The Message Behind the Concept: Symbolism and Colour in Modern Illustration

Lecture notes

• SemioticsOr realism? 
• How can a black and white photo be real? because real life is in colour.
• There are no certainties about the realities of the reality of a photograph. 
• Semiotics argues that reality is constructed through a discourse of codes. 
• Art requires a spectator to give pictures a significant meaning. 
• Semiotic theories 
• - Signs 
• - Symbols
• -Denotation and connotation 
• -Metaphor and metonymy 
• -Language and speech
• - Codes
• Sound image- Signifier
• Concept- signified 

Tutor lecture notes - Symbolism and colour

• Gunstall Klimt - impressionist
•  Symbols often used within patterns. 
• eyes = protection = gateway to sole 
• Colours and imagery mean different things to different people.   
• The yellow book was brightly coloured (yellow) to draw the eye. It was seen as seductive when it was first brought out, it depicted things that were risqué back then. 
• Aubrey Beardsley used a lot of symbolism in his work. He emphasised erotic, grotesque things. 
• The Purple book is a modern version of the yellow book, showed sexual symbolism. 
• Cartoons show a lot of symbolism
• Chris Ridell makes modern political cartoons. 
• There is often symbolism within children's books with use of imagery, colours and composition.  
• Children's picture books are the art of visual storytelling - Professer Martin Sailsbury and Professer Morag Styles 

Research Symbolism in children's books 

Although upon first though it may not seem it but children's picture books are often full of visual symbols that have underlying meanings. It may not seem it to the child or in fact the adult reading and looking at the book, but after some consideration and visual analyzation it is clear that a lot of subtle things such as the colour and composition used are symbolising different things. An example of this would be Oliver Jeffers book 'The heart and the bottle.' It is a heart warming, sophisticated children's story about a little girl who's farther disappears one day, because of this she gets so sad that her heart comes out of her body and she keeps it in a glass bottle until one day she decides to re connect with her heart. This book uses lots of visual symbolism starting with the front cover (figure 1) there is a considerable amount of empty space, it could be said that this is to symbolise the how empty the girl feels now that her farther has gone. The size of the girl in comparison to the bottle could symbolise how small, insignificant and un important the girl feels because of her fathers disappearance. the size of the heart in comparison to the bottle could show how small her heart feels after her fathers disappearance, this imagery also goes along with the idea of bottling up your feelings.

Pictures naturally have a superior ability to convey the spatial position of the character... We assume that a charac­ter depicted as large has more significance (and maybe more power) than the character who is small and crammed in the corner of a page. [1]

(Figure 1) The Heart and the bottle, Oliver Jeffers 

 Perhaps the biggest use of symbolism throughout this book is the double page spread that features the little girls, fathers chair (figure 2).  The first page shows the chair with negative space all around it this brings all the focus to the chair indicating that something is wrong. It could be said that all of the empty space is referencing the the empty chair and the loss of the girls farther. The Next page shows the same chair but in the context of the room, the room is dark and evokes a sad feeling. The little girls body language in these images symbolises how she is feeling because it can be seen that she is slumping over in a sad manner.

The character's actions can be described verbally or visually, and, as with the external description, the two descriptions can complement or contra­dict each other. This particular aspect of characterization allows probably more counterpoint between text and image than any other and allows the authors a good deal of irony. [2]

[1] Nikolajeva.M, Scot.C, How Picture Books Work, p.83
[2] Nikolajeva.M, Scot.C, How Picture Books Work, p.83