dog

Strategy: This project was a response to the idea of colour in context. It grew from a combination of two things. First was the quote from David Batchelor, "All experience of colour is an event" (2018), and second, my desire to put colour into the incorrect context. Colour in its own world, eg. dark green in a garden or blue at the beach, can be beautiful and striking and can captivate and affect the viewer. But when colour is unnatural, otherworldly and out of place it can set you on edge, especially when the colour provides no explanation for its presence.

Whether it is a girl with bright blue hair, Yinka Shonibare's sculptures, or the fluorescent yellow of your urine after you've taken vitamin B, colour when in the wrong context can be scary. This is a feeling that I wanted to capture in my colour in context project. In my project I have used my dog as my subject. I transformed him into a strange, whimsical and wonderful creature called Dog Boy. His natural colour is distorted, and by using fur and a simplified cut, it is thus only his colour which is changed. His shape and texture remain the same, and yet he becomes an entirely unnatural beast. I have used flash photography at night in my garden to intensify the feelings of other-worldliness and distortion.

In utilising this type of photography, as well as this temporal and physical context I have been able to intensify contrast between the bright red fur and the natural surroundings, thus, emphasising the idea that this colour is in the 'wrong' context.

Strategy: I have then used this photography to produce a picture book. The book is a printed hardcover with 150 gsm silk paper. Its dimensions are 260 x 330mm. My choices regarding text and layout all stem from the bold, graphic shapes that I have created through the manipulation of colour in my photos. I used swatches from the photos to colour my text, and relied on simple, bold, sans serif type for most of the text.

My cover design has been kept simple and focussed on colour and a highly specific combination of typefaces. It uses the red from my photos and allows the gothic, black letter font I have chosen to shine. In this way, I aimed to create a cover artwork that was simultaneously decorative and striking, while still maintaining a level of readability within a clean, neat design.

Throughout this book, the experience of colour is an event. If not for the introduction of bright red to this natural landscape, the events of the story (a dog running around a garden) would be completely mundane and unremarkable. In each image it is the vivid colour of the dog's costume that creates the story and the moment for the reader. Further, picture books in and of themselves create events, as the reading of these books almost exclusively occurs out loud, to an audience.