'The World I Live' - Unit 10 - Evaluation

Over the holidays, I only got half of my primary research done as I started it in the last month of the holidays – I didn’t realise we had to finish ALL of the primary research over the holidays or I would have started it earlier within the first month of the holidays instead of the last...

In this project I focused on family, friends, places I have been and things that I like that represent me. I mainly looked at the things that I see or think about on a daily basis and good memories in my ‘world’, rather than the whole world and politics or countries; the whole of England etc. I chose to work with these topics as they are the most important factors in life to me and they are what came straight to mind when I was given the project title ‘The World I Live In’.

I did all of my primary research in my sketchbook. First, I created a mind map of all of my ideas and possible themes I could choose. I colour coded it to split up the different types of ideas. Then, I took photographs of my friends, family, pets, places I’ve been, my favourite things and my bedroom - with my cannon camera, printed them out and stuck them into my book. I did sketches, drawings and paintings of each person in my images and studies of my favourite objects etc.; trying to include as many different mediums as I could (graphite pencil, biro pen, fineliner pen, coloured pencil, charcoal pencil, watercolour paint, acrylic paint, mono printing ink, lino prints– I mixed some of these together on some drawings for a different creative style and more variety e.g. on a drawing of the Victoria garden from Wentworth castle, I drew the outline and some of the shading in biro pen, then I added watercolour paints to it for a wash of light colours and a little extra water to blend the ink out somewhat). I also used a variety of different techniques throughout my book (rough sketching, crosshatching, blending, pointillism, collage backgrounds, Photoshop/image editing on computer/phone, mono printing & lino printing). These are mediums and techniques that I am familiar with and have used a lot in the past that have been very successful and had a good outcome. I critically analysed each page as I finished them, explaining the techniques, mediums and reasons for them etc.

I created 4 mood boards for my secondary research. I got images of places I love or have been, music I listen to, my favourite singers, actors & movies, places that are around me and that I see or go to often, a map of USA (where I am from) and a map of England (where I live) and I also got images of items and things I like: food, makeup, social media etc. I got all these images from websites like Pinterest, tumblr, instagram.

I did not draw any of my secondary research because I already knew that my final piece was going to be created from my primary research – I also didn’t have enough time to draw any of my secondary images but I completed my sketchbook and drew all of the primary drawings that I had planned to do.

However, I did research ‘Mark Hearld’ because he does Lino printing of animals and his style links to my work so I made a carving out of a piece of Lino to make some Lino prints of my dog – I used black ink because she is black and white it gave the best effect and portrayed her well) I printed onto white paper and brown paper.

I developed my ideas on 2 x A3 design sheets. I did 6 designs altogether. 3 of the designs were in the style of Andy Warhol and the other 3 were inspired by Vincent Van Gough (these are two of the artists I researched for my critical studies A2 sheets). I focused on the most important things in my life, latest events and things that have been a big part of my life/ the world I live in: Wentworth castle – where I lived for 6 years (the bench I sat on a lot, and an image I took of the back of Wentworth castle), my new cat ‘Binx’, my dog ‘Penny’ who I’ve had a long time and my first friend that I met in England 12 years ago who is still my best friend.

I chose to paint my cat Binx using acrylic paint for my final piece on an A3 size wooden board. First I did 4 smaller samples on A5 boards to test different possible mediums and techniques I might have used.

I chose to paint my cat in acrylic paints on board – I chose to paint onto board because it was already a smooth base which made it easy and gives the painting a sharp looking finish. I used Van Gough’s style of swirls in the background from his painting ‘Starry Night’ but I changed the colour from his style to mine (his painting was blue and purple, I used yellow and oranges) because I used yellow on my design sheet so I stuck with some of my original ideas to show development. I painted Binx (my cat) himself in the style of Andy Warhol – Pop Art. I did this style by doing him in more block shapes instead of great realistic detail without too many tones and lines – this gave that pop-art effect. I used colours similar to the one in my original idea and I used dark colours as Binx is originally black and brown but Andy Warhol uses colours similar to the realistic ones but not exact so I tried to interpret this style in my painting.

The only real problem I had was priming the board with emulsion because the board had some glue around the edges which was hard to remove and it started to come off when I was painting. To solve this problem – after I put one layer of emulsion on, I left it to dry, then it was okay to put another coat on and it was solid.

I ran out of time at this point so I did not finish my painting on time as it took so long to prime the board which wasted some hours.

If I had more time I might have also done a bigger scale painting instead of just A3 size and on a canvas instead. I may also do some collages in my sketchbook instead of just for background – I really love the outcome of collages but they are very time consuming which is why I don’t tend to do them often in my work.

I did try to use my blog as much as possible and included images and analysis of most of my sketchbook work and imagery. However, if I had more time I would have written a lot more on my blog and set it out in an even more organised way and separate things more.

I am satisfied with my project outcome in the amount of time I had as I have tried the best that I could for this project – however I could have managed my time better in the beginning which may have led to a better outcome.

I can handle the amount of work needed if I started the project as early as I can and do as much work as I can every day and outside of college whenever I have time – and I do try my best to manage my time.