Further research and Initial visual response: Quentin Crisp

From my research the main points to take from Quentin Crisps life were his defiance of conformity and public expectations through his flamboyant, effeminate appearance and open homosexuality that often lead to confrontation and more often than not persecution. As this task isn't simply about creating portraits I decided to depict simply the most extreme parts of his appearance at the time. These include his long feminine hair that was dyed lavender as well as his polished and brightly painted nails.

The below images were created with brush and ink and I feel the top right is the most visually pleasing. This is because the others feel a little to graphic and clunky where as the top left has a nice free flowing aesthetic to it as well as tonal variation with give a much more recognisable impression of hair. The simplicity of the images I feel would translate well onto the post card or stamp format.

Although still at the very early stages of this brief I have already started to think how these may transfer into the final formats given the mistakes made/lessons learnt on the last brief.

I also experimented with further reducing the complexity of the hair into simple flowing brush strokes leaving areas of negative space to describe Crisp's hands and face as well as a simple black shape in the right hand image to give a subtle impression of his famed fedora. This  has resulted in more abstract and playful images which, to a certain extent reflect his personality particularly his wit and tendency to cause controversy through both his actions and remarks.

However, despite this I still don't think these images speak enough about his personality or ethos.

To try and solve this I produced several images employing a similar but more reduced aesthetic to the one above containing key quotes that I felt helped sum up his attitudes. 

These included:

'Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.'

and:

'To know all is not to forgive all... it is to despise everybody.'

Both of these showed, in my opinion, that despite his flamboyant appearance and out going social life he was in fact a man of many insecurities with a deep disdain for the wider world.

Visually I think they are a little too messy, particularly the type, however, as with the previous images they do have a certain playful flamboyance which I think reflects some aspects of Crisp. I also think the use of a simple but quite loud colour pallet both further reflects the conveyed themes as well as gives all the images a visual consistency. The latter point is something I am keen to nail in this brief given the problems of my last final out comes.

To further explore these themes that seem at the heart of his life's out look I experimented with visual motifs conveying duality. This was due to the the conflict and tension that seemed to exist between his outgoing nature and flamboyant/provocative appearance that seemed at complete odds with his ethos. This view seems to be back up by, despite being seen as a guy icon and defying public preconceptions in a very homophobic period of time, he himself made various homophobic remarks later in life which included denouncing the guy pride movement.

To try convey these ideas visually I played around with drawing simple recognisable portraits of Crisp looking relatively candid and easy going with more sinister projections of himself appearing out of the shadows and negative space. 

I think as an initial attempt its an ok concept, I think in the below images the execution is a little to clumsy particularly the duo head and basic portrait/shadow. The slightly more experimental ones, created with ink and brush as well as acrylic paint dragged through tapes off areas I think have some potential, especially due to the contrast between the simpler forms of the faces present and in the negative space and the more complex drawn ones.

In general I am struggling a bit for ideas with regards to this person of note. Initially I chose Crisp due to his flamboyant appearance which I felt, given the more graphic nature of my work on  previous submissions, would prove a challenge. However In comparison with the other two people I think there just isn't quite as much to say about him or an interesting enough angle to take in answering this brief.