Decorative Plate / Feminism / Vote for me!
Could do with a vote or several!
Little sequence up on my flickrApologies for the radio silence, my poor neglected livejournal! I promise I will lavish you with all manner of attention and new work soon. But for now I have a favour to ask of you.
This is a new picture I made inspired by 'The Awakening'* by Kate Chopin, which I just entered (fashionably/foolishly late) to the Don't Panic poster competition. Please vote for it here if you would be so kind!
I originally intended on this being quite a different beast. To start with I wanted to enter something to said poster comp because the theme was feminism and I felt like I could actually make something good for that. Of course then I couldn't think of anything at all, and ended up talking to my mum about this book. We both agreed that we thought the image of a woman underwater somehow worked well, without being overbearing. I had a good idea of what to do, it was going to really emphasise the themes of the book, and be made up of big brushy lines and bold textures & huge swathes of ink wash; it being a poster after all. Then while reading the intro to the book and seeing Aubrey Beardsley mentioned I started thinking about all sorts of other things and ended up scribbling this out, then felt completely compelled to make it. I ended up taking influence from all manner of stuff as well as Beardsley; decorative plates, Samuel Palmer, Jillian Tamaki, George Barbier, manga art and even the Moomins. Also I finally got round to using my Deleter pens properly and realising I can actually, like, draw with them! That's the first time that's ever happened with that sort of pen and am v pleased.
So yeah, this may have become something quite different along the way. A print rather than a poster perhaps, and maybe more fanciful than at first thought. But, y'know, this is what I have. So I may as well enter it anyway! However, I'll probably try and make some nice prints of this regardless because I do think that's actually how it will work best.
Plus I like it.
* Which, when I checked the Wikipedia entry on it for this post told me it was 'one of the most boring books ever written. It has little value to people who are under the age of 35, who aren't married, and are not female'.... Aw, bless! So naive you can tell precisely who and why they might be writing such a thing.