Evaluation

Evaluation

Final Major Project: Adornments

My final major project followed the theme ‘Adornments’.  I wanted to explore the different ways people choose to adorn themselves within different cultures and how we as western society draw inspiration from all different cultures in the way that we dress ourselves.

I began my project by carrying out observational drawing of found adornments. I felt my project was quickly drawn to looking at South Asian culture from drawing ethnic footwear. I gained a real interest into drawing mehndi patterns and channeled my primary research into finding similar cultural patterns.

I intended to look into the idea of material wealth as well and the importance of materialistic possessions. This I feel I only touched upon at the start of my project and did not have the opportunity to develop further.

In hindsight I feel I could have expanded on a few more different cultures before moving so strongly into one particular culture, but I know I followed my own personal interests and found out there was a lot to South Asian cultures to explore, and the connections with western culture and other cultures was vast.

I knew I wanted to somehow reflect the similarities between different cultures but also celebrate cultural diversity.  

I do feel like I have achieved several aims that I formulated in my statement of intent.  I feel I have successfully used a range of media experimentation. The project gave me the chance to undertake new image making techniques such as etching onto woodblock, photogramming and printmaking. I also feel like this project has developed my skills in portrait photography, rendering vectors in illustrator and has given me the chance to utilize my skills in Photoshop.

I really liked some of the pattern drawing I had done. Such as the mixed media collage pieces in my sketchbook that I also inverted on the scanner I felt looked visually very nice. I just felt like my project needed more to it than just patterns. I felt like I was loosing touch with my theme of adornments and only creating visual pleasing outcomes with a tenuous link to my theme.

I did research into different contemporary designers and artists that really pushed my project forward. For instance looking at BJork verspertine album cover inspired my primary research into photography and imposing my pattern drawing onto my own photos. 

I spent a lot of time rendering patterns as vectors in illustrator and I believe doing this really benefited me when it came to designing a final outcome as I found it a lot quicker after making myself familiar with the process.

Later on in my project I decided to look into masks. Inspired by the paper cut exhibition I decided to experiment with creating masks out of paper.

Looking at different ways the face could be covered/masked lead to my primary final piece idea.

I felt using photography in my project was a strength so I wanted to incorporate it in my final piece. Nina Chikrobati’s work motivated me to be a bit more adventurous with the types of illustrations I was doing over portraits. I experimented with drawing over typical women’s magazine flawless covers in an attempt to try and mock that type of culture.

I began taking my own portrait photos at home. I was really concerned that it might not work out well without a studio setting and lighting. I was pleasantly surprised with the results and really like the impact natural light had on the portraits in regards to shadows.

The first illustration over portrait experiment I carried out was done with fine-liner straight on to a printed photograph. I felt doing my final pieces this way would be quite problematic as I wouldn’t be able to adjust the size easily without distorting the photographs after. Fortunately after some consideration of other ways round it I came up with a resolution of using tracing paper to draw over the printed photographs and to then scan them in, clean them up on Photoshop and digitally impose them over the photographs. Meaning I could then adjust the colours and size as I wished.

When taking the photographs I decided to steer away from the mocking aspect in regards to magazine covers and decided to make the photographs more natural and simple. I felt this drew more attention to the illustration. I focused on making the illustrations reflect the patterns I had previously been researching and the kind of tribes body modification I looked into; merging different cultures. In an attempt to put my own personal swing on it I adorned the faces in unusual ways and blacked out the eyes to try and make them eye-catching and bizarre.

Finding the artist Hetian Patel’s work of his henna designs on the body, displayed in Nottingham Lakeside gallery, was really influential with moving my project in another direction away from just looking at portraiture. So I began creating some more final pieces using photographs of a male models back and a female models legs. I felt this broadened my exhibition adorning different parts of the body.  With my portrait pieces lacking in colour I felt it necessary to include some in these pieces. I experimented with overlaying some of my prints and this worked out really well, and I am glad I could utilize the prints I had done.

Overall I do believe my project was successful. I am very happy with the outcome of my exhibition and feel it reflects my journey well.