For this project on the theme of 'life form', I thought about the different ideas I could do. I started with a spider diagram to explore different areas.
I was interested in creating a design with flowers and took lots of photos in my Mum and Dads garden but after looking through the photos nothing was really standing out to me. I then thought about other ideas including staying on the path of the succulents but adding some other element to it.
I've been really inspired by butterflies lately, the colours and patterns on their wings especially. I gathered some reference photo's from a family trip to a butterfly house a while ago, there were some really good ones there, different colours and also different angles of the butterflies. I really love the colours in these particular photos.
I did some initial colour ideas in the corner of the sketch above and was thinking along the lines of doing succulents and butterflies in a glass house. So I began doing some research of glass house shapes and sketched some ideas out.
The shapes of the glass houses were quite complex and it was hard to see the succulents and butterflies which I wanted to be the main focus of my design.
A while later, I was at our local cafe just doodling and they had these lovely succulents on the tables in their coffee cups. I found myself sketching them and then had the idea of the butterflies following the direction of the steam as if it was a coffee inside the cup. I liked the idea of the butterflies getting smaller as they went upward, which made me think of the life cycle of life and death. I liked this concept so decided to explore it further as I felt it fit the brief of 'Life form' really well.
Whilst I was gathering more ideas I started doing some rough sketches of butterflies from my reference photos and playing with colour combinations to fit the brief of a limited colour palette.
These are the colour combinations I was inspired by. I wanted a colour that would really stand out, along with the black and white. I took inspiration from the butterflies in my reference photos and found tones of those colours that I really like.
More testing out and thinking more about what the design could look like. I started thinking what shape would the cup be. Would it be the same as my original sketch or would I go for a more rounded cup like one of my favourite Christmas mugs at home that has a stripy handle. I thought this could look quite effective with the limited colours.
Then I considered what type of succulent would I use? Would I stick with the one from my original sketch or did I want something that had different shaped leaves/petals. I decided I liked the original one so kept on with that because I felt they were fairly simple shapes and I liked that they were slightly pointed at the tips rather than rounded which I didn't feel fit with the image I wanted.
Then I started to think about composition, I didn't think that my initial idea was interesting enough and I wanted to develop my skills in this area so started playing around with different ideas.
I tried out close up views, different ways to show the butterflies going upward and what the main butterfly would be like. I really like the shell shape composition so I played around with that both ways up so see how that could work with my design. I then thought what about looking down from above and have the butterflies fly around and upwards instead of just straight up.
This idea was then born and I really liked this concept much better than my original one. I went on to develop this further with colours and tried different combinations.
On this second version I made the cup slightly smaller which I felt looked better.
I also reversed the image to see what I would look like. At this point I was thinking this was the final design but wasn't sure on the final colours. I tried a few other options.
The colours just didn't seem to be working so I began thinking about developing the idea further and thinking about symbolism and colour meanings. I didn't just want the colours to be colours I liked and not really relevant to the design meaning and so I did further research about the spiritual meanings of butterflies and the colours.
References:
Animals.mom.com. 2020. The Meaning Of A Blue Butterfly. [online] Available at: <https://animals.mom.com/the-meaning-of-a-blue-butterfly-4982108.html> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Color-Meanings.com. 2020. Butterfly Color Meanings And Symbolism. [online] Available at: <https://www.color-meanings.com/butterfly-color-meanings-and-symbolism/> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Butterflyinsight.com. 2020. Myths, Symbolism And Meaning Of Purple Butterflies. [online] Available at: <https://www.butterflyinsight.com/purple-butterfly-color-meaning-and-myths.html> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Owlcation - Education. 2020. Butterflies: Symbols Of Life And Hope. [online] Available at: <https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Butterflies-Symbols-of-Life-and-Hope> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Mycolormeanings.com. 2020. Red Butterfly – Meaning And Symbolism. [online] Available at: <https://mycolormeanings.com/red-butterfly-meaning-symbolism/> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
My faith as a Christian is very important to me and since my design was telling the life cycle I wanted to go deeper still.
I researched the meaning of butterflies and colours in the Bible which then shaped my next decisions for the design.
Learn Religions. 2020. Butterflies In The Bible: Meaning And Symbolism. [online] Available at: <https://www.learnreligions.com/butterflies-in-the-bible-meaning-and-symbolism-4846560> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Christianity.com. 2020. Is There Any Significance To Colors In The Bible?. [online] Available at: <https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/is-there-any-significance-to-colors-in-the-bible.html> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Color-Meanings.com. 2020. Biblical Meaning Of Colors. [online] Available at: <https://www.color-meanings.com/biblical-meaning-colors/> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Biblegateway.com. 2020. 1670 Symbols - Dictionary Of Bible Themes - Bible Gateway. [online] Available at: <https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/dictionary-of-bible-themes/1670-symbols> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
Nytimes.com. 2020. How The Butterfly Discovered Daylight (Published 2019). [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/science/butterflies-moths-fossils-evolution.html> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
I wrote notes from the references I found along with more ideas and then condensed it into a spider diagram to make it easier to think through.
I concluded from all this information that I wanted to make my design a spiritual story and meaning and so I chose my colours based on Biblical colours and the butterflies became symbols of humanity, specifically Christian believers who begin on earth; with the succulent representing earth as it is green and vegetation.
The butterfly starts of coloured black for sin, red for Old testament sacrifices and then Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. The white parts represent the healing of the spirit inside man. As the butterfly flies toward Heaven, it gets smaller and starts to change colour.
Eventually becoming black and white, representing the almost spiritual completion, still sinful but becoming Holy. As the butterfly then rises it turns completely white which represents the scripture 'Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool." '- Isaiah 1:18
Bible Gateway. 2020. Bible Gateway Passage: Isaiah 1:18 - New International Version. [online] Available at: <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%201%3A18&version=NIV> [Accessed 16 November 2020].
White as snow as it meets Jesus, which is represented as purple, the royal colour and white for purity.
Jesus as the butterfly also has holes in His wings to represent the holes from the Cross which remain even though He is resurrected.
With that in mind I then needed to make it work with the design. I had trouble working out the design on 'Jesus the Butterfly' because I couldn't use black as an outline since Jesus is perfect and has no sin in Him. Therefore I then decided with purple and white.
I spent a long time on the position of the butterflies flying upwards, seeing what would work best.
I was a bit unsure of the style of this design as well. I didn't know if I wanted to go a bit more realistic or stick with a bolder, cartoony style. I was going to go for light blue as the background which did contrast nicely with the orangey red but once I added the purple it just felt off. I also felt like my previous design was much strong and so I went back to that and added the purple butterfly. I felt this worked much better and added some white lines to represent the light of Heaven as the white butterfly entered and also to distinguish the top from the earth below.
Although I really like the pink background it didn't fit with the meanings, so then I tried yellow to represent light but that didn't work either. I then decided to try lilac, which then worked really well with everything and so I decided to stick with that. It was then a case of deciding how to draw the detail on the purple butterfly and positioning. I felt like the composition didn't really show the depth very well and the original butterflies weren't drawn right either.
I changed the shape of the butterflies, which then allowed me to add more detail to them, which I feel looks a lot better. I also moved the succulent to the lower right to help with the viewpoint and strengthen the composition as I wanted the viewers eye to follow the butterflies around the design from bottom right up to the top right.
I feel this design is much stronger and represents my initial ideas really well. It has the contrast and meaning of the colours and emphasises 'Jesus' at the top making His meaning more clear also.
I chose to do a series of eleven prints to allow for mess ups and good quality prints to use for the assignment.
Cutting out the white areas first, I used a couple of different sized blades to get the different depth of lines.
First print layer - lavender on smooth cartridge paper.
I printed nine editions of the first colour and two extra for tests.
Showing the carving for both the lavender and green areas after they had been printed.
Next print layer - green.
Cutting out the green area. I used the pattern of the succulent as influence the direction of the carvings.
Layer three - red.
This red layer didn't show up as well as the previous layers, it was hard to roll the ink in such small areas successfully.
Adding the final layer - black. This really made the butterflies stand out and gave the print a nice finish.
Final nine prints with editioning.
Print 1/9.
Final Reflection:
This project took a lot of developing, research and designing and over time I believe I developed an idea that had great personal meaning as well as a good subject for the brief. I have never done reduction printing before and found the process very complex and challenging. Overall I feel like I achieved what I set out to do and my prints are bold, colourful and a good composition. For the experience level I am at I feel my prints came out quite well, there is definitely room for a lot of improvement in my printing ability but I am really happy with the overall concept.
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