Elly's Influence Map 2010

What started as an Influence Map turned into a book review.
Thanks to fox-orian fox-orian.deviantart.com/ for the template

1.Patrick Woodroffe
A author, poet, painter and sculptor, Woodroffe created tomographs, a word he invented in the seventies from the Greek words for 'cut' and 'drawing' (not to be confused with medical scans). These are photographs that combine actual objects with cut-outs of his paintings. A lot of his work was created using real photographs with painted elements, long before we had the luxury of Photoshop.

Amazing imagination and illustration skills, I collected his books and would get lost in his fantasy worlds. www.patrickwoodroffe-world.com…

2.Typography and calligraphy…where art meets words. Pictured is an example by Shun Kawakami. Check out the brilliant designs here www.nullartless.com/sk/artwork…

3. Japanese design
The minimalistic approach combined with an appreciation for the symmetry of nature, provides a soothing tonic in a world overloaded with fussy visual messages.

4. Steampunk
A subgenre of science fiction, it fantasises a 19th century era where steam power is still widely used and speculates what mechanical wonders may have been created by steampowered inventions. Featuring brass and copper clockwork, optimistic gear driven computers, dirigibles and goggles. DeviantArt has the most amazing Steampunk artists, you can see collections of work here ellyevans679.deviantart.com/fa… and here ellyevans679.deviantart.com/fa… Image ‘Jetpack’ comicsando.wordpress.com/2008/…

5. Rita Hayworth
The 1940s movie star they called the Love Goddess, Rita was an exquisite dancer, holding her own with the likes of Fred Astaire. She embodied a combination of strength and sensitivity that set her apart from other screen sirens. (Image by George Hurrell, 1941) More photos of Rita here www.google.com.au/images?hl=en…

6. Pin-up art.
Gil Elvgren was a prolific artist, arguably the best pin-up artist in the world. He influenced many other artists and mentored dozens of younger artists who apprenticed with him, studied his work, or otherwise sought to emulate ‘the master’. www.gilelvgren.com/GE/

7. Brian Froud and Alan Lee.
As a youngster practising with traditional mediums, the book ‘Faeries’ had a profound influence on my illustration and painting. See their work here www.google.com.au/images?um=1&…

8. The Surrealists.
Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality." One of my favourites was Magritte and pictured is his work ‘The red model, from 1936.

9. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
Like many of us, LOTR captured my visual imagination and is my all time favourite novel. The picture is of Rivendell, the Elven outpost in Middle-earth. How I would love to live there! depts.washington.edu/ctltstaf/…

10. Enid Blyton, The Enchanted Wood and the Faraway Tree.
These books can be credited with starting my love of fantasy. I have fond memories of winning Book Week contests during my primary school days with posters of brownies, wizards and fairies. I have devoted a series of my artwork to these books ellyevans679.deviantart.com/ga…

11. Music.
Art, words and music, they all inspire each other. It was Neil Young and Rodriguez whose lyrics inspired me as a 16 year old locked in my bedroom with my guitar. Led Zeppelin always challenged me to practice and improve. Creatively, no one surpasses Pink Floyd. And once I devoted a whole art book of my digital and traditional work to the inspiring lyrics and harmonies of the Indigo Girls. It was called 'Fine Lines and Shades of Indigo'.

12. Art house film makers, Peter Greenaway and Zhang Yimou.
Film studies at university was my favourite subject and started an appreciation for art house films.

In ‘The Pillow Book’ (pictured ) www.google.com.au/images?hl=en… British director, Peter Greenaway experiments with montage film-making using the screen as a canvas for visual collaging of imagery. He tells the story of a Japanese girl, Nagiko who grows up, obsessed with books, papers, and writing on bodies. It is a sexual odyssey, where the body is book, the flesh is paper and life is art.

My other favourite film artist is 5th generation filmmaker, Zhang Yimou (Hero, Ju Dou) for his painterly sense of symmetry, color, and nature.

13. Books.
I am equally inspired by theory books as well as novels. Here are a few that have really influenced my way of thinking.
From left to right;

•Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Wonderful book that deals with the archetypal, the intuitive, the sexual and cyclical, the ages of women, a woman's way, a woman's knowing and her creative fire.

Estes is a Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller who uses multicultural myths and folk and fairy tales to help women reconnect with their instinctual selves.

The stories she calls ‘soul vitamins’ stir memories of a woman’s absolute undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghosty from neglect, buried by overdomestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore.

• The Rose and The Beast by Francesca Lia Block
Nine classic fairy tales with female heroines, set in modern, magical landscapes and retold with a gritty twist.

• Joanne Harris novels because she finds magic in the mundane!
Chocolat and the sequel The Lollipop Shoes are my favourites but I can also recommend The Evil Seed (about vampires), Sleep Pale Sister (a Gothic tale about an artist and the underworld) and Holy Fools (about religious mysticism).

• The Artists Way by Julia Cameron.
A self-help process towards ‘creative recovery’.

Readers are guided to overcome artistic blocks and get in touch with their creative flow through simple exercises such as writing ‘morning pages’, writing horror stories about people who have sabotaged your creative self-worth, establishing a hall of champions who support your creativity, taking yourself on ‘artist dates’, indulging your childlike spontaneity and having fun visualising yourself in alternate imaginary lives.

• Restoring the Goddess by Barbara G. Walker
The Goddess is a different entity to simply a female version of traditional religious attitudes. Goddess theaology arises from different psychological and cultural roots, recognizing different truths of human nature, embodying a different philosophy of life and death. Not all the claims in this book are supported but I found it a thoroughly entertaining read.

• The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales Edited by Jack Zipes.
I love fairytale theory, the history and traditions, and so wrote my ten thousand word uni arts thesis about it. It is fascinating how the symbols and colours endure with such culturally metaphorical meaning.

Thanks for reading
Elle