Poem Artwork

James showed us on Trello a list of poems to look at. We had to read through each one, then choose one we liked and then create a media piece based off the poem. The media could be a drawing, sound scape, animation- any kind of media.

Since art is a strong point for me, I decided to do a drawing in response to the poem of my choice. So I chose to do 'Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe.

There were points of the poem that really stood out to me and these were:

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And:

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sittingOn the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floorShall be lifted—nevermore!"

Now that I saw my points, I started to picture a demon like creature: here is my process:

I started by sketching out the basic idea- a thumbnail if you will, of the demon and had the idea of having multiple eyes and demon like wings. Then I had to start refining the idea by adding on details that I may want to have to embrace the idea of having feathers (to allude to the raven) and have wings on the top of the head. I also decided to adjust the right hand- instead of having the pose making the demon look more like a rabbit or dinosaur, I had the right arm swooping down. This was because I wanted to imply the nature of the descending shadows by having an arm that's slightly elongated and unnatural to show the ethereal nature of the creature.

Once I had sketched out the final details, it was time to add the line-work and refine it all. I made sure you could see the halo around his head and the feather details (which took an age). I was happy with how it turned out- as well as having it slightly to the left to make it more appealing through the rule of thirds.

Now it was time to go onto the colouring:

Here you can see the process in which I coloured in my Piece. I started with all the flat base colours of my drawing (using CLIPStudio Paint for it all), and then used a glow brush I had installed for the outline of the halo. I then used a combination of the blur tool and air spray tool to try and form the shading- mostly sticking to the blur tool to make the edges more harsh and rough (to continue to convey the feelings I felt during the reading of the poem).

I then added curtains and darker shades around the edges because of the section where it mentioned that the writer 'threw back curtains'.

I really wanted to continue to imply the idea of a shadow beast, so I stuck to purples, blues and blacks as those are the general colour pallets to stick to when depicting shadow. I also added the outline to show more of the details, the dusting of red around the halo to give off a pop of colour that contrasted as well as the yellow of they eyes to really imply the essence of the creature.

A lot of the details were contained within the face and the feathers. Though my shading isn't always the best and I tend to struggle to find the light source, I really wanted to show the full details of the face and here it is:

With this face I really wanted to capture the essence of a sly and cunning demon. He knows he is sinful and not at all kind to the writer of the poem, but it really shone through on the mouth with the enticing lips and the waring of the sharp teeth that shine through.

This lead to some interesting insights from my peers. There was another poem called 'Lady Lazarus' and because it depicts a woman turning into a horrific creature, they all (bar a few) thought it was from that specific poem. I can see where they thought I was coming from, but overall it wasn't what I had in mind.

I didn't want to go so literal with my work. I really wanted to take lines that I found inspiring and turn them into a creature or beast that captured the essence of it. "If bird of devil" was the line that inspired me the most as well as the constant mentions of a prophet. I am very happy with the work I did and I am glad that my peers liked it too!

In the future I have to be careful though. Some people thought that in the lower lighting version of the drawing, as some things were obscured, people thought the demon's tail was somewhat phallic in nature.

I wated to mention this because it is important to know what the public thing about your work. Because you need to try and evoke emotion from them, so if it doesn't sit right with people, you will fail to make a design that is appealing!

This was shown in class on 15th October 2020.