Poetry Brief- Ludgin' Wi Big Aggie

Nick Hedges Photography proved to be of great value to the project. He was a new find for me and a brilliant photographer that campaigned for the homeless with shelter through 68-72. These are both from a series he done in Glasgow during this time. His work was a great find. Oscar Marzoroli was a photographer whose work was already known to me. A fantastic series of images done all in Glasgow where he grew up, incredibly capturing the spirit of 60's/70's Glasgow and its Urban Refurbishment. His work has always been important to me, heavily featured in any textbook, documentary or book about Glasgow's history. Tim Mara as far as I can tell is an artist who, working mainly in screen prints, cuts in his work with photography through taking photographs from a single point with a tripod set-up. He then over time changes the scene of what that camera is looking at by putting up and taking down wallpapered plaster board and moving furniture and models ...

I all in all was fairly happy with the turn out of my book. Certain pages I feel still need a lot of work done to them and maybe even heavily reworked. However the ones that I fuly finished I was quite happy with the layout and colour designs. I do regret not being able to fill it with my own photography more, as such a lot of the photography had to be taken from old books lying around the house and the odd google search. Ideally though this would not have been the case, there is in fact one of the original 'Singl-en' tenements left standing in Glasgows Gorbals area at the start of this project I had envisioned going there in order to get most of the structural photography with maybe a couple of mock ups of friends arranged as I wanted to then drop in on top of one another. As the country is in lock-down, this wasn't possible. I still feel I did not to bad a job with what I had to use at my disposal.  I do wonder whether it maybe would have been made easier/better if I had...

The Copyright page I wasn't totally clear what to do with so just more or less copied the Copyright page out of an illustrated 'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carrol. I didn't put a copyright sign with Adam McNaughton's name however as I know that he did not copyright his music as he felt it should be free to the public to hear and find.

The cover I didn't want to be particularly flashy or special in anyway. This seemed to suit the poem quite nicely. I felt as it is a poem about tenement living in Glasgow during the 60's/70's, a time and type of living, famously not that flash for Glasgow that it would be better to design a cover that reflected that of the poems words. On the front cover the illustration for 'Big Aggie' is different to that inside the book. This is because I had planned to replace the image of Big Aggie in the book with the drawing above, which is of my 'Big Gran', she always seemed a bit fit for the role. Although on page 1 of the book I went ahead and fully coloured the original drawing I had made for Big Aggie, therefore it seemed a bit much work to replace. I'm not to dissapointed about this as it does just create another layer to the design process.

With Text.

Now I was close to the end for some of the pages but thought I should maybe give text a little go for some of them and so, in the same process again using opaques scanned in and digitally coloured I began to add text to the new ones with colour. I continued this process until I had almost finished all pages.

Happy with how some of them looked I started making opaques for them in order to, in the same process, begin colouring them through photoshop. As if it were a screen print, as this would likely have been the fashion in which I printed them if I had the facilities at uni. The ones I was not happy with, I took back to the drawing board and began anew. 

Having made some of the wallpapers and planned the layouts I thought it time to begin to hand colour some of the printed layouts. I also very quickly started lobbing in text not worrying to much on the style of it or the placement, just to see if there was room enough for it.

With the opaques made, I scanned them in and on photoshop, coloured and assorted them. These are two of them. Pineapples and Flower Basket.

With layouts I was kind of happy with, I decided to begin to take note of the white sections I had originally removed, I would be looking to fill up that did not have figurative work in them. It seemed very classic of Singl-end tenements as they were called, to have a strange eclectic wallpaper range in just the one room. So i began design my own wallpapers by knocking up some opaques.

I drew the people that I had already cut out of the images in order to get an idea of how it would all look once the figures had been placed in to the layouts. I also drew certain figures from photographs on Google that could not be easily mocked up, such as a man in a full hazmat suit. I intend to replace these toward the end of the project with drawings of my Gran and possibly me. 

Then I Began to upload scans of both drawings and photographs (my own and others) to photoshop. I played around with the arrangements until I could find something I was happy with, making amendments in my sketchbook when needed. The Layouts ranged from very simple as seen in the first just to try and guide me a little more in the correct design direction, to fairly complex and near finished black and whites.

I then began to make more detailed roughs. Beginning to think about which words would go where and just how the structure of each page would fit together. I also began to devise more heavily on the sections I had left out in order to see if the challenge of knowing how to illustrate certain pages I previously didn't had become any easier. These are all Roughs progressing to more complete drawings of the same double spread.

Then I began to make roughs of what I had left of the photographs, mixed with what I thought I may be able to replace the now missing sections with. very quick and very loose I didn't want to be too decisive at this stage. I also (as shown in picture 2), began to make quick drawings of sections I thought may be fully illustrated as opposed to photography inclusive. I didn't want to break the poem up, instead I started with the sections of it I thought seemed most obvious as to how they should be depicted.

I then began to as planned cut out all unneccassary areas this largely includes wall papers, windows, figures and really anything that can't be recreated by hand in order to give a sense of what you're looking at. largely I kept the room structure, as I feel this aided me quite heavily in giving a true idea of glasgow living and the cramped conditions during the 60's & 70's housing crisis'.  I wanted to create this feeling above all as, although the poem itself has a very comic undertone the subject it deals with was a very important and quite poignant one.

 started looking through photos online of Glasgow tenement living in the late 60's. Around the time the poem would have been based on. I did this and then began to think about which would be usable and which sections could be removed from the photos in small roughs. (The blue hatched areas are those I planned to remove) I also start to think about how the photos could be used as part of a larger double spread if at all.   I would of course preferred to have used more of my own photography which likely would've been possible if not for the state of current events.

the correct method of writing the poem. I had to write it out myself as Adam Mcnaughtton the Author is more of a folk musician from Glasgow and as such it is rather tricky to find his verses written out.