Anna Lenton Reflective Journal

I spoke to Sue about my idea and she had quite a lot of knowledge on the book my project is based on and therefore had a few ideas I could use. I mentioned that there are a couple of stories involving water and she suggested having a prop such as a fake fish to represent the fact that Jonny Air Head had fallen into the river. Sue also suggested using Vaseline with water sprayed on top of it so that the water droplets show up well on camera. I tried this technic and it worked really well so I am going to use it in my work. I also asked Sue if she could show me how to use fullers earth properly as I have considered using it for my Shockheaded peter shoot. She showed me different techniques for colouring it such as painting underneath and on top of the fullers earth which showed up well on camera so I think I could use it. I was worried about the product being harsh on the skin but Sue explained that this was not the case as it contains a lot of natural ingredients and is also a main...

 I told Helen that I was concerned about getting all of my shoots done and also that there were a couple of my looks that I wanted to reshoot as I am not completely happy with them. She suggested that I leave the reshoots until a later stage as she felt it would be better to shoot more of the stories instead so that I had more work that could go into my final outcome and this would also give me more time to decide for definite how I wanted to do the reshoots. Helen also suggested that if I am struggling with finalising some of my ideas that I should shoot the looks that I am finding it easier to finalise the ideas for first and then develop the more difficult looks.

First Shoot, Ink coming out of the mouth, Model: Issy This shoot was originally going to be a test shoot but I have decided to use the images as final images because they exceeded my expectations and I think they are my favourite set of images from the whole project. Before the shoot I was a bit apprehensive about getting the mood right in the images as this style of image I have not created in the past and so I did not know how good my ability would be. Therefore I prepared for the shoot by testing out several different products to create the black oily substance that I needed to create my desired look. I tried using Supracolor, Aquacolor, Mac Mixing medium, primer, Mac Lip Mixes, glosses, lipstick and different combinations of the products mixed together to see what work the best. I felt that the Black Mac Lip Mix together with the Mac Mixing Medium created a very glossy wet look that was not too runny as it created drips yet did not move around too much which made it easier t...

My tutor Helen specialises in wigs and so I spoke to her about where I could source wigs from and my concerns that they will be expensive and I do not have a very big budget. She offered to lend me some of her wigs and hair pieces because I did the wig work unit with her in the second year of university as well as doing work experience with her so she said she would trust me to look after them. She also suggested that for some of the looks I want to create I could use hair pieces and hair extensions added into my model’s hair which would be cheaper than buying full wigs. She also offered me the opportunity to borrow wigs from the university which will be very useful and again a lot cheaper than me buying the wigs. She thinks that for my Inky Boys look with the dripping eye that although it might have been done before if it fits into how I want to represent the story then I should keep it in. She suggested for my water based looks I could use glycerine so I will experiment with this a...

After discussing the possibility of basing my project on Struwwelpeter or shockheadedpeter as it is sometimes known I ordered the book to look at the stories and illustrations for inspiration. The book was first published in 1845 by German author Heinrich Hoffmann and has since been published and translated into many different languages. The book contains short stories about children that misbehave and as a result are punished for their actions. The idea is to scare the children so that they behave. I had not heard of the book before but as I started to talk about it to other people I realised that the stories are still popular today. My parents, two of my tutors and a couple of my friends used to read the stories as children and his made me think that their could be a market for a version of the book aimed at adults rather than children. I am thinking of creating images inspired by the stories and creating a book or website to present them on. The book would have the stories in as w...

Until this week I still felt a bit lost in my project the ideas I had I just din't feel were working well enough and I was not feeling as inspired as I imagined I would be when doing my final major project. I spoke to Sharon about this during my tutorial and she said that I am trying too hard to find a perfect project which does not actually exist and that you don't have to love every aspect of your project in order to do well. She asked me what I would do if I was offered a job and did not one hundred percent like the topic it was based on, would I turn the job down just because of this? Obviously my anwser was no, I would still do the job to the best of my ability regardless of if I liked the topic or story it was based on. This was a bit of an epiphany for me as I have realised that this is something I have done a lot throughout my time at university. I've not properly started a projects until a lot later than I should have because I have spent so much time trying to mak...

He told me to think about what was the purpose for my work in order to decide if a book, magazine, website or online exhibition would be the best way to present it. He suggested discussing this with my mentor Sebastian so that I could make a definite final decision that I was happy with. The following week I told John that I had decided for definite that I was presenting my work as a website and not as a book which had been a possibility in the past. He told me to find websites that I like the look of and then show them to him so that he could show me how to make them. He also suggested to look at story websites on the internet and see how they were laid out. I mentioned to him the idea of creating Gifs and he said not to use them if they are not going to add anything to it and are going to be a lot more work but not have a lot of pay off or not add a great deal to my project.