Do judge a book by its cover - Visual skills (ideas)

I started with a new book 'Native american myths'. The book is about native american mythology and includes a range of different stories and beliefs. It talks a lot about spirits and sacred objects that have powerful meanings in native history.

Native american myths

I wanted to be experimental and imaginative with this brief and make images in a way similar to visual language. I created a character using a process exploring line quality and shapes working in a loose and gestural way.

These drawings where outcomes from my visual language. I want to explore native american myths in a similar way, to make a face or figure that includes symbolic objects and pattern from native american history. I started by looking at some masks. I needed to get some some basic face shapes I could use.

The thick bold eye brows in these mask are interesting and are unique to native american masks.

The pattern and shapes surrounding the head really caught my eye. I like the symmetry to it how the pattern is very straight and angular, especially the shapes on the top.

This image from the book also grabbed my attention, how there are patterns and shapes used to create a face shape.

 

Drawing these from reference helped me understand the way the faces are formed. Native americans use lots of pattern. The faces have an african and aztec feel to them. The colours and patters is how i will make them recognisable as native american.

I started interpreting them in my own way and drawing quick faces that would help me figure out how the face of my character will form.

I started added ornamentation around the faces, I tried making a head dress out of simple shapes which worked well. But i needed to find more objects that I could surround it as part of the head dress.

Totem poles where mentioned a lot in the book, they are very symbolic of native americans and especially the mythology. Could it be effective to include one in my design? I will explore how a totem pole can be made part of my design. Also the eagle is seen as very sacred and spiritual and is often placed at the top of the totem poles. 

This was an image of an eagle-man ornament from the book. This interested me, I want to see how this could be used in my design.

This head dress is made from modern materials, Its interesting to see the different things used to create it. Could I use shapes like this to structure the headdress?

This crazy extravagant head dress is awesome, It gave me ideas to exaggerate the head dress and make it filled with different shapes and pattern.

I found this photo of an old native american, I like the horns in his head dress. Could these be used in my design?

I good way for me to come up with ideas is to just draw loads in a quick and gestural way. This helps me figure out the image and the direction I want it to go in.

I liked the idea of a character holding a staff. The randomness of shapes surrounding the head works well.

I tried drawing the character within a template of the book cover to help me see how the space is going to be used.

At first I was drawing the character with an eagle staff but I randomly drew him with an eagle as an arm. I was surprised with how much I liked the look of this. I want to develop this idea further.

I tried it out in different ways, I was still drawn to putting a staff in one of his hands, the dream catcher looks is my favourite. The eagle hand looks good when its big and bold, almost like another character in the image.

This was my favourite character so far, I liked his straight body going diagonally across the page. The shape and layout is good but I feel it needs to look more native american. I need to look at more pattern and ways of making the head dress more feathery and decorated.

Native pattern is very triangular and rigid, there is not really any curved lines in the designs and they are often symmetrical patterns. Blue red and yellow are the key colours I've been noticing whilst exploring them.

Seeing these simplified patterns helped me start making patterns of my own.

I started exploring patterned totem poles and different shapes i could use within them.

These where some shapes I put together that could be used for decoration around the head.

 I was eager to start applying colour to my designs so I added coloured with drawing inks. Im pleased with the aesthetic of this design. I like the colours co-ordination but i feel it needs a third colour to make it more native american. I really like how the inks look, they create a nice rich colour, I will defiantly consider this media for my final. I think the decoration around the face looks aztec. I need to try out some new shapes for decoration around his head. The dream catchers work well and help emphasise my theme.

I decided to try some different ways to build up the character.

The horns on this design look good but I dislike the wing arm and big weird head dress.

I liked this design so I decided to try applying colour with a scratchier and quicker outline. I like how the outline is overlapped and there is space in-between lines, I think this way of outlining could be really effective with neater colour application.. I don't like pinky red colour I think an orange or yellow would look more native american.

This was another character variation, I think the body looks too small and stumpy but could work if it was bigger.