Exercise 46 - Juxtaposition

What: The brief of this exercise was to show the understanding of illustration and an understanding of illustration by juxtaposition by producing an original image either a still life or a larger scale shot.Where: In the house
When: During the afternoon
How: First of all I had to do was to reference some book and magazine covers and get an idea of what to avoid when coming up the image concept. I then decided to do a book cover

I went with a murder mystery novel as I thought the concept would be a good challenge as there are a vast number of murder mystery novels and they all have different covers all trying to avoid the same cliché potholes.

My book cover I decided on is for Agatha Christies Murder is Easy; I then sat with paper and pencil and scribbled rough drawings and thoughts until I had formed and idea or two. I then refined the ideas down into a workable format.

I worked on the idea that if murder was easy then a child could do it, I then played with ideas such as child blocks or a lego gun, before deciding on a simple design of cut out people in a chain and one of them being murdered with a pair of scissors as simply we teach children to use scissors quite quickly.

D80,Aperture f/3.5, Shutter Speed 1/125 sec, ISO 400, 18mm (35mm equivalent 27mm),Pattern Weight Metering Mode, Flash White Balance, Hand Held, 18-55mm lens



What I learned

I learned from this exercise that is can take some experimentation and practice to demonstrate abstract ideas through illustration; however once the concept has been developed and it can be demonstrated.
I was unfamiliar with the concept of using illustration of portraying ideas, but I now understand the concept and also the concept of symbolism and the requirement to find the right symbol for the illustration of a subject or idea.