24/04/2018 - BETH COLLAB SESSION 2

We got together for another session with tissue paper to see what we could produce in a second experiment. Ahead of this attempt I had done a little exploration into a designer named Dorota Pankowska who had been inspired by the Twitter logo bird, crafted from 13 circles. She then went on to create a series of 13 other animals from circles, and open it up as a creative challenge to other designers.

From this I found many more examples of animals which had been crafted from circles, a tool often imployed by logo designers and commercial graphic artists. One particular stuck out to me as a shark logo design constructed from just 7 circles. I liked this piece because unlike many of Pankowska's work, which forced animal shapes into curvature in oreder to fit within the 13 circles, in this work the streamlined curves of the shark actually lended themselves very effectively to being simplified down into circle forms.

This made it one of the most effective examples of this technique in my eyes, especially in terms of realism of representaion which helped the work depart from the graphic design elements and appear as a faithful piece in it's own right.

I started out by constructing my circles according to the Fibonacci Sequence, which I could then directly trace from whilst Beth working on some geometric elements from one of her pieces using the same tracing method.

While I worked on the shark I considered potential narratives to suggest in the work. I knew sharks around the world were just one of many large underwater species having populations decimated by over-reliance on these nets in both the British Isles and all commercial fisheries internationally. The iconic 'fishing net' composed from synthetic fibres bound into large grid nets which I also thought could look visually effective alongside the rest of the design and continue to carry through links between
geometry and animal function.

Next Beth had completed some of the geometric layer and we began to trial the pieces together. The angular nature of her area of the piece strongly contrasted the curving forms generated from the shark made of circles and broke the work up very effectively. However we both agreed that the design could do with stretching out slightly further.

First Beth added red shapes branching outwards and then furthermore a yellow circle overlaid on black. I really liked the red bits but was unsure about the larger circle behind, and decided I would wait until dried and then decide fully, as I could easily cut the design away from the background once again if I was dissatisified. Although I really liked the circular silhoutte, as it gave the piece the quality of an information symbol, sign or alert, the red triangles adding to the urgency of the notice. What I was dissatisfied with ultimately was the colour as the colour produced from a yellow and black colour overlay did not coexist aesthetically with the other colours in the artwork. Yet me and Beth had tested other potential options quite extensively and found there were few colours which we could represent in tissue paper which would suit the rest of the design whilst also boosting the delicate white gillnet pattern.

One thing I thought worked particularly effectively in this piece was the black outline I added all the way around the shark. This tied the work together and gave it a sense of being strongly grounded in the figurative. It also got me thinking about possibly having a less figurative basis when composing the piece. One way to possibly achieve this would be to create the animal from all of the complete base shapes (just as I drew all of the circles to compose the shark), stick all of these shapes over each other correctly and then use a black outline to rediscover the forms of the intended animal from the illegible arrangement of the shapes. This format would also visually reference the drawing aids which I had first cited an an inspiration at the start of this collaboration, and also make the works feel less constructed and formulaic.