Thursday, May 29, 2008

Scarlett v2

So this is my second version of Scarlett as Waits. I actually heard her rendition of "Falling Down" on the radio today which was pretty exciting. I know I've been told that I'm tend towards shape-based illustration, but I still don't know what that means...so for now line reigns supreme! Comments?...Oh and I apologize for the nasty jpg that this is...my scanner is less than ideal... :/

3 comments:

Alan Sheu (squeaks) said...

Hey Rachel,
It looks great. I think that you've really gotten Scarlett's likeness down with the face and upper body. I'm having trouble with the lower part of the body and the perspective of the chair (maybe because the scan cut off the edges).

Conceptually, I don't quite get the "sweet-gone-sour/sickly" theme from the cigarette. I actually quite like the original idea of butterflies, except maybe make them dying or wilting as they come out of her mouth (she could be surrounded by the corpses of hundreds of butterflies!). I don't know Waits or Scarlett, but is her singing really plasticky, childlike, dead-sounding? Maybe have Scarlett as a singing Barbie, singing in a Barbie world.

I hope I've kind of understood what you were going for...

What's up in Boston?

Alan

Boston, MA said...

I sorta abandoned the whole sappily sweet thing because 1)I had second thoughts about the album itself & 2)I was responding to Mike's comment that Rolling Stone often does a album review that illustrates something about the artist that isn't usually a negative review. I thought I'd put Scarlett in the same pose that Waits is in for his Orphans album, put her in a shabby suit, but still look like herself....so she's playing the role of Waits while still being herself. How lovely.

MikeC said...

I'm not quite sold on her face: I don't think you need to add much, it seems that proportionally things might be a shade off, but overall I like what you've done. The line quality (from what I can tell from the scan) looks really promising: what are you thinking for color? digital? And what palette? I, like Alan, also want to know where that chair is sitting.

I like the idea of placing her in a Waitsian pose, though I think sticking to a specific album for the feel is unnecessarily limiting, and I think the environment is going to play a huge role as a result. Is she in a dive bar somewhere, like the cover of Closing Time, in a seedy strip-club dressing room like Small Change, or surrounded by Waits-like junk like on the Orphans cover? Also, the environment will help you solve compositional issues that may arise from depicting her whole body in the frame.