Assignment 5
Seven days
Research
I went to the Tate Modern Gallery in London
I didn’t like it at the beginning as the subject that he was
treating was unpleasant and discomforting.
However as I spent more time surrounded by his work, I finally realised
that this artist showed a small part of my life. I have to explain myself and what I mean by
that. I work at a hospital and look
after people with cancer, often at the end of their lives. The pictures I saw in the Tate by Munch are
very real, I could saw from my working experience. I thought that finally I can take that
difficult subject as the main theme for my last assignment. I didn’t want to use any silly illustration
without meaning. I decided to take the 5
stages of grief called the Kübler-Ross model, as a subject for this task.
There we are, 5 stages of grief of a person who has received
the news from the doctor that he has cancer.
This is a copy of the booklet that I got with the ticket to E. Munch exhibition.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/edvard-munch-modern-eye
Brief:
We are a private health agency with many years experience in this field. Are our aim is to explain young audience five stages of grief according to Kubler-Ross model.
We would like you to design 7 separate illustrations and create one week from a cancer patient life. All 7 illustrations have to be A4 sized. There age restrictions from 5 till 7 years old.. Try to appeal to the widest possible audience. The illustration should take up all space of the page.
The illustrations should provide a clear massage however there is no style restriction. Be imaginative and creative. Feel free to use your own choices for composition and colour.
I used pencil to draw my first stages of this assignment. Then I decided to with them in Illustrator, just to have an idea of how it would look as a big illustration. My opinion at this stage was that I didn’t like the overall look. I thought there was not enough space for so many drawings. I thought that 7 days on one illustration was just too much. Therefore I changed the whole concept from one illustration about 7 days into 7 separate illustrations, each about one day of the week.
Day 1 - Monday
This illustration tells us about the man who has found out
from the doctor that he is seriously ill as he has cancer.
This is my first stage for this assignment. The background is black and bold. The idea
for this project is to make the characters very simple and visible to show
their emotions by gesticulations and facial expressions. Therefore, I decided
to use very basic colours. As for now I don’t think the black colour is the
best option for Monday illustration. I need to look for different options.
I worked on the overlook of my characters and I like how I present
the doctor, with a bit of grey hair he looks more knowledgeable. I am happy with the face of my main character
however; I need to work on his clothes.
Lets play with word ‘Monday ‘ ….
Now my characters have hands and they look more competed. The idea behind those
big hands of my main character was to exaggerate this first reaction. The hopeless filling
when you get this scary news. I also added one item that described the doctor
very well- stethoscope. I am not happy with my word ‘Monday ‘therefore I need
to look for something different.
Black capital letters are fine however I want to try bit
more options. I like the font that I used and the way how I split the word
MON DAY . I am going to leave this.
It is very easy to play with this illustration using the
Photoshop.
The colour are ok. Do not need to change anything. I am very
pleased with the pink colour of the background as it represents cancer. I think
that this is the best illustration that I have produced.
second day ...
Day 2 – Tuesday
This first stage of grief has been called ….. denial. This is where a person tries to lie to themselves
about his/her condition, where everything is ok and fine and there is no way
that their doctor is right.
I was looking for the best way to express word : OK. I think
the way how we say OK with one thumb up is the most obvious. I am going to
stick to that and don’t want to change this.
I am content with the green background that looks like very relaxing
place somewhere in mountains. The clear blue sky and the yellow letters that
crate word Tuesday. I managed to place the pink bird that says the name of the
first stage of the grief. I created the bird using scanned paper and playing
with that in Illustrator. I am very pleased with that .
Day 3 – Wednesday
The second stage of grief is called….. anger.
This is the day where he is angry at the whole world. He just can’t accept the fact that he has
cancer, or understand why.
Wednesday was described as an ‘Angry’ day, therefore the
colours had to be shouting from the distance. The patience face had to be angry
as his body language had to say the same. It was very easy to produce this
illustration. Nice warm colours for this background and massive question mark
behind the person. I used my own writing to create word ‘ Wednesday’. I wanted
to put in to the practice my current knowledge gained from my course. The exercise
was called: Words and image’. I had massive fun with that. I may say that my
selection of letters express the angry Wednesday very well.
Day 4- Thursday
The third stage of grief is called…. Bargaining . This is the day where a person
is asking for a help . He wants to do anything to get a few more years to live.
Many times he is desperate to achieved his goal.
I wanted to created a very peaceful and homely atmosphere. I
thought about closed space as a place where my character can fill more humbled
and meek. I added a scanned peace of material and created a carpet form that. The cross on the wall is build from few layers
of my hand written letters. I really like this visual effect .
Day 5- Friday
The fourth stage of grief is called … Depression. I think
that there is no need to explain that
stage . Everyone is depressed sometimes but person with cancer has more to worry
therefore it is many times very deep depression.
Day 6 – Saturday
The fifth and the last stage of grief is called …
Acceptance. The stage where our patient knows he cant fight with the illness.
He accepted the fact of long-term discomfort and all consequence related with
that.
I think I spent the longest time on creating this
illustrations. I am very happy with the way how it looks like as a finished
product.. I love the colours that I used to create the atmosphere of word ;
Acceptance’ . The concept for this illustration was very complex as the
emotions related with that are not easy to describe. When I think about person
that accepted the fact of this illness I see someone very vulnerable. I see
someone with a white flag raised up to show that he gives up on all silly ideas
and he starts to understand the situation. He took his mask of to prove that he
is ready for this challenge. I created this background to limited his space and
exaggerate his mental state. I wanted
to create a sort of mental prison that he is now.
Day 7- Sunday
I used the last day of the week for contemplation and unknown. The day where our patient is standing
in front of dilemma. He has to make a decision of his life. Either he will go
to the hospital to get a treatment or he will stay at home and spend his time as
if nothing has happened.
Sunday was the most difficult part of this project. The
reason for this is that I haven’t thought about the ending carefully. From my
experience I know that this illness very often doesn’t have the happy ending .However every cancer patient has
different story to tell and the ending doesn’t have to be so dark and gloomy. It
all depends how advance the illness is. On my first black drawing, we can see the
patient going to haven. I decided to change the concept during my brainstorm.
The another idea tell the story about having two roads where the patient stands
in the middle of them. We can see the building at the end of each road, the
hospital and the house. This Sunday tell as the story about person who stands
in front of big dilemma , he doesn’t have to take the treatment as many people
are afraid of pain therefore their decision is to stay at home.
my first ending
another ways of ending the story...
a
b
c d
the finall ending and finished illustration.
I would like to sum um my last assignment in terms of gained
skills and knowledge.
I am very pleased to take this task as seven individual
illustrations. I had plenty of opportunities to explore my character , surrounding
and the mood . I hope that I managed to combine all skills from my
illustrations course like working with and writing the brief, character
development , working with text and image. I have also managed to work for the audience,
as this assignment was focus on children. I think I was as creative as I could
and managed to play with every individual illustration to create good work.
