World war 2 ended in 1945, This was 9 years prior to the ending of rationing within the UK and using ration books for food and clothing was used until 1954.
Looking at information from the 1950’s I found that there were many aspects which differed from today’s era, for example clothing was found to have many patterns and bright colours in the 1950’s and this also leaked into the interior design whereas in today’s era it is more of a plain style type. Many different pieces of clothing had patterns entwined along with tweed plaid clothing, men’s clothing, such as suits and long skirts for women were a main focus of the 1950’s.
In this era there is a standard for the patterns used, this standard seems to be more fun and energetic which is seen in both advertising and architecture. During the 20th century people were very hands on and encouraged for the right and wrong for the typical housewife role for women through advertisements of them cleaning or planting plants and basic gardenwork which depicted what a typical 50’s woman should look like with it also looking like it was a “man’s world” with women doing all the housework, cooking and looking after the children while the male’s spend all of their time earning the money.
Below is an image I made which depicts a typical 1950’s male, alongside a jukebox from the 1950’s and wearing the appropriate attire of the decade. For the image I used watercolour as I felt this worked best for the style of illustration, although I liked these pieces I feel that I could have improved the illustration by possibly adding a woman with the man or by doing an illustration of a woman alone, however I really liked how the jukebox turned out in the end.
This concept was inspired by many different 50’s style patterns and designs. I chose a cross hatch flooring as this was popular during the 50’s along with the open planned kitchens with a breakfast bar. I also featured some typical cooking utensils such as pans cooking on the stoves and also a male and female preparing food in the kitchen
From here I Defined the concept more by redrawing it and filling it in with fineliner to add more detail:
To finish this piece, I decided I would use water colour to add a homely feel to the concept, I then also added a feel for textures by overlaying the paint using a lighter colour with more water and layering it on top:
I felt that over all this illustration worked well to create a 50’s style kitchen along side a 50’s style wallpaper in the background. Although I changed things from the concept by putting the pan in centre image rather than the chopping board and also adding the circle wallpaper behind the figures in the image allows for a more 3D and focused final result.
The colour scheme I used was chosen because it was a very popular choice in 50’s kitchens with blue being the main colour and with a support of red’s and whites. I decided to use a more of a crème colour on the wallpaper to allow for an offset from the res of the image and to allow for a more high-quality final image.
From here I began to start working on the final task piece, for this I had several ideas. To start with I decided I wanted to use a variety of medium and drawing styles within the illustration so I started by using a fineliner with then adding watercolour for colouring and pencil for shading as seen below:
After starting to work on this drawing physically I decided I wanted to attempt this as a digital illustration using photoshop. From here I started to draw different artefacts and toys from the 1950’s era:
I began by drawing the lady sat down as the brief asked, then from there I started to work on the 50’s style car and robot toys, as these were popular from the era. From here I started to add more popular toys from the 1950’s and slowly added to the image, to finish it off I decided I would label the piece as 1950’s and to add a background of a 50’s style wallpaper to add some background to for against the foreground of the image and finish it off.
I began by drawing the lady sat down as the brief asked, then from there I started to work on the 50’s style car and robot toys, as these were popular from the era. From here I started to add more popular toys from the 1950’s and slowly added them to the image, to finish it off I decided I would label the piece as 1950’s and to add a background of a 50’s style wallpaper to add some background to for against the foreground of the image and finish it off.
By gathering main artefacts of this era i have been able to identify key elements from the 1950’s and convert them into a visual image, although mainly using toys along with inatimete objects including a car from the 1950’s and a microphone as music of this era was very destinctive, the combination of style and colour to give the image a pop poster feel.
Key Steps in Illustration 