Drawing Upon Inspiration

• Consider what drawing means to you? We are here to question, celebrate, explore and challenge concepts of what drawing is. You are to be provided with a photographic image as your starting point. This image will provide a reference point/trigger and inspiration for when you conduct your drawing investigations. You may respond to themes suggested by the photograph, e.g. sense of time, place, history, relationships etc. but you are not limited by this and so can develop and explore/expand upon your own interests and how these relate to your given photo. 

For the start of the project, we were each individually given an old photograph, which we then had to work from. The photograph that I was given, depicted a young woman- smiling, and with her hand on her hip. Depicted behind the women, were beach huts, with other men and woman standing around, also wearing swimming costumes.

Originally, when starting the project I did want to create a some kind of animation/ story book from the photograph we were given; however, we did have very little time to complete this project, and knowing myself, I didn't want to over complicate every tiny detail. In some ways I'm glad that I didn't end up doing an animation/ story for this project- as I'm still taking my time to figure out my own style of drawing, and I don't want to rush into a big project like that, with not enough preparation. However, animation is such a fascinating medium and I would love to try it out in the future.

This decision to discontinue with the story book left me quite confused however, after visiting the V&A gallery in London; I was slightly less confused with my project. The gallery itself holds some of the most profound figurative ancient sculptures; so mesmerising and delicate in their shape. As this projects title was called 'Drawing Upon Inspiration' knew that I wanted to begin my project with what I had previously seen at the exhibition. 

For these particular drawings, I wanted to incorporate these statues sense of elegance and grace of their posture into my drawings, which I feel I have done quite successfully. However, in terms of my personal style, I wanted to incorporate a sense of quirkiness into these drawings- by slightly manipulating their faces- transforming these beautiful women into per say 'beautiful' aliens

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of these drawings. Essentially my aim for these drawings was trying to discover my own type of style of drawing - which is very important to me. I wanted to primarily focus on drawing only women, as I find there is a real sense of elegance, and beauty in a woman's figure. However,  I wanted to experiment further with making these drawings of women's figures slightly different- different in less idealised, perfected way.

I noticed that in my previous drawings, all the women had been depicted with perfect hour-glass bodies, which led me to focus on different body shapes, but also finding peace with your body. I've had trouble at times coming to tersm with my figure, which made this project wuite sepcial for me- as I wnated to project this idea of finding peace with your figure, and loving your body- no matter what shape or size you are.

For these two red compositions, I was experimenting with backgrounds in my images. I think that some of my drawings can be quite plain, which is why it was interesting to experiment with this. The image below, is quite comical- as i wanted to accentuate this woman's figure as much as I possibly could. It sort of reminded me of some of these women I see on Instagram with extremely large breasts, and abnormally big lip fillers. 

For these two images here, I was experimenting a little further with accentuating these drawings with more lines, making them slightly bolder, and more striking in their composition. For the image below, I added used watercolour to fill in this drawings body. 

Making Sculptures

 Although I had drawn all of these images, I knew that I wanted to experiment further with another medium. My boyfriend who does sculpture, suggested that I should try making some sculptures of these women. I've never really experimented with this medium so it was very interesting and enjoyable to do so.

 *****ADD SCULPTURES *****

As I had done so previously I wanted to experiment with creating different shaped bodies- making some ridiculously curvy, some very slim and some very large. I think these bodies as a series works very successfully.

 Conclusion 

From the beginning of the project, I was given an photograph of a woman- in which I enlarged this image, and drew out the outline of her figure- following this drawing, I experimented with drawing other very precise, particularly 'idealised' drawings of women, with very neatly  drawn bodies, but rather unusual facial features. Following this, I began to start making my drawings slightly more deformed, making some of their bodies slightly larger than others or more misshaped,  but also retaining these weird, unusual faces. Once I had played around with drawing different bodies, in different styles, making some more bold than others- I knew that I wanted to take my project a little further, which is when I began to use sculpture as a medium for my project. Creating around six different small sculptures of women, I experimented with making their bodies different sizes. 

Drawing Upon Inspiration: One Day Intervention

As part of the drawing upon inspiration project, that was given to us prior this week- we were given another studio day to not only work on this project, but possibly come up with some more, new techniques to collaborate with this project.

We were told that we had to enlarge the small, old fashioned image to an a4 size, and then work from it. When I arrived in class, we were each given an A3 sheet of paper, and told to just start making different patterns, or shapes from our original old fashioned image- this was quite overwhelming for me at the beginning, as I usually take my time to perfect my work however, this exercise allowed us all to think quick, and to just work from our instincts.

I began my composition by firstly drawing a woman onto the page, which I then copied twice more. Following this, I experimented using this gold paper, which you stick onto the page, and then tear off creating this unusual, faint effect. 

I then began to draw in different images into my composition, such as these unusual eyes, which I accentuated using pencil and black pen- to make them stand out slightly more. 

The composition as a whole still looked a bit plain, so I decided to draw in another figure into my drawing, and another face- but I also kept adding some more of this gold paper onto the image. 

Lastly, I used some black chalk to really define the figures at the top of the image; as it looked quite plain before doing so. 

In some ways todays session was very successful, as I experimented with different materials. I also think it was successful as I didn't really take too much of my time caring about making the image perfect, which is something that I always try to do in my work. However, I do think that I could have maybe experimented with collaborating some different materials a little more onto the composition.