Assignment 4 - Magazine Illustration

Lost and Lost again
I originally planned to work around the subject of Guilty Secret with a display of fruit and vegetables representing healthy diet, concealed amongst them a bar of chocolate. I got as far as setting out some variations in the placings and the position of the semi hidden chocolate bar.
I photographed the setting at different angles and distances.
However in considering where i could take the idea in terms of final piece I decided to change and selected LOST.
Firstly I looked up the word in a dictionary to confirm all the meanings of the term.

adj.

1. Unable to find one's way: a lost child.

2.

a. No longer in the possession, care, or control of someone or something: a lost pen.

b. No longer in existence; vanished or spent: lost youth.

c. No longer known or practiced: a lost art.

d. Beyond reach, communication, or influence: The expedition was lost to the world for two months.

3. Not used to one's benefit or advantage: a lost opportunity.

4. Having not been or unlikely to be won; unsuccessful: a lost battle; a lost cause.

5. Beyond recovery or redemption; fallen or destroyed: a lost soul.

6.

a. Completely involved or absorbed; rapt: lost in thought.

b. Bewildered or confused:

Definition courtesy of thefreedictionary.com
I hope doing this will stimulate my own interpretation.

My setting is centred around the money lost on betting. So consists of an open wallet some coins spread about, credit cards and some screwed up paper to represent spent betting slips. I had intended to include my laptop to indicate online betting, but deemed this as cumbersome so dropped the idea.
With all the screwed up paper to draw I feel I have made a rod etc..

When I drew a couple of thumbnails It became clear to me that it was difficult to keep a sense of what was being represented and in the act of covering the wallet in screwed up paper..

I thought about changing how I was interpreting the word.
My wallet was literally getting lost amongst the screwed up paper.
It was later, after an afternoon walk that a whole new image formed in my mind; how about just a lost wallet with a covering of leaves to indicate this. I collected a few leaves for the still life and proceeded to map out various settings.
This is my initial objective drawing

Then I made some further studies .. exploring angles and alternative placement of the leaves etc

Exploring interaction of form and shapes.
Or tone and angle for dramatic effect

Varying the framing of the image..

Part of the thought process whilst experimenting would be to consider how a narrative could be added to it without adversely affecting the overall look and feel.
Next I made a copy of my objective study and added some tone to it. I chose to use a drawing ink pen.

For a narrative I chose to keep it as simple as possible trying to add to the sense of the word. Just the silhouette of a person in the background without explanation this becomes the owner of the lost wallet.
Moving on to the visual

And then the final piece

I have purposely omitted any tonal value and much of the detail of the wallet; what I set out to convey by doing this was an added sense of lost, the wallet being absorbed by the surrounding environment. Conversly set out this way the figure also looks lost.

Later; I was trying to improve on the lighting of the piece to photograph when I started to zoom in and out of the view I took some extra images framed in this way and kind of liked the added dimension.

I noticed that framed like this the person seems nearer to the wallet and therefore the sense of loss the power of the word LOST diminishes.