Workshop Two – Taking Direction/Barnet Fair

Research
Victorian Posters

Looking at Victorian posters i can see see that the colour schemes are usually quite minimal; blacks, off whites, and reds


Adrian Johnson

This is the style i'd like to go for with this workshop.
http://www.adrianjohnson.org.uk/home


Ben Newman

Again this is the sort of style i'd like to have in my final piece, this one even more for the use of Newman's limited colour palette.
http://www.bennewman.co.uk/


When we first got given the brief we were told we had to choose between two different quotes to illustrate:

Quote One (reference either Pulp fiction covers or 1950s Advertising)

“How do I control my life when I can’t control my hair?” – anon

Quote Two (reference Victorian posters)

“BLESS the HAIRDRESSER.
 He attacks Mother Nature for a small fee.
 Hourly he ploughs heads for sixpence,
 Scours chins and lips for threepence.
 He makes systematic mercenary war on this
 WILDERNESS.
 He trims aimless and retrograde growths
 Into CLEAN ARCHES SHAPES and 
ANGULAR PLOTS. 
BLESS this HESSIAN (or SILESIAN) EXPERT
 correcting the grotesque anachronisms
 of our physique.” - Wyndham Lewis

 ­I chose quote two to illustrate because even though the mass amount of text needs to be put in the illustration, the text itself can inform the illustration better than the other quote.

When reading through the quote it was obvious to me that the hairdresser is described to be able to do many tasks and with the first line of “BLESS the HAIRDRESSER” I see him being like a god, like Vishnu or Ganesh. I decided then that the barber should be multi armed in order to be God like and to be able to do all the tasks that he’s able to do at the same time. Also in cartoons when a character’s doing multi tasking at high speeds it is drawn like they’ve got multiple arms and to add to the godliness of the barber character I put beams of light coming out of him.

To tackle the challenge of getting the entire quote on the illustration I wanted to have parts of it on each arm, when we were in the final critic it was said that this would be like him having tattoos so I made the font more like that you’d have tattooed.