Exercise 3: Sequencing images

In this exercise you’re going to create images which you’ll then print onto the papers you collected in the first exercise. You have been working with the poem Tango With Cows in the exercise ‘Concrete Poetry’, to create an experimental text. Using your interpretation of the poem as a starting point, develop a set of images that you can sequence into a narrative. You can choose to create these images yourself or use existing images.

Idea generation
Create a series of images which will build a narrative sequence over about 16 pages.

Use keywords from the poem as a starting point. Work with images you have created before, developing and changing their contents, or use fresh new ideas and imagery related to the poem. Remind yourself of the creative design process.

Explore the sequential narrative over the folds. Produce a folding document (2 sided) with the images you have created. Try one of the folding systems discussed in part two of the course, Form and Function: Paper folding.

Research and development
A visual narrative is a way of communicating some form of ‘story’. It may be that you interpret ‘narrative’ in a conventional way, using chronological images of how your identity has changed over time, with a beginning, middle and an end. Or perhaps you’ll work in a less obvious way, exploring how your images can be exploited through abstraction and print processes, using the term ‘narrative’ as a vehicle on which to hang your concept of the poem.

The purpose is to interpret the brief to create images that are meaningful to you, plus extend your understanding of image qualities. These images may be paintings, photographs, drawings, film stills – they can be at any scale, in any media and about whatever you want them to be, in the context of exploring the concept of the poem. This is your opportunity to explore some of the features of digital imaging software, such as Photoshop, to layer images, cut out images, experiment with opacity, filters, hue, brightness, contrast and halftone screens, among other things.

For example, can we approach text as image? What happens if you ‘rasterize’ text, then begin to manipulate it, in the same way as you would montage image material. Be creative! Explore!

Remember you have access to Bridgeman and Oxford art libraries online also, if you want to download images and work in this way, but originating your own images will make the project more personal to you.

Firstly, I sketched ideas for some of the (in my opinion) most vivid imagery from the poem. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to juxtapose the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ or the ‘artificial’ and the ‘natural’ to capture the tension in the poem. I was also interested in combining images in a collage to create absurdist imagery which would also capture the flavour of the poem.

Quite early on I settled on using an accordion style fold for the booklet. I’m not exactly sure what drew me to this, perhaps it was the simplicity of a long spread that can also be compacted – giving it the quality of expansion and revelation. In any case, it felt intuitive and I wanted to see it through. Another idea I had was to use different colours throughout the booklet to symbolise ‘cool’ modernity and ‘warm’ tradition (more on that later).

I felt that Photoshop would be the right program to use for collaging photographs and as I didn’t have the imagery in my own collection I mostly used the site Pexels for stock free images.

Life is shorter than the squeal of a sparrow – The ‘squeal’ is a factory chimney with a plume of smoke. This illustrates the speed of modern life and is very contrasting against the graceful bird. It has an absurdist quality to it. The stormy clouds in the background amplify the concerns that would have been present at that time in history about industrialisation.

Like a dog, regardless, sailing on an ice floe down the river in spring? – I scrapped my initial idea of using a dog and instead simplified it by using an overhead photograph of a road. The similarity between a meandering river and road was too good to miss. The road is perfectly placed as a symbol of the speed of life and so it joins onto the sparrow spread.

With tinned mirth we look at our destiny. – This is pure absurdism and nothing else. This was meant to be ambiguous and perhaps a little unsettling. The gears and oranges in the background were later added as a reflection of the opposite image and another chance at creating an interesting juxtaposition.

We – the discoverers of countries – conquerors of the air – kings of orange groves and cattle. – I focused on the idea of ‘kings of orange groves’ here. I thought the main sentiment was dominion over nature. I took a crown and combined it with an orange tree and oranges with an agrarian field in the background. This synergy is quite powerful and a little bit comical too.

Perhaps we will drink a glass of wine to the health of the comets, expiring diamond blood. Or better still – we’ll get a record player. – I’ll admit with this image I have been very literal without adding extra meaning. An old fashioned record player sits in space and spins a galaxy while a comet shoots out of the speaker and drops crimson blood/wine into a wine glass. It is fantastical and absurd but also quite a striking image.

I want one – to dance one tango with cows – Really this is the title image, a tango with cows. I added cow heads to tango dancers against an idyllic backdrop.

and to build bridges – from the tears of bovine jealousy to the tears of crimson girls – An image of a lady crying and a cow. Seems quite simple but I had more ideas which are coming up.

I needed to modify the images so I now set to doing that. I selected some of the foreground components and added a conte crayon effect. This evokes the history of the poem a little bit more while also giving the images a gritty feel. I also edited the tangoing cows image further by blending the pastoral backdrop with a nuclear power station. This better represents the two opposing forces that are meant to be pivotal in the work.

My final set of changes focused on colour. As I mentioned earlier I wanted to express ‘cool’ modernity and ‘warm’ tradition. Also, red is an important colour in relation to the tango and passion. I used gradient maps to achieve these effects.

The first two images start with the cool blues of modernity. As the backdrops are of the sky and icy waters this is a natural selection anyway.

I expanded the field backdrop onto both images here and used green/yellow/orange. A transition to warmer colours.

This spread features a brown/red sepia tone which evokes vintage while not being a full blown red.

Finally, a crimson red is used which is perfect for the ‘crimson girl’ and very eye catching for the front and back cover. I also added some blue water droplets for tears and extra contrast. I think the changing colour throughout the booklet works well and fits perfectly with the images it corresponds with. I used the Rodchenko typeface that I had used in the previous exercise for a Russian constructivist link.

I then made a simple mockup to see how the 16 page booklet could work in practise.

Reflection

I think I succeeded in creating images that are meaningful to me. One alteration I think I could make is to make the images flow into each other more smoothly like they do in the first section. This isn’t achieved so well in the second and third section. Overall I found this exercise very engaging and I particularly like transforming simple stock images into new images with different meanings and contexts by collaging.

Photos used

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