9. Creating Silhouettes

Inspired by Kara Walker, I tried my hand at creating my own silhouette.

I experimented with posing, because I wanted to capture a pose with personality. 

The silhouette is plain, block-colour and void of personality, so the shape of the person is the only thing that can evoke personality. 

I wanted to go for a weightless / unrealistic / fantasy pose to capitalise on the "surreal" side of my work.

The proportions are unrealistic and so is the pose, but I enjoy the exaggerated features (especially the hair) and the motion captured.

I decided to have her figure bare, without a skirt, using the hair and slim figure as indication that the silhouette is female.

I started placing the silhouette over backgrounds, like before, giving the illusion of a silhouette or shadow infront of a light.

Darkening the edges turned an innocent, easily readable piece into something much more moody and enigmatic. The dark corners hide what the silhouette is "reaching for", and forces the viewer to look deeply to decipher each part of the piece.

I find that the piece below has an uncanny effect - the silhouette is human, but too thin like a doll - the flowers in the background are recognisable, but the colours are different to what we know, and the innocence of the flowers is counteracted by a dark aura. 

To relate more heavily to Kara Walker's style, I decided to add WINGS to make the silhouette more surreal and interesting. 

I think that the wings make the woman look like a fairy, making her appear much smaller and more dainty. There is also a fantasy theme, and an innocence. The black aura closing in on the fairy is not quite as innocent, and brings questions.

Inverting the silhouette looked far too innocent, and cliche, in my eyes. A fairy with flowers inside is very pretty, but almost childish.

I began to play with creating dark affects around the fairy, which made it look like the wings and limbs were dissolving... I found this very interesting because it stripped away some of the innocence, as the poor fairy is literally disintegrating.

I enjoy the affect that the piece above brings. The "glitch-like", layered flowers appear "wrong" like a digital error, and the colours are very dark,  shapes difficult to decipher. It makes it difficult to see that she is a fairy at all on first glance, and looking closer brings it to the viewer's attention that she is disintegrating slowly. It's a very bittersweet image. Pretty, but dark.

Below are some similar experiments.

I found it very interesting to experiment with this organic, swirling shape pattern, because it is very busy, very confusing, and almost appears evil and void-like due to the dark purple. It is like an evil vortex, trapped inside a fairy.

I decided that this "fairy" silhouette wasn't surreal enough. I found it boring and nowhere near as strange enough to match my inspiration, Kara Walker.

Inspired by this image, I added more arms and legs.

I also added a bird due to my previous feedback on THIS image.

(The leaf of the rose was misinterpreted as a bird, which was an inspiring idea.)

I found these images much more successful on first glance, because of the fact that they are CLEARLY wrong and clearly not human or comforting (fairies could be seen as innocent, this could not). There is a level of uncanny about it, especially the fact that a bird is innocently perching on her hand like nothing is wrong with her.

Adding a dark aura gave an interesting, shadowy, unnerving affect, but it hid the bird, which was a big part of the composition.

I decided to layer the first two images, erasing random parts with a soft eraser brush to make the transitions appear natural and gentle. I feel that it worked successfully, and the piece is incredibly interesting to look at. 

The identical shapes overlay eachother, although some are solid black and some are full of vivid colours and patterns, creating a double silhouette that almost looks like a 3D-glasses illusion.

I added a clip of her hair and added it to her stomach, adding an extra dimension of surrealism and uncanny that viewers have to look hard to notice. This idea of NEEDING to look hard to grasp the whole image is inspired by Kara Walker's silhouettes, which tell an entire strange story through silhouettes.

I thought that adding a dark border would finalise the piece, but I am not sure whether I prefer this layered piece WITH or WITHOUT the dark border.

Thinking on it more deeply, I think that the dark border surrounding the piece makes the piece look much more busy, but also much more eerie. It is as if the darkness is closing in on the surreal creature. I left the corner with the bird completely untouched, making it brighter than the rest of the piece, and eyecatching. The bird is very innocent, sweet and gentle... But the dark background surrounding it suggests otherwise.

SELF REFLECTION:

The silhouette work that I have created up until this point has relied heavily on secondhand sources (Kara Walker's own work), and the silhouettes that I have drawn myself have been incredibly unrealistic and exaggerated. I enjoy the over exaggerated look, as I think it looks fun, interesting and passionate - but I wonder if using REAL PHOTOS would look more NATURAL, relatable and thus more UNCANNY as a result. I would like to experiment with photographs in the future.