More experimenting

For this experiment I decided to move away from the figurative response. I wanted to accentuate the feeling of being trapped by focusing on the hands holding onto the bars of the cage. I like how simple this idea is yet I feel like it tells the story quite well. I like the simple block shape effect, creating quite a striking composition. I could scan this is and experiment with digitally creating the piece, perhaps on illustrator playing with vectors. I could also use cut out pieces of coloured card to accentuate the idea of shape. I do feel with this one maybe the music notes look a bit random and perhaps don't really fit with the overall composition. They look a bit like sharp daggers which actually creates quite an interesting effect as this could represent the daggers coming from Maya's mouth (she thought she had killed her mother's boyfriend because of the power of her words).

This is a collage experiment trying to focus on the power of simple shape and colour. As you can see the overall mood is completely flipped and all of a sudden reflects more of a positive message. The musical notes allow the composition to appear more optimistic and happy. This is good in some respects as I do want to reflect a sense of successful - a feeling of success and triumph, escaping the cage into freedom but I feel like it doesn't really reflect the idea of struggling and being trapped. I want to combine the two aspects perhaps having the main composition black and white and then the musical notes in bright colours on top? 

Also, instead of the literal sense (drawing the bars) i could look at metaphorical ideas such as using lyrics from her poem from the bottom to the top, or perhaps relevant quotes of Maya to represent the bars - holding onto the words reflecting her strength and the fact she stands by what she says and what she believes in no matter what anyone says. I could also experiment with the idea of Maya breaking the bars to represent her power and a sense of victory.

What I have to be careful of with this idea is I don't want it to look like someone is breaking some sticks - it has to in someway reflect the 'cage' and Maya. I do quite like the idea of drawing the bars disjointed but perhaps I need to include the outline of the cage to show that it is a cage. Maybe the lines drawn to show the cracks don't work that well making the bars look quite weak - I want to highlight the strength Maya went through in breaking the cage. 

I decided to draw the cage around the hands to indicate it is a cage. The abnormally large hands work so well and contrast the small cage giving off a sense of claustrophobia adding to the trauma. I feel like this image would look great scanned in and digitally played with. I could experiment with manipulating the structure of the bars, making them appear broken and bent. I could then add the musical notes coming out from the middle on top of the cage as the notes become bigger to show they are coming from inside the cage. 

Started to play around with block colours and I can see this looking really good as a logo or something. It would be interesting to also create some mono prints to show a whole completely different side to the composition - more rough and textural as opposed to the neat, refined block shapes.