Reading an Image

Picture Content:Red dragon, asleep in an ice cave, with piles of ‘treasure’, tucked in by his tail. Two children looking at the dragon, a girl pointing to it, a boy scared, wanting to leave. Armour are scattered in the cave around the dragon.

 A dragon that likes to hoard treasures is asleep in an ice cave with his body protecting all he has gained. Soldiers have tried to fight the dragon to regain the treasure but have failed, leaving nothing but their armor. A boy and girl have discovered the dragon. The little girl is curious and is excitedly pointing it out to the little boy. He is scared and is pointing to leave. The dragon is so hot, the heat from his body is melting the ice in the cave.

The colour palette of this picture is both hot and cold. The cave is cold but is melting and so there are hot colours depicting the heat coming from the dragon. The dragon itself is also a hot colour - red. The floor of the cave and the outside is also cool. The details are defined more towards the bottom of the picture more, in the treasure the dragon is protecting, the soldiers armor and the children. The main elements of the picture are the most detailed.

In this picture clearly the dragon is the dominant character and so is closest and largest of the elements, it is also a hot colour suggesting dominance.

The hierarchy in the image goes as follows;

The dragon and his treasure, the effect of the dragon on the cave (heat), the children, the armor. The elements go in a sweeping motion across the page. So your eyes are led to the major part and go round to each of the elements in order of importance.

Illustrating Visual Space

Images chosen for each theme.

My Compositions:

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. The meaning of the image can change dramatically depending on the size and placement of the elements. For the first and third images I was playing with the idea of the child being a giant and balancing on the building. In the first it looks like the child is being dangerous and climbing along or balancing on the building. The third image suggests more like the child is crushing the building and then in second image it's like the camera is zoomed to focus on the child playing with the building in the background and in the last image the child is playing in the grounds of the building.

2. If the other images are at different angles it gives the image more sense of depth. I didn't go for crazy angles on these but just by positioning it more to one side and higher up gave a sense of depth and more ground space, like in the last image. I really like how this turned out.

3. If they are all horizontal and vertical it makes the image quite stiff and no sense of depth. It doesn't work for a landscape at least. Maybe with different elements it might work.

The image shown in the course notes is really interesting. In this case Geoff Grandfield has created an image that is really interesting. When you look at it at first your not sure what you are seeing and then to me it looks like a huge mountain with someone climbing down it. It must be really tall because you can see a cloud quite low down and at the bottom of the image it looks like an abstract view of the hills below the mountain.

The sensation that I get is a sense of awe of the scale of that mountain, it's a bit scary as the person looks so tiny in comparison to the mountain.

4. I really enjoyed this exercise and each composition I created there is something I like about but my favourite is number four because I feel it works the best. It has the most depth and has a sense of playfulness more than the others.