Shakespeare's thumbnails: Artistic experimentation

[keyan_bowes]

Some months ago, a Facebook link led me to this site, which had extremely elegant minimalist posters for childrens' stories. To give you an examples, I'm going to steal one off their site to show here (it's at the end of this post); but do go and check them all out. They're clever and amazing.

So, inspired by these, I thought I'd try to do some thumbnails for Shakespearean plays. I'm no artist, but I like to fool around with Paint. So I decided to see what I could come up with using these parameters:

A simple dramatic image...
 ... that is instantly comprehensible by someone who knows the story...
 ... but doesn't try to tell the whole story...
 ...using only Paint and Microsoft Office Picture Manager...
 ...in a rough square of 400 pixels.

So I started with Macbeth and Merchant of Venice and Hamlet.

What I discovered:
(1) I'm not nearly as creative or daring as SquareInchDesign
(2) A new time-sink
(3) It's fun!

It's also difficult to resist the temptation to draw a picture, to add elements. I think I should go back and study the inspiration posters again.

Like this one below from SquareInchDesign! (I particularly love this one.)