Research Development

[Pages from sketchbook]

At first I was quite stuck on how to develop my research and images. I decided to look at everything abstractly and see it for shape, form or texture. My aim for the day was to move away from initial research into more developmental work that I could experiment with. I felt I definitely achieved this, taking shapes I saw within each image I created paint 'lumps' and emphasised the curves and bumps in them with simple line drawing over the top. This plan to develop worked pretty well, the 'shapes' I was drawing I then cut out into paper and sewed together. With these I played around on the stand.

Stand work helped me move my work from research to response to development, when going through my work so far with a few different tutors they noticed that my responses to research stopped abruptly before I moved onto the next part of research. With the stand work I have aimed to push my response further and keep developing, hopefully to create more work and ideas to move on with. This has also helped me pick and choose which parts of research have been relevant and which to leave behind. When going back through my images I noticed these two images that I took in the Tate 'Time - Conflict- Exhibition [see below]

[Survivors from Hiroshima and the Holocaust]

I felt both images related well to my concept of being wanted, both women have lived through horrific times but what stood out to me as a representation of this 'living' was their skin. Skin is one of the few human features that shows absolutely everything that happens to it; scars, wrinkles, marks and bruises. Each perceived as 'ugly' or 'undesirable' but to me I think someones skin shows a lot about what their life was like. So in personal response I set about creating textures and samples through different fabrics and media. The 'scrunched' media worked best in the form of the burnt or distressed skin and something I will continue to test onto fabric with thread and pva.