COLOUR THUMBNAILS

First of all I just played around with photoshop lasso tool and using different textures- also adding small details with the brush tool.

I decided I wanted to go with the bath/mice idea and the lonely figure/walking shoes idea. I felt like both these ideas were different enough from each other yet still relevant to my proverb- one being a literal take and the other metaphorical. I took my two favourite bath thumbnails and experimented making some colour versions of them on photoshop. Although I originally liked the viewpoint of the above thumbnail (the taps and feet at the end of the bath) in a tutorial with George we thought that the thumbnail below made the most of the space on the page, where more could be fit in instead of just a lot of tiled floor in the background.  I think the forms in the below thumbnail are fairly successful, however it was brought up in the tutorial that some of the colours are too close in tone, making it look quite flat with some areas not standing out as much as they could.

I had also painted a watercolour version of the thumbnail so I could see if I was missing something from creating the digital versions. The watercolour thumbnail itself is fine, but I don't think I would be happy with it printed in olio. However it's with this thumbnail where I experimented with scale, making the bathroom tiles tiny compared to the wide, swimming pool like bath tub. George suggested to carry on exploring and exaggerating the scale within my thumbnails- and I took this into consideration when I created these thumbnails below:

  

Here I mirrored the tiny floor tiles that I painted previously, this time also making the size of the foot huge compared to the bath and mice. Here I also tried working with a limited palette where I could easily keep an eye on tones, something that I was struggling with when I tried to go back and recolour my original digital colour rough. I think working with limited colours is an effective way to make a piece of work look cohesive, and I think is something I would definitely consider for my final Olio artworks. I still wasn't happy with the scale, so I tried making the foot bigger:

Although I like these thumbnails I still think there is too much background and the small tiles can be quite jarring to look at.

I decided to minimise the colours again, now sticking to a simple, Matisse inspired cut out design- using blue as an appropriate colour to communicate my proverb, and anyway most bathrooms are blue.

I think this thumbnail is easier on the eyes without all the tiny tiles in the background, and it also gave me the opportunity to play around with the background for the first time since bringing my thumbnails into colour roughs. George liked the blue but suggested adding another colour.

I added yellow.

Also using textures that George sent me, I applied one of them to the same original cut out thumbnail. The second I added colour to, still using only three colours but overlapping and combining the half tone.

After using gouache for my front cover- I decided to experiment with it for my mouse thumbnail. I painted big first of all and scanned it in to edit.

I then photoshopped in the bath and the background, drawing from the past thumbnails and combining the handprinted gouache with digital cut-out and half tone.

This one is with the simple cut outs, I then developed the image by making the foot bigger, adding colour to the white cut outs and making the blue of the bath brighter, as even on screen I think it looked dull compared to the pink.

For my second thumbnail idea I wanted to create a sense of both claustrophobia and isolation (fun!), trying to communicate this though colour, layering and juxtaposition of size and texture. The layered legs create a crowded image, and put on top of the textured background emphasises them. The small sad man is also emphasised by his scale compared to the large feet walking past him as well as the darker space he is trapped in. George confirmed that this was satisfactory for a colour rough, and I am happy with it mostly as it is (for a rough) I particularly like although the forms are quite graphic I can still add in hand drawn detail which I think reflects my way of working.

As with the mouse thumbnail I also painted the thumbnail in watercolour, but I prefer the solidness of the digital version.

I still wanted to experiment with the multiply selection on photoshop so I drew some more legs this time with solid backgrounds (below) but I think the texture I used above helps the image seem more illustration based.

I also wanted to explore different colour and composition, and although I think blue is semiotically the best choice I also wanted to experiment with muted pinks. I quite like the bold composition of these thumbnails but as George pointed out in our last tutorial- he looks like he is being trampled to death. We agreed that the first thumbnail is more subtle and more abstract, reflecting the proverb better.