Picture This Jack!

For the “Picture This” assignment I chose to the create a picture inspired from the old tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. While reading Molly Bang’s book, I immediately began to consider how and why I would lay out my image. When I began to start the actual process of cutting, gluing, and placing, it all became quite a bit harder than expected. I really wanted to be in touch with my emotions and express that feeling on to my canvas. I wanted the image to really capture my feeling, and the feeling my audience would retain from viewing my image and then connecting it with the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
First, I had to determine the color of my background. I played around with a few different colors such as, black, white, yellow, light purple, dark purple, blue, etc. I decided to go with a darker purple because the story is very much about curiosity, and the still I wanted to capture was a generalized thought of the entire story as a whole. After deciding on the purple background, I wanted to incorporate the beanstalk. The color of the beanstalk wasn’t as challenging as the background color. I also cut the beanstalk out so the bottom was larger than the top to show scale that the tree was tall. Larger and the bottom and skinnier at top, captured a sense of the tree’s height. I chose to use green, not only because a beanstalk would be a plant, which we most likely be green, but because it is almost a neutral type color. Black and white didn’t work. It didn’t feel quite right to me. Black was too dark, and white was too blah. I didn’t want the beanstalk to be the main eye catcher either, so I went with green. Once I placed the green on the purple background, I felt that it was a good representation of the beanstalk being not a mean or bad source of the story, and not a great or main point of the story either.
Now I thought, how do I relate the giant and Jack from the story into my image? I wanted Jack to be a main visual component, but I also wanted the giant to be a main source too. I decided to incorporate the giant first. I went with my emotions the entire time and the figuring out the giant’s placement just felt like the right thing to do. And plus, I could change anything whenever I wanted. Going forward, I traced the a few items that could represent a giant. I used rectangles, triangles, blobby figures, and a bunch of other cutouts, but I decided I wanted to use a hand. I felt that a hand, a rather larger hand, would best represent the giant instead of trying to use a large human type figure. I traced the hand and did a couple of sketches first. The hand was rounded, as it would naturally be, however, the hand of the giant didn’t seem scary enough for the image. I decided to revert to all the information that Molly Bang wrote in her book. I then decided to make the fingers sharper so they seemed scarier. I made the tips of the fingers to kind of represent and look like sharp knives. I knew immediately though I wanted the hand of the giant to be red! I wanted it to be in contrast with the purple background and the green beanstalk. Red also can represent danger, and the giant isn’t the nicest guy in the world. So, yeah, the giant’s hand is red. I played with the placement of the hand and placing on the top of the frame seemed best because of the hand reaching down, coming out of the sky. Jack was challenging! I wanted him to be placed perfectly and be giving off the perfect vibe from his color. I chose Jack to be yellow, because I’ve read in previous color theory books that nervousness is usually linked to the color yellow. Since Jack isn’t evil, and he’s curious and most likely nervous, I chose yellow. I didn’t want to place Jack too close to the beanstalk because I wanted the image to capture a journey. Moving him back away from the beanstalk gave me a good feeling that represents that Jack was on his way to up the beanstalk… the journey up the beanstalk.
Like I’ve mentioned, this was challenging, but it was fun trying to determine color and shape to explain a story. I feel that going forward, I will take shapes and color more into consideration. Shapes make such a difference! Weird and true.