Artists, Themes and Greek Mythology

For this assignment, we were given a list of artists to take inspiration from. Before planning I did a bit of research, and looked at artwork from each artist on the list. I noted down the ones that appealed to me or seemed to match my own personal style, I also considered which artist’s style could be translated into a black and white composition since that was the requirement of this assignment. The artists I minimized down to were Aubrey Beardsley and Paul Morrison as their work were in black and white. I wanted to incorporate both of their styles since Beardsley’s work was too complicated while Morrison’s style was very solid. I wanted to achieve a style that was intricate yet simple.

Next I decided on a theme. I had a lot of ideas, but settled on visually portraying various Greek Myths. I wanted to choose 4 myths for each principle however a lot of the myths were difficult to translate into a visual representation except for 2: Daphne’s metamorphosis and Leda and the swan.

Brief background of each myth:

Daphne’s metamorphosis:

An arrow from Eros struck Apollo when he discriminated Eros’ skills with the bow and arrow. The arrow caused Apollo to fall deep in love with the nymph, Daphne. While an opposing arrow struck Daphne to caused her to feel a deep hatred towards Apollo. Apollo chased Daphne while she fled. In an act of desperation, Daphne called her father Peneus for help, as the river god he transformed her into a Laurel tree. Her skin turned to bark, her hair into leaves and her arms into branches. She stopped running as her legs became rooted into the ground. Apollo continued to love and idolize the Laurel tree that was once Daphne.

Leda and the Swan:

Leda and the swan is a motif in Greek mythology where Zeus came down to earth in the form of a swan to seduce and rape Leda. Leda bore 2 children from Zeus, Helen and Polydeuces and 2 more from her husband Tyndareus, the king of Sparta.

1.     1. Balance: Daphne’s Metamorphosis

Of course when it came to making compositions with this theme of a woman turning into a tree, I would have trees come out of a female human figure. But I also wanted to play with negative space. I drew a silhouette of the female body, but I cut it off at the top and bottom so the image did not fit perfectly in the frame, which is why I liked it. I had branches grow out of where her hand would be, and instead of repeating it with the other hand, I drew some growing branches over her shoulders on the top right to balance out the branches on the bottom left. I really liked the addition of the vines in the center of the body because it allowed me to minimize my cutting as well as add more intricacy and detail into this composition.

2.     

Movement: Daphne’s Metamorphosis

For this composition, it was a literal transformation of the female figure into a tree where I isolated the arms lifting high up above the head and turning into branches. I positioned the body so it is viewed from the back and not perfectly diagonal to make the composition more dynamic. However I failed to portray the falling leaves. Something I could have done was give it depth and distance by making certain leaves smaller to portray the distance and certain leaves bigger to emphasize how close it was to the viewer.

3. Repetition: Leda and the Swan

This may not be the best representation of repetition but I wanted to make a very simple composition that anyone would recognize with one look and adding some falling feathers to balance the big solid composition in the back. Perhaps I can incorporate the same improvement of the previous composition to the feathers.

 

4.     Emphasis and Economy: Leda and the Swan

This composition I feel shows more of Beardsley’s style however I may have made the composition too spread out to really portray emphasis and economy. I enjoyed coming up with this composition but the end product was not as successful as I thought it could be. I wanted the emphasis to focus on the point where the female face meets the swan’s head but the other lines in the composition constantly distracts the eye. Maybe if this composition was kept to a minimal, the principle of emphasis and economy can be picked up easily by viewers.