inspiration
I've wrestled and wrestled with concepts for my poster for the play "Handing Down The Names". I wanted to keep the tone of my poster serious and "of the era", but kept finding myself turning to contemporary ideas or images. I wanted to keep the poster in the same spirit of the Polish posters. I wanted to Keep it simple so it looks good in black and white. Ideas I came up with include literal renderings of historical tomes-(photo albums, passports, portraits), images of dirt and farming, and of nazi and swastika images. One area that I thought felt strong at conveying the feeling of this family and their struggle is a simple focus on hands. Initially, I shied away from hands simply because it would seem too unimaginative to literally act out the title. Fortunately, I got over it. The opening scene of the play features a woman kneeling on the floor, sifting a hanful of dirt through her hands. Such a strong image would work great on a poster...especially the hands. I'm excited to get this concept on paper! I'm still undecided if I want to photograph some actual hands sifting dirt or draw the image. I'm leaning towards the photograph, but I'll play around with drawings first, just to see how it turns out. So far, I want to basically cover the whole poster in a faded deep red with very little or no white showing. We'll see how that turns out as well. Until next time!