Part 4: Exercise - Paper Circus

 Inspiration:

Experimenting:

Making my own collage papers using craft paints, various types of brushes and some mixed media paints.

After I had a selection of different colours and textures in pastel colours I moved on to the next stage.

Sketchbook Pages:

Mind mapping different things associated with the circus and using Pinterest to get colour ideas different from the normal circus primary colours.

Initial sketches, I was very uninspired at this point and wasn't sure which direction to go in.

In the end I decided to go for a snacks theme, rather than the usual animals. I am not a fan of the circus or what they make animals do and so I needed to find an angle that would work for me and still be eye catching for the viewer.

I saw a lot of circus party themed ideas on Pinterest and I liked the idea of appealing to children as the target market for the poster and using a pastel coloured theme. Including the common stripes that often feature on circus tents, I used that with the popcorn idea and the flashing lights and bunting strings to bring an overall circus themed design together.

I played around with different layouts and used the different painted paper textures to try to create the overall look I was going for.

Here I was trying to work out how to cut the yellow and brown collage papers to make the popcorn look less flat.

Testing out different lettering and colours. I used ideas from Pinterest to help me create a font that looked like something from the circus.

Process:

I cut out the shapes using my own painted collage papers and played around with placement and also tried different coloured backgrounds to see which ones made the main elements stand out the best. I went with a warm grey.

Final Poster:

Reflection:

This exercise was very challenging for me. Not a fan of the circus I firstly didn't know how I wanted to approach the design. I got some ideas from Pinterest and was initially looking at Circus animals and stunts, then over time I found some pastel themed circus party ideas which really helped me feel more creative about the project.

Again, I spent a long time preparing, testing and thinking about my design and practising with the collage to experiment and see what results I could get. I chose to use collage with painted papers because I was inspired by Emily from Art with Em who has recently been sharing a lot of her painted collage paper illustrations which I found really interesting and wanted to try it for myself. I watched her video about how she creates her collages and gave it ago using acrylic craft paints and a variety of brushes to create different textures. I particularly like how the textures in Emily's work show through and give the illustration depth.

I tested out different options to try to get some definition to the the elements and added pens for details including the wording. Emily uses coloured pencils to define her elements and I definitely think this is needed. Even cutting the papers very small to create shadows and detail wasn't enough to clearly see what I was trying to show.

Overall I don't think my final poster was very successful, collaging wasn't as enjoyable as I thought it would be and I really struggled to get the look I was after. However the opportunity to test and experiment was a good thing and builds on my practice of doing more sketchbook work before jumping into the final illustration. It was good to try another medium, but this one is definitely not for me.

References:

Siobhán O'Dwyer Art. 2022. About Me — Siobhán O'Dwyer Art. [online] Available at: <https://siobhanodwyerart.com/life> [Accessed 8 August 2022].

Instagram.com. 2022. Login • Instagram. [online] Available at: <https://www.instagram.com/odwyer_sio9/> [Accessed 8 August 2022].

Instagram.com. 2022. Login • Instagram. [online] Available at: <https://www.instagram.com/p/CUov3boI_Zz/> [Accessed 8 August 2022].

Instagram.com. 2022. Login • Instagram. [online] Available at: <https://www.instagram.com/art_with_em_/> [Accessed 8 August 2022].