folly sketches, part two

through class critiques, we went from 50+ thumbnails to three concepts to move forward with. we then had to generate five half-page sized sketches for each of those three concepts, for a combined guest critique with chuck haddix, a local jazz expert. the three concepts i moved forward with were an idea about hands painted to look like piano keys (a personification of the piano object), a mashup of my playing card row, and a mashup of my magician/showmanship row.

my sketches looked a little something like this:

which puzzled mr. haddix, because they were somewhat too tangential to the idea of peter nero, a pianist, coming to play a concert. which is an absolutely, totally valid critique. the trouble i'm learning with using rhetoric as a device to come up with ideas is knowing when you've gone too far on an idea and you've lost track of the point you were trying to make in the first place.

from this, the ideas i'm moving forward into digital iterations are the painted hands with the context of the piano keys already there, meaning my intention would be more like this

than just hands representing a piano by themselves; some of my rotational imagery from the playing cards minus the overt playing card outline and numbersystem, and the piano keys turning into birds, which is the last sketch on the middle row. i'm growing increasingly fond of that one, i think, as an idea, but it'll all come down to if i can execute that illustration satisfactorily. (i hope so.)