Output details

Illustration, Drawing and Narrative

The corpus of work comprises commissioned illustrations/speculative drawings/graphic-stories. This practice-based activity provides the research rigour which supports an emerging discourse, embracing reflective methodologies evidenced in outputs such as exhibitions/colloquia/workshops – ‘Fashion, Drawing and Narrative’ and the Varoom interview ‘From Film to Fashion’.

The form of the research is manifest in narrative-based drawings, which are applied to graphic-novels such as illustrations for literary/editorial/fashion related commissions for ‘The Guardian’, ‘The New York Times’ and anothermag.com. The research question explores visual-narratives and the construction of an intense, yet ambiguous sense of drama, which invites the reader/viewer to interpret and inhabit the narrative - as articulated in the ‘Fashion, Drawing and Narrative’ discourse.

The elements are drawn from filmic language, with other visual references and textured, tonal and expressive modes of drawing, to create a distinctive visual-language. The process of constructing a convincing mimetic-scene is reminiscent of a contemporised nineteenth-century approach to illustration but the appropriation of filmic-devices of the classic-Hollywood era, e.g. the close-up, framing and the suggestion of cinematic-lighting, combined with a preoccupation with surface/expressive mark making, is novel within contemporary illustration practice.

A number of reference-points are used to construct the drawings - some elements are drawn from imagination/memory but typically refer to a range of found/staged photographic-material to construct a convincing ‘mise-en-scène’. Colour is used sparingly in restricted areas of otherwise muted drawings implying significance and evoking a sense of detachment and obfuscation.

The drawings/illustrations form the research discourse through publications such as ‘On Illustration’, ‘Global Contexts’, ‘Text and Image’, ‘The Independent’, ‘A Magazine’ and ‘Varoom’ which have provided impact through international dissemination in international publications and web platforms e.g. anothermag.com. The outputs are grouped because each ‘breath out and in’ forms the emerging discourse through the dissemination/gathering of information.