Studio Brief 3: 'Persons of note' - Ideas and Development

Ideas

I have really enjoyed learning about Bruce lees life throughout my research and I want my final pieces to really do his life justice. 

For my poster, I would like to focus on important elements in his life/history. I have had the idea of illustrating a huge Chinese dragon (typical to that of one commonly found in Chinese culture), with the body being completely filled up with little scenes and illustrations of symbols and moments from his life. 

For my stamps I would like to focus on Bruce's philosophy. Bruce lived his life philosophically and his life's work was based around his own insight into life and how it should be lived. He came up with the philosophy "The Stage of Cultivation", each stage accumulated into one core symbol which was also the same symbol he used as an emblem for his own from of martial arts Jeet Kune Do. 

The Yin/Yang symbol representing "Partiality", the arrows showing continuous connection between Yin and Yang representing "Fluidity", the space between the symbol representing "Emptiness" and the Chinese symbols explaining Bruce's motto: "Using No Way as Way" and "Having No Limitation as Limitation". My idea is for each element to appear on its own individual stamp in the form or a dragon body part, all coming together in the final symbol for the 4th stamp.

Having focused on Bruce's life/history for my poster and his philosophy for my stamps, for my postcards I would like to focus on his legacy. Brice was the founder of his own form of martial arts - the way he believed Kung Fu should be taught. It is still taught today and is called "Jeet Kune Do" translated as "Intercepting the Fist". I would like my postcards to centre around specific movements used within Jeet Kune Do. I was wanting to focus on specific Katas which are quite common throughout all martial arts and tell a specific story and show control and great body positioning. However, Bruce's form of martial arts went against the trend and did not involve katas, which he thought to be outdated and unnecessary. I was thinking of choosing a maximum of 3 overall movements and illustrate them in a variety of ways. Each movement will then be layered one on top of the other to show motion in each postcard.

The theme running throughout all of my pieces is the dragon concept. This is because Bruce was given the name Li Xiaolong (李小龍; Xiaolong means "little dragon") and he was born in the year of the dragon and often depicted as one. I feel this links well to Bruce and his life and helps to add a common element throughout the work helping them to become a set.

Roughs

Stages of cultivation symbol and explanation

My own stamp designs

Small poster rough, drawn from a variety of reference material

Digital Media Test

As a quick test I was able to scan in my poster rough and see what I could do with it in photoshop. This is the first time I have attempted to create artwork using pen and ink and then colour it digitally. I really like the effect I was able to achieve, however whilst scanning, some of the line quality was lost meaning they appeared more grey than black once the dragon had been coloured. I need to find a way to solve this - I hope its just my rubbish home scanner.

(I haven't got around to doing postcard roughs yet)

Group Crit

During the group crit I received great feedback for my ideas and final piece concepts. Advice was given to speak to the digital printing technician downstairs about my issues with line quality after scanning in artwork. I did this straight after the crit, and he was able to tell me exactly how to overcome this issue. Once the image has been scanned in at 300dpi, open it in Adobe Photoshop and adjust the exposure to whiten the image, adjust the levels to blacken the lines and then desaturate. I found this extremely beneficial and a solution to a problem I have been having for a long time.

Successes
I am really confident in my concepts for each piece of artwork. I think that I have covered a lot of important information to do with who Bruce is and his life which is important when approaching a portrait brief. I am happy to continue creating my final artwork using pen and ink to start off then colouring digitally in photoshop. I feel i am able to achieve a high level of detail this way, and i am confident in the results now that I know how to fix line quality.

Failures
I am not sure if my ideas still link with the actual portrait brief. My peers during the group crit liked my ideas and didn't seem to think them too vague. Other people seem to have focused on separate, less obvious elements from their chosen persons life also.