Word as Image

Illustration should neither distract from the text nor completely describe it. However, what is really interesting is when the two worlds of image and text collide.

Artists such as Jonny Hannah and Sarah Finelli utilise text in an imaginative and illustrative way, where the type and image hold the same amount of attention and work in complete harmony. In this piece by Jonny Hannah, the simple stylized portrait which is immediately recognisable to us as William Shakespeare is also emphasised by the text that surrounds him, displaying the titles of his plays. Here the text is not overwhelming the image, but is simply reinforcing what the audience is seeing.

Copyright Jonny Hannah

In the image below I have illustrated a piece based on a segment from Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar.

Watercolour illustration inspired by an excerpt of the Bell Jar

‘The cadavers were so unhuman looking they didn’t bother me a bit. They had stiff, leathery, purple-black skin and they smelt like old pickle jars’ [1]

If this were put amongst the text as a traditional illustration in a book, then an audience would be able to see the image and have the context of the writing to know what it is referring to.

 If I wanted the image to be a standalone piece but still be relevant to the book and to Sylvia Plath’s writing, then I can try and incorporate the text into the image, as Jonny Hannah has done with his Shakespeare piece.

The words that inspired the illustration now surround it

 I have tried to treat the words as images themselves, and have painted them into the drawing in such a way that would not distract from the image itself, which is quite dark and macabre. I have tried to make the words part of the image, using a lighter colour so that it does not distract, but I have also attempted to make it look like a cold table that the cadaver is lying on. The form of the letters themselves is not curly or flamboyant, but reflect the nature of the image; clinical yet bold.

Obviously a huge mistake I made was missing out a word, so if I were to revisit the project then that would be the first thing I would change. Also what I like about Jonny Hannah’s illustrations is the folk art inspired text, which looks dynamic. Although I think the lettering I painted for the illustration is appropriate for the piece, the forms of the letters tend to stay the same and therefore are less visually exciting than Hannah’s work.

 [1] PLATH, 1963

Bibliography

PLATH, S. 1963. The Bell Jar. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.