COP3 Initial Project Presentation - Outline

COP3 Presentation Outline

Slide 1: Opening slide

COP3 Dissertation Jessica Dawson

Slide 2: Overarching question & Research Project

The overarching question I have chosen is:

“ To what extent does aesthetic style reflect the context, audience and / or function of contemporary illustration?”

And the specific subject I want to focus on is – colour

- Why I want to look into colour: I want to investigate and learn the importance of colour and how to better use colour in my work. Colour in itself is ubiquitous, the impact colour has on us can often be overlooked and undervalued - I want this project to be a celebration and appreciation of colour and its importance within our lives.

I am particularly interested in our emotional connection to colour and investigating colour in a personal and emotive way.

Not really wanting to look into the impact of colour on advertising and marketing but more about the subjective and emotional.

Slide 3: themes / areas of interest

- areas I am interested in / themes / want to cover throughout this research project

Colour theory & colour rules (in order for me to learn more about the fundamentals and specifics) emotional connections connotations & associations mood identity nomenclature - colour psychology colour perception subliminal

Slide 4: Summer development

- Playing with colour – colour experiments - Collecting colour swatches from observation - Investigating colour across different media - Pinterest board of colour palettes - questions for potential survey – which I will come to later on in this presentation

Slide 5: Experiment examples

- examples of images of my summer work – explain briefly

- Being free with colour - Process and media driven - playing with colour plates and media - shape and colour - shape colour and texture

Slide 6: Research:

Science and theory How colour works - theorists - colour theory - scientific - psychological properties of colours - syndromes and phobias

Slide 7: Research

Subjective How people respond to colour

- emotional connections to colour - connotations - colour uses and values across varying cultures - obsessions examples of these, gang culture (bloods and crips in LA blue vs red), football teams colours)

Slide 8: List current theorists / people / opinions of interest

Extensive list of theorists, experts in the field of colour, psychologists, and artists / creatives who have had impact on the world of colour or a specific and unique connection to colour.

Ranging from Isaac newton : who’s understanding of light and colour and experiments with colour prisms lead to the colour wheel and colour separation system we know and use today.

To post war French artist Yves Klein who created the colour International Klein Blue, a pigment famous for its optical brilliance and with what he would obsess and focus the majority of his works on.

Slide 9: Primary Research

“Pick a colour” survey - aims - examples of questions - why I thought this would be a good idea: to gain an insight into people’s personal connections to colour.

Slide 10 :

Current reading For both theory and subjective connections to colour

Slide 11 & 12: Creative inspiration

Artists whose use of colour inspire me Who have a unique connection / outlook on colour

Talk about Marion Deuchars – colour book. Project responds directly to research she has found and painting from this. Creates a very personal and emotional portrayal

Slide 13: Practical Ideas

Difficult to pin point what I want to create at this stage Interested in tactile learning In personal journeys A celebration of our emotional connection to colour The subjective as well as applying the theory behind colour

- Educational illustrated book - publication - Visual journal – focusing on the emotional connection and subjective (in response to survey) - Alternative swatch palette (in response to survey answers) - Colouring book – that somehow determines that persons mood depending on what colour or content to colour in relation to memories and emotional connections to colour for the audience to interact with / complete. Like a journal / diary / artefact / record to colour in and help remember the colours that shape us.

- Pick one colour or a limited palette and research and respond to this thoroughly - Responding to quotes from people about colours and a visual illustrated representation of this in that colour palette – almost reportage - ‘City Swatches’ - Observational city illustrations (leeds?) in palettes that represent them – almost like swatches. – focusing and conveying mood and atmosphere created by dominant colours // what people feel in these places. How the colours here affect people.

Slide 14: Practical Ideas

- Set of prints responding to research, applying theory - Set of prints for each colour responding to my survey - Educational prints focusing on and playing with theory

Slide 15: Pinning down a research question

This I need some help with Without a set direction, it is hard to know what it is that I want to say or what I would like to underpin my dissertation.

Had a go anyway.

Q: How has the use of colour influenced society and culture?

Q: To what extent can the use of colour positively affect society?

Q: To what extent does the use of colour (/colour theory) - influence the audience’s emotional response and connection to illustration and artwork?

Q: Does colour belong in the realm of theory & science or subjective emotion, connection and connotation?

Q: To what extent does colour form a part of our identity?

Slide 16: Worries

The sheer scope of colour as a subject is vast. Which avenue to take or which is going to be more lucrative? What do I want to say? What is the problem I want answered?

I have the tendency to research and search and continue to open up a subject in search for that gold thing / eureka moment of a project. This has been my downfall before and as well as being worried that I won’t find that specific juicy theory or focus to write about which underpins my research project, I worry that my search for this thing will be endless and in the end I’ll have lots of random bits of research that interest me and will be unable to tie them all together.

Subject of colour has the potential to be quite abstract – this is not my practice or what I want from the module. I like to have subject matter to respond to. How do I overcome this and create something I am proud of?

- maybe show some of my previous works here to give an idea. How do I respond to this topic in an illustrative way?

- I could generate artwork which employs some of the colour theories I have been investigating – but how do I choose / justify the subject matter in which to apply these theories as the project itself is so abstract & subjective.

- colour often goes hand in hand with shape, subject matter, texture etc – when the nature of my research is so abstract – how to I justify these choices without distracting from colour as the focus?

Colour is a well researched subject and I am worried about reproducing artwork or responding in a way which comes across naïve or obvious. To me the subject of colour is pretty new – therefore everything I am learning about theory etc is really valuable and interesting to me – but I cant just produce images and tests based on this theory – which again poses the question of how to respond to this research.

Slide 17: Plan of Action // where next // further research activities

Colour nomenclature – why and connotations. Pantone?

LAU survey (give examples of some of the questions) Emails to practitioners with specific colour palettes with a set of questions to find out more about their choice, why and connection to specific colours.

Paint / illustrate from observation – places around Leeds that evoke emotion and dominated by certain colours / colour palettes Chroma therapy Find images for image analysis and to apply theory.

Find more examples of colour associations / connotations Nature & environment -how weather and landscape dominate colour palettes - how colour works in nature – plants and animals essay stuff

Slide 18: final slide // Thanks for listening

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Questions to the group

If I was to generate artwork / illustrations from the survey results – would this be ok? A good avenue to go down for artwork? Gives me a subject matter and relates to primary research.

My research, approaches and topic on the whole are quite broad at the moment. Any ideas of how I can narrow this down or any feedback on which avenue could be interesting for me to focus in on?