Editorial Illustration-Article One.

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the results of human endeavour set in the context of society and culture.




This was an initial concept produced for the article ' The voice of reason. '

I had a strong image in my head of two silhouettes almost like the well known and seen optical illusion image that can be seen as a vase or two heads facing each other. I played around with this idea in adobe illustrator. But I wanted to produce something slightly less robotic and introduced hand rendered faces. I felt this would give the illustrations more of a connection with the reader as opposed to an unknown emotionless silhouette.
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Here was my first drawing that I started to digitally edit and manipulate in Photoshop. I introduced colour. Blue and green was mentioned in the article but it was mainly personal preference that made the selection. I used very soft tones because I didnt want the image to overpower and outweigh the article.
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I thought I would try out an image based on another hand drawing produced. I felt this drawing had an interesting angle and qualities that were more interesting such as the hair as opposed to the first drawing. So decided to take this through the process of the first one. Neatening the pencil lines, editing the contrast to make them stand out more and then adding colour...

But I also then went on to play around with dissecting the faces. I also had the idea of using shapes to represent words, I used circles. I started putting in circles then realised I could link them all through the mouth's ears meeting at the head (The article mentioned listening,speaking and thinking) so I placed the circles in a way that would be able to be linked through a track of lines (or track of thought.)











Above is The final realisation. This was chosen because I found the composition wasn't to overwhelming. It reflected the topic and sat well within the context of the article. It has a decorative function although is slightly more in-depth.

My only criticism would be that there is a lot of white space around the image. I could have introduced a background. Also, on reflection, I could have played around with more images of the same person and maybe not have had a symmetrical composition as the area is very large and invites maybe more of a complex piece.
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