kti-firstyearprojects-blog

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My Evaluation - Experiment Images to Come!

The most recent project presented to me through my University course was quite a controversial one, as young adult illustration students we were challenged to investigate eveasdropping and create a book containing our findings. As a late teenage girl I could only recall the days of a rumour being passed around a Secondary school from child to child like it was news that the world was ending, developing and becoming more dramatic with each whisper being overheard. However, I was also aware that we started the project that a lot of people would probably all jump to the same conclusions when presented with the topic ‘Eavesdropping’, so I wanted to try and find a more abstract or unpopular view towards it.

The purpose of us producing a book to document this not only served purpose to prepare us for potential Illustrator jobs in our future careers by getting us to produce art for a publication, but also will all combine together to create a Travelling Library. I particularly liked this factor of the brief as it enables young artists like myself to try finding new skills such as book binding, prepares us for jobs and also provides an easy and effective way for our artwork to be seen more publicly. Therefore getting our name out there and hopefully helping our careers in the future.

However, because these publications are to be presented in a travelling Library I have to consider wether my art will be appropriate for the right audience. Technically a travelling library will be available to all members of the public including children so therefore should be entirely child friendly, however this isn’t how most travelling Libraries work as the are normally constantly manned so a customer can be guided towards what is most suitable for them, enabling artists like myself to create more sophisticated or less PG books. Although I do want to make sure that if a child should pick up my book they won’t see anything outrageously inappropriate, as even if the stall is constantly manned I wouldn't want there to be a possibility that something like that could happen and so will create a less child orientated book but still one that does not contain swearing or nudity/gore to the extremes where if a child were to pick up my book it would be inappropriate.

To begin my research I started to investigate what the original, traditional if you will, meaning of the term ‘Eavesdropping’ is. Which of course is that a person would stand under the ‘eaves’ of a house or building and be close enough to hear what was happening inside the establishment but also be at danger of having water dropped on them off of the Eaves. Although this is very interesting I felt as though this is quite an outdated meaning, so rather than carrying on investigating this I started to look at what types of people would do eavesdropping in more current times. This of course lead me to investigate things like Facebook conversations which can easily be read whilst someones phone is locked, overheard phone conversations and open mail lying around, and how these things can be seen as eavesdropping too.

I eventually decided to utilise my time at University and surroundings to create a book about what I have learned in my time here. Although this may not seem to directly link to Eavesdropping I feel as though it is appropriate ad the entire book is made up of visual interpretations or sketches from the scene where quotes and observations about University life were made. Therefore creating an interesting situation where it appears almost as if the reader is Eavesdropping on my University life, in order to prepare them for their own. In a way I suppose my book does appear as a kind of self help or self preparation book, however I personally look at it more of a moment of my time here and a way to pass on knowledge I have gained during my time at Uni.

Before deciding upon this final idea however I did have multiple prior which I also wanted to pursue, however as always I had to little these ideas down to one final outcome, I did this by experimenting with different art pieces and constantly thinking how I could relate what I was doing to the Brief, and therefore how I could make it into a book, for this reason I have several half started projects which I would like to  go back to in the future and revisit but which were not appropriate for this Brief. One of these experiments I created was doing quick sketches, visual representations of song lyrics in the space of time which the song lasted. This  meant that I had to really pay attention to the lyrics and what I was hearing but also keep relatively fast paced with my sketches which I think could be very beneficial in developing my drawing skills. It is also interesting how different two drawings can be when the song from which they are based are at drastically varying paces, as this naturally effects the pace at which one draws making fast paced song sketches seem more aggressive and erratic whereas slow songs more graceful and natural. This is what intrigued me about this experiment and I want to further investigate more.

Something I did gain from these experiments however was an observation on how different paints can create a different atmosphere on a painting. For example what I specifically found I liked from these experiments was my use of watercolours as I feel as though it added to a sense of recollection and memory about the pictures, which is why I decided to use watercolours in my book.

I also investigated different font styles, however I quite quickly decided I wanted a handwriting look so that my book would look like a student notebook to further addd to the Uni feel of my publication. Hopefully all of these factors combined have created a clear and enjoyable book for any person of any age to read if they want an insight into my world at Uni.

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Her World

I think one of the most important factors to this project is that since I am focusing on such a real world, one of another human another human who was very close to my heart, and such a serious topic, of mentality and physical awareness I have decided that I don’t want to draw my final outcome. This is because I want this to be a serious depiction, that is true to life. Because of this I have considered elements of my Nannas life in order to make this outcome as true as possible and decided that since my Pappa was a skilled and passionate photographer I would use old photos of my Nanna and Pappa and family to depict the world my Nanna saw when she was not entirely in the world she was physically situated in. I then took inspiration from So-Me by using colourful text to boldly make the statements I wanted. I will do this by purchasing a scrapbook which I personally believe my Nanna would of liked the appearance of, organising some of the old photographs within the first pages and filling the empty space on the pages surrounding with the statements explaining the physical situations my Nanna was in and the contrasting world she believed she was in. I will likely use a different colour to emphasise the difference between the two worlds as I want to make my point bold and clear much like So-Me does in his work below.

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Living in the Past

I have found this project quite difficult to complete many because of the unfortunate timing and situations currently occuring in my life, but mainly because I am attempting to depict an entire world, a world which in reality I can never completely understand. Especially since I don't believe anyone can truly entirely understand another persons world simply because it is not their world, and their opinion on it even if you did know every detail of a persons world, would be different even if it is only slightly to their own. However I have tried my hardest to do so anyway, and therefore sketched the two images below. The first image features a crudely drawn sketch of my Pappa in the foreground with a imagined version of him when he was younger in attempt to depict how my Nanna saw him.

The below image I have posted before by editing a previous post as I utilised my knowledge of how portraiture can depict emotion and personality to create the atmosphere of the sketch of concern and slight sadness. However, this image is also depicting a concerned family member at the end of the hospital bed and the innocent looking invisionment of her as a child, which is how I imagined my Nanna remembered my aunts uncle and mother as children.

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Seeing a World That Isn’t There

As previously mentioned I now have gone on to investigate mentality in relation to a persons individual world. However not entirely in the way I thought I would. Once again life threw me and my family a curveball and I have chosen to utilise it to inspire me. My Nanna has started to get slightly confused in some situations, she can still have a conversation and still is the wonderful lady we all love, but she occasionally gets quite distressed as she believes something that isn't actually physically happening. An example of this is that she was lying in her hospital bed talking to my Auntie Pamela and then all of a sudden shot up and said that she had to get up, despite knowing she was supposed to be bed bound, to go and collect my Auntie Pamela  a fully grown woman with children of her own from Brownies. In all honesty it’s  quite distressing seeing my Nanna worry and have these delusions as it feels almost like you're losing someone to their own past or mind, however it unfortunately in this circumstance is something we could all relate to as we were also watching her own body slowly give up on her as her cancer got worse. These turn of events once again though inspired me, as well as various examples after this that have happened as it was something which in reality was something none of our family were really prepared for or had considered may happen, making me realise that my want to depict how another persons world is different is important, and that as sad as it was what my Nanna was going through was inspiring me to help other people in the world understand. Making this overall experience although it was extremely saddening and of course I wish did not have to happen, something which I want to thank my Nanna for. She always helped me see what was the right direction in life, and even in her suffering she has helped me once again. Unfortunately my beloved Nanna passed away a day before New Years Eve, may she rest in peace. However now I am even more motivated to show people what I learned and how someone can physically be in the same world as you but mentally can be in a completely different world. 

However this was all extremely raw for me and my family so I did not want to focus all my work upon my family at this time so I took a step back and instead focused on Psychotic episodes and how different a person who suffers from such horrors world must be. I aimed to do this by contrasting the positive portraiture of a character and stance to contrast against a negative and frightening vision. Below are the images I sketched with this in consideration.

Above I used the smokey effect over the creepy figure to emphasise that this creature was not actually stood there and was in fact a vision from whoever is conversing with this young lady featured in the foreground.

This image is my favourite of the two, however I wish I had more time so that i could recreate this digitally and make the effect even clearer as I don’t feel that it is as clear and also effective as it could be because it is sketched. The image shows two pages of a4 paper layered on top of each other with the top layer being a portrait of an attractive young woman, contrasted against the below image shown through the ripped parts of the top sheet which shows a zombie skeletal version of the same girl. I think this image is effective both visually and theoretically as I feel as though it also makes the statement that people who suffer with mental illness can have the most beautiful or best situation/person in their life and still their own mind scares them and makes it negative for them. I hope that one day I do digitally recreate this image as I think it could be very powerful however I think I have decided that I want to focus this project upon depicting the world of someone where I can understand as much as possible about it, my Nanna’s. Therefore from now on I will focus on and refer to my outcome as ‘Her World’.

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Seeing The World Differently

After investigating physical ailments which can literally effect how someone sees the world they are in I also went on to investigate how personalities change how we see the world we are in. An example of this is why is it that one person, like myself thinks of home as a place surrounded  by people you love, and open fire, dinners together and music and yet to another person it could be completely the opposite. Why is it I like Abe’s Odyssey and some people would rather play football, or why my dearest friend would choose Die Hard any day and yet his sister would rather say Bridget Jones Diary? This topic is something that has always intrigued me; what makes me, me and you, you? It also seems appropriate to consider alongside this project however I think I might focus more on what physically makes peoples worlds different to each other similar to how I did with my last post studying vision, rather than what makes peoples personalities different. After all I am trying to create another world not another defined stereotype. I therefore think I might investigate delusions next, as psychology is also another one of my passions.

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How We See Our World

One of the main things I have realised whilst considering what makes each individual persons world different is that the majority of differences simply is the way we see our world, our own perspectives and opinions as well as th literal physical ways we see our world. With our eyes. I therefore followed this thinking and considered how visual impairments can change how we see the world and created the below sketches:

The above sketch was merely to demonstrate the different types of glasses I could draw to highlight the visually impaired element of my drawings. Whereas the sketches below show how I used these various different frames and glasses to show how much visual aids such as glasses can change the world around us. I attempted to achieve this by faintly sketching a blurred background scene such as a love letter ( top) a persons knees covered by ripped jeans sat in a chair ( middle) and a ladybird on a distanced wall ( bottom).

I particularly like the last sketch due to the compositional lines drawing the viewers eyes in to the image however I did feel as though because it features a magnifying glass and not glasses this seemed to send more of a message about emphasisin our ability to already see instead of depicting how we should consider the differences in other peoples worlds. Which was what I was aiming to portray in the first two sketches. I really like this idea of investigating how other peoples worlds are different however I think I might look at other ways in which there could be difference and possibly find a topic which could use awareness being raised as I feel this project could be extremely influential as it will force the viewer to consider other people by looking at my art.

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A Personal Matter...

After the previously mentioned flood of inspiration at the start of my Christmas holiday swiftly followed by the shooting down of all the possible outcomes I had discovered my work had been put on hold as our family suffered some troubles. 

I debated wether or not to include this upon my blog as I believe that as an artist my life plays a large part of what I want to portray and aim to do with ym art, but also did not want to be insensitive to the personal matters my family were experiencing. However, in this circumstance this recent turn of events is largely inspiring me and my current project therefore I have decided to share my late experiences with the world.

A few months ago my Nanna (my grandmother, Betty Stansbury) was taken ill and spent a substantial amount of time in hospital, various tests and investigations later my family and herself were informed that she had Ovarian Cancer. I personal come from quite a large family so emotional support was always around but this was something that was obviously very hard hitting for my family and I especially as my cousin sadly died of Ovarian Cancer about two years ago. Obviously it would be almost impossible for me to say any of these events in a way in which you as a reader can understand what it puts you through, and how it effected our family and I certainly hope that you have not personally suffered from or watched someone suffer with Cancer. However it inevitably did effect me and everyone who was close to my Nanna but my Nanna always has been a tough cookie so we tried to stay positive and help out all we could, which did that Christmas this year wasn't quite as traditional as usual as we all tried our hardest to make my Nanna’s everyday life as comfortable as possible despite the pain she was in as well as also all grieving from the recent passing of her husband, my Pappa (Grandfather, Guy Norman Stansbury) but we all didn't mind a less conventional Christmas because we all would do anything for such a lovely character as my Nanna.

Anyway, getting back more to how this effects my project and why I am telling you all of this is that I wanted to show the real journey that my thoughts went on with this project which was full of possibilities, and these events have made a major impact on that journey especially as I pondered and discussed my project holding my Nanna’s hand as she slept in the hospital bed and realised that I have spent so much time grasping at ideas of what I can do to change elements of our world to create a new one to depict in my final outcome and in doing so have completely missed what was right infant of my face, that as individuals we are surrounded by other worlds. The worlds of the other individuals around us, worlds which physical may be right next to ours and yet are completely different to ours simply because they are not ours. This is what I wish to investigate in this project and aim to consider more over the next few posts, mainly by looking at what makes us and our individual worlds different from each other.

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Overwhelmed with the  Possibilities

As I mentioned at the end of my last post I had hoped to gain inspiration from other peoples imagination over the festive season, however I did not expect to get so many suggestions as I did, some of which were amazing, some very intriguing and some just plain weird. I tried my best to focus on a few of them and so did some sketches for two of my family members ideas and one of mine which I have shown and described below:

The above page shows the quick sketches I completed of my cousins suggestions of another World, the top sketch showing ‘What if we could see sound?’ shown by the visible sound waves as the pin drops and hits the table. With the second sketch below depicting my cousins dog surrounded by smells aiming to demonstrate ‘What if we could see smells?’ However after quickly sketching these theories I realised that both sound and smell pretty much surrounds us wherever we are, therefore it would be very difficult to actually see anything if we could see sound and smells. Therefore once again meaning I had another couple of ideas which I was really intrigued by but could not follow through to create my world. The below image shows my preliminary sketch of my own idea which was ‘What if the rain that fell was actually paint?’

I really liked this world, so decided to take my sketch and digitally recreate it to create the below finished Illustration of what I think it might look like if one day it rained paint.

However, once again upon further research this idea results in being impractical and actually would be quite disastrous to our current way of life as humans as the lack of drinkable water would not only create a huge world wide drought despite rainfall but would also likely kill crops and livestock as well as most of the bird population as the oils in the paints effect their feathers resulting in depressing circumstances like ducks not being able to swim and owls falling from nests. Therefore despite the attractive qualities in the way I depicted paint rainfall above I felt that the realistic visualisation of what would happen in this circumstance was not one I wanted to investigate any further.

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Dinosaurs Destroyed

Upon further research of what would  happen if Dinosaurs lived on this earth with us I have had the saddening realisation that it is not realistic at all, and infact it is more than likely that if the Dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out our world would nt of developed to be as it is today anyway and actually would probably result in mammals including humans like us would of stayed at the smaller size that early mammals were whilst amongst the dinosaurs, for safety and mobility. 

The above sketch depicts my quick thoughts about what it would be like to have human civilisations as tiny mammals amongst Dinosaurs before I considered ways other than the meteor not striking earth which could result in our society and world staying the same other than there being dinosaurs. A train of thought which drew me to the film Jurassic Park, as an element of this film does provide us with a viable way of having both todays modern civilisation and dinosaurs together. I depicted the extraction on DNA from a bloodsucking insect preserved in Amber in a quick sketch shown below:

However, once again my want to be able to depict dinosaurs roaming beside current day civilisation was shutdown as I realised that the likelyhood of the DNA inside said insect being usable to clone and grow a dinosaur despite it being stored in amber and mixed with whatever other creatures blood the insect had feasted upon as well as the chemicals of the digestive system. Which is why I highlighted the damaged helix in the bottom half of the image. This therefore meant that my Dinosaur World idea was well and truly destroyed as a possibility for my outcome this project. However I couldn't resist one last sketch of dinosaurs so I depicted what I imagined the dinosaurs might come out like if someone did attempt to create them from this damaged DNA.

Thankfully the christmas break is soon, so I am hoping that I can gain inspiration on other ‘what if’ worlds from my friends and family which I will visit over the holidays.

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What if ...

The next step in my journey to ‘Create Another World’ involved me asking a lot of questions. After discovering my fascination with dystopian novels having the ability to take an element of our world and twisting and emphasising it to create a completely new world which is both very different yet still understandable to us here on this earth I decided to attempting to think of various ‘What if..?’ questions so that I can take our normal world and change an isolated element of it to create a new version of our world. It was at this point my mind turned to the inner child in me and did what most people would think which was ‘what if I could have a pet Dinosaur? ‘. This then lead to a flood of consideration full of questions like ‘What if Dinosaurs walked around cities?’, ‘Would we live completely separately?’, ‘Would some dinosaurs of been utilised to benefit us?’, ‘Could I have a pet Dino?’ ‘How accurate would the flinstones of been?’.. these questions flooded into my mind as I became more and more fascinated with the topic of dinosaurs and as a consequence I completed various sketches quickly completed to show what I was thinking at the time. I ahve featured these sketches below and also accompanied them with the theories and questions I was attempting to depict underneath:

‘What if the meteor never struck?’

‘How would the Dinosaurs react to the meteor missing Earth?’

‘Could we have Dinosaurs as pets? What would a Pet Shop look like? Would we of bred miniature Dinosaurs like we have done teacup pigs in our current world? What would a tiny Pterodactyl look like?’

‘If we did have Dinosaurs as pets, would we treat them like dogs? Imagine a tiny Dino tied up outside the corner shop!’

I have really enjoyed creating these sketches and fantasising about the endless possibilities however I do think if I am going to follow this idea I will carry out more research on the realistic consequences of Dinosaurs patrolling modern earth because as enjoyable as these comical sketches are I think that I want to utilise this opportunity to show my audience another world I should use it to make people think of possibilities and things they had not really considered before.

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Dystopias

Through studying Margaret Atwoods dystopian worlds I have noticed that the worlds I admire and am inspired by the most, are dystopias. This then lead me to think that it is not actually the specific stories and worlds I have been looking at but rather the dystopian nature. A dystopian novel is one which isolates a certain factor or part of current life as we know it and distorts it, emphasising it to drastic proportions to create a world which is supposedly the worst extent, that is different to ours, yet still mildly relatable too. Obviously in the books I have previously mentioned this has been done to scare the viewer with the dystopian world whilst still having some elements of reality so they see it as believable, however I think this could potentially also be done to merely investigate the wonders of ones imagination rather than purely to show a dystopian world. I therefore want to investigate creating my own worlds by isolating part of an already existent world and distorting it or emphasising it.

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Margaret Atwood’s World of the Handmaids

Another texts of Margaret Atwoods writing is called ‘The Handmaids Tale’. This book features another dystopian world just as the last book I spoke about, Oryx and Crake and the Maddaddam trilogy, did. However the world featured here focuses more on if religion took over in America, whereas the last talked of scientific experiments. This book takes the extremes of a totalitarian christian government and the exaggerated effect it could take on the world and peoples lives to the point where various women, like the main character, are labelled as ‘Handmaids’ dressed in the same way, made to act in the same way and also used as surrogates to the rich married couples of the society. The book therefore depicts some quite graphic sexual scenes which show the discomfort in the characters lives due to this regime, however this is not entirely wha tI want to depict. I would rather focus on how the Handmaids, although previously would all be seen as different are now labelled and treated the same and therefore stripping each person of their identity. 

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Margaret Atwood’s World of the Crakers

One of my favourite dystopian novel series is Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam collection. Dystopian Novels show worlds which have been created by somebody as a distorted future, usually of the world the author currently lives in. For example the Maddaddam series shows Atwood's exaggerated version of what would happen if science took over against religion, resulting in strange occurrences and genetically manipulated creatures. It is these creatures which I wish to focus on in my depiction of Atwood's world. Although I am mainly focusing on the creatures created in this world I do also want to emphasise the quality of this book as it is one of my all-time favourites and is expertly written, and features an enthralling story containing much more than the obscure creatures which I shall try to portray. However I think that the way in which Atwood has combined elements of animals makes her creatures easy to imagine, and in my case draw. Shown below are some other artist interpretations of the creatures Atwood depicts in her novels. I’ve written underneath each depiction a small description of what the creature featurd is in the novels.

Above is an image containing 3 different creatures from the novels, one of which appears to be a regular scavenger bird which can be found in our normal world, the next being something Atwood named a ‘Liobam’, a sheep and lion cross animal created to stop the predatation of sheep by lions through combining the two’s genetics, and the last animal a glowing rabbit. The purpose of the glowing creatures in the novels is never really in depthly expressed other than their creation being purely amusement based.

This image depicts the main character (Jimmy) in a hazmat suit along with his father and fathers coworkers in a science lab, from when he was a child. The Pig-like creatures are refered to in the book as ‘Pigoons’ although it is later clarified that their actual names are ‘sus multiorganifier’ as the purpose of their creation was to splice Pig and Human DNA together so that a singular Pigoon could grow and have harvested from it multiple transplatable organs. 

Finally this image shows an artists vision of what a creature named a ‘Snat’ in the books would look like. As a snake cross rat animal the name seems fitting even if not very creative. The snats are another creature similar to the glowing rabbits which didn't seem to have a beneficial purpose to being created, and rather appear as more of a possible freak accident that is now a common vermin problem in Jimmies world similar to how regular rats are with us in current times.

I now want to try and recreate my vision of what some of these and other creatures from the books may look like as it will both aid my drawing skills and also help me understand how Atwood created this world, hopefully making it easier for me to eventually create my own world for the end of this project.

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Another World

The first brief given to me as an Illustration student was to create Another World. I particularly like this brief as it enables a variety of outcomes to be created, not only meaning I am free to create whatever I want to but also making this brief appropriate for practising becoming an illustrator as I can use films and books along with other artistic creations as inspiration, similar to how I may be requested by an author or musician to create artwork inspired by their work professionally. However, I also think thats its important to notice how the brief states we should make Another World, as even though it does say that we can use books as inspiration I feel that this brief will be more beneficial to me if I create the entire thing myself as this will help my original drawings. Ofcourse I will still start by looking for inspiration despite this though, which is where I want to start this Blog. Therefore the next posts on this blog will be investigating the worlds other people have created, which already exist and my own ideas following.