Narratives Exercise
Completing Ancient Man
To make the cover of Ancient Man, I made a collage of a sculpture and a painting in the foreground, and this time plus a picture of mine for the sky.
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This book is meant for children. For the pages where the text would be, I used an old paper texture as the background to give it an aged and archival look.
Illustrated Storybook : Making the images
To cut out the sculptures from their backgrounds, I used the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop. At first it was a little tricky, then I watched a tutorial on using the tool which really helped understand the functions of the width, contrast and frequency settings of the tool. Manipulating these 3 settings properly really allowed me to make an accurate selection around the sculpture.
After cutting out the sculptures, I pasted them on top of paintings I found online which I thought really illustrated the settings described in the book.
“Often, during a thunderstorm a tree had been hit by lightning. Sometimes the entire forest had been set on fire. Man had seen these forest-fires. When he had come too near he had been driven away by the heat. He now remembered that fire gave warmth.
Thus far, fire had been an enemy.”
To illustrate this part of the story, I used the  Greek sculpture ‘Boxer at rest’, a painting of a forest fire, and an image of a campfire. I chose the Boxer at rest because of his sitting position and the position of his hands which I thought looked as though he was warming them up over a fire. After choosing the painting I was to use, I chose an image of the Boxer in which he was facing to the left and back.
There were many paintings of forest fires, but I chose this one because the fire was on the left of the image which gave me room on the right to place the sculpture. Also, there was a foreground of rocks and trees painted which would make it easier for me to place the sculpture into the painting.
After cutting out and pasting the boxer onto the painting, I used the curves adjustment layer along with a layer mask to cool the color temperature of the sculpture, as well as darkening it and reducing some highlights to make him look like he was sitting under the moonlight.
I then added the campfire to the picture, positioning it in front of the boxer. For this it was quite tricky to use the magnetic lasso tool, so I used the regular lasso tool to make a rough selection around the fire, pasted it onto the painting, then simply added a layer mask and painted black with a soft brush around the flames. Again with the curves adjustment layer, I added some reds to the lower half of the boxer and the surrounding rocks to reflect the flames of the fire.
The rest of the images were made with the same processes.
Illustrated Storybook : Ancient Man
The story I chose is Ancient Man by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. This book talks about the prehistoric man and the settings in which he lived. To represent the prehistoric man, inspired by artist Jens Ullrich, I decided to use ancient Greek and roman sculptures. I thought these sculptures were perfect for the job because they were often naked, celebrating the poise and physical beauty of a human being.
There were a few things I had to consider when choosing the sculptures, or the images of sculptures. First, the body posture ; sitting, standing, walking etc. Next aspect was where the sculpture was facing in the image. Mostly I used the ones either facing into the image or toward the viewer. After that, I had to consider the angle from which the photo of the sculpture was taken from. Photos taken from below with their camera pointing upwards toward the sculpture were practically unusable, as most paintings weren’t painted facing upwards. Last but definitely not least, the lighting on the sculptures had to considered. I would consider this aspect most vital toward making the sculpture’s presence in the painting look realistic, but this was unfortunately the aspect I had the least control over. Most of the sculptures were in museums, which almost always tended to light the sculptures from above. This made combining the images and paintings quite difficult.
Artist research : Jens Ullrich
Jens Ullrich is a Berlin-based artist. I came across his collages of sculptures and sports photography and thought they were simple, smart and funny. Then I took a closer look and realized how impressive they really were. It wasn’t simply replacing a torso or the upperhalf of an athlete with a sculpture. It replaced also the tension and drama of these frozen-moments with a completely different mood. The emotions expressed by the sculptures somehow fit nicely in these pictures. Their calm expressions covering what is probably a clenched face. It converted thrill and excitement into grace and in some, tranquility.
It made me think of how beautiful sports could look if athletes were actually able to hold such expressions during these intense moments.
zenkhyeooi 