You are not you forever

Subject Object project. First we were briefed to draw a summary of a news item everyday for a month. I liked that- for a month I knew quite well what was going on and I could remember details better because I'd drawn them. So I think I'll continue that.
I liked drawing on transparent paper during the reportage project- so now I drew on tracing paper. I thought I'd try to photocopy them all together, and it works well! I want to use this that in another project.

 Then we had to choose one story, and make a relic or poster illustrating it. My news story was Nelson Mandela's funeral. I drew in the British museum- they have so many objects that were made for the afterlife, or for catching the soul. It was fascinating.

 It was curious, this split between materials, things, objects and the very unsubstantial stuff of spirits or soul. So I chose to make an object, a memento mori necklace to touch and remember or think about what we will become. I found that to Christians memento mori seemed to show life is not so important because there is an afterlife. I don't believe in an afterlife- not in that way. My memento mori is a sort of celebration- remember you are not you forever, so live!!
So my object shows that Mandela's atoms will spread out, he will be undone. Some will go into the aloe plants (specifically the Ikhala aloe, which is the symbol of the region Mandela was born and buried in) that are growing in the garden above his burial place, then into the birds that eat the plants etc...

I used candle wax. You can also read the spread of Mandela's ideas to the world.

Dr Syn project

 This was the brief we had to work on at the same time as the reportage. Dr Syn is a book, and the story happens in the marshes on the south coast of England, in the 1800. It is the story of old pirates who, back in the rainy marsh, away from the south seas have had to turn to smuggling. The man who runs the operation is the vicar, who was also once the most violent pirate of the sea. This little village then, turns very violent when the 'police' (a 19th century version of it) appear. Many of the first drawings come from the trip we made to those marshes. I found that really interesting- being in the landscape where the story took place.

  I chose to concentrate on the character Jerk- he is a little boy who has had to toughen up and behave like a much older boy because of growing up in this village. But sometimes he becomes the little boy again- frightened and vulnerable. Jerk is fascinated by the marsh, and when he is alone, he lies down in the grass and watches it's inhabitants: tribes of mosquitoes, a great rat, dragonflies....

Though I had ideas about making him out of eggshell- a very fragile material, I finally made him out of cloth, so he became a rag doll, which can also work.
 I was also interested in the spices and materials pirates would have found in their 'travels'. Part of me really wanted to illustrate those sunny islands, those seas full of mermaids and dragons and pirates.
Instead I chose to attach those materials to Jerk- so he became some sort of medicine man like in The english patient- the man who carries all those tiny multi-coloured bottles.

I watched Kaspar Hauser, because I became interested in wild children- enfant sauvage, who are at once tougher than other humans because of the way they have grown up, and more innocent (they have grown up away from other humans, and they are children). I thought there were parallels with Jerk.

Reportage project

This was a difficult one, maybe because there were two briefs going on simultaneously. I found it difficult switching my mind off one and on to the other. But reportage illustration is a big area so I'd like to try it out again. Here, the area we were reporting on was the south-bank (London). This was December, so there was the Christmas market, but I became interested in the Thames. First there are a lot of observational drawings, and at the end idea sketches for the resulting work.This was the first time I drew on lay out paper- which is thin and almost transparent- and I really enjoyed that so I'll try it again. It allowed several drawings to be seen at the same time.

"sequence and mark-making" project

This time we were briefed to make a sequence of images, based around a household object, including ourselves and a place/location. We also had to pay careful attention to the marks we used to depict the story. My object was the sieve. Here, a girl pulls apart the wire netting of the sieve, and cuts them up into varying lengths. Smaller pieces of wire become ants that crawl along the floor and eat away the dense darkness surrounding the girl. Longer wire bits grow into trees, that break up the darkness further.I really enjoyed drawing that story. I'd drawn several others, and they were too abstract. I had a sort of idea about this sieve wanting to be alive, so I started drawing and figured it out as I went.