10. How the Eye Reads an Image

The next Welsh folktale that I'll be looking at are the four branches of the Mabinogion. Each branch focuses on a mixture of welsh culture, myths, rulers, their families, lovers, enemies and forms of witchcraft. These stories were also passed by word of mouth and adapted by many unknown people in the 12th and 13th century. As these stories have many more abstract elements to the narrative, it became more nesissary to understand how the eye reads an image.  

Neault  (2013) states that the eye is rarely still, and the focus constantly jumps  to new details to find information, and this process is known as "saccades".  An experiment created by Yarbus discovered that the eye is naturally drawn to areas of high contrast, detail and facial expressions, but unexpectedly discovered that the eye also searches for areas that may explain narrative, as shown in the results below. How you read an image can also be dependent on your cultural upbringing, as in western countries our brains have been trained to read from left to right, and these skills are transferred into our understanding of narrative in photographs and art. 

By understanding these elements, we are able to learn how to guide the audience's attention through and image, a website, a shop window and ect in other ways than purely composition. One example is following the gaze of a human figure, as it is human nature to focus on where another person is looking, such as in the example from Yarbus experiment above.  Visual ques often used in narrative illustration such as children's picture books are arrows,  pointing in the direction the viewer should follow. This type of visual que may be helpful in narrative as children and some adults may be less experienced in following complex narrative without any guidance, but this type of visual que may also be used to manipulate and confuse an image. By including too many arrows pointing all around or no arrows at all, can intentionally leave the viewer unsure where to begin. 

 Bradley, S (2014) How To Direct A Viewers Eye Through Your Design. [Online] Available from: http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/direct-the-eye/ [Accessed 9 April 2018] 

Neault, M (2013) Tracking the Gaze. [Online] Available from: http://magazine.art21.org/2013/01/07/tracking-the-gaze/#.WoxxjKOcaqQ [Accessed 9 April 2018] 

9. Gelert Final

To create this image, I used pencil so that I would be able to fully focus on detail. I feel the image started well on the left half, but it starts to lose some energy and depth on the right. The box within the image has been left in open space to make it more abstract, but I had considered to illustrate it on a surface in a dark room to give more context. 

In order to make the image more captivating and give depth, I plan to re create the image by using gouache for blocks of colour, and colour pencils for lighting and detail. Some illustrators who's practice inspire me is Daniel Jamie Williams, and Oliver Jeffers. 

Daniel Jamie Williams 

His work is a mix of using pencils and mixing with digital elements to colour, and the style of the illustrations give the feeling of contemporary folklore images, by making the figure more abstract than realistic and with the cartoonish face on the skull. The compositions may first appear to be fairly quiet within the scenes and colour palettes, but with closer inspection, the more apparent the narrative and symbols become, such as in the above image. It may first appear that the figure is sitting in a garden of flowers and rocks, but noticing the face of the skull transforms the scene to have an ominous twist. 

Oliver Jeffers 

Jeffers' work has a much different approach as the images are more experimental, and brightly coloured for children's picture books. Although my illustrations are not aimed for children, the colours used in his scenes inspired me to recreate a full coloured image for Gelert to make the image more captivating. 

Gelert;

Overall I am happy with the outcome as it is much brighter and allowed for better experimentation with lighting, and also gives a softer appearance. Using gouache to create a full colour scene presents its own challenges as it become risky with making the scene blur together where a higher level of detail is needed. 

JeffJeffers, O (2017) Here We Are. Great Britain, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 

Williams, D.J (2016) Growth For Daylight Curfew. [Online] Available from: http://danieljamiewilliams.com/#/growth-for-daylight-curfew/ [Accessed 9 April 2018]