DESIGN PRACTICE BLOG: Women in Film // Painting development

I have decided to create a simple zine with female tropes in, which will be illustrated by imagery. I have developed the illustrations before taking any other steps.

Type

Medium: Indian ink, as I haven't used it before to paint with and I think it could create some interesting and simple illustrations.

Zine cover

For the cover of the zine, I wanted to create type that is gritty and a little aggressive to address the seriousness of the situation, rather than give off the impression it is a celebration of women.

Using the ink I experimented with different styles of type, I wasn't keen on any of the more elegant styles because it didn't seem suiting to the subject. I warmed to the letters in all capitals that are more confrontational.

For the inside of the cover, I sketched film roll, which proved quite difficult with the ink - attention to detail is needed. After scanning, I multiplied the illustration to form a pattern - it is a simple (but obvious) way of reflecting the subject matter. However, the pattern messes with the viewers eyes a bit as parts of the pattern are repeated in a line - something I'm not completely happy with.

Zine content

For the tropes names, I wanted to use the ink to create scruffy hand painted letters to name each trope in a playful way. I also see this style as appropriate for a low cost zine.

It was very trial and error to get legible letters that would fit together well. I scanned them in, and pieced them together:

The words are pretty clear, but I wasn't happy with them as I changed by mind about the 'scruffy' style. Maybe letters in this fashion paired with illustrations would be too much, so I've decided to use a sans serif typeface for the headers inside the zine after this experimentation.

Illustrations

Next I painted some ideas for imagery, taking from my research and portraying the ideas visually.

The Smurfette Principle - One female character amongst an all male cast.

At first I thought of drawing Princess Leia from Star Wars as she is an example of this stereotype, but then I thought... that isn't very imaginative or creative. I also thought about drawing the Smurfette from the Smurfs, which again isn't imaginative. I want to create a zine that is original to me.

So from this, I started to think outside the box. How can I reflect these themes through very simple imagery?

Most of my ideas were based around something being the odd one out, like simple shapes or peoples heads.

Then I came up with the idea of people's profiles lined up in a humorous manner.

By boldening one of the profiles, it clearly shows someone being the odd one out. The style of the faces create a playful atmosphere that I want to keep going throughout.

I scanned this painting in, and after playing around with it a little, I went off it and tried to create something more expressive:

It took many tries with the ink but I created these faces which look a lot more effortless and interesting. I did it by gliding the paintbrush very quickly and smoothly down the page, whereas with the previous image It was more of a detailed process.

I decided to incorporate a small amount of colour into the zine, so instead of filling in the whole face I solely made the outline red to signify the importance.

I painted some pages with watered-down ink to use as a pattern to break up the illustrations... This is because I want to keep the illustrations black and white but adds zine-scruffy layers.