Charon Chapter One

I've spent most of my day today typesetting the first Charon Continuum chapter (Written by Dominic Archer and available to read online for free here) for viewing online and then re-editing it for the Kindle, when it eventually gets published on there.

My poster illustration from the post before is actually being used as the front cover. (Yay!)

I've actually really enjoyed working on the Charon Continuum, but I feel I might have to take a step back for a bit, because I feel like I haven't worked on my own projects in a while, through no fault but my own of course.

So far, in my sketchbooks I have three fully scripted out mini comics to draw up; further journal comics to do; as well as the main Graphic novel I'd like to finish scripting and then actually draw. So, yeah....a lot to be getting on with really.

New Draft pages.

Inked most of pages up, now just for adding colour. Decided to use a limited colour palette so you don't get too bogged down with colour and detail when you read it.

Here's two pages, when the comic is in printed form, they will read as a double page spread.

These are still only drafts, so they could end up changing and getting redone by the time I colour the rest of the pages.

Page 2 Teaser!

...also known as HALF THE FRIGGING PAGE, because I couldn't pick between which panel to use.

First Original Comic.

Taken some time recently and sat drawing and finalizing my Domestic Abuse comic from University  (Title still to be decided....any ideas?) 

Gotten a few pages drawn up, colouring them inbetween my searches for employment.  Two pages basically done.

Hope you enjoy the teaser above. 

End of Assessment, Start of show.

Assessment is over and done with now, so now it's the organisation of the end of year show. Walls are painted and everyones' work from my course is hung up. 

My work to be shown at the exhibition is not the final work I had for assessment but a stronger piece of work I had from before. The dull ache 'poster' I had before was really scrappy, however after cleaning it up and recolouring it on CS4 Photoshop, it has come out quite nicely, and really makes an impact on the viewer.  

I'll take some photographs of my work hung up in the exhibition and post them soon.

Typography

University work has been pretty slow since Christmas, for personal reasons; but here's what my work progressed to following my presentation with my tutors.

 

I've seemingly moved back into my safety zone of 'Typography' which last week I was NOT happy with. However, after having a seminar Tuesday with my tutor, I've now started mixing images back with the type, which I am finding much more interesting to both look at and do. Not only that, but I am now also incorporating memories of my Gramps into new posters, rather than my original idea of Domestic Abuse; I'm finding these changes a lot more inspiring and motivating than my previous pathway of work. So YAY!  

Currently doing my dissertation at the moment, so I haven't really had time to do my main work, but next week is had in day, so I can get back to drawing soon. In the meantime, have some photographs of my studio space and work I have done.

My University studio space needs a bit of a tidy up, towards the bottom you'll notice some other artists work I use as inspiration, they include: Becky Cloonan, Yuko Ota (from Johnny Wander) and Sam Bosma.

The other two photographs are of one of my draft pages for my domestic abuse based comic.

Panels.

Finally thought of an idea for a few panels to go towards a comic/fanzine. I done a quick test of colours/style of colouring on the two panels below.

Women's Aid

Haven't really done a lot on my main project currently other than reading. Been mainly concentrating on my disseration to get that out of the way.

I have however found out some truly shocking statistics through Women's Aid UK, a charity in aid of women who are victims of domestic abuse. Here's some of the facts I discovered:

• 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their lifetimes and between 6-10% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year (Council of Europe, 2002).  

• 12.9 million incidents: The British Crime Survey found that there were an estimated 12.9 million incidents of domestic violence acts (that constituted non-sexual threats or force) against women and 2.5 million against men in England and Wales in the year preceding interview (Walby & Allen, 2004). 

•  One call a minute to the police: Though only a minority of incidents of domestic violence are reported to the police , the police still receive one call about domestic violence for every minute in the UK, an estimated 1,300 calls each day or over 570,000 each year. (Stanko, 2000).  However, according to the British Crime Survey, less than 40% of domestic violence crime is reported to the police (Dodd et al, July 2004; Walby and Allen, 2004; Home Office, 2002). 

•  44% of victims of domestic violence are involved in more than one incident.  No other type of crime has a rate of repeat victimisation as high (Dodd et al, July 2004).

•  Fear of being killed: In a study of 200 women's experiences of domestic violence it was found that 60% of the women had left because they feared that they or their children would be killed by the perpetrator (Humphreys & Thiara, 2002).

• Homicide: On average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner. This constitutes nearly 40% of all female homicide victims.  (Povey, (ed.), 2005; Home Office, 1999; Department of Health, 2005.)  

•  54% of UK rapes are committed by a woman’s current or former partner. (Walby and Allen, 2004)

• Serious sexual assault was most likely to be committed by someone known to the victim (89% of female and 83% of male victims). Just over half (54%) of female victims reported that a partner or ex-partner had been the offender. (Coleman et al. 2007)

• 29 children in 13 families were killed between 1994 and 2004 as a result of contact arrangements in England and Wales, 10 of them since 2002. In five of these families contact was ordered by the court. (Saunders, 2004) 

• 1 in 5 young men and 1 in 10 young women think that abuse or violence against women is acceptable. (Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, 1998).

Some of these statistics are truly disgusting, to think that humans can think of these acts as everyday blows me away. This is why I have now decided to do my work on Domestic Violence.

Newspapers.

I spent today pretty much doing intensely detailed doodling, in order to waste time until my tutorial at 14:15 in the afternoon. Drew two hands on separate paper, using the same graphic style as before but including some more detailed crosshatching; then went on to draw some hands bound together. I left the last illustration in black and white because I think it made a bigger impact as it was instead of adding in the blue/grey colouring.

After finishing these, I decided to shift everything about on my studio wall, I discovered that the separate hands worked really well when combined with the illustration 'Shame.'

After much 'faffing' with my work, I had my one to one with Ian Chamberlain. These are the quick notes I took from that tutorial:

• Domestic Violence? More people can relate and have experienced. Can also use my own experiences with it. 
• Can see my style of work in a Graphic novel/fanzine/printmaking.
• Look into current news rather than vague historical events e.g. Chikatilo.
• Perhaps take current event from newspaper and illustrate. e.g. M5 crash near Taunton. 
• Or look into major historic events and adapt into comic form e.g 300/ From Hell.
• Keep a narrative.

With this tutorial I discovered I was at a bit of a crossroads with my work. I didn't really have a concept, other than keeping a narrative; I didn't really know where to move onto, although through my research I had discovered what I was interested in: control, power, and the edges of morality. 

I will continue with research but perhaps keep too more contemporary and 'conventional' issues rather than serial killers.

Joint.

My last seminar at University on the 28th of October was partly useful, partly confusing.

I was told by my peers that the pencil drawing 'Captive' was too sexual, something I already knew. However, they made some valid evaluations about the small graphic/comic styled illustrations and confirmed what I had thought:

• A narrative/storyline is being read
• Small and frantic- adding to disturbing-more dark imagery.
• Colour adds more humanity- reds really grabs you- evokes danger quality.
• Undergrowth wrapping around victims- disappearing- buried = creepy. 
 

They also gave me some good points and questions to think on:

• Which Side of the line am I looking at?
• Observational or experience.

• Control- not just physical, can be emotional.
• E.g. Domestic violence/abuse

• Juxtapose images- suggest rather than shout. 

• Perhaps look at rope, tape and cable ties- again suggest with images of just rope instead of tied up women etc. 

The last one I wasn't too keen on because it starts to lose a narrative when it is just of rope, however using an image of rope and juxtaposing it with another image appealed, and so I experimented with juxtaposition. 

Rope. Draft. Nov 2011.

Rope. Nov 2011

Shame. Nov 2011

Restrain. Nov 2011.

Sorry about the image quality, the photographs were taken with the camera on my phone.

 In the seminar, they also suggested going back to using pencil instead of brush pens and ink, however I enjoying using them far too much to go completely back to using just pencil.

While I thought of the comments my peers said were great and useful towards the techniques of my work, I didn't recieve anything helpful about the concept or undertone of my work, and so I am starting to feel a little lost about how to move on from the above.