Interpreting a passage from the poem “The Absence,” by Peter Eluard into a surrealist painting.
CASE STUDY
Peter Eluard's poem is an especially soft and dreamy poem in my opinion; other surrealist poems are quite vivid and explicit. Because of this, I went for softer objects in the image with colours of a sunset to mirror the feeling it evokes with me. The Harry Potter series and their book covers were an influence as they had a fantastical feel that I wanted to implement into this illustration.
These were preliminary sketches to help sort out the composition of where to place the model as well as the typography. Working in a thin format like this is quite difficult and unconventional which created an interesting challenge. The image would have to seamlessly link between the two halves of the composition. In the end I went with the far right concept as it flowed the best because of the integration of the human form and clouds raising into the sun.