Formative Reflection: Narrative Art

By A.Student

Our unit is about Narrative Art – this is artwork that tells a story in some way. Our first job was to collect examples of narrative art from different places and times.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/cave_art_an_intuition_of_eternity/decent_into_the_cave/shamanistic_visionary_experience.php

In this investigation part of the unit I was most surprised by the drawings from the cave paintings, I always thought these 17,000 year old paintings would have been made by ‘unintelligent’ human beings, not at all like us, but looking at them and thinking about my own drawings I now think they must have been quite sophisticated. The quality of some of the drawings is amazing. The image above was the most ‘narrative’ that I could find. Whilst we don’t know exactly what the artist intended we can see that a sequence of events has happened – the bison has been injured and the bird headed man seems to be falling or laying down. Maybe he was injured whilst hunting the bison? The bird stick is a mystery though.

The thing I realised from doing the investigation is that for something to be narrative art it has to tell of a series or sequence of events, there has to be an element of time passing in the piece. I’m not sure yet if any of the artwork I have collected will be useful for my graphic novel but I do see how graphic novels are just one more way that humans have used images to tell stories.

Having mind-mapped possible stories I could use, current news stories, personal experiences and re-telling an old story I came up with a few ideas. I found it hard to force myself to keep going once I had an idea I liked, but wanted to show I could have many possible starting points. I think I am going to use the news story about whales beaching themselves in New Zealand. No one knows why they do this, but people try and help them get back in the water, which could make a quite a dramatic graphic novel page.

We also learnt how to use the Action Line Figure method of drawing people – you make a sort of skeleton and add the bulk of the person once you have got their position and movement right. The action line that you start with has to describe their movement/position.

Learning how to use the techniques and art materials we will use – we had to practice using the fine liner pens and brush and ink to show we could make objects look round. We used cross hatching, squiggly lines, wet on wet technique, and ink and white gouache paint. Once I knew how to use the materials I looked for examples of graphic novel artists work and made some studies of them. Because I had used the materials I could figure out how they had made their work.

Peer Feedback – I asked two of my classmates to look at my webpage and tell what I was doing well and what I could improve.1.“ The investigation should have more written comments. You could think a bit more about the presentation and make your work look ‘artier’. “

2.“ Your drawings from the other artists work aren’t bad – if you took a bit more time over these they would be even better.” I think it is fair enough about the comments in the investigation – I could add more about what I thought and found out about the art I selected. I don’t want to change the presentation though – I like it clear. We only had one lesson for the drawings – I could do more at home.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/90123/20150930/superman-44-review-unmade-life-clark-kent.htm

I like how Frank Miller composes the frames of his graphic novels - this one is great – the whole composition moves from the top left to the bottom right corner. Great use of warm and cool colours as well.

WWW - I think I have done all the tasks set and posted them, my drawings are ok and if I have more time I think I could make a good quality graphic novel page.

EBI – I haven’t yet found out enough about graphic novel artists I like – I think having some idea about the sort of ‘look’ I’m after will really help.

Next steps – I need to decide how to tell my story – I haven’t yet collected ‘mood board’ images to help me design my page. If I am going to use the beached whale idea I need to collect some images from news sites of that story , and images of whales underwater.