chosen picture for postcards

I have created four postcards, all from Francis Picabia's collection, I chose to use his Udnie, Dances at the Spring, Edtaonisl and New York. All these artworks complimented each other and have made a little collection of postcards on their own.

I created the leaflet in In Design, annd tried to use a similar colour pallet to my poster so everything would tie in. When I printed it it was fairly straight forward, I printed one side and once I had worked out what way to put it back through again to print on the back, it all worked out. Below is one of my posters front and back.

essay booklet

My essay booklet, I first wrote it out in text edit and made any corrections in there. I next created 4 x templates in In Design, I needed four documents even though I was only using two pieces of paper because there were four sides. I had created a paper version mock up first and page numbered it, so I could see where and which order the pages went in. Now I just need to place my text in the allocated spot and flow it across to all the other pages. With the blank pages I placed some Dada artwork to make it more interesting. I had a little trouble when it came to printing it out as it keept coming put upside down, but I soon got to grips with it.

leaflet

I began by setting out my Leaflet template in In Design, I downloaded a template of the Adobe website, I chose an A4 template. Before I started to design it in In Design I looked at various random leaflets to see how they were folded, set out and the general overall functionality of them. I first made a paper version, so I knew how I was going to fold it and where each page was going to go. This would not only help me when coming to do it in In Design but it also would help me to visualize what I was going to put on each side. Printing would be a challenge and a bit of trial and error as I would have the same piece of paper through the printer twice, so it printed on both sides.

I started with the front of my leaflet, introducing the subject of the leaflet with some illustration. I needed to choose a colour for the background of the leaflet, my first choice was to pick a shade of blue, as this would compliment the Dada artwork, as blue is a commonly used colour. I was not sure which colour to have my writing in, however I left it in black to begin with just to see how I got along with it. As I started to develop the front etc, I brought in a couple of other colours, pink, yellow and a darker blue, I decided to bring these colours in as I have used similar ones in my poster and thought it would all tie in together if I did so.

I decided that I was going to include a time line of the Dada events, and lay it out across two pages, I was not sure to keep it solely to just text of to include some pictures to illustrate. I would also like to elaborate on some key dates from the time line that were important during the Dada movement. Also I am going to include a brief introduction about the history/origins of the Dada movement. Below is both sides of my finished leaflet.

Poster

My Poster must convey the style that I have chosen to interpret, this to include colours, style, type, composition etc. In order to create this I have chosen to use Francis Picabia as my inspiration, in order to achieve this I have chosen one of his famous paintings called Udnie, which he produced in 1913. I really like the selection of colours that have been used they are all cool colours, greys, blues, whites and greens. The crowded space of curved lines and shapes create a sense of depth with in the paintings. Trying to interpret this in my own way, I will find to be a challenge but very fulfilling, I will use a similar colour palet and use a variety of lines and shapes, along with gradients to create the variation in each colour.

When creating this poster I found that Picabia uses lots of layers, he lays shape upon shape on top of each other. I found this to be a challenge as the layered shapes are some how all linked in some way. Also the colours he has used are not all solid colours, I found this to be very hard to recreate on the computer. I create a colour pallet that used similar colours, I created a swatch to enable to me to reuse the same colours.

I started by doing lots of random shapes as a background, then began to layer, I have tried to recreate one similar to his Udnie, but of my own creation. It took me many attempts and reworking in order to create the atmosphere that Picabia manages to create in his art work. In the Udnie, the centre is rather full and got lots going on, however less so in the outskirts. Below is my first attempt: I did not finish it as I was just not feeling it, thought it lacked the crowded centre and some of the shapes were to big, so from the experience that I had from doing this one I started to recreate another version, this time aiming to make it more crowded in the middle.

After I had created the above, I tried again, this time I wanted to be more random with my positioning of my objects, but all so wanted to achieve some flow, like picabia's Udnie, I also looked at some of his other art works that were of a similar configuration to the Udnie, for example his 'Dances at the spring' (1912), 'Procession in Saville' (1912), 'New York' (1913) and mostly ' Edtanist' (1913).

I concentrated on the shapes that he uses and how he has put them together, I found this to be quite a challenge because it was hard to make it work without making it look to orderly. Below is my second version. I have changed the text and its colour on the right poster, as I was not too sure on my first choice of text.

I did some type research, I found out that Dadaists thrived in making their type style unconventional, they did this by frequently mixing different fonts, using unorthodox punctuation, printing both horizontally and vertically, also they used many random text symbols on the text. A French Avant Guard poet described the Dada revolution with graphic design as 'each page must explode, either by deep and weight seriousness - the whirlwind, the vertigo, the new, the eternal - by the cursing joke, by the enthusiasm for the principles, or by the manner of being printed'. This is truse of the typographic style as it broke many traditions and there were many interpretations of this unconventional Dada typography, below are a couple of examples. I began looking for a font that would be of the Dada style, I found on on Defont website called DaDa Antiquerist, I thought that this was of similar style because of the unconventional way that the letters do not line up straight.

Chosen typefaces and colour swatches

These are my chosen colours for my poster and I will be using similar one through out my project. I sampled these colours from Francis Picabia's Udnie piece of artwork.

Cardborad box

I got ideas of how the net of my box would look like on the internet, there were many to choose from, but the one I have drawn below is what I decided to recreate. This template of a box was only the bottom and did not include a lid, so to create a lid I did exactly the same template but made it less deep and slightly wider so it would fit over the bottom. To make sure that this would work I first made the box in wallpaper which was rather flimsy but gave me a good idea of how and if it was going to work. I made sure that the length of my box would accommodate my poster once it was rolled up. I then made it for real, I chose blue card to make it in and did not glue all sides to begin with, I just paper clipped the sides so I was definite that this was going to work.

dada

Dadaism is a cultural movement, it began in Switzerland during World War I. This movement involved mainly visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestos, art theory, theatre and graphic design. However it also delved into anti war politics, by using anti war cultural works, other activities that Dada got involved in were many demonstrations and public gatherings. This movement was a major influence to later styles for example the Avant - garde, surrealism, and pop art.

Dadaism is the main movement that layed a strong foundation for the surrealist movement. Below is a piece of work by a artist called Francis Picabia and this particular piece of his work is called Udnie.

Hear are some other works of art from the Dada movement, the one below has names of artists that were involved in that movement.

My chosen Movement

After researching a few movements that interested me the most, I decided to do Dadaism possibly combined with Surrealism. I found these movements very interesting and thought provoking, the artists that I found to be essential in these movements were Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte work for surrealism as these were the two most prominent artists in this movement. However I found that both of these movements crossed, Dadaism was also very interesting to me, a particular artist caught my eye was Francis Picabia.

Francis Picabia, he had a successful career as an impressionist painter as well as being a part of the surrealist group. By 1912 he was a member of the Dada group, he influenced and encouraged Dadaist tendencies. Through out his career he had a vast array of styles as can be seen in his Spanish Night painting (1922) and The Happiness of Blindness (1947).

In this project I would like to mainly focus on Francis Picabia, however I would also like to incorporate some of the surrealist style into my project. I will combine both of these movements as the converge into each other, but my main influence will be Francis Picabia.

Egyptian Revival

Egyptian Revival is another movement that was particularly interested in researching. This movement consists of borrowing the most spectacular elements, decorative elements are then given new life through new uses. The idea of this movement was not to copy what had already been previously done by the Egyptians but was to re create, or to give them an appearance of renewed vitality, a function other than the purpose for which they were originally intended. The Egyptian revival was an popular architectural style in Europe and the United States during the 19th century. It is generally dated by napoleon's conquest of Egypt and, in Britain, to Admiral Nelson's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Below are a few examples of Egyptian Revival.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a movement that is dedicated to imagination as revealed in dreams, free from conscious control of reason and convention.The work of a surrealist usually contained realist imagery arranged in a nonsensical style in order to create a almost dream like image.

This movement was founded in 1924 by Andre Breton with his Manifesto of surrealism, the movements principal aim was 'to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality'. The major artist of this movement were Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Rene Margritte and Joan Miro. The impact of this movement can still been seen today, it is a popular choice by many advertisers.

Surrealism can be divided into two parts, Automatism and Vertisic Surrealiam. The first automatism focused on expressing subconscious ideas, they divided their imagery purely for spontaneous thought. The second Veristic surrealism, this artists aimed to to represent the connection between abstract and real material, in other words they transformed objects from the real world into their paintings.

One world renown surrealist artist was Salvador Dali, he was a Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres. He was known for his rather bizarre surrealist work, one of his best known pieces of work is " The persistence of memory "

This piece from his collection consists of landscape forms that slowly change from one object to another. There are lots of spaces and the contours of the shapes are very interesting, however the image as a whole remains unified.

Another surrealist artist that caught my attention was Rene Magritte, he was a Belgian surrealist, over the years he has produced many thought provoking images. I found that with many of his images, he liked to use blue sky and clouds, below are a couple of examples.