Paths to the Absolute.

Famous abstract painter, Kandinsky, once asked himself 'Speaking of the hidden by means of the hidden. Is this not content?' regarding the point of symbolism. When we view his painting we are 'simultaneously looking at what it is concealing. veiling'. (Golding, 2000: p82)

Applied:
What is more prominent in the narrative in terms of emotion or subject matter.
You know it's symbolism so you are looking for meaning in what is hidden/not shown. Aware of looking for what is hidden for meaning. Strange to hide something that you then know the point will be to look for it...

'Kandinsky...achieved abstraction through the proliferation of imagery, through endowing his pictures with such a multiplicity of images that eventually one image cancels out another and the canvus surface becomes a single, throbbing whole.' (Golding, 2000: p83)

For this picture i used the same codes and shapes that i had come up with for the rest of these related pictures. Red scribbly anger, the orange triangle cat, the dead triangle cat with the sign of death. The blue-ness-overwhelming sadness the comic has to it's theme. The murky confusion in the middle and the smaller orange triangles where the cat is recurrently thought about throughout the narrative. The white running through it is the distraction about the freezer defrosting...


The video to the below is anger turning to confusing. Anger is represented in this case as an imposing red square, while confusion is a swirling murky mess.
By filming this moment, the transition becomes the story. An interesting thought in the way of the form of storytelling.

EXPERIMENT: Abstraction 3...Rise of the Triangle/Narrative through Symbols

So i've looking looking into symbolism and thought the idea of trying to convey a narrative through abstract shapes, using the codes and conventions of symbols. You can see my sketchbook plan and key for this in a pervious post below.
I used boxes/cells, a common structure device associated with comics to hold the picture together and control the narrative/the way the viewer reads the image and is taken through the story.
This is about assigning connotations, whether pre-existing or not, to shapes and colour to create appropriate mood and feeling that suggests what is going on in the narrative.

Like before, i recorded the process of drawing out the story as i am interested in the idea of that too conveying the narrative in a different, possibly clearer, way.
The narrative plays about before the viewer and they can follow as the story and emotions unfold.

Clearest, simplest design. Even this conveys a narrative.

EXPERIMENT: a small abstract test.

So i did a quick test from a thought i had regarding abstraction. That the painting can be read as telling the story or you could record the progress and tell the story that way. The painting isn't good but that wasn't the point.

 The Finished painting.

EXPERIMENT: Abstraction 2...this time it's personal/colour without lines

 So recently when colouring my major project i've been working on layers; one colour and one lines to keep the colours loose. The colour layer always looks interesting and it got me thinking how the lines ground the image and the colour layer without them is abstract in the way that it is harder to read what's going on.

This is a page from my final major project, 4AM. On this page especially, just having the coloured boxes to read you get more of a sense of an atmosphere and time of day from the colours and general shape of what could be (is) landscapes, trees and clouds, without the preconception of knowing the location/item pictured truly looks like.

EXPERIMENT: Abstraction

An experiment in abstraction using a page from my major project 4AM.

Reading the story through the lights in a night club scene. Does it still read the same story? What else does it suggest? Other meanings? Or is it simply more obscure and therefore more interesting? I think it is indeed quite interesting and it's giving me more ideas for where else this could go.

Not much is happening in the the actual comic page. I just wanted to see if you would read the same thing happening or if you understood it differently ion some way because of it.

The Cat's Dead.

The Times: "Wes Anderson's ... movies, such as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, tend to drive audiences into two camps: those who see them as emotionally dead baubles wrapped in self-regarding irony; and those who see them as the apotheosis of film craftsmanship. The Darjeeling Limited is hardly going to bridge that gap". The Times 

^ Hutson, Graham; Siret, Mal. The Times (London).http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/film_reviews/article2915999.ece.

I did a proper comic drawn out from a script i wrote and with my own characters. Using the slow pacing, long pauses, emotionless expressions and sentences that go nowhere of Wes Anderson. Towards the end it's meant to turn into more Stanley Kubrik in feel; With flashing images of close up faces and use of red.

GOOD MORNING, LETHARGY.

Did a more finished painting using some recurring themes from Wes Anderson iconography and my own characters.