Illustration: A Is For A4

Challenge: Display a word beginning with 'A'
Materials: One piece of A4 white printer paper

Chosen Word: Apparition 

General feeling for this project: Intense excitement

The thought of doing a whole self guided day long project restricted to one piece of paper seemed a great challenge and one that I wanted to exploit by doing something different. Paper doesn't have to be flat, but it also doesn't have to remain within it's own space. 

After looking at Peter Callesen's work I wanted to play with all of the paper.

Dead Angels, 2007, Peter Callesen

I love how dark  and witty his works can be. Paper to me seemed like a craft material before, but Callesen is really daring with the medium.

After doing some research on 'Apparition' I found that a creepy atmosphere was usually created when something was in a photo or image that shouldn't be there or when something was missing that should be there and from looking at Callesen's work I wanted to add an extra layer to my cut out.

So I decided to use the shadow that the cut out would cast, making a face (the apparition) appear in this shadow would create the same sense of creepy discovery.

The first test using thin lines didn't go too well as the face was too subtle. The idea though was to conceal the face in a typical scene, so that the apparition only appears in the shadows, like a ghost.

The original drawing for the cut out

I moved onto observational drawing to get a mix of figures to conceal the face better. 

I really liked the library setting, of a group of figures in a standard setting - it would make hiding the face easier as the scene would look more natural. 

I wasn't satisfied with the thin cut lines as they weren't obvious enough to show the face. It needed to be more of an immediate realisation so I looked at pop-ups, as the space that they leave in the paper is larger.

Final Cut out - Apparition

The shadow face

I liked how changing the angle created a different face, like it was alive.

I'm really happy with how this cut out turned out as the shadow face is really strong, while it's still hidden in the pop up scene, giving a sense of the word 'apparition'. I love the detail that you can get on the paper figures as well, as I never knew that just by scoring the paper you can get definition, so that the front and shadow of the paper are just as interesting. I'm a bit annoyed that on the front figure I scored too deeply and the paper almost came off, so the figure doesn't stand up as prominently anymore, but overall I found it a great project. It made me think differently about what white paper can do or mean and how restrictions can make you think about the possibilities of a material more.