Themes

After being at loss at what to do for a bit, I thought about some of my favourite artists and things they have done. I know that I like to draw both people and animals, and landscapes too, so it would be good if I could find a way of combining these elements in different ways.

My favourite artist Mucha has done lots of different series and themes of illustrations, which could give me a few ideas for my own work.

Mucha's Themes:

• Flowers (rose, lily, crysanthemum, orchid)
• Semi-precious Gems (ruby, quartz, emerald and amethyst)
• Horoscopes
• Seasons (there were three seperate versions of this)
• Times of Day (morning, day, evening and night)
• The Arts (painting, poetry, dance and music)
• Moon and Stars (moon, morning star, evening star, pole star)
• Other Decorative Pairs (blonde and brunette, feather and cowslip, etc)

'Four Seasons'

De Goya also painted a couple of themes, like the 'Black Paintings' and his series 'Disasters of War'.

'Saturn Devouring his Son' from the Black Paintings

print 39 from the Disasters of War series

print 05 from the Disasters of War series

 I like working within themes because it gives me a way of containing my ideas in measurable 'portions', so they don't just all try to come out at once, effectively giving me artblock.
As you can see in Mucha's themes, the seperate images are all very different but when put together the series is clear, and it's all very much in the style he is commercially famous for which is another element that pulls them all together.


Themes I might enjoy:

•  Elements (air, fire, water, earth, darkness etc)
• The Seven Deadly Sins (Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Lust, Wrath)
• Horoscopes (Aries, Taurus, Capricorn, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Pisces, Saggitarius and Aquarius)
• Creatures (sea creatures, land creatures, etc)
• Mental illnesses/ disorders (depression, anxiety etc)

At the moment these kinds of things are what I'm thinking of because I actually quite like to do darker, more macabre images rather than really happy, shiny things. I could think of lots of different things to do for some of these themes. 

'The Book of Drawings'

After all of the mini-projects we have completed within this module, the last is 'The Book of Drawings'.
In this we must create a book totally and wholly envisioned by ourselves of 6 pages (excluding any written content if any and the cover pages), and it should be a culmination of all our work so far.

To do this successfully I will have to research hand book-binding and making and I will have to thoroughly contemplate which drawings and sketches I will use to compose the final copy. It will probably help if I create a few quick mock-ups and try a few different kinds of binding to allow me to make the best decision regarding the way the book should be formatted, and I will have to explore the options I have regarding the printing of the pages and the layout and style of any text I may choose to include.

Other factors will be important here too, such as the size of the book (it should be big enough to allow details to be clear) and the material I will use for both the book jacket and the pages. Will it be a paperback or a hardcover book? How will I make that decision? These are just a couple of the questions I will have to consider while undertaking this project.

My first port of call will be researching existing handmade books by other illustrators in the industry and methods of hand making books. After I will consider the content and then the medium and any text I will include.