Where-ever you go – there you are, as Bukaroo Banzai often says.
This is the week in which I have to hand over my “final” version of my banana peel symphony – I polished it all, built the 3D (look Ma: perspective!!!) made the peel smaller and here is the result:
Why “Rue Oulala”? Because I’m French and I love laughing at clichés (oulala is not something people say all the time, but perhaps it was in 1930 in the Maurice Chevalier days, my grand ma found it old fashioned)
Glenn’s verdict: has it got a joke value outside of the class? difficult to say (my opinion: the banana joke has nothing funny, it’s so old, as for the bully and inner child, their presence is incomprehensible outside of the composition class) But, back to Glenn’s opinion the compo works. Great: I have an image that is meaningless outside of my class but its compo is good 😀 way to start a career! LOL
Glenn pointed out that the sewer guy’s head looks funny, now that he has mentioned it I see it but I did not see it before: it should be the same size as the dog walker’s head and fill the helmet! Will work on that when I have 5 minutes!
Now back to the unreadable titanic (re: last week). I redid the image totally, trying to get a more readable image: faces, bigger “hero couple” taking the horizontal in a more obvious way. Here is the result:
It’s a ruff (a very ruff) drawing, but it took me hours to rearrange the characters, and pages of thumbnails (more than the other images I do).
Still the result it still confusing Glenn tells me: lots of action in there, who is the star couple? impossible to say! The compo doesn’t “point” to anyone. In fact i’d go so far as to say the compo doesn’t exist at all!. Back to square one, but i’ve learned a few more things here. I’m going to redo this totally!
But what of the topic of the week? the topic of the week is the very important diagramming of space, making clear where everyone and everything is.
I got a very clever idea: wanna diagram space? how about this setting:
Now you cant beat that unless you have a floor made of checker board like plaques! LOL
But where is the composition? what is the image pointing to in itself?
Nothing, I now see. Glenn tried very hard to find some elements pointing to the red haired girl who is in the center zone, has free space around her….. but I did not include any in fact – I considered that the nerd in the cubicle on her left, with the Spock and dino puppets holding flowers was the main point, my idea was that the guy is declaring his flame through puppets…. does my compo lead the eye to him? Frankly no, I thought the panels’ lines would suffice, they do not, we are talking serious hard worked composition here, not compo for a quick funny cartoony drawing (and I’m insulting cartoonists here – some of them are masters of compo!)
No problem: I’m going to redo this, still feeling that people wearing no togas, no draperies and the absence of rocks and trees that I can bend into whatever shape I want is not helping! (last week I said there would be togas this week – I was getting ahead of myself: togas next week (please remember i’m writing this after the fact – I’m LATE in my blogging!)
The positive from the above work: composition is not clever setting, but a very complex work that takes a lot of work. Also I produce more and more drawings every day, never thought I could do so many, all different, testing ideas, rejecting them – you see one out of 50 of what I draw if not less. My imagination is going wild (it was already too wild before :-D) but now it’s wild on the paper: ideas come more quickly than ever,I feel that the pressure of so much work, so much self doubt and step by step improvements (plus deadlines!) has made the cork of the magic bottle pop out! I can draw or doodle for 4 hours straights with new ideas in each drawing (and then I go sleep 2 hours LOL).
It’s moving in my head, I’m not there yet but I’m improving, and if Glenn says I’m on the right track then… no worries, more drawing less thinking!
Next week: togas! (and James Stewart, but not in a toga!)
cheers