Banksy

The stencil method that Banksy uses are actually rather detailed, there arent any broken edges, Very harsh lines between black and white, to get this effect i have experimented a little with threshold effect in photoshop, this effect alone gives you a stencil look but leaves some to be desired when it comes to the white to black transition, looks more like a spraycan effect, now this would be good but not for banksy good.

Sketches

I have made some sketches of my idea, trying to make the girl look young and playful, and what type of weapons the girl should have and how they should be strapped on her.

In addition whether i should have something extra in the picture besides the girl, like a gum machine.

 

This was the very first one i did, a girl holding a bazooka with two rifles across her back and a revolver at her hip, also i played with the idea of having a gumball machine in there. due to the stencil method alot of information is removed in the picture so i need to be careful so that hands and other details are still visible and more importantly still distinguishable in the final image, so this might be too many weapons to keep track of.

             Here is another sketch, i tried to make her seem younger looking with wavy hair and a dress and also a little more realistic in terms of body proportions, i decided to draw the weapons seperate from the drawing of the girl because then i can decide later how it should be placed on her and i will also then have the freedom of changing my mind. I decided on "only" having the big guns on her, the rifles and bazooka as well as some bazooka missiles.

Checking out little girls

I'm researching Banksy's work that has little girls as a central element, to see how he interprets them as well as what detail he has in the different works, of course i will be doing my picture in my own way so that mine is as unique to me as Banksy's is to him, but it's useful research in my opinion because of the link it has with my own work.

Decisions

So my image of the little girl with the Rambo weapons needs to be done, but in Banksy's art the people are realistically stenciled, they aren't stylized in any way in how they are portrayed, since i don't have skill when it comes to realistic drawing, manipulating pictures in photoshop would yield the best result in terms of the look of it. But one of the objectives for this assignment is that our work should not be identical to the artist but should have our own visual stamp on the work. So drawing my idea then try to get the stenciled look i'm after will make my work look unique.

Color

I have noticed that Banksy does use some color in his work, sometimes in the entire picture, but mostly on some parts of the body or clothing. To me it seems that some of these examples help to define where the arms are when it goes across the body and wouldn't normally be seen due to shadows if it was only black and white. This is something I can use if I have problems with the different elements in the picture, for example if a rifle makes an arm look non existant and the girl in the picture seem to be oddly shaped or missing limbs.

Little girls play harderst.

I have just had an epiffany, the last idea about the stormtroopers i've noticed really didn't match with the quote either, but i thought "when was the last time you chewed bubblegum?" i chew gum all the time, but i haven't chewed bubblegum since i was a kid, so an image popped into my head, both funny and appropriate for Banksy, a little girl, standing innocently with a whole bunch of weapons strapped all over, she's ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum, it's looking better and better all the time.

I quickly photoshopped a "sketch" of a possible look for her to get an idea of how it would look, I'm not sure if i want to take my own photo's so I can get the exact same realistic look of the face and the stencil look that Banksy has, or another direction is to draw the girl and weapons so that it doesn't look identical to Banksy but so that it has my own "stamp" on it if you will.

Change of Mind

I have changed my mind about the stormtrooper idea, over the last couple of days it's occurred to me that the image isn't really that obvious or funny, and that's the whole idea, something most people will recognize and think is either funny or thought provoking and I am not happy with this first concept, So I'm scrapping the Stormtrooper idea and will continue to try and get some inspiration from Banksy.

Sketch

I've done a rough sketch of my first idea, in November 2010 North Korea fired several shells into South Korean territory creating a national incident sparking rumours that the uneasy truce that have existed between the two since the 1950's is about to go up in flames, nothing happened of course. Now my idea came from the idea that North Korea is a very strict place to live, with the government controlling and censuring a lot of what comes into the country so that they can, more or less, controll the population more easily, what this reminds me of is the Empire in Star Wars, keeping in mind the political critisism in Banksy's artwork, I thought of portraying North Korean soldiers as Stormtroopers firing at South Korean soldiers across the border.

After doing a rough sketch of this idea I am becoming a little less sure if this is the idea I want to go with, i'll probably try to think of some alternatives before I make a final decision so I can start serious work.