Persons of Note; Week 1

Notes on three given persons of note

While I had to research all three given names, I knew once I had them that I had a clear favourite. Since childhood Spike Milligan has been a small but important part of my life; my dad used to print out his poems for me when I was little and we'd read them together. Their quirky, imaginative and sometimes just hilariously ridiculous nature had always captured my attention and creative thoughts.

Since childhood however, I'd be exposed to a different side of Milligan, documentaries and adult poetry revealed there was very much a conflict within him. It was this relationship between Milligan's well known comedy sketches and poetry, this happy and ecstatic human being, with his struggles with mental health and depression that I really wanted to explore further.

Sketchbook pages beginning to visual understand Spike and his poems

After initially looking at Victoria Borges I wanted to try something more painty and experimental to the way I'd normally construct work. Milligan's spontaneous natured allowed me to fully embrace this messier way of working. I really wanted to exhaust the ideas I was illustrating and experiment with style and tone of voice within the various poems

Close up of 'cows go bong' scamp

I continued to experiment with the Ning Nang Nong poem as well as doing more research into Spike himself and a few portraits; I was wrestling a little bit with what side I wanted to focus on with my series of illustrations. I was well aware of his struggle with mental issues throughout his life, and the fact he'd had a couple of affairs, however I was completely in love with him as a human being; despite these struggles he was incredibly affectionate, earnest and caring. His flaws MADE him HUMAN. And I think this human element was an extremely important part of what made Spike Milligan, Spike Milligan.

I think I want this series of work to embody that idea.

Feedback from crit

MAIN POINTS

Strong understanding of subject

Find one simple visual metaphor or create multiple stories using lots of images (collage?)

Idea of conflict could work - reflect him

Consistency of colour//media to link illustrations together

Use small parts of poster for stamps?

Illustrate a poem for each postcard?

Consider TONE OF VOICE - is it appropriate 

Victoria Borges

REFLECTION

For my poster I was thinking of having an image similar to Borges (above) to incorporate a few different aspects of Milligan's personality and life; with perhaps some of the imagery in black and white to reflect the hardships he faced and colour to represent the joy he brought to the world

I'm still not sure about media; while I like some of the images I've created I agree that the tone of voice isn't quite appropriate to the subject matter at the minute; it's too 'cute' and 'bubbly' and I want something more serious so that my intent is met

I like the idea of illustrating a poem for each other the postcards as I could choose poems from different times of his life; when he was going through different things

I think I need a bit more research into the chronology of his life and more media//tone of voice experiments to really lock down what I want to say and how I want to say it