Research task 3.5 - visual research

Visual Research

For this research I read an article by Pam Smy, “Searching for the Green man: a sketchbook quest.”.

This article investigates her journey to create a version of a character called Green Man for a children’s novel written by the author, Linda Newbery, in 2010.

• How does the character of the sketches relate to the final illustrations?

Pam Smy's final illustrations were based on her observational sketches in the Empty Common allotments in Cambridge.

With these sketches, she intended to build a visual library of everyday objects she wasn't familiar  within the allotment, things like foliage, trees, vases and sheds, from which, when creating her final illustrations, helped her to subconsciously create the figure of the green man. It wasn't a literal human figure that she drew on the final illustration, but a human sillouette that manifested itself through foliage and trees.

It was during one of her observational studies, she noticed a man doing gardening, and how his figure  blended into the foliage, that was a major inspiration to help create the character of the Green Man. 

The literal observational sketches made during the primary research and the conversations with the author gave birth to the final illustrations in the book. 

   Imaginative drawings are subconscious manifestations of your sensory experience.

One of many illustrations for the Green man, based on her observational sketches.

One of Pam Smy's observational preliminary sketches  for  Green Man Illustration.

• Are there any texts or stories you have encountered that relate to any of the drawings you have produced during this section of the course?

No. At least I can’t think of any famous text or story that might be correlated to my sketches in this section. Most of my drawings were observational drawings, people on their everyday routines, having a picnic, cooking, talking of the phone, etc.
Perhaps on exercise 3.4, one of the drawings had a character I made up on Section 2 called Brush Man. In this particular illustration (3.4.), Brush Man is surrounded by a group of people dressed up in nuclear radiation protection suits, there wasn’t any background story behind it, I just liked the idea. Actually, this image could be a flashforward or a flashback in a story with this character.

References:

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jill/2014/00000001/00000001/art00009?crawler=true