Chosen Author: Haruki Murakami

Having read many books by Murakami I think it is the tone and mood that he creates through his narratives and the subjects and themes he chooses to explore rather than specific aspects of his life that most interest me. At the heart of this is the recurring themes of alienation, loneliness, fatalism and social guilt that a touched upon in my previous post.

In particularly I find his idea relating to the difficulty people have in really truly understanding one another due to the fact that memory, time and personal experience warps your own perception and view of the world into something individual and almost alien to that of another person.

Initial Visual Explorations

Therefore to start of my visual journal I decided to produce a series of ink drawings depicting portraits and streets scenes in a finish which I hope gives them a moody and slightly warped feeling.
Some images were also based off of my own interpretations of Murakaimi's characters such as Ushikawa from Wind Up Bird/1Q84, May Kasahara from Wind Up Bird.

Although I think this was alright just to get started producing images in response to my author I felt that the tone of voice was wrong, for example the Ushikawa drawings felt too messy and disturbing rather than unsettling and the Mai felt to sterile and life less.

Therefore I think I need to focus on trying to create more visceral images with a slightly ambiguous/mysterious feel to them so as to better reflect the more intangible themes I am trying to communicate.