Development in drawing technique

Following the recent tutorial, I decided to focus a lot on the colour palette I have been using...i.e. I don't think its has been considered fully and since I have decided to try and stick to a colour palette of only two or three colours per image to make them bold and the audience to easily recognise familiar faces. I did this firstly with a few colour line drawings with coloured felt tips. This was to concentrate on the consistency of line.

Out of the three, it appears that the second image is the most effective, due to the boldness of the two colours. The images, despite giving a sense of my intended approach, still felt flat and wasn't particularly exciting in its presentation. I wanted more attention to be brought to particular areas of each image, in particular the people of interest. At the end of the tutorial, it was suggested by Joel and Paul to incorporate some of my previous paper cut techniques back into my imagery. Taking this on board, I decided to experiment with cutting out silhouettes of the specific characters I wanted to focus on in the image and then drawing back into them, therefore it looks more 3D and more of a performance than a single illustrative image. The following images are the result of this experiment....

This was the first image that I worked on in this style. I tried to only use yellow, brown and purple. I really think the mark making has worked well in this particular piece and compared to the other images, I worked on better quality paper and tried to stretch it onto the table with masking tape before working into the paper with ink. However, the amount of yellow in this image is overwhelming and it seems the two workmen get lost within their surroundings, which is not really the case in my grandfather's original photo, and as a child i would have been more intrigued by the people than the surroundings. It is important that the audience is seeing the image through a particular viewpoint. I also I found whilst working in this technique that it would have been easier drawing the details the clothes and the characters separately. Also the extra layers would create the illusion of the three dimensions in the image.

As you can see I have taken these on board to the next image. This time I cut out my grandmother's shirt separately to the main silhouette. This makes her stand out much more and when photographed, the paper creates shadows giving the image more depth. It is definitely a technique i'd like to continue with.

This image is currently in progress, however I wanted to demonstrate how the paper cut technique is allowing me to create perspective and atmosphere within image. I think that the character on the far left is perhaps a little overdone in detail, especially considering the other silhouettes do not have much detail and I never wanted each image to have so much realism. In fact, the figure looks rather distorted and seems to fade into the chaos of the image. On the other hand, the man with checkered shirt on the right appears have a more distinctive presence and he has had the most attention from my peers when looking at this image.