Tuesday, 1 October 2013

Exercise 2.12: Visual Metaphors

The aim of this exercise was to collect examples of images that were metaphorical and then do a few rough sketches to describe either broken relationships, reaching retirement, dreams of romance, high achievement, censorship of the press or economic catastrophe. I chose to illustrate broken relationships.

I have scanned in the pages of my paper learning log so will keep comments brief and hopefully the images will speak for themselves.


My rough sketches for Broken relationships: 





Reflection: Visual Metaphors

Overall:
I enjoyed this exercise and found that I was able to be a little more carefree without having the pressure of worrying about visual accuracy.

What did I do?
v I brainstormed ideas around broken relationships and particularly tried to think about relationships or partnerships that we generally associate together like strawberries and cream, bacon and egg, chair and table, cheese and wine, horse and carriage, salt and pepper or knife and fork. My thoughts were that if I could somehow illustrate that their relationship was broken or ended this could symbolize any other broken relationship. I was however only really successful in coming up with an image for knife and fork.
v I also tried to play around with text using it as the image itself.
v I also tried to depict a suitcase being packed with not only men’s clothes but also half of the items that one would usually share in a happy relationship…things like half a teapot, half a toaster and half of a DVD player…. I’m glad I wasn’t concerning myself with visual accuracy in this particular scenario!
v I noted the power of speech bubbles from some of the resources that I collected so I tried to echo their use in a few examples of broken relationships. I didn’t quite get there with them but I enjoyed using them.

How do I think/feel about this? How well did it go?
v I think that I got the gist of exercise and when I showed the images to a few family members they were able to identify with what I was trying to get at. The images that seemed to communicate the easiest to those I asked were those of the knife and fork and the disintegrating word relationship. All the others images needed a few explanations and then they assured me they understood them completely! ; ) Perhaps they were trying to appease me……
What did I learn?
v I learnt a lot from the images that I found in a variety of editorials and postcards. They reminded me of the power of symbols instead of stating the obvious in order to challenge the audience to read the visual image.

What and how would I do it differently?
v I would have liked to continue the exercise and perhaps take photographs of things like broken glass forming the word relationship or tear up photographs or a single photograph with scenes that depict happy relationships.
v I think I have only touched on the visual brainstorming step in this ‘broken relationships’ chain and if time allows would like to brainstorm further and perhaps create some finished images.




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