FLOWER WOMEN
HONOURS PROJECT
My project was to build a group of female characters as personifications of flowers and present each character in an illustration. I used flower language, floral symbolism in stories, myth and folklore as well as the physical attributes of the flowers such as hardiness and culinary usage to create each illustration.
FINAL RESULT
DEVELOPMENT
Initial concepts
My first round of conceptulisation focused on playing with art style and finding how I want to personify flowers.
At this point, I considered the project to be primarily concept art based with the end goal of a world bible. However as I continued through development, I drifted from this idea to an illustration focus using these concepts as a jumping off point.
Illustration dev.
Here, I am focusing on learning how to portray character and my literary references through the whole illustration rather than just the character design.
Additionally, as my main reference point was Victorian flower language, I was using a lot of Victorian fashion here. I eventually dropped this because I found it limiting.
Colour tests
Using some of the characters from the above concepts, I made a handful of colour tests to see how the colour of the image changes my perception of the figure.
Photo credits:
https://nomadphotoreference.net/store/0Kj3/bundle-free-png-cutouts
https://nomadphotoreference.net/store/1Rw/png-photo-pack-people
https://www.photobash.org/city-skyscrapers
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/2vyb/high-resolution-texture-photo-pack
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/9K2R/art-nouveau-building-pack
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/j9dr/ireland-reference-pack
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/nXj3/medieval-village
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/1Rw/png-photo-pack-people
Photobashing
Since I hadn't done phototbashing before, I wanted to try it to explore an idea I had about using art nouveau for the architecture in each illustration.
Like with using Victorian fashion, this idea didn't make it into the final illustrations, however the art nouveau influences stayed through the art style which took greatly from the work of Alphonse Mucha.