Exercise: Image development

For this exercise we were asked to take a photo or artist’s work with lots of content and make 10 copies. Using L-shaped card, we had to create edited versions of each image, analyse how this changes the image and pick one word for each image that relates in some way to the content.

I chose Edgar Degas’ ‘The Dance Class’ to use as per the below photo. It was full of content, depth and perspective and one of my favourite artists.

The 10 images below are the edited images with a one word description and some analysis as to why I have cropped the image in this way and the relationship to the word chosen.

Scrutiny: Focusing in on what appears to be the teacher and the student actually dancing brings the teacher’s observation to the fore and makes you think of the relationship they have as teacher-student, the pressure to perform, the teacher’s judgment, support, educational methods etc.

Determination: This cropped approach puts focus on the main dancing student and the friends watching on or talking and resting around her. I thought of the word ‘determination’ – which you need a lot of to succeed at this very difficult dance.

Friendship: Focusing on the waiting students in the background gives less movement and a more ‘restful’ feel to the image. The girls are also all in relaxed poses so at ease with each other, sharing their daily practice together so it brings to mind the idea of friendship.

Anticipation: Focusing more on the dancers in the foreground emphasises the idea of ‘getting prepared’. It seems like one girl is helping to fix part of the other girls’ costume. It makes me think they may be excited, nervous, anticipating the next performance or trial.

Fly: Focusing fully on the only dancing student takes away the teacher and the classroom setting and just focuses on a graceful dancer surrounded by other dancers and gives a light, airy feel with a lot of movement.

Secret: Zooming in past the teacher’s cane and the dancing student’s skirt and leg we can see an intimate moment between two friends who are engaging in some potentially private or secret discussion while playfully stretching out their feet and legs. You can see a clear relationship of trust and friendship.

Moral support: Cropping out the foreground brings focus to the dancer, teacher and background students who seem to be observing the dancer. It gives more unity to the image, as it seems more like a crowd around the dancer. It makes me think that the dancer may be showing how to do a new move and everyone is observing, learning, being supportive.

Strive: Cropping to focus more on the taller dancer who seems to be observing or watching the dancer invokes the idea of a relationship between them. The dancing student could almost be smirking or smiling or making a little joke. Alternatively the onlooker may be either jealous or supportive. Or the taller dancer may be a more senior ballerina also helping to teach and observing the dancing student to be able to help her. It is almost as if the dancer is striving to succeed and show her skills to the older girl.

9. Together

Together: This crop places more focus on two background dancers who seem to be hugging or potentially helping each other stretch. By keeping in the dancing student’s arms and other skirts on the left, the image retains the movement and also becomes more ‘crowded’ looking with little space between all the girls.

Focus: This crop seems to take the authority away from the male teacher/observer as be blends more into the general crowd and although he becomes the main focus of the image, everyone else is looking to the left as is the teacher towards something that is no longer in the frame so it retains a little mystery

I was then asked to chose one of the images as a basis for an illustration and to draw up the artwork to make a poster, adding colours and textures to emphasise the message. I chose no. 5 ‘Fly’. I first did a spider diagram to brainstorm some ideas around this word:

I really liked the idea of ‘flying’ through the air, being light as a feather and bringing in a soft sky with fluffy clouds. Based on these ideas, I then made a moodpboard for further inspiration, collecting related images and textures.

I then started trying out some materials. I originally intended to use a watercolour background wash colour for the sky and then pastel on top but this wasn’t working very well – I found it not dynamic enough and a bit too washy.

So I looked into how Degas actually did his paintings and discovered that he either used oil or was a master in pastel and charcoal and used to mix these media. So I tried out mixing oil pastel, pastel and charcoal in different layers. Applying first the oil pastel then pastel and rubbing into the white oil pastel gave quite a nice effect and then going over it with pastel in colours and then charcoal at the end for more fluid looking/movement effect.

I then tried out various background colour ideas to see what might work with the blue/lilac dancer’s outfit I preferred from above. I decided on sticking to the nice blue/lilac pastel colour, even after some more watercolour ideas which still did not convince me.

I then started to try out thumbnails for composition and picked my favourite dancer’s position that would look like ‘flight’.

I settled on a vertical A3 with the dancer flying out from left to right and reaching up towards a feather to guide the viewer from the dancer, to the feather and to the text we also have to add that would be on the top left. I then drew up the art work as per the below, trying to bring a feathery light look to the clouds and to match the feather on the top right. I chose to use pastel paper to give it a texture that didn’t quite come through on normal sketch pad.

I then started researching text fonts and downloaded a few from dafont.com which are free. I was trying to go for something light, elegant and slanted – matching the feel of the image and the elegance of the dance.

Taking advantage of my new Canon I took a RAW file photo and first tried out some editing in Photoshop. Since I used a pastel paper and the grain came out more than I had imagined, I tried some softening which was nice and fiddled around with brightness and contrast to get a nice balance that I liked. I then exported to Jpeg and uploaded into inDesign which I find easier to do text etc. Picking my favourite font and getting nice dark fascia colour, I added that! Final poster below!

Exercise: Image development

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