• Played with mixing both the "positives" and "negatives" cut off shapes of the fonts, filling the cut offs with the photography instead. Added some of the shadow play letters and changed the blending layer in Photoshop. Added some bats and then a Dracula-like figure to add focus to the centre of the composition. What will happened if the type isn't white? A mess! There is now no focus and no contrast. This isn't working!
• Far too much going on at once with too many layers, the purple isn't working for me as there's too many tones. What will print out successfully and what won't once it gets transferred to black and white and printed onto coloured paper?
• I tried blue here and I just feel like the tone of Dracula is lost completely. I'm not happy at all with how much time I've spent on this and how overdone I'm finding it.
• Looking back to the contextual studies I did previously, simplicity is key!
• What now? I'm not even happy with the layout of the typeface and may redo the composition altogether as I'm feeling so limited and falling back into old ways of working. I'm no longer being inquisitive...
• This D looks like a Nosferatu face. It wasn't intentional but a happy coincidence. What if I arrange the letters in my type so that the D is at the top and the rest looks like a body? This is something I would never have thought of before but the previous and "typical" way of working has backed me into a corner that I'm not happy with.
• This is quite interesting! Because I used my hands for my type, it translates well to being Dracula's hands! My acrylic nails that I had professionally done really translate well too as vampiric talons. Nice!
• What shall I do for the image layer? Something simple like a cape? Inspired by the arrangement of the lettering and the lights from the play...
• I used a digital watercolour brush that is affected by pressure as I wanted to mimic the lighting from the ballet and let that inform my work with that unique experience of witnessing the flow and movement
• Looking back at my contextual research, red, black and white were most successful to portray blood, lust, shadow, a dark character, themes of horror and a sharp contrast with white. Which elements do I want to colour which way? Adding fangs to the D! A nice use of negative imagery, basic shape and adding a focal point
• I had quite a central alignment composition which I felt didn't really say anything? So played with sizing and alignment. The smaller Dracula felt like he wasn't as imposing or threatening, a much quieter figure. The bigger one taking up more of the canvas felt more imposing. The right alignment gives a sense of him coming forth, looming towards and like he has moved. There is space behind him
• Overall this has been quite an exhausting and exhaustive process. Not having constraints to work with this time threw me a little bit, colour especially, and having that freedom and total control of the output is both good and bad as things can be overworked to oblivion as I did at first throwing everything at my first outcome.
• Having constraints in place for yourself and not overworking something and keeping it simple is the key to a successful image and this has been a very strong learning point for me.
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