Studio Brief 2: Printed Pictures
Final Print Design: Bathroom Scene

For another one of my finals I decided to further revise one of my previous roughs. I chose the bathroom design as much of the feedback during the initial crit had stated that the depth within the general composition as well as the general absurdity of doing a bathroom for a print created a strange and engaging image. However I had previously written out creating it as a final screen print as I felt that the surreal element, an eel swimming within the bath, wasn't prominent enough within the composition and got lost in amongst the other elements.

Revising the design

Therefore I decided to redraw in a few times with a larger, more prominent eel emerging from within the bath and flopping onto the floor where it then becomes the main focus of the image rather than floating off to the side.

I was also keen to work my previous cat design into one of my finals some how seeing as how prominently they feature within Murakami's books and life (his record shop was called the Peter Cat and of the books by him I've read at least 5 have a cat either as a plot devise or a prominent feature). Therefore I flipped the design and redrew into the top corner of my bathroom design, choosing to have the tail hanging down at an angle so as to mirror the shape of the eel creating a more interesting and harmonious final composition.

Printing

Initially I had wanted to create a print using blue and yellow as I had seen a few examples of work where they had been used to create a really effective overlay with a strong contrast between each inidivdual colour. As with the orange I was worried that the yellow would be too bright so tried to dull it down a lot. 

Despite how it looked when mixed (a mucky yellow) it came out far too vivid and bright in the actual print. Although it still made an effective over lay and in terms of mood it did have the desired surreal/dream like quality I felt the yellow through the composition off slightly. This is mainly in that the yellow tiles are too bright and too some extent get lost next to the white (white and vice versa) reducing the illusion of depth of field within the image. I also felt the thin green line of the eel wasn't bold enough next to the blue making the eel lose some of its visual impact.

Therefore I decided to reprint it with the same blue but replacing the yellow with a dark pink as due to also being complimentary colours I felt this would give me a strong over lay. These colours worked a lot better creating a better sense of depth as well as creating a stronger contrast between each of the visual elements meaning nothing within the composition felt like it was being lost or over powered as it had done with the yellow.