After visiting the Guston exhibition I made an image in response to his work. I had very mixed feelings towards the work he did across his life. I wanted to take some of his key thematic elements into my own piece such as the use of figure drawing and cluttered compositions. However I went in the opposite direction in regard to colour and keep mine black and white. Guston’s work shows a narrative (known as a tableaux), so I wanted to try capture that idea of representing a whole story in 1 image. His work was often centred around serious political or social issue so I tried to tackle the feelings of anxiety and pressure. Guston’s work was predominantly done in oil paint, a very traditional medium but I did mine using more experimental digital techniques.
The idea behind the piece was to depict 1 figure and centre the narrative around them. Around the figure would be seemingly random objects and hands, 2 things Guston used a lot in his work. I wanted to combine traditional and digital mediums.
A did a few charcoal figure drawings to get the main character. I chose charcoal as it has a nice gritty texture which translates well to digital media. I wanted the figure to be in a hunched over position to suggest struggle and pain. To try reflect the physical effects to depression and pressure.
I ripped around the figure and scanned it. I like the look of ripped paper and I think it helps to make the figure look small and compressed, furthering the theme of being trapped by these negative feelings.
I have been experimenting with scanner and like the effect it gives to get hands I decided to scan mine. I tried it in different ways, some pressed against the scanner and some hovering above. It gives a really interesting texture that I think contrast the hand drawn charcoal figure well.
Then for the third part of the composition, I randomly scattered needles, nails and pins onto the scanner and scanned them. This is taking inspiration from Guston’s clustered use of objects. The scanner pick up metallic objects very well. The reason for the choice of these object is that each of them are designed to fix and hold things together but when used wrong they can be dangerous and destructive. I think this goes well with the themes I was trying to represent.
Then I started to digitally combine them. I used Photoshop and spent lots of time editing the layers in different ways, ordering them and adjusting the overlays.
I found that I liked dramatically adjusting the contrast and brightness on the objects to give it a printed stamp look. Also I liked having 2 layers of objects and having one light and 1 dark and 1 infront and 1 behind the person. I wanted both the hands and objects to be overly large in comparisons to the person, this is something Guston did in multiple pieces.
I preferred the one where the hands where hovering over the scanner as opposed to being pressed on the scanner as they’re more subtle and less distracting from the figure. Also I think it works more for the narrative that they’re almost just constantly looking over the figure in the background.
I tried different formats and liked it better landscape as I feel it made the hands look more like them where coming to get the figure. Furthermore I think the figure looks better placed at the bottom of the page, not in the middle because it makes it look smaller and more scared.
I chose to use this figure and not the other one because it looks more like she’s shielding herself from the hands and objects which fits the narrative more. Also it has white bits which help bring out the white in some of the objects and I think just overall ties better in the composition.
This is the final image. I made some adjustments to the edges of the figure and made some of the objects look like they’re piercing the figure. Overall I’m happy with the outcome. I think the texture and layering of digital and traditional media was successful. Also I think it has the narrative of a person struggling from negative emotions and external pressures represented by the objects and hands. I like the subtlety of the hands compared to the boldness of the objects. I was able to incorporate elements of Guston’s ideas. I chose to use more of his compositional style rather than his visual style.
Samuel Green Illustration 