Study Task 8 - Reflective Writing

The question of my practical based is, "Does the use of using the ‘Gestalt Theory’ of visual perception, help to create a more effective ‘Alice in Wonderland’ background?". Therefore, in the practical part of my project, it is about how to create a more visually pleasing background. The reasoning behind this is because I would like to enhance my skills at drawing my interesting backgrounds for future projects. I believe that it is best to focus my on the outlines than colours if I don’t have enough time, as sketching the perspective and getting Gestalts principles are more important.
The main principles that I have been looking at are proximity, similarity, enclosure, symmetry, closure, continuity, connection and figure and ground. I have been focusing more on the use of symmetry and figure and ground because it creates a more interesting image. Whilst researching these principles, I have watched the 1949,1951 and 2010 ‘Alice in Wonderland'; read the book (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and played the game 'Alice: Madness Returns'. The reason behind this, is so I can get more of a sense of how the characters interact within their scenes and whether Alice has changed as a character through the years. Also, it gives me the ability to compare different forms of media.
My end goal for this project is to become a much better artist who can break more barriers whilst drawing. I believe that this is important as it will hopefully make my work stand out from the rest. For the rest of the project, I hope to create more backgrounds and possibly colour at least one in.

This is my first drawing that I did from the 'Alice:Madness Returns' game. I believe that this picture as a sketch, doesn't have much interesting to it.

Using a couple of images as inspiration, I drew this on Photoshop using the symmetry tool. I used different 'Gestalts' principles such as symmetry and figure and ground to create this. I believe by drawing in this manor for an 'Alice in Wonderland' style drawing is perfect.

That was created in the same manor as above. By drawing this piece in this way, it creates a hierarchy of chairs. This is good as Alice's seat is at the top of the table and she is a great importance of 'Wonderland'.

This piece was created the same as the previous two. As well as the principle symmetry, another principle called continuity was added. this can be seen with the use of the arrows. The reason for the arrows is to show the urgency of 'Alice' needing to go down the rabbit hole.