Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Queen Mary, Bloody Mary

Below is my interpretation of the character Queen Mary out of my chosen nursery rhyme, the character that will appear within my final scene.



I wanted 'Mary' to appear as though a ghost as no one really cared about her and her feelings. Queen mary was really disliked by much of the population and so I wanted her to blend into the background, almost as though I'm letting her disappear as she was very depressed and sad because of the many miscarriages and hatred she had. I have chosen to photograph 'Mary' looking quite sad and sorrowful as I am trying to portray her in a way that many people didn't, I almost want people viewing this photograph to feel sorry for her and have sympathy.


As you can see, I have also added glasses to mary's character as although not many people know, she actually had bad eye sight in which she didn't ever tell anyone as she thought that people would take pity on her and not respect or see her as a worthy leader.

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Sketching away...


Discovering the facts

I have decided to look at the nursery rhyme, 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary...'. I chose this rhyme as it is and has always been one of my most favourite nursery rhymes as I used to imagine myself as Mary, watering my 'silver bells and cockle shell' in a garden of my own. Before I started creating my character I wanted to look more into the background and history of the rhyme and what the true meaning of the rhyme is. To start this I decided to define each word that I thought had some significance to the perception of the rhyme:


Upon closer inspection through the history of this rhyme I found quite a substantial amount of historical/factual information about it.


Within the rhyme, 'Mary, Mary...' actually referred to Queen Mary, bloody Mary and 'Quite contrary...' is thought to be reference to her unsuccessful attempt to reverse England from the enforced protestant religion of her father, Henry VIII and her late brother, Edward VI back to that of the catholic religion of which she believed in.


Following this you then get the question, 'How does your garden grow?' in which is a mocking reference to her womb and how it wouldn't 'grow' a baby and so she gave birth to no heirs.


The 'silver bells...' referred to the cathedral bells - the telling and preaching of the catholic faith '...and cockle shells...' referring to the term 'cockling', a term used within them days when a husband cheated on his wife, insinuating that her husband wasn't faithful to her.


Finally we come to the last phrase of the rhyme which to me is quite a sorrowful line and was my favourite line of the rhyme as a child; '...pretty maids all in a row' which is a spiteful ending referring to her many miscarriages, all of which were baby girls, linking to the term 'pretty maids' of which Queen Mary 'secretly had them buried...in a row.


Now I know that Queen Mary was supposedly a horrible women and tortured many for not believing in her religion or for going against her decisions but to me she seemed a very sad and lonely women, her husband was cheating on her and she couldn't have a baby. When I first found this out I think I could have cried. I felt Terrible to think that I was singing this as a child and now for me to know what it means I don't think that I would be able to pass it down to my child.


I think that this is a good rhyme for me to focus my thought and character on as it links to me and I think that it would link well to both the Tim Burton style and Annie Leibovitz photography style.

Inspiring me...

For this task I wanted collect a bit of research on other artist/photographers of which would relate or inspire my fairytale in any way.

Annie Leibovitz is an american photographer whose main projects either include celebrities or a story of which are always fashion based. Recently she done a project on 'fairytales' in which she dressed celebrities up to look like the charaters within the stories being shown, here are a few example:
I like the way Annie Leibovitz has created these in her own style and yet the original themes and renowned poses of each charater are there. I am very inspired by Annie Leibovitz as she can make something which looks animated into something else which makes the photograph look very plausable and realistic. With the boldness of every colour and the lighting of which she has used, the photos are really eye-catching. I would like to apply these techniques to my photoshop skills in order to make the photographs I create appear life-like and as striking as these.
Tim Burton inspires me a lot, with his surreal landscapes and characters in which he gives an era. Tim Burton works are very prominant, with the wakiness and brilliance of a film, and in everyone theres that underlying theme of darness and horror of which is absolute beauty.
Within these photos below you can see Tim Burton's personality shining through each and every object present making each character and scene as wacky and insane as himself of which becomes lovable and serene.



Preparation for photoshop task

Before I created my characters for my chosen story, I decided to experiment with photoshop and get a custom to the different tools better so that I would be able to have three finished photographs in which would look realistic and that I am happy with.

For my first experiment I decided to turn a young woman into an old lady using photoshop, here are my results:
This image was taken from the internet as I did not neccessarily need a primary photograph as I was only experimenting. Fromthis I then found some photos of old women in which I then began collaging the didfferent faces onto the face of the woman in the original photo. However, this made the photograph look unrealistic and so I changed the opacity of the top layer to about 56 to make the old women's faces appear on the young women, creating the effect of wrinkly skin.
For my second experiment, I decided to have a go at changing the hair colour of someone. Here I have taken a picture of keira knightly from the internet and as you can see she originally has brown hair. Here I will take you through how I changed her hair from brown to blonde hair.

First I opened up my picture within Photoshop

I then clicked>Image>Adjustments>Match colour. By matching the colour of Sarah Jessica Parker's blonde hair to that of Keira Knightly's brown hair, I can begin to see where the highlights and low lights of blonde hair would be and also get the pigment of the blonde hair into the brown hair.

From matching the colour, I ended up with the image above. As you can see Keira Knightley's hair doesn't look realistic at the moment and so wouldn't be very convinsing to use within my character.

I then clicked>Image>Adjustments>Brightness/contrast. This would help me to get so highlights and shadows onto the brown hair where necessary.

Here you can see that the 'blonde hair' is now becoming more realistic to fit in with Keira knightley's skin tones, but I still need to do some work. I then used the 'rubber' tool on opacity 27% in which would make the blonde hair fit in with the face more and look much more realistic.

This is my end result. The 'blonde hair' which was formerly brown looks realistic and fits Keira Knightley's skin tone and face perfectly. There is no dark root and the different tones of the hair make it look very realistic and natural. No one would ever have known that she had brown hair.