Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow African Barbershop Sign: Grid of equal frames with every face drawn at the same angle
- Type
- Set in African Barbershop Sign's manner (Number each cut and paint only the shop name large by hand), and let Ghanaian Movie Poster's lettering (Titles sized letter by letter, lifted off the surface with outline and shadow) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in African Barbershop Sign's material (Enamel on plywood, few colors, black outlines holding it together); bring in exactly one thing from Ghanaian Movie Poster (Enamel laid thick on sewn sacking, creases and seams left showing).
- Colour
- Build on #f3f2e8, #58a488, #191511 and admit one accent from #e3d5b6, #b31b17, #1b1512.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- African Barbershop Sign Individualizing the faces as portraits breaks the catalogue function, and customers can no longer use the board to order.
- Ghanaian Movie Poster Borrowing the exaggeration for laughs alone erases the exhibition need that produced it, and the picture ends up mocking somebody else's living.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from African Barbershop Sign (style, 1950s–) and their accent from Ghanaian Movie Poster (style, 1980s–2000s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing African Barbershop Sign exists for: showing the choices in pictures for customers who cannot read the text, or shopfront signage hand painted to survive sun and rain. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from African Barbershop Sign - Grids of haircut samples - Flat repeated faces - Numbers and hand lettering - Enamel on plywood Composition: Grid of equal frames with every face drawn at the same angle. Type and lettering: Number each cut and paint only the shop name large by hand. ## Accent comes from Ghanaian Movie Poster, used sparingly - Flour-sack canvas - Exaggerated violence and muscle - Free departure from the actual film - Hand-painted title lettering Let one material quality come from it: Enamel laid thick on sewn sacking, creases and seams left showing. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #f3f2e8, carry the structure in #58a488 and #191511, and let a single accent come from #b31b17. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: intimacy, play, trust, rebellion, exhilaration. ## What goes wrong - African Barbershop Sign: Individualizing the faces as portraits breaks the catalogue function, and customers can no longer use the board to order. - Ghanaian Movie Poster: Borrowing the exaggeration for laughs alone erases the exhibition need that produced it, and the picture ends up mocking somebody else's living. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- African Barbershop Sign 1950s– / Style / Signage and Display
The hand-painted signboards of West African barbershops: numbered haircut samples in a grid, flat repeated faces sitting between product catalogue and portraiture.
- Ghanaian Movie Poster 1980s–2000s / Style / Regional Graphics
Ghana's hand-painted movie posters on flour-sack canvas, made for mobile cinema: unconstrained imagination reinterpreting Hollywood with exaggeration and local horror into a painting style like no other.
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