Do Judge a Book By its Cover: Final Image and Evaluation

Having encountered so many problems/frustrations with trying to paper cut my final design I decided to start all over again using photoshop to reproduce it. This was frustrating as it meant I created myself a load more work and seemed ironic as I had tried paper cut in response to problems faced in the previous project when photoshoping images.

Once again I created various textures, mainly ink and charcoal washes which were applied via the use of vector masks to add some warmth into my images. I feel I have refined this process much more than last time I used it in that I now can create much more subtle textures which are much less jarring visually.

However, rather frustratingly these subtle details seem to have been lost on my final printed image due to the poor quality of the printers. In future I should be more organised and use either the print dungeon, once inducted, or a printer outside of college.

Despite some positives I was once again I was very unhappy with my final outcome.

On the positive side I do think it is successful in visually communicating the themes of the book. Having taken on board the mistakes of the last task I was careful to make sure colour added to the message rather than detract from it. This is due to the fact that the use of purples with a minimal amount of yellow creates a mysterious but slightly sinister feel to the image whilst the use of black allows the motif of the fairly to stand out and become the focal point of the image.

However the lack of contrast between the tones being used has made the image seem really murky and unappealing, completely detracting from any positives that had been achieved.

I was also particularly careful to make sure no other motifs or visual devices detracted from the message by drawing the viewers attention away from the main focal point as occurred in 2 of my last tasks final images. 

However I feel that on a whole I didn't do my idea justice in its translation to a final image.

This is because aesthetically it feels very empty and bland.

Although I wanted to create some thing graphic and shape orientated, I should have taken the advice given in the group feedback of focusing on adding depth. I completely over looked this when producing my final image and realise now it really has let my image down.

This problem has been further exacerbated by the poor quality print which has served to further flatten the image,

In general I feel my final image just serves to demonstrate how an interesting and well informed idea can fall completely flat on its face due to the quality of craft man ship and design being employed. I feel I am facing the same issues at the end of each task even after taking into account the mistakes made in the previous exercises which I think is really beginning to effect make progress within the course and development as a practitioner.