Exercise 3: Sequencing images
A sequence of images generally implies a logical progression or images showing some sort of action, but that is not necessarily the case here. The poem is odd and a bit abstract, despite the fact that it has a multitude of vivid imagery in it. The images alone do not make sense together, which means that the narrative of the sequence of images I will create can be somewhat loose.
The only semblance of order I planned to use was the “chronological” one of the poem, or the order in which the poem paints the images. When I imagined the finished product I thought I would use different textures of paper, some collaging and a couple of different drawing mediums, which means that neither the logic of the images nor their style would connect them. To create a form of coherence I decided to also include the poem, or at least fragments of it, in the illustrations.
To know what images I would be sequencing, I first had to look for them in the poem. I went back to the previous exercise and selected the images where I had highlighted the words which I thought were vivid or important. The most central phrases and words are: ” tango with cows”, “sparrow”, “dog…sailing on an ice floe”, “orange groves”, “glass of wine”, “comets”, “record player”.
In my process, I usually prefer to sketch early on. After creating a board for inspiration, I drew some sketches to get an idea of the imagery. The tango sketches were good for studying the fluid elegant movement of the dance, and in drawing the cows I observed that they can be constructed easily out of squares. This made drawing an image with a tangoing cow rather a humorous endeavor. I am rather fond of the “king of the orange grove and cattle” image as well, because the idea translates better that I thought it would on paper.
To build on my notes and sketches, I looked for images I could print out and paint over. The OCA book recommends printing out images on the paper bought in the previous exercise, but the printer was not compatible with most of them, so I made due with using the regular printer paper. Therefore I resolved to use the interesting paper as a base for the illustrations and photographs.
I have not often worked with collage or with cutting and pasting already existing images to create something new. Drawing comes much more naturally to me. So I wanted to do something a little different and use photographs for illustrating this poem. I searched for images which corresponded to the lines of the poem and of high enough quality to print well. In order for them to be of the appropriate size (smaller than A5, because the booklet would consist of folded A4 papers) I adjusted them in Photoshop and arranged them for easy cutting. I also used one of the images to create a pattern to serve as a background.
Once chosen and edited, I printed the images along with my own sketches and started modifying them with paint and by cutting. The poem mentions two colors: red and orange. Therefore I limited my palette to warm colors in order to keep things at least somewhat consistent. The fact that the printer only had black ink already offered a little consistency, but I could not leave the images entirely without color.
Some images I painted over with light washes of color (the orange grove landscape), while others I only dabbed with small dashes of it (the comet). Some images, like the two sparrows in flight, I edited with ink and not with color. While to others like the ice flow image, I added white.
I liked my initial sketches enough that I wanted to include them, but the newly printed images needed a little bit of editing. The “king of the orange grove and cattle” illustration was charming, but needed a little clarity and color provided by a little acrylic color and ink. The tangoing cow illustration was enhanced with a red (a passionate color often associated with the dance) background and a little texture using ink hatching.
I also cut out some of the smaller illustrations and layered them over photographs. The tango dancer illustrations layered very well over the cut outs of the dancers. And I thought pasting images of record players right over the hands of two people toasting wine would make for a good visual transition between the lines of the text. Layering the drawing of a dog on a slab of ice was rather necessary, since there weren’t any images of what I had in mind.
The sketch that had a lot of potential and which was important to the poem because of its vivid imagery was the the one depicting a woman drinking wine and watching a comet dash by. This one, I painted over digitally and then printed out on paper, at which point I did nothing else to it, even though I had planned to paint it over with red. The black and white had ended up looking just fine on its own, and besides I already had two other drawings featuring red comets.
I collected a good selection of images and then started putting them together with the words. All the while I was painting over my sketches and planning out collaged pieces of photographs, I was thinking of the poem in front of me. I had about 8 or 9 phrases that would each correspond to a double page spread. I cut out the typewritten words (which were printed in the same old fashioned font used in the previous exercise) and arranged them next to their images and designated colored page. I chose to use the thicker papers I had selected in order to have a sturdy foundation to stick my drawings to. Most of them were in warm colors, excepting the first blue page, which I kept mostly because the of the ice floe “scene”. It was the only part of the poem which made me think of a cool color. It ended up serving very well for both the content and the cover, the blue made the red outline on the cover stand out even better.
Most of the images were large enough to fill the page with only a border of the paper showing, but the effect is pleasing. It helps the images that are cut out more irregularly stand out. Like the bird in flight, the dancers dominating the page and extending to the other, and the circle with the man tangoing with a cow. I tried to arrange the words in a way that they would be easy to read and which does not disrupt the flow of the images. I played around with the linear nature of the progression by overlaying certain elements in places of the poem where they shouldn’t be, like a callback, or an attempt at unity. The record player is layered over a pattern of crowns and the tango dancers glide over a picture of a comet.
To bring the spreads together a little, I used borders for either the words or the image. I preferred the simple look of the black and white with a little color on top and not much texture besides the one of the printed photo. I did paint and draw some tears over the cows right at the end, as it seemed appropriate.
Exercise 4: Collating and binding
Binding was simple. Since some of the images already spanned two pages and effectively stuck them together, some of the booklet was already technically bound. But for extra security, I used a needle and thread and a quick Coptic stitch to make sure everything would stay in place.
