research

This is my attempt to create a more interesting post :D

So, at uni I was advised to research "darker" things in order my illustrations stop being "cute" and start being well... darker. A tutor recommended me to watch Jan Svankmajer's Alice. It creeped me out a little, but gave me a few ideas to start with this project (by the way, somehow Svankmajer's work (because I also borrowed a DVD with 5 of his short films), reminded me (just a little) of Hello Seahorse video Bestia).

I was researching more about the film and I ended up with funny taxidermy images (you know, there's a moment when you cross a line from point a to point dhsfjksd in the internet, just like in youtube, you start with "cute bunnies' videos" and end up with "how to eat your own face tutorial, step by step", ok, maybe in this case was not that extreme, it was actually kind of related) so there I was with the taxidermy research thingy, and I found Angela Singer, Sarina Brewer and Andrew Lancaster (not her actual site, sorry :( could't find it). If you are lazy enough to not click on the links this is basically what they do: Singer mixes taxidermy and "decoration" and Brewer and Lancaster mix dead animals to create a new creepy one. I got one idea or two out of this...

But as my research has to have something more that that, I am happy to share that in one of the crits I mentioned Nicoletta Ceccoli and her work was well received and kind of compared to mine in terms of the "prettiness". She gave me the hope that cute can be also interesting. So yesterday I was more excited when I visited the uni's library and happily found her book Beautiful Nightmares.

At the end of the book there's a page with all kind of random stuff which I thought It was really useful in terms of understand what kind of things Nicoletta Ceccoli is inspired with

then it's when I remembered my tumblr, which was mainly created as a space to hoard images that I found inspiring, so... yeah, same thing! (?)

I could see that I was attracted to blurry, soft toned photos. Some double exposed photographs appeared in there to. Ghostly. Lovely. (Image below taken from this Flickr)

I also using (again) Stella Im Hultberg as an inspiration.

So wish me luck with this project. I have to say that I am actually enjoying it a lot :)