Image Making

image making Course Documentation Faculty : Immanuel Suresh

Daisy

Dutta

Graphic

Design

UG

2012

Mythological Characters Assignment 1 : Collecting mythological composite characters and the myths related to them. Also understand how the form is integrated.

PROCESS & LEARNING : History is full of interesting mythological characters. Mythological characters are not merely representations of natural forces, but also embodiments of the values of the culture that created them.

At first I started finding out what are composite creature in the mythologies of different parts of the world. I was fascinated by the stories or the myths related to Medusa of Greek Mythology and Goddess Kali of Hindu Mythology. So I selected these two characters to study on and find out their different myths.

As civilisation developed and grew we seemed to have made meanings of abstractions and simplified forms. I first studied about what is the reason of their existence and about the composite forms and their meanings according to myths, what they symbolise. Myths have always represented imageries through a composite forms - a combination of multiple forms and yet perceived as a whole. All these names of the composite characters makes a meaning in our minds because of the myths or sometimes real stories related to them. If we talk about Kali many images may come to our mind, for me its power, destruction, death, and sometimes insanity. For my Grandmother who is a great devotee of Goddess Kali, it may be a mother figure for her whom she worships for the protection and well-being of her household and family. After I read Medusa’s story I feel pity for her because she had to face the ill treatment from Lord Poseidon and also the curse of Athena which was not she deserved.

Kali

According to the stories, Kali is another form of the Goddess Durga. Kali was made by Durga to help her fight against demons or, Parvati can take on a fierce form by transforming herself into Kali from the poison stored in Shiva’s throat. Kali incites Shiva to dangerous and destructive behaviour that threatens the stability of the cosmos, and they dance together so wildly the world is threatened. Shiva traditionally calms Kali and defeats her, though there are few images and myths of Kali in a tranquil state. Kali plays an opposite role to Parvati in Shiva’s life.

She is the goddess who threatens stability and order. Kali’s dangerous role in society outside the moral order is increased by her association with criminals. Not surprisingly, Kali plays a central part in Tantrism. Unlike mother goddesses who give life, Kali takes life. She feeds on death and must be offered blood sacrifices. Kali is the feminine form of the word kala, time. Kali is the energy or power of time. Her blackness represents the supreme night which swallows all that exists. The emptiness of space is her only clothing, for when the universe is destroyed the power of time remains without its veil. Without shakti, expressed as the i in Shiva’s name, Shiva becomes inert like a shava, corpse. Kali standing on the inert Shiva represents her standing on the universe in ruins. Kali’s terrifying appearance is the symbol of her endless power of destruction and her laughter an expression of absolute dominion over all that exists, mocking those who would escape. Her arms are the four directions of space identified with the complete cycle of time. Four arms symbolise absolute domination. Her sword is the power of destruction, the severed head she holds is the fate of all the living, and the garland of skulls shows the inseparableness of life and death. Kali as the power of time destroys all and embodies all fear.

As she alone is beyond fear she can protect from fear those who invoke her. Thus she has a hand in the removing fear gesture. The pleasures and joys of the world are ephemeral, and true happiness exists only in that which is permanent. Only the power of time is permanent and can give happiness, so Kali gives bliss as symbolised by her giving hand which may offer a bowl of plenty.

According to the Hindu tradition, we are living in the Kali Age; the time of a resurgence of the divine feminine spirit. One such is a striking contrast is Kali represented as the Benevolent Mother where she is the personification of Eternal Night of Peace. From the canons of orthodox Hinduism Kali, Durga, Parvati, Lakshmi and Saraswati are all different forms of the Ultimate Power that are revered on different occasions.

Kali faces the demon army led by the demon Raktabeeja. Raktabeeja had the special power to create clones of himself from drops of his blood, rendering his forces nearly unbeatable. Facing a nigh unstoppable demon-clone army, Kali chooses the only rational course of action- she drinks all of Raktabeeja’s blood and eats all his clones. Anyway, after drinking all of Raktabeeja’s blood, Kali starts eating the other slain demons and goes into a blood-crazy dance of death (this is actually a very common phenomenon in Kali myths.

Alarmed by the violence of her dance, Shiva laid down on the battlefield to absorb its terrible tremors and cried out; when she realized that she had almost stepped upon and injured her husband, Kali was ashamed and stuck out her tongue and bit it in penance before helping him return home. Some says that it is also because to swallow up evil and negative thoughts.

She returned to the battlefield, however, and again her terrible dance was so destructive that the gods began to fear she would crack the earth; they called on Shiva to control her, so he took the form of an infant version of himself and sat in the midst of the battlefield, crying in distress. Kali, finding her husband as a child, calmed herself and fed him tenderly from her breasts, and the gods were able to repair the damage she had caused.

Kali once took possession of a forest, and the natives of the area were thoroughly terrorized by her presence, even to the point that some of Shiva’s followers were distracted, causing them to pray to him for help. He came down from heaven to ask Kali to calm herself, but she refused, taunting him and claiming that it was her nature to be so violent. Though Shiva was well-known to be the Lord of the Dance, Kali’s fearsome and destructive dances were legendary, and she challenged Shiva to a contest, saying that she could dance more awesomely even than him.

The two danced with such fervor that they shook the very foundations of heaven and earth themselves, until finally Shiva danced the Tandava, the dance of all creation, life and death in the universe, and Kali was unable to keep up with his steps. She conceded that Shiva was the winner and departed for heaven with him, leaving the earth as it was. The gods, shaken by the awesome fury that had occurred when both Shiva and Kali danced at the same time, resolved never to allow them to dance together again lest the world be shaken apart.

Medusa

Medusa one of the Gorgon sisterwas a beauty that had no such interest in human interactions and spent most of her life as the loyal servant of the Goddess Athena. Among many admirers of her beauty it was Poseidon that could not resist the charm of Medusa and took her virginity at the Temple of Athena. After this miserable encounter with Poseidon, Medusa now had to face the punishment of Athena who was raged with anger after her temple has been badly desecrated.

Her beauty was turned into an abhorring creature and she became the scariest yet fascinating creature that mankind has ever seen, her beautiful long hairs were transformed into snakes and her entire body structure was changed into a horrible creature. The physical appearance was just the beginning of the curse and the final touch of the curse banished her from the entire mankind.

She was cursed with such eyesight that would turn anyone into a stone with even a slightest bit of gaze from anyone; this ensured that no one would ever interact with Medusa.

She was abandoned by everyone and lived the rest of her life miserably as a monster terrifying the people and turning every onlooker into stone. This curse was so strong that even after her death at the hand of Perseus her head still had snakes and the eyes still had the curse to turn anyone into stone.

Medusa was the only Gorgon sister that was not immortal and suffered a very gruesome death at the hands of Perseus who beheaded her after she had terrorized the entire Athens and took many innocent lives. Athena guided Perseus to hunt the monster that she created through the curse, if it was not for the brave warrior Medusa would have continued her killing of innocent people.

She decided to use the curse to her advantage and started killing the people of Athens and the Goddess Athena refused to stand idle as her city burned and turned into stone; it wasPerseus that used his wisdom and bravery to take the head of the demon and presented it to Athena.

One has to feel for Medusa as she first suffered at the hands of Poseidon and then was cursed

by Athena and finally hunted down by Perseus, it seems that the poor priestess suffered at the hands of superior power. She suffered the consequences of Poseidon’s lust and didn’t deserve such a treatment, though men were much superior in those times hence Medusa had to suffer such horrific end. Because of her hatred for men she continued to kill many innocent men, who barely looked at her and the God of sea destroyed her life.

The fact that Poseidon was a god may have restricted Athena to harm him that is why all her anger was inflicted in the only mortal Gorgon sister. But the birth of Pegasus raises the question, if Medusa was such an evil monster how could she gave birth to such aglorious white winged horse, it is assumed that Pegasus was the son of Poseidon and was born after the death of Medusa. Since she was the only mortal sister it seems that Pegasus wouldn’t have existed if she was immortal, he birth through neck has also captured the attention of many scholars and many views have been shared about the symbolic significance of the birth through the neck.

Simplification of Forms

Assignment 2 :

Take a portrait of person or your own and an object and then simply the image in stages keeping the original meaning of the form intact.

LEARNING & PROCESS : The assignment dealt with simplification of form. Simplification is a process of elimination and how to communicate with the simplest elements. The assignment was to simplify one object and one portrait i.e. one structured form and one organic form. Simplification involved understanding the chiaroscuro of the object or form and representing the form with its full communication possibilities. The form should be perceived in its entirety. Choice of orientation through which the form communicates is the prime concerns in almost all the assignments. First I took a picture of a friend, I did many of them but the image I was trying to create was not happening. So I took a picture of mine and started tracing it on paper and it came out better than the previous one I was doing may be because I understood it better later on. The blackness is more in the first portrait where simple lines are not visible and then I gradually move towards the simplest one. The last one is the simplest portrait of mine beacuse it has the least black in it and shows the form and the essence of the original picture through a few simple plain lines in it. But it still can be recognised as me I think. I might have got out of the track somewhere but I really enjoyed doing this assignment because it dealt with lines and form and simplification. I understood how the weight of a line can change the meaning of the subject or the appearance. A simple line can also mean a lot of things.

The object one was bit more complicated but I found it easier to do because I had understood the process in the first one which might be wrong as our course was so short I could not discuss much during the course or later.

Portrait

Original Image

First Stage

Second Stage

Third Stage

Fourth Stage

Fifth and the Final simplified image.

Object

Original Picture of the Object

Sketch of the object

First Stage

Second Stage

Third and the FInal Stage.

Letter Integration Assignment 3 : Integrate two selected alphabets. The alphabets should integrate and form a whole new alphabet and cast a magic of perceiving each form in its separate entirety. The corollary to this assignment was to integrate an Alphabet sign with one number sign.

LEARNING & PROCESS :

We discussed how Aphabet and a number as a form are perceived. Alphabet is a symbolic unit and represents a sound whereas number is an abstract unit. We took 2 letters or alphabets which was decided in the class for everyone so it that doesn’t clash with one another and also is different. Since I am DD so I was given U and D. This assignment was kind of challenging as we had to integrate two different forms and represent them as one. U and D has similar features like the counter of D and the base of U both has a curvy character. Initially we were told to use helvetica as a typeface to experiment with but later on I started using lot of other typefaces like Amplitute, League Gothic, Helvetica with Klavika, Bauhas, Desdemona, Elegant cursive, agfa rotis, big caslon, minion pro, avant garde, meta etc. All these typefaces had a different form and appearance that also changed the form that was created by integrating the two characters. I think each form I had made integrating U and D has different personality. As lack of time I wasn’t able to complete it in time so I couldn’t decide on a final one so I have put the explorations of both.

UD

D

U

U

D

D D

D U

D

U

d D U D U U

U D

U UD

U

U

U

D D

d U

Exploration of Alphabet Integration.

U

ud DU

UD

D

du dU

U

D

U

D

U

U D

D

UD UD

D

UD

u u

D

U

Exploration of Alphabet Integration.

Letter & Number

d

3

3

3

3 d3 d3 d D 3 3 D D d d 3

Exploration of Number & Alphabet Integration.

Forms of Assignment 4 :

Movement

The main objective was to work under extreme constrain and create a form with the given word. Here the exploration was on the word ‘ movement’. The constraint was LINES horizontal, vertical or diagonal. The spontaneous form was created and exploration to be done with the positive and the negative form. to bring in a movement and later culminating in to a poster.

LEARNING & PROCESS : At first we made some doodles of movement. Basically some what abstract

forms for movement then we started doodling with ink by bare hands on paper. I chose one started working on it. The first picture on the next page is the one I had chosen. We had to show the same thing with only horizontal or vertical or in diagonal lines. I started drawing only horizontal lines on it and added small line in between to add depth in it. The amount of lines varies with the darkness of the lines or the size of the strokes of the original. I did one with all horizontal lines and background also in horizontal line and another one with only the form as horizontal lines. To experiment I did one with stiff paper strips on black paper (picture is on the last page), its not complete though but the essence of the form is visible. This assignment gave me more ideas about making an image, it doesn’t always have to be a line drawing or sketching or whatever, it can be straight horizontal or vertical or only diagonal lines that can create a whole image.

Form that was chosen

Some other explorations on movement.