(DATABASE) Project Two - Refined Sketches

Maggie Lin

I chose to focus on showing Urashima Taro forgetting/neglecting his village. 

First idea: Urashima and the princess are underwater in the dragon palace (instead of portraying the coral, pearl-themed setting in the story, I want to draw the dragon palace described in the more common version of this story.) The pond beside them is reflecting his old village on land. Probably will add fish in the background to show they're underwater.

Second idea: The princess's garment is covering his old village. 

Jinfeng Yang

After some reading and thinking, I chose a story that I can most empathize with, the story of the two travellers. I want to use the relationship between the two travellers as the focus of my illustration, further enriching it by digging into their contradictions, emotions, attitudes. Here these two sketches here can be seen as the base colour of this project, I will add details that can tell the story, details such as clothing, accessories, environments, etc. to turn it into a finished product step by step.

Trisha Guarin

So I chose Two Travellers as my story of choice for project two. The original story was vague and concise enough to give me room and freedom to do as I please with the story. Upon reading further renditions, I was given more detail in the story that also gave me some sort of structure for my rendition. I decided to illustratte the key elements in the story to tell thee whole narrative.

Reading the story I was given a lot of imagery of the forest (as a lot of the story took place in there), which made me really wanna illustrate that setting and give a sort of magical tragic feeling to it.

Rita(Xiaoxia) Zhu

I picked “The Two Travellers”.

The story is mainly about two travelers, a good one and an evil one, a good man who, because of his helpfulness, gets the help of the birds in the forest, saves the princess, and the king's garden, gets wealth, and lives a happy life; while the bad guy, because he hurts others, and greedily hopes to get the help of the birds, is finally blinded by the birds and punished.

I looked up many different versions, and the details were varied, but the basic concept was the same, which was to say that the good people who did good things would be blessed, and the bad people who did bad things would be punished.

So my picture mainly describes the two opposing roles of good and evil. The bird is a character similar to the judge, or the balance of good and evil, so in the first picture it exists between good and evil.

The second one is also a big idea of the opposition between good and evil, and I originally planned to use birds in the middle of the stream, but it felt that it would make the picture too complicated, so I was still thinking about what to put.

ZhengJi Zhang

Have to say tired of drawing people. I choose Two travelers and The three imposters, I had read them over and over when I was a child, Three imposters has different way of saying in 

other translated format but mostly is same. I'm still beginning of this project, I want to draw more of landscape instead of people, so later this week, and in reading week, I will try to develope 

more landscape I can draw in these two tales and less people (if I can). 

Jenny Luo

Of all the stories I’ve combed through, I ended up gravitating towards Urashima Taro. As there are many iterations of the story, I chose the one where it ends with Taro assuming the form of a crane and circling above his family grave, as pictured in the first thumbnail. The story has origins in eighth-century Japan, so I plan on doing some research and incorporate some contextual clues to reference the timeframe of the story. For the final iteration, I’m quite taken with tsurezure (Japanese tapestry/textiles) and chiyogami for that uniform, yet decorative look, so it’s likely I will be employing those design elements for this piece. For the crane, I took inspiration from footages depicting the crowned cranes’ courtship dance — while the pose isn’t the most dynamic by any means, I wanted to find something between idle and restlessness and arrived to this conclusion. Elements of the Dragon Palace is tightly woven into the composition, with serpentine shapes weaving in and out of the spaces as well as dragon claws. It was my intention to juxtapose the dragon with the softer contours of the crane so as to create an intrusion act rather something that melds together. Probably because I find the story unsettling, especially the ending: I was always under the impression that a part of Taro, specifically his soul, was left behind at the Dragon Palace when he returned to the surface with his soul no longer tethered to his physical body. The outcome of the story ultimately does not favour him, as most iterations depict him suffering ghastly fates: death by crumbling to dust, aging rapidly, or turning into a bird when he opens the box that was given to him. So in the final thumbnail, he is depicted dancing alone, with no salvation or hope that he will gain back the life he lost. 

Although I enjoy the free-flowing elements in the initial thumbnail, I am concerned there’s a visual divergence from the story that will leave the viewer in a guessing game as to what it’s trying to depict, unless they are familiar with the tale and it’s many iterations. The second thumbnail is visually closer to the story and it’s iconic cast of characters, but the composition reads a little static and doesn’t provide much contextual clues to the story. 

Alexis Valgardsson

After reading all of the stories I was torn between illustrating work for "The Three Imposters" and, "Childe Rowland."

In the end ultimately deciding to go with, The Three Imposters, with the intention on coming back in the future with my own practice to research Childe Rowland further. I chose The Three Imposters for a number of reasons, the main one being that I this particular tale to be extremely cheeky and fun. The story of three con men essentially making their way out of a kingdom with gold and silver along with many other expensive items. All under the ruse of creating a fabric that could tell if a person was legitimate or not. 

While deep diving in for my research I found that this tale had been told numerous times throughout the centuries in many countries. Including; "The Emperor's New Clothes" - Denmark, "Fine Thread" - Russia, "The King's New Turban" - Turkey, "The King and the Cleaver Girl" - India, and "The Invisible Silk Robe" - Sri Lanka. Each with similar concepts and overarching themes while also being unique to their own country. But what caught my eye was the original tale from Spain, "The Three Imposters" also know as, "The Invisible Cloth." 

Because the story itself is based off the idea of cloth being woven, it seemed only fitting that I created an illustration in a similar style to those of tapestries or illuminated manuscripts for that time. To tie into the historical aspect of the story in such a way made the most sense for my practice and the research I conduct. Which also meant looking up imagery from that time period for textile and dyes. In the end, only leading me down a further rabbit whole of architecture from that time and the tiles that were produced. Snap shots of my Pinterest board are featured above for further visual context. 

Cassandra Carlos

One-shot based on Urashima Taro. I will use the second image because there is no important information in the middle, but I'll try to include elements from the first that I feel are working well. I'd also like to try using the Princess' hair, the water and the mist from the box as a compositional tool (merging them together, smooth transition from left to right).

I chose the two travellers' story for my piece. I first read the story, then collect reference photos, like location, clothing, facial features, flowers, etc., then I go onto thumbnail sketches, and lastly, the two refined sketches.

I wanted to focus on the good and evil in the story; one side will have all the good elements with a bright colour scheme, while the other will have a more dark, dreary theme. 

Yusha

I would like to choose either Hansel And Gretel or Tattercoats. But I could not decide yet.

As annotated, the first sketch depicts the witch's ("weak red") eye. Her iris is displaced with flame (from the oven which burns the witch in the story). In this composition, it burns and melts down the gingerbread house. A path to home extends from the melted house. And the moon glows upon it (as portrayed several times in the story). The third sketch would be another composition with the same elements.

As for the second sketch, it illustrates the gooseherd's hand holding the pipe. Tattercoats stands on it with the princess (as I personally do not favour a story with princes), followed by a line of geese. A castle floats at their destination. As the tale is a variant of the Cinderella theme, I have referenced the palette of Disney's Cinderella for the princess and the castle. Perhaps this could be a story between Tattercoats and Cinderella (if she is born royal or becomes royal elseways).