As for the second part of the project I was working with the topic ”Visualise what you can’t see”, I decided to continue looking at the notion of the ”minds eye” and presenting human intellect. The direction I took my 3D assemblage in was about the desire to be taken seriously in the intellectual world, I chose to use templates from my pictograms to make a moving sculpture with split pins. I wanted to make the sculpture look as not serious as possible – challenging the notion of drawing as an intellectual practice.

After producing a dictionary of 30 pictograms, I created 20 a3 compositions, based off the guidelines given on the brief, experimenting with scale, contrast, negative space and various other themes. Even though the deadline was short I tried very hard to put thought into each composition, for example I wanted the image of the crabs (below) to depict the feature that the original pictogram was inspired by, in David Attenborough’s Planet Earth 2, about the mass walk of the Red Crabs on Easter Island. And for the image of the tessalating books, I wanted them to be in a mineral like structure to represent their true forms, and not only their chemical formulas. Although at first I found it challenging to compose the images, I definitely learn a lot about what ‘worked’ and what didn’t work for my style of illustration when thinking about composition, such as I had to especially carful when thinking about positioning scale, as if I placed a large images next to a small image a lot of the time the detail in the line work could get lost.

For my 30 pictograms of animals, minerals and vegetables I decided to do 30 ink drawings using a paint brush. I had recently been very in spired by David Attenborough’s launch of ”Planet Earth 2”, because of the amazing visuals, this is what I based my pictograms for animals on. It was interesting yet slightly challenging to translate the images I saw on the screen into my own style of drawing. I found this challenging as usually I don’t draw from observation, and as I explained in my ”Drawing Is” project I find perspective and accuracy when drawing from observation very difficult, I also find merely coppying images bit boring and pointless sometimes which is why I generally choose to draw from my head or create things in a more abstract style. However despite this, I really enjoyed applying my (very limited) observational drawing skills, to my own style when drawing the animals.

For the Mineral Pictograms I again decided to keep things more literal in my approach, and after research into what defines a mineral I decided to depict to chemical formulas for a list of minerals enclosed in books. I thought this would add some variation when creating compositions with all of the animal mineral vegetable pictograms, as the letters and numbers in the chemical formulars would contrast with the standard pictures I’d drawn for animal and vegetable. I also thought the formulas o the books would add an element of interest and mystery to the compositions.

Finally for my vegetable pictograms I decided to bring things back to my favourite area of interest – Philosophy. A while ago I had read a really interesting theory by philosopher James Lovelock; called the Gai Hypothesis. Lovelock said ”The earth is a living system and we are part of it” , I really liked the idea of bringing the earth alive – which is what inspired me to draw each pictogram as a living earth, Whilst still being a vegetable.

As a Group we decided to experiment collaboratively with our individual objects to play around with light. For example we used one of the lockers in the studio to project light through my object (The five pound note) and using a prism and phone light we managed to project light through the note to make different coloured patterns onto the other side of the locker.

After experimenting with the DSLR cameras in the photography induction, and as a group, I decided to experiment with using a disposable camera for my own side of the project. The object I decided to use to experiment with light was the new five pound note, as I found the clear part of the note, intereresting to shine light through and project shadows from. I experimented with different strengths and sources of light to create the photos (as shown below). I enjoyed the mystery in using the disposable camera as you never know how the photo will come out, I think this added to the illusive quality that the final images had. I also experimented with shining light through the negatives of the photographs to project images on different surfaces. Overall my photographs had quite an abstract aethetic to them.

I decided to go and see the V & A exhebition You say you want revolution : Records and rebels 1966-70, as part of my investigation for cultural and critical studies. Overall I really enjoyed the exhibition, learning all about the emergence of a youth driven sub culture, and looking a different social, cultural and political turning points of the 1960s.