CORE Final Piece Evaluation + Overview

The story I chose to illustrate was Mary Kingsley's encounter with a leopard, she came upon the big cat in the midst of a tornado. I was drawn to this particular passage because of the detailed description and heightened drama. I chose to do a large A0 piece using collage. I wanted to convey the kind of 'ordered chaos' Kingsley describes. 

Research

My initial core research took me to Kew Gardens, The British Museum, Natural History Museum, and the Horniman Museum. I also drew the riverside in Kingston-upon-Thames. These initial drawings were really very useful for the project, I think I underestimated how useful an image bank could be. Some of the research I ended up not using, particularly the drawings of animals. My plant research at Kew Gardens was probably the most useful for me. 

This initial research sparked my interest into the peoples met by Mary Kingsley, particularly the Fang peoples. I learnt about how important pottery is in West African societies, traditionally speaking it's a female craft - strongly associated with spirituality, midwifery, and 'big' ideas like time, death, and birth. I knew that I wanted to reference this research in my final piece. Some of my visual references included artists such as Matisse, Laura Carlin, and Sarah Burwash. 

Workshop

The book making workshop was so fun! In particular what I took from this workshop was: tracing paper, painted collage paper, and the story I wanted to use. I think it helped me to condense my image bank to the bits that were most impactful/useful/good. 

Feedback

The feedback I got from the crit day was really useful, I have the original notes in my sketchbook but here are bits from our discussion:

• Wanted to convey order + chaos
• Like how I layered the tracing paper
• Can immediately tell that it's wind moving from the white strips of paper and the shape of the leaves
• The leopard is very inconspicuous as well as Mary - they're hidden, in contrast to the huge powerful storm. 
• They liked the contrast and composition and the different shapes of plants, converying the chaos of the jungle
• Like how I made one side still and one side violent.
• Could the pot be a darker colour? 
• Could the pots position be improved by shifting it to the left? 
• Mary might want to be in a different position too.
• Love Mary's character design! Her long neck shows a curious personality. 

It was good seeing other people's take on the same book as well, really interesting how diverse the results could be. 

Overall...

I really like elements of this piece. There are areas I want to improve are the 'storminess' of the pot/tornado area of the piece. I think I needed to experiment further with the tracing paper, I didn't really use it as much as I could have. It would have been a good way to make mistakes without 'ruining' the piece. 

Overall I've loved working with collage on this scale, I like working on large pieces and this was particularly challenging with the amount of detail and the composition involved. The colours are yummy and definitely give a jungle feel, but slightly cute and story book-like.

The Pot

This is a little (ha.) extra project I'm doing. The history of ceramics in West Africa was really fascinating, I really wanted to make something referencing the things I learnt. Plus I get to challenge myself, I've never made a coil pot this big! It's going to be interesting. When I am decorating it I'm hoping to use stencils to get the same 'cut-out' effect as the collage.