Tutorial to get back on track

After being ill for the past week my work has begun to turn stagnant so I arranged for a one-to-one tutorial with Glyn this afternoon to get some advice on the direction of my work. I feel I have a good amount of experimentation it's just how to bring that into final pieces I am struggling with and needed a fresh pair of eyes to look over what I had.

Glyn was really helpful and was enthusiastic about my use of the clock cogs in my work and suggested I could move forward with that concept of mechanisms and so I have some ideas of how I could make some acrobats out of paper-cuts and cog joints like they are clockwork figures. He reiterated what Catrin advised about reflecting on the atmosphere and setting that originally drew me to the book and try and reflect that in my final illustrations. I am keen on continuing to use layering and paper-cuts in my work but I need to think more about I can successfully bring the different elements together. Glyn liked my tent collages but suggested that they needed grounding to a place and setting so to perhaps consider that when layering them up. The key lessons from today seem to be to really focus on mood and tone of the text and how to reflect that in my work.

'Untitled', Naomi Shiek

Glyn suggested that I look at the settings of films such as The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen to look at the staging and atmosphere they create. We sat down and watched half of the Brothers Quay 'Anamorphosis' after discussing looking into illusion and dimension in my work so I plan to look at some of their other animations and finish watching that one as it was really engaging with a spooky, dark undertone to the imagery. I went to the library after my tutorial to get out the films mentioned above and to also look at some books to try and get an idea into how I can construct and format my final illustrations and I found some really interesting books on mixed-media illustration and paper-craft. The book 'Papercraft 2: Design and Art in Paper' has some really unusual paper-art set ups and 3-dimensional work that could give me some ideas.

'Anamorphosis', Brothers Quay

My next step is to go home and watch the films and flick through my library books to get some inspiration and look more into this specific area of current and emerging illustration practice.