A-Z Poster Development

I reverted back to Alex's favourite theme: David Bowie.

'Carnival/Circus' was included in a list of topics to choose from for our current Visual Language brief and I didn't want my work to get confused with that module. Although I wasn't certain that I would chose the Circus/Carnival theme for that brief, I wanted to keep my options open and decided not to use that for this poster project.

I'm also afraid of clowns. I hate busy, crowded spaces. I've certainly never been to a circus I've enjoyed. I was more in love with the drawings than I was the brief. I was in love with my idea of a circus, with my make-believe show, but I want this poster to be something that any viewer can recognise and relate to.

I looked back over my peer review comments from Alex. I looked back over my ideas.

I listened to David Bowie songs and got a book about him from the library.

David Bowie is Inside - V&A Publishing; De Luxe edition edition (23 Mar. 2013)

David Bowie. I decided.

No turning back now, this is final! Now make it happen Jay.

I collected images of Bowie from each of the 'letters'/eras. I made a visual timeline of Bowie's personas in photographs and now needed to translate them into characters.

Colour decision: all of these images share one colour in common - red. Whether it's the outfit or his hair, red was a constant throughout his aesthetic. Blue and red is another classic Bowie signature, but after testing this combination I decided that these colours were too dominant. I needed one dominant colour to match with white to achieve a monotone finish.

Media decision: I played with pencils, like Alex had shown me. I liked the sharp lines that this achieved but I wanted something stronger to fill areas of tone and give the illusion of texture.

I'd never used gouache paints before and had bought them during summer in preparation for this course. I made a test swab of gouache. I loved the opacity of  this medium and how strong the colours were when applied to white cartridge paper. The only thing I didn't like about it was how dry it felt once dried.

I made a real-size test. A2 portrait and featuring all 26 tiles. I chose not to use a grid structure because after trying this I decided that it was too neat and sensible, opposing what Bowie stands for. Some letters were more significant than others. Some characters screamed out of the page whilst others quietly stood back, which is why I varied the size of the illustrations.

This test piece was the perfect opportunity to discover exactly how I wanted to order the images, which I'd previously only focused on as individual illustrations. I cut them out and moved them around as separate parts until I was happy with how they were positioned on the page.

I used a lightbox to transfer the draft plan to the final image, maintaining my original structure before adding the final details of paint, colour and subtitles to the finished poster.