Portraits: Evaluation

When I first looked at the brief I admit that I had a bit of a heart attack; I didn’t have a clue what the psychology of faces was so the first thing I did was research into that subject. I feel that by doing this first helped me generate ideas rather than drawing something and hoping that it would fit into the topic.

So my first thought was to create something that showed emotion, or different kinds of emotions, and this happens to be what I used for my final idea. By connecting all of these faces with a single line showed that they all belonged to the same person, and to further support this idea I made it so that the faces had the same features and hairstyle.
I experimented by adding colour to emphasise the emotions but I was treading on a thin line, as some sources said – for example – that green was the colour of surprise but then others said it was the colour of envy. To avoid any confusion I made my illustration black and white and this then allows the viewer to focus more on the facial expressions that are drawn rather than be distracted by the confusing colours.
This then creates a successful illustration because a) it had an obvious meaning to it and b) the viewer could focus on the actual drawing rather than the “pretty colours”. My target audience (psychologists) would be able to tell that the faces are the same but many variations of emotions, and facial expressions are one of the key parts of human psychology as they could portray a certain emotion that makes up the character’s personality.
By adding a grey gradient I have made the illustration softer as the lines aren’t so bold and demanding, and then this’ll help the viewer to read the article without being distracted. I made it darker so that the white border would be deliberate as I noticed that most of the images in New Scientist don’t “bleed” to the edges.

The typefaces used in the caption – Minion Pro and Myriad Pro – resemble the ones showcased in the magazine, which then allows my design to blend in easily with their articles. I have used a blue for the heading because blue and black are used on their main website (the colour scheme changes within each issue).

However when I printed out my two versions (one of the illustration at it’s full size, and the other alongside a caption) I noticed that the one with the caption had a darker grey gradient even though they were the same image. I think that this is because I had printed from Photoshop for one version and as a PDF from the other. This has taught me that I should print out from PDF’s as they “hold” the right colours.
So if I were to revisit this project I would save both documents as PDF’s to ensure that they’ll be exactly the same safe for the little caption.

This project was pretty challenging because of the fact that it ran alongside my FMP, but because I knew this was going to happen I was able to draw up a schedule so that I could research specifically on the things that were relevant to the project so that I had more time for the designing process. By doing this I was able to save valuable time and ensured that I was finished a week before the deadline so that I could brush up on any mistakes made or add a bit more research.

Like all of my recent projects I drew up conclusions of all of my research so that I could reflect on what I’ve learnt and how they were going to be relevant to my project. This then helped me to generate ideas, as I was able to flick between research and idea generation as I was going along.

If I was to say one thing about this project then it’ll be that I wished I did more experimentation, although at the same time my main focus was on the actual idea and so I didn’t waste time just doing them for the sake of filling out my research methods. I had discovered my style as well – which is line drawing – and so I wanted to explore into that rather than dabbing a hand in, say, charcoal or paint. Illustrators such as Joe Ciardiello, Ralph Steadman and Giacometti influenced me on line drawing as I really liked the way they produced sketchy images and making them appear finished at the same time.  

With my next project I think I’m going to look at inspirational designs first and then come up with my ideas because this project was a bit of a mess when it came to idea generation. The reason being was that for a couple of days I was so stuck that I wanted to avoid the project altogether, but after looking up at some other illustrations I was able to “get back in the game” and become inspired and produce ideas.