Part One 

For my worlds collide project I was chosen to be in Group B- and from the list of subjects, I decided to go with Ritual and Human  Superstition. I did a basic thought dump and ended up forming a lot of my ideas around Witches, one of my own personal interests.

I looked for information from my copy of Cunningham, Scott. Wicca, a guide for the solitary practitioner, 1st ed. Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2019. Print. As well as using my knowledge of sterotypical ‘witchcraft’.

 

I then took a temporary break from research just to draw out a digital sketch of a ‘modern day witch’ (thanks to the Halloween vibes at the time and some inspiration scrolls through Pinterest) I typically use the program Pixelmator for my digital drawings, along with my Wacom tablet. 

 

I then decided to look more into some more traditional pieces of art work revolved around magic and Witchcraft, such as some of the pieces done by Albrecht Durer, Hans Balding and Francisco Goya. Goya, Francisco. Witches Sabbath. 1798, Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid.  

I produced various sketches around the traditional witch, thinking about how they were originally portrayed: ugly, old, misshapen hags running around wearing just grey rags, vs how they are now shown within modern artwork- young, beautiful, close to nature and well meaning. I felt that I almost missed the gross naked witches from back in the day- why is it that now media just shows supernatural beings as romanticised beautiful creatures? Even Vampires and Werewolves cannot run from medias forced beauty standards.

And after a while, some of the old medieval woodcuts used to depict a witch, as I thought that would fit in well with the later process of creating a stencil (blocky drawing style, minimal colours) 
Image taken from W.P, Editor. The History of Wizards and Witches. London, T.Norris, 1720

I started working on black ink sketches, and found myself getting distracted from the original ‘Witch’ idea and more intrigued by the misshaped devil/goat man that was typically portrayed ‘working’ with them.

I liked the shape and caricature that was given him, and eventually ended making my final cutout- not a witch, but instead, the accomplice; the Devil.

My design-

When Screen-printing, I was placed with a partner who had the same topic as me (didn’t have much of a choice, due to being the only two left unpaired) I still feel like the printing was successful however- she had  two stencil designs, ‘Bloody Mary x3’ within a mirror, and a very good cut-out of a woman screaming. Together we merged our stencil cutouts to create a interesting mix of pieces that we agreed were reminiscent to a lot of traditional posters for horror films, probably aided by our choice of colours- black, red and slime green.

Some photos taken of some of the stencils and the various pieces mid-work-

    

Some of the final prints-

 

 

 

 

After using my Demon cutout for printing, he was still somewhat salvageable, and the colours on him made an interesting look- I stuck him in my sketchbook and added in some ink.

Part Two 

The topics chosen for the second half of this project- Childhood and Literature; for me, I felt they merged well. A very large section of my childhood was spent reading- my parents didn’t own a television and my mum strongly limited my access to the computer, so my main past time was to delve into fictional universes, spending all my saved 50p and 20p coins on charity shop books and taking great advantage of the local public library. I wish I still am able to demolish and sink into books as much as I used to be able to- sadly my attention span is no longer as good at focusing as it was.

Some initial sketchbook thoughts/ doodles-

 

I decided to colour in digitally the drawing of younger me reading in the car at night, attempting to use the light from the individual street lamps as they flashed past. To me this is a perfect merging of the words ‘childhood’ and ‘literature’, and gives me a strong flash of nostalgia from my younger years.

One particular fictional world that I would say had the biggest impact on me would be that of Winnie The Pooh and all his friends in One Hundred Acre Wood, written by A. A. Milne – as far back as I can remember I have known a large part of these stories of by heart, both from the book set, which I owned several copies of, and the more Disney-fied animated cartoons ( I will admit that the kids TV show released a few years back is beyond me however) Every character has a set position in my heart, and the illustrations by E. H. Shepard have fascinated me- my mum would copy them out, and still does, for my birthday cards every year. In fact, it was only for this project that I discovered that Shepard didn’t actually take his Pooh sketches all that seriously, thinking them only as a side job to his illustrative career- for he was also behind many other recognisable names such as The Wind in the Willows and The Punch Magazine.

E. H. Shepard. Bump, Bump, going up the stairs. 1973

His specific style of scratchy pen and pencil, with long straight lines and shading perfectly sums up childhood simplicity. I have attempted to copy this style in drawing out my younger self from memory and some of the Hundred Acres characters, if a bit botched and not quite as delicate, using a fine-liner. (I was curious about attempting it using a dip ink pen, but sadly realised I had forgot to bring  ALL of my ink pots to university)

In that last one I attempted to add in my long had childhood friend Sophie- thinking of when we used to go to the allotment and play around together whilst the adults did all the planting and watering- after all Poohs stories are all about him and his friends antics.

 

For the word literature, I decided to focus on the latest book that I am in fact still currently reading as I thought it far to difficult to decide of a particular favourite- Gordon, Charlotte, Romantic Outlaw. Penguin Random House LLC, 2015.

This book is a biography based around the live of two revolutionary female writers, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. I feel this links well within the subject childhood, as it is giving birth to Shelley that Wollstonecroft met her death, and the book looks strongly at the links between how this had effected Mary Shelley as she grew up, along with comparing strongly their different childhoods.

Pencil Sketch of Mary Shelley- Reference was the portrait by Rothwell, Richard. Mary Shelley. 1840.

Mary Shelley also later experiences the grief of loosing her firstborn with Percy Shelley to fever, whilst he is in fact galavanting off flirting, and impregnating her own sister Claire. I find this part particularly infuriating- I always found Percy Shelley an interesting character and it was only in this book that I really learned what a particularly selfish pretentious person he actually was. To make matters worse, Mary Shelley, after all this turmoil falls straight back into his arms as soon as he remember she exists, despite his complete lack of faith or compassion.

I decided to draw this out using a particular style- when my mother was pregnant with me, she produced almost hundreds of postcards all using similar imagery of her orange blobby self, with a tiny blobby me inside her. We still own most of them- in fact I am unsure if she ever intended to sell any of them. I felt it would be fitting to draw out Mary s suffering using this, with the play on colour scheme to show her grief.

Watercolour on Card; A3

Whilst I am unsure that this work was successful as an actual piece, it felt good to do- its far more ‘abstract’ than what I am used to.

I also played around with this image to create some not so great computer edits- whilst again not very successful, I thought it was worth messing around and experimenting with the colours and shapes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is also revealed in the book that Mary Wollstonecraft had a very neglected childhood, with a distant and cold mother and an alcoholic abusive father, who would commit terrible acts in unprovoked fits of rage. “Already a volatile man, Edward became frightfully unpredictable under the influence of alcohol (…) One awful day, for no apparent reason, he hanged the family dog. The irrational nature of this act made it all the more horrific.” (14)

The idea of this man of terrible evil is an awful one- and something which I believed would work well with some of the print images I created within the first part of my project – linking the devil in the doorway and Edward Wollstonecraft returning home from the local brewery, reeking of booze. I did some initial sketches of the child Mary, attempting to stick with limited details seen within the printing artwork.

The final outcome, which I am considerably pleased with- I enjoy the minimal colour palette that I was almost forced to stick with, and also how it links all three themes together.