Updated Manifesto

My main goal is to educate and inform people of topics / stories that speak to me and find interesting so that my audience are then encouraged to look for similar things that interest them and broaden their knowledge on topics that we as individuals find intriguing.

There are many ways to communicate a message though image, whether its film, photographs or hand drawn images, everyone reacts differently to an image and for some people, the image may have such an impression on them that they then decide to find out more about it , this is what i want to achieve through my work, I want to make an impression on them, giving  them information which they then digest and encourage them to look into it a little more, the reader is unaware that they are learning and if they find the topic intriguing then they will research into it as its human nature to be curious about the world we live in.

I would hope to cover a wide range of audience with my work and vary my work so that it is focused on a different audience depending on the topic, for example: i’m interested in Victorian crime and policing but some of the material would be inappropriate for small children and would probably be aimed for a slightly older audience.

The target audience is open to anyone who is interested in the topic that I decide to base my work on.

I find that by broadening peoples knowledge on a subject that they find intimidating or know little about, they will begin to understand that subject a little better and be able to pass on said knowledge to other people with a similar predicament, by doing this , people become more open minded about the world around us and begin to accept things that before they considered to be “strange or boring",

 therefore I have decided to base my project around the Victorian era and possibly the Story Papers and the sensational stories that were included within its pages, I feel that the tales featured in this period are overlooked nowadays and they shouldn’t be , some of the most interesting stories and characters are featured in within he pages, some are so incredible that they are still studied today but others have been left neglected when they should be explored, we should be able to learn from our past, and Story papers and sensational fiction from this era , with their surreal and macabre atmosphere are an interesting way of doing so. I want to be able to engage and enlighten people on these tales and give an insight into why they should be preserved for others to research and learn from.

The dark and often surreal images concocted from these papers and books effectively invoke shock, humor or fear into the reader and this is the point I want to bring across in my work, I want to experiment with different ways to communicate this and try to bring out this emotion on my audience so that they are aware of how brilliant the tales are to still be able to accomplish this after nearly a century of them being documented.

Alot of the work I produce at the moment is Hand drawn , which I feel would work well for creating images based on this era, 

I also want to explore printing as many of the story papers where mass produced through printing machines ect and might add to the “olde world” effect that I want my work to have.

I enjoy working with pencil, pen and ink as well as water colour but it wouldn’t hurt for me to also try to experiment with digital painting and manipulating my images though the help of a computer. 


By the end of this project I would hope to have produced either a series of images or a short comic / illustrated paper  that would pay homage to the Victorian Era and its illustrated newspapers unique and surreal style of storytelling and layout .

Here is a brief breakdown of what I now need to do for my project in order for it to work and for me to refine my skills:

* To research and explore Speculative fiction and real live events form the Victorian period and stories that feature in illustrated Newspapers as well as film , television and narrative adaptions.

* To look at different ways to engage and inform and audience 

* To find different ways to communicate emotions such as shock. horror, humor ect

* to experiment with a range of styles and media in order to convey these emotions

* Extensive research on the period,not only looking at the topic i choose to illustrate  but also various other aspects of Victorian Britain’s Culture, Law and order, Technology, Government ect 

* focusing on what i need to improve my drawing skills on, such as: 

-Costume/ Fashion from the period 

-Portraiture 

-Hair

-Machinery

-Architecture of the period

-Lighting

-Human Figure