it was more toned and shaded it would look a lot better I feel. However the simple colour and brush strokes do contribute to the childlike nature of Helen Oxenbury's illustrations. 

What Next?

I plan to place her in a forest, specifically Burnham Beaches as the forest area there is beautiful, there are many meadows with bright flowers but also some contrasting tall tress which create a dark and ominous sense. Below are a few photographs of the area which visually explain why I chose it:

 

Before doing the shoot I want to ensure I know exactly the type of photographs I want so have created a rough sketch of my ideas, these are just a few ideas I have drawn up to get me started, once I arrive on set I plan to take more photos of the girl in different positions.

This is my first sketch it's a simple idea I wanted to show the part where Alice first arrives in Wonderland. She is surrounded by tall trees and beautiful flowers. Although the sketch doesn't show it her facial expression will reflect a sense of bewilderment, as she looks around her and I will take photos mostly of her with her head turned observing her surroundings.

This is my second sketch, although the girl appears to be grabbing onto a tree really I will take the photo of this but edit it so she is grabbing onto a giant mushroom which we see her do in the book. She will jump so it looks as though she is hanging onto the mushroom but realistically the branch may not be strong enough to hold human weight.

The final photo I have planned to capture will be of the girl relaxing up against a tree. This is the final photo as it is meant to look this she has returned from Wonderland and is now relaxing. Her eyes will be closed and I may place a tea cup next to her linking to the concept of the Mad Hatters tea party.

From the photographs I aim to place them in Adobe Illustrator and make them appear to be a real digital sketch which will reflect the work of Helen Oxenbury.

Experimenting

Previously I have experimented with sketch effects on illustrator by physically doing it myself. However there are many sketch effects on Illustrator already. Therefore taking a photograph which I had captured over the summer holidays I began playing with the effect settings in Adobe Illustrator. This meant when I came to editing my response I had an idea of what sort of effect I wanted my image to have.

This was the photo I began with, I chose this as when I do my shoot for the response I'm going to set it in a forest. Also I am going to have a female subject so this photo is a good base to practice effects on.

This effect is 'cutout', similar to the object trace tool it cartoons the image and reduces the amount of edges and colour in the image. This feature links to the cartoon styled work Helen Oxenbury produces but isn't as good a link. However, I do want to modernise Helen Oxenbury's work and feel producing a work similar would achieve this as it's different to her presentation of Alice in Wonderland.

This next effect is 'drybrush' it gives a painted effect to the image however it does make it very dark which I feel doesn't communicate the theme of young and childlike. I didn't like this filter very much and probably won't go on to use it or experiment with it further.

This 'Ink Outlines' provides a cross hatch drawn effect over the image and makes it look slightly blurred which loses the quality of the image. However it did provide an outline over important aspects of the image and I liked this idea and could outline main features of my response before I place a filter over it.

This final effect 'stamp' is the only one which reduces the colour in the image to a simple black and white which I don't like. However, the strong outline this filter presents is interesting and makes it look far more childlike than other effects. Therefore I could use this effect but layer it under a coloured version of the image and reduces the opacity of the coloured image so there was slight colour which could be seen under the stamp effect image.

Photographs

Following on from my plan to capture photographs which can relate to Alice in Wonderland and Helen Oxenbury I went to my chosen location and captured these images. Below are four contact sheets which I annotated discussing the photos positive and negatives. Due to being printed then scanned in the quality of some of the images on my contact sheets are poor, therefore my chosen images are enlarged in a good quality at the bottom of the post.

Favourite Images

Editing Process

Photo Manipulation

Before turning my photographs into illustrations I needed to take the photos into Photoshop and edit them so they were good basic photographs to begin illustrating on.

The first photograph I started with was the Mushroom photos in which I needed to add my model to.

1. I opened the image of my model with her hands up and began by adjusting the levels as the background was going to be removed I made the levels high to create a contrast making the girl more obvious.
2. Using the Lasso Tool I cut her out from the background and then removed the background as I didn't need it and enlarged the girl to check I hadn't missed anything during the Lasso Tool stage.

1. Next I placed her on the first mushroom image.

1. I shrunk her down to appear smaller than the mushroom
2. I got her in the position I wanted then skewed it to make it look more realistic
3. I added a drop shadow to make it look more real
4. Also I cut out part of her hand so it looked as if she was actually hanging off the mushroom
5. I altered the levels on both images so they were similar and it wasn't too obvious that they were separate photographs.

1. Then I wanted to experiment with my other mushroom photograph so began the process again:

1. I shrunk her down to fit next to the mushroom
2. This time as there were a cluster of mushroom I placed her on one and had her hands on another.
3. I then used drop shadow tool to add a light shadow making it more believable that she was in the original photo
4. I again deleted part of her hand so it looked like her hand was tucked underneath the mushroom
5. I then used the burn tool on the bottom mushroom which she has her feet on to make it look like her feet were resting on it as it created an indent and shadow mark around her feet.

My other three images:

1. For the next three images I adopted the same editing technique
2. I used the levels tool to enhance the brightness then to enhance this further used the brightness/contrast technique.
3. Due to changing the lighting in the image falsely I lost some of the sharpness of the image so used the smart sharpen filter to add this back in
4. Then I used the curves to make it more interesting and adding different light to the image
5. After this, as they were simply photographs I didn't need to add anything else

Illustration
I chose the image of the girl hanging onto the mushroom as I felt this was the most accurate and easily linkable picture to Alice in Wonderland:

However as I discussed earlier I wanted to make it a Illustrator piece. Therefore with help from my tutor I began editing and creating my final response in Adobe Illustrator.

I firstly opened the photograph in an A4 document and locked the layer before adding a new layer over the top, this will be the layer I draw on. I then chose my brushes. I used two different size brushes, one 0.2 so there were thick outlines to the shapes. Then 0.05 so there were thinner lines for the detail in each of the images. The exact brush I used was "Charcoal - Feather" this gave the rough sketch effect to the edges of the piece. The reason I used this rather than a smooth brush is that Helen Oxenbury creates roughly drawn sketches to illustrate her work so I used this brush to reflect this.


Next I started drawing over my image. I began with the bottom mushroom as I felt this would be simple to draw around to get me started as I hadn't done much experimental work using this tool and wanted to test how it would look on a small part of the image. This image on the left was captured whilst I was drawing over it as I kept the back layer lit so I could see the important sections. The right picture is how it looked without the background. I didn't add a lot of detail to this as I planned to add colour.

The third step was to draw over the girl, much like with the mushroom I kept the back layer open to display the person so I could draw over her accurately. However, unlike the picture above I added more detail to this using the 0.05 size brush as I felt it needed it too look more interesting. I drew around key parts of her to make certain bits obvious. For example her top and trousers to make it obvious what she was wearing so it still conveyed my idea of updating the classic tale. I applied this exact same principle when drawing my third and final mushroom.

 I felt there was too much negative space so with the 0.05 brush size I went over the other mushrooms so they were lighter and did this in less detail so they didn't draw focus. However I wasn't happy with how they looked. I felt compared to the other two mushrooms they lacked quality and weren't as impressive therefore I removed them and just kept the simple two mushrooms and the girl.

Finally, I experimented once more with the image by adding colour. As i'm not very advanced at Illustrator I did this in Photoshop. However there was a tool I could have used called the 'Mesh Tool' which would have given it an advanced 3D affect but I felt I couldn't work this well. When I took the illustration into Photoshop to add colour the simplest way of doing this was using the paintbrush too. This however ended up going over the black lines and ruining the illustration by knocking it's quality down. Therefore I didn't continue to use colour on the image and deleted it.

Then going back into Illustrator I wanted to counter balance the lack of colour by adding more detail. So on the mushrooms I added more lines all using the 0.05 brush. This way it kept the interest in the image but didn't remove it's quality.

Final Response

Below is my final illustration in response to Helen Oxenbury.

Evaluation

I am very happy with my final response. It is made to reflect the scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice is looking on the toadstool for the Caterpillar. I like the amount of detail in the illustration and feel it accurately reflects Helen Oxenbury's work. The simplistic nature of the illustration makes it more childlike much like her work and having a lack of colour adds to this. The girl in the middle has more detail on her and being central in the illustration makes the viewer observe her in more detail than the other objects in the image.

However, I feel I should have added colour and for my next piece I need to ensure I do this as it does make me work a slightly poorer quality due to this. Also some of the parts which I have drawn on the mushrooms to add detail look odd and don't appear to do anything or add any interest. I feel although it does show a narrative it would have been better if there were a series of photos each displaying key parts of the book. This way it would appear as a timeline and show a clear story communicating an obvious message to the audience.