Title: The Two Trees
Size: Medium: Digital Illustration and Watercolor Date:July 2023 The Two Trees is an exploration of narrative and storytelling through composition and purely visual scenes. It is an experimentation of bringing textual quotes into a visual format through both digital and traditional mediums. It is inspired from scenes in J.R.R Tolkien's Novel The Silmarillion. |
Artistic Inspiration
This piece was primarily inspired by the work of Sir John Tenniel, specifically his black and white cartoons and illustrations. Tenniel was a Victorian artist and illustrator best known for his work drawing various books by Lewis Carroll including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. His work is often in black and white or utilizing a very limited color palette. It is also characterized by his strong use of hatching and cross hatching to express shading and shadow with limited materials and color. Tenniel also created many political cartoons and is known for far more than book illustrations. As an artist he walked the line between fine and applied arts being skilled in not only illustration but also traditional painting.
Although his oeuvre is expansive, I mostly took inspiration from his cartoons and illustrations, specifically those in black ink or with a limited color palette, such as those done for Lewis Carroll's various books. |
Planning
This process started with an understanding that I would be working in Ink and a limited color palette to illustrate a scene from external literature. I began by deciding what piece of literature I was going to illustrate. I went to the MIAD library and began looking in the fiction section. I knew I wanted to do something fantasy related and eventually began looking at the various Tolkien books. I didn't want to base my piece off of Tolkien's The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as those have already been readily adapted into visual media in the form of movies and TV shows. The Silmarillion on the other hand is one of Tolkien's lesser known works, while still being considered very popular. It also does not have a direct movie or TV adaptation (although it has inspired various works). I decided that these factors made it a perfect candidate for my illustration. I was also intrigued by the book's biblical connections which is a major theme in my comparative study. Tolkien used the Christian Bible as a loose inspiration when creating the mythology of The Silmarillion and many of the books central themes coincide with traditional Christian beliefs. I then selected my scene and the specific quote i was going to Illustrate. This was difficult since Tolkien uses very long and descriptive language, meaning I had to trim my quote down from a full sentence.
I then began the process of actually planning the layout of my piece. The scene in question involves two villainous characters, Melkor and Ungoliant, destroying two sacred trees that provide Tolkien's world with its light. I really thought about the implications of this story and how I could use my composition and color choices to convey the story in just one image. I experimented with thumbnails using graphite pencil, trying to create an effective composition for the scene. I had lots of trouble realistically placing the large spider-like character Ungoliant in the scene, since her arachnid appearance gives her an irregular shape. Since the scene mainly focused on Ungoliant and her actions in the story, I decided to place emphasis on her while moving the figure of Melkor into a corner with his back turned to the viewer. I experimented with the placement of his figure specifically digitally in Procreate on the iPad as it was proving difficult to make his position and size feel realistic next to the monstrous Ungoliant and towering trees. I found it easier to maneuver his figure around my already layed out scene digitally as it meant I didnt have to worry about erasing what I had or recreating the thumbnail multiple times to move the figure around. Instead, i could just have different figure positions as different layers and move them around until the scene felt cohesive.
I then began the process of actually planning the layout of my piece. The scene in question involves two villainous characters, Melkor and Ungoliant, destroying two sacred trees that provide Tolkien's world with its light. I really thought about the implications of this story and how I could use my composition and color choices to convey the story in just one image. I experimented with thumbnails using graphite pencil, trying to create an effective composition for the scene. I had lots of trouble realistically placing the large spider-like character Ungoliant in the scene, since her arachnid appearance gives her an irregular shape. Since the scene mainly focused on Ungoliant and her actions in the story, I decided to place emphasis on her while moving the figure of Melkor into a corner with his back turned to the viewer. I experimented with the placement of his figure specifically digitally in Procreate on the iPad as it was proving difficult to make his position and size feel realistic next to the monstrous Ungoliant and towering trees. I found it easier to maneuver his figure around my already layed out scene digitally as it meant I didnt have to worry about erasing what I had or recreating the thumbnail multiple times to move the figure around. Instead, i could just have different figure positions as different layers and move them around until the scene felt cohesive.
Process
I began my physical process on Procreate on the iPad, I started a rough sketch with the basic pen brushes in the application bringing it to tight sketch after some work. I wasn't thinking about color at this point since that would come a lot later. What I was doing was trying to lay out effective line art over my sketch, I did this with a larger pen brush. I also began thinking about shading, my sketches included some shading, but this would eventually be impossible since I would be working in ink. I settled on a mix of hatching and stippling to achieve my desired effects of shading.
Once I had finalized my digital drawing a printed it onto a large piece of mixed media paper in a light gray. I then used a set of black ink multiliner pens to begin inking over the light image I had printed. This allowed me to finalize the shapes and give the image a natural look and feel. I then began hatching and stippling using the pen, this was incredibly difficult as the small details were hard to mimic using this different medium. Color was the final aspect of my process; I chose to utilize watercolor paints to achieve this. I really thought deeply about the color and the way I could use color to further express the story without overly detailing. To do this I thought about the story itself; the two main subjects, Ungoliant and Melkor, are villainous characters so I chose to represent them with red and black. This contrasted to their surroundings, which in Tolkien's story is the realm of the gods. I chose to represent the divinity and holiness of the place with a golden yellow which contrasted greatly to the red and black of the villains. Melkor in particular was an interesting design because I gave his armor golden accents. This was alluding to the fact that in Tolkien's story, Melkor too was once divine, a similar equivalent to an angel in this imagined world. As mentioned previously Tolkien took much inspiration from biblical references meaning many of these parallels exist. |
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Experimentation
My main experimentations were with positioning and layout. With such harsh restrictions on color and material I needed to ensure I could still tell an appropriate story within the given size and limitations. I did this by making sure all-important parts were easily within view, including the figures and the trees. The main struggle I had was the positioning of Melkor, no matter what I did he seemed out of place or out of scale compared to the spider. I tried several positions using just the layers feature on Procreate, this allowed me to compare figures in the scene without redrawing it over and over. Other experimentations were mainly just design for the characters themselves as I wanted to make sure they had a unique feel that was both true to the book but differed from what is traditionally thought of as Tolkien material in pop culture.
Critique
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ACT ConnectionsClearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- The main cause and effect between the original works of John Tenniel and my final work is conceptual purpose. Both pieces are meant to translate text into imagery using simplistic elements of line and limited color. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? - The author was very dedicated to his illustrations especially those in Lewis Carrolls books as he continued to create them for multiple iterations of the books. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? - I enjoyed learning about my inspiring artist and the way he impacted illustration as a medium. He was important in making it a respectable career in the eyes of many people. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?. - The central idea that connects my inspiring piece to my work is the idea of narrative and adapting literature into visual media. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? - I had to think about why Tenniel made the choices he did in illustrating Lewis Carrolls books. His other work is quite different from the whimsical tone of his illustrations, so it was interesting to think about how the intention of the original author impacted Tenniel's designs. |
Reflection
Throughout this process I feel like I gained a better understanding of many of my skills as an artist, particularly developing my ability to combine digital and traditional mediums into one. I also developed in terms of my storytelling and narrative skills which was my primary goal with this project. The whole thing was a small look into the way illustrators work and how text and literature can be transferred into visual media. This builds off of my previous summer project which had a similar theme and purpose with a focus and narrative and visual storytelling. I also faced many challenges and successes throughout this process, with my biggest struggle being focusing my quote and inspiration text into a small enough excerpt. Tolkien often speaks very eloquently with unique descriptions and I found it difficult to cut his long descriptive sentences into usable chunks that I could illustrate. My biggest success was my use of the watercolor in my opinion and the color choice that went along with it. In conclusion, I hope others are able to see my vision regarding the story through the artistic choices I made such as color and composition.
Citations
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/john-tenniel-an-introduction#:~:text=The%20Victorian%20artist%20John%20Tenniel,)%2C%20written%20by%20Lewis%20Carroll.
“The Tenniel Illustrations for Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.” The Project Gutenberg E-Book of Tenniel Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, by Sir John Tenniel, www.gutenberg.org/files/114/114-h/114-h.htm#alice01. Accessed 13 Sept. 2023.
“The Tenniel Illustrations for Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.” The Project Gutenberg E-Book of Tenniel Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, by Sir John Tenniel, www.gutenberg.org/files/114/114-h/114-h.htm#alice01. Accessed 13 Sept. 2023.