How to practice visual metaphors
+ I finally have a functioning studio for the first time ever in my life.
Here are some ideas that come to me this Friday morning (probably not all of these will be good…):
Effort: showing strength, something small with something large, like a bug doing something incredible, something breaking, sweating while playing an instrument…
Multitasking: the one that instantly comes to mind is an octopus doing different tasks, but are there other, less used metaphors for this? I’m sure there are… Of course it has to be one character doing more than one things, but let’s make it extravagant, like for example a pilot flying an airplane and decorating a cake, or someone surfing while doing their tax return, or a hippo jumping on a trampoline while putting on nail polish…
Procrastination: someone trying to escape from something in a dark cupboard - we only see two eyes, someone making a house of cards while surrounded by a huge pile of laundry, someone playing the violin in a burning building…
I’m sure you’ll come up with (even) better ideas. 😅 Anyway, you get the point.
Now let’s see how it works visually.
Another way to practice this is to consider your feelings. Think about how sometimes we describe how we feel by saying: I feel like a million bucks, I feel like a truck ran over me, I feel under the weather, she is always so over the top, etc. All these expressions are goldmines when it comes to visual metaphors.
The cool thing about visual metaphors is that they are completely subjective so there is no right or wrong way of doing them!
Plus, huge news, the studio of the ground floor is finally working! (Meaning, there is a couch to take naps and there is wi-fi.) I wanted to have my own space out of the apartment for such a long time and it’s an incredible thing that it finally happened, plus that it happened now! I don’t know what it feels like to have your own working space as a man, but as a woman and a mom I have to say it feels like a portal to a different world. Here are just some of the things I love about it.
There are no demands on me when I’m there, only ones that I’m making myself.
People need to ask permission to come in (I mean knock).
When I’m there, I’m not the role I play in society, I’m not a mom, I’m not a wife, I don’t have responsibilities other that making my work.
My art feels like it “matters” more because I’m doing it in a dedicated place.
I’ve been reading A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf to give some intellectual context to having a private space but it’s taking me a long time. Anyway, once I have read it, I’ll probably have more ideas about this. The main thing I feel right now is that while I know that it’s an enormous luxury to have my own dedicated space for my work/art, I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was normal for artists, especially women to have a space with a door where people need to knock to come in.
So now I’m curious, where do you guys make your work? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time, keep on making!
What’s often missed by those who don’t use illustrations in their live illustration work is visual linking.
In the U.K. we have an island called Iona. On Iona we’re sole monks (before printing press) and they created what’s called the book of kells. These are actually the gospels of the Bible, but beautifully illuminated.
Pretty pictures? Nope! The expert in the field was talking to me one day about the book
The images and the colours are deliberate and enable visual cross referencing of passages throughout the book of kells, showing where there are relationships, ideas and so on
That informs my work. The illustration work I use are metaphors (appealing to novelty, and the tiny bit of effort needed to decode the metaphor stimulates neurons and myeline so that the idea is more memorable … I can explain further if you like); but the secondary function it serves is to create a way for people to look at the whole chart or sometimes multiple 4m lengths spread throughout a conference, and easily compare details and information.
Essentially I’m creating a temperate storage and index system through using images. So when I can I try and even use the same image of the same idea pops up sometimes a couple of days apart
Found this super helpful, thank you! I work in an old mill in Leeds and since setting up in Jan I have all the feels of not being interrupted or needing to hang out the washing. So fun!