Females in fairytales

RESEARCH - 

From my essay I extracted parts I felt I could research more extensively and split them into categories. I then branched out ideas from each category of quotes, people and further fields I could look at. This created a kind of mind map of ideas and I felt I was drawn more towards the idea of strong women in society. 

I got quite into the idea of powerful women in history and how this reflects on the type of female role models within fairytales. Often in fairytales women are perceived as the weaker sex, vulnerable and awaiting rescue. I want to mirror this through my illustrations. 

I went into the library and took out 9 books. Feminists such as Germaine Greer, Fairytales from Hans Christian Anderson, and critics of fairytales and gender roles within them. This allowed me to gain a better understanding of the point I was trying to make about the negative connotations of fairytales. I picked out quotes and wrote a few of them down on my sheet. 

I found this really useful because it gave me a better understanding of my subject from all different angles and was making me think differently about the points I had raised. 

For statistics I looked at the comparison of how much women earn in jobs compared to men to show how this has improved over the years - equality. I also looked at the statistics of women having the right to vote.

For people I researched feminist authors but also decided to look at the most powerful women of history and what they did to gain that title. I thought it might be interesting to portray them as fairytale characters.

Some powerful women

The sad fact is is that despite being so influential and almost heroines, most of these women are unrecognisable. I still would not be able to name them without looking at the name of what i'd saved them as. This is something I feel should be taught more to children of today and a more positive role model than the celebrities and women of the media. I have not included their names - how many can you recognise?

Map of understanding 

Research exploded!
I bullet pointed the main points raised from my essay and from this expanded on other points that I could raise or things I could research further that would make for interesting illustrations.

I made a list of some more powerful women of history

Further research into strong independant women. 

My research was really good in giving me a better understanding of the fields I was interested in; however at this point it was really broad and I struggled to think of how I was going to tie them all together.

I had collected so many images but the ones that caught my eye the most were that of women strikers. I decided to research into the suffragette women who striked, often chaining themselves up and being arrested. In prison they went on hunger strike and were force fed. It gave me the idea of using the suffragettes as these disney princesses. Or perhaps using the disney princesses and putting them on strike against this whole fairytale structure they have to conform to. I started to generate drawings based on my ideas.

REFERENCE 
SUFFRAGETTES & STRIKERS

I love these images I think they're really powerful as photographs they really capture the struggle and fight of the women and it makes you want to know what it is they're fighting for and whether they won the battle. It's so much more interesting to see than these passive vulnerable Princesses.

SKETCHBOOK

Strikers against Disney

This image of the Fairy Godmother quitting, was created from the original image (above) by re-drawing out the character and adding symbols of the fairygodmother including her cloak, wand and a pumpkin. 

Disney princesses rebelling

Drawing style

Looked at real life Princess imagery to get a sense of them really being human and this would be easier to translate into them fighting and rebelling.

Pecha Kucha

From this I got some really nice feedback and suggestions. Heres a few:

• Draw everyday princesses
• Show princesses being normal, the reality
• Having a fag, farting..
• Telling the Prince to fuck off when he's trying to rescue her
• Liked the idea of 'happy never after'
• Look at 'The Bloody Chamber' which has strong feminist messages to empower women
• Look at how princess fairytales are traditionally illustrated - medium/stylistically
• Good idea of questioning role models - hero women fairytales?
• Like the idea of politically correct bedtime stories, reflects my sense of humour
• Consider the format of the final idea
• Love the idea of what could happen after a fairytale
• Interesting to look into what role models are and what we are telling children
• Rebellious princesses
• Show what women are really like, sitting in pyjamas all day, getting smashed, body hair etc.

It gave me some sense of direction of where I want to go with my illustrations and I like the idea of steering away from the striking and going more towards Princesses being independant real women, telling the Prince to fuck off. I got an idea of Rapunzel being up in her tower and the Prince is trying to climb up her hair so she cuts it off, sticking her fingers out of the window.


I thought about putting the Princesses into these types of situations, drunk and rebellious, showing more of an exaggerated reality. I need to go back into these images and change them into the Princesses but these are rough ideas.

REFERENCE IMAGERY 

SKETCHES

PROCESS
Could be snow white, after a drunk night out

How sleeping beauty got her name (passed out on a bench)

A princess peeing in the street

Modern day Cinderella, saying no to the Prince and running off by choice. Covered in tattoos and piercings to battle against the stereotypical 'Princess' imagery

Snow white and the seven dwarf idea but with lots of kids years later. Born from the show 'Little Britain' based on a character that is a chav. Here she is pregnant again despite having 5 children already. I think this would be a humorous approach towards a Princess that is supposed to be clean cut, prim and proper. 

Cinderella after the marriage, as a stressed out mother taking to the drink and fags. Need to add more wrinkles to the face and change the clothing. 

Used this original image of a girl being sick and then transformed her into cinderella by adding a broom, and her dresswear. 

I spent a lot of time using my reference imagery to then create characters (disney) based on these real life women. I used the light box a lot to layer my drawings over one another to add hairstyles or dresses born from reference imagery of the Princesses to make them recognisable. 

Here you can see I have used an image of the woman eating the KFC but left out her hair and then later layered over more paper to just outline her body shape and add hair of Ursula and traits of her. 

 This pocohontas piece did not work as well in the end. I spent a lot of time trying to get her face right in order to make her recognisable without copying completely. It was really difficult.

Born from this orginal image

Trying my best to get the face correct but was really struggling

I decided not to use this image because I don't feel happy with how it came across and the fact she is getting her bum tattooed seems a little bit too far fetched and stepping away from the concept a little bit.

 Original image

Layered over to add Princess style dress

Final image

Used original idea of the chav holding a pram of children and layered over paper to add details of rapunzel such as her plait hanging down.

Here I added a dark grey background but something didn't look quite right. 

Here I tried all white background but that made it appear like it was floating, needed a balance. 

Cinderella and snow white

Took this original image of women feeding eachother in their underwear

Transformed using the clothing and hairstyle of the princesses

Sleeping beauty. Original image of a fat woman laid in bed transformed by adding clothing trying out adding symbols of sleeping beauty

Later added more details such as the rose wilting in the background 

Experimentation of colour on Photoshop. 

Sleeping beauty - won't get out of bed. 

Cinderella and Snow White feeding eachother a Macdonalds. Based on an image of two obese women. 

Rapunzel

Ursula

GROUP CRIT

The most relevant feedback I got from this I think was distinguishing how I was going to make the illustrations work as a set and which final ideas I was going to run with. Everyone seemed to like the fat princesses the most; but I feel they are all succesful in their own right. I need to decide which path to go down whether it be the realistic princesses rebelling or a play on the Disney Princesses getting fat and going against that notion of beauty and perfection. 

Re-drawn again ready for colour

This one I felt needed more detail so I added the dressing table in the background

Adding more colour

FINAL OUTCOMES

From the feedback given I decided that I liked both of the ideas and wanted to include them all. I also realised when I opened them all up in Photoshop that the more Disney style cartoony ones had their own drawing style compared to the realistic women where I'd used more reference imagery. I could not depict between the two ideas which worked best so I have decided to include both sets as final outcomes. Two portrait pieces and one landscape for each. They are all to a format of 190mm x 240mm as this worked best to scale them into. I maybe should have planned out my format first as it is not very interesting.

SET 1 : FAT PRINCESSES

based on the cliche Disney Princesses becoming overweight 

SET 2 : HAPPILY EVER AFTER 

based on real women rebelling

 

FINAL CRIT

I recieved some really nice feedback about how humorous the work was and character development, in particular faical expressions. Someone commented that the strongest images are where characters have been put into context, into situations, which I agree with. I like that I added more detail to the sleeping beauty piece as it allowed me to add the wilting rose and use up more of the free space. I would have liked to improved on this if I had more time. People also commented on the scale and format which I also feel is something I could have been more experimental with.
Overall I am pleased with my outcomes not just because they reflect my essay well, but I think I've portrayed a funny concept, one that makes you think, one that is relatable and recognisable and goes against the normal structure of fairytales. I also think the visual quality is quite good and this is through vigorous testing and layering images, taking some away, making decisions about what works best and adding more detail. I like to add little quirks to make them quite modern such as the KFC bargain bucket I think these little details are what makes them humorous. Some of them could be funnier and I know this, but I think the main thing is that they are not how we would usually see these characters and that's the most important message.
Within my essay I commented on what happens after the fairytales, I think this is a quite playful take on that. I also commented on how Princesses are role models, this echoes this too about the type of role we play as women. That infact, we are just normal, we get drunk pass out, eat takeaways and slob in bed sometimes and that is totally fine.
Though my work may seem like it has geared away from the original research into strikes and powerful women, it has actually been informed by all of this and is showing a sense of rebellion still by being shocking, being something you would not expect.
I really feel I have worked hard with this brief and I think that is due to being passionate about the image making and wanting to create work that says something, argues my point and is informed by my understanding of the subjects.