Drawing Upon Inspiration

 

 

Inspiration comes from all around us, even a photo from the 30’s.

This project started out, for me, by staring blankly at a photo of a woman awkwardly standing whilst everyone else happily ate their dinner. “What am I supposed to do with that?” I thought, as tears rolled down my cheeks as I pondered the very point of my art degree. I got stuck just by looking at the photo.

I started doing some small sketches, but still no luck. Nothing felt right, nothing felt genuine, I was just sketching faces and hoping for the best.

Then on a cool Friday morn, we had a guest artist that came in. I told her how I was struggling and didn’t know what to do, and she told me that the art that comes out of the project doesn’t have to be literal.  “What’s her story?” “She could be a spy, don’t write that down though, that’s my idea”

With this new sense of enthusiasm for the project I got to work straight away. Her story was that she was leaving this party, why? Because she felt awkward, in the way and so on.

But she doesn’t want to leave, why should she? Her inner voice is telling everyone to fuck off, and just cut the bullshit. Something I feel a lot.

 

With this idea in mind, the second piece I did explored this idea, but instead displayed all the possible emotions that she could be going through instead of just anger. Confusion, sadness, pretending not to care, screaming at how unfair situations are that you can’t control because that’s just the way it is.

 

 

After finishing the bigger piece above, I had a chat with one of my tutors, who suggested it would be interesting to do the same idea on a smaller scale, in this case A4, which would be more restricting composition wise.

 

This the process of how the A4 piece took shape, I tried to emulate the bigger image, but I had to think more about where I wanted things to go.  I also wanted to change mediums, partially due to how small it was but more just to experiment a bit more. I think what came out was a minimalist version of the bigger piece.

 

I think this project was interesting. The project was structured in a way that meant I could focus on themes that I wanted to do, that I think are important, and I wasn’t limited creatively.