As I was not going on the Newyork or Barcelona trips, I was a little worried that the imagery ect.. in the zines I would make would not be as interesting as everyone elses , despite this; rather than making my zines about a specific location or journey, I set out the aim of the project to address a current metaphorical journey of my own. (this is me saying I’m basically making more art about a break up). I wanted to combine and explore a literal and metaphorical journey in this zine. For the literal side of the journey I wanted to depict the weekly journey I would make to London to see my ex boyfriend, and the interest I have in travelling to London, as I am from a small rural market town in the midlands, I would always associate travelling via trains (or any means of transport really) very exiting, as for me getting on a train would always mean escaping a boring town I very much hated living in. This is why I decided to call the zine ”Escaping the Cave”, which is of course also a reference to (Philosopher) Plato’s dialogue of ‘The republic’ in which he outlines the analogy of the cave. Plato’s Cave is essentially a metaphor to explain how Plato believed human empiricism is flawed, and how the world we reside in is a mere shadow of the truth that is supposedly in ‘The realm of forms’, which in his analogy is outside the cave. I thought this was a good metaphorical association with the current journey I wanted to depict in the zine, as I wanted to explore how I had experienced a similar period of enlightenment after the relationship break up, and how sometimes our judgement of things can be flawed by our sensory knowledge.

I started experimenting with compiling the ‘Memory Patterns’ I had made, on a larger scale digitally. I liked how the compositions that just had a singular colour conveyed quite a specific feeling or effect, and the compositions with a multitude of different colours and marks had a more chaotic feel to them, whilst still painting the child like aesthetic that I wanted.

After choosing my colour Palette and medium, I started constructing the ”Memory Patterns”, I think they really captured the childlike aesthetic I was going for, and followed the notion of ‘representation’ of images and sensory experiences I wanted to depict

after the workshop, I wanted to think carefully about the medium and colours I wanted to create my work in. I think when depicting memories and senses choice of colour is very important, as it helps create atmosphere and memory and sense association. As it was a memory from childhood I wanted to illustrate, I thought about the medium a child would conventially use to draw – this for me was crayon, I also incorporated this into my mark making, the marks turned out quite abstract as I didn’t want to create anything that had to much of a refined sense of pictorial quality, as I wanted to emphasise the fact that this was a hazy memory from childhood.

I feel like I got a lot out of the workshop with Esther Cox, Surface pattern design has always been something I’ve appreciated and been interested in as my twin sister (my biggest Inspo in life) is a surface pattern designer, and I can see many parallels between my sisters work and Esther Cox’s. I really liked the way that Esther explained the importance of representation of images, especially when dealing with representing memories, and I really enjoyed the drawing excersizes she ran in the workshop.

As I am a long time fan of the various musicians Andy Vella worked with, thus found his talk really interesting, I really liked his emphasis on process and experimentation in his work, and also the importance of visual play, it really made me think about ‘making my work my own’, and not always creating work I know I can create. I also got a lot out of the talk that Miriam Ellis did, as I like to use a satirical or humorous element in my own work sometimes, I also liked how she explained her idea of having the freedom of speech to satire whatever we want.

Upon recieving the brief to the vertical project on memories I felt a little reluctant to start the project. because of recent events concerning a bad break up (lol) I didn’t really feel like making work about what I had experienced (or making work about anything at all really). Despite this I decided to look into other areas; memories of childhood for example, my aims for the project was to also try and visualise the characteristics of what a memory actually is and look at the concept more deeply.

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As I had got so into creating work for the first part of the explain project, I had left no time to focus on the unexplained part of the brief; In the group grit I was relived to realise that I was not the only one who had done this, and we where advised to maybe complete the project as a one day project. And so this is what I did, I focused on a project for a day and completed it. I decided that instead of picking one of the themes provided on the sheet to create my own. I decided I wanted to explain something to myself that has been a mystery to me my whole life – why I can never (effectively) get things done. Don’t get me wrong, Ive definitely got a lot better with time management in regards to my creative practice, however I still find I never get half as much done as I intend to (for example having to do this project in a whole day). I decided I wanted this project to be humorous and also relatable to others, so I started off by writing down a lot of things that hinder my creative practice, and then narrowed them down to the main most relatable reasons. I decided I wanted to present my findings as a series of animated gifs, I did think about making a zine, however I wanted to challenge myself, as I’m not great in the digital realms of illustration. After a lot of practice I was surprised at how effectively the gifs I was making on photoshop where coming out, and I also really enjoyed the quality of the moving image, as it definitely was a vehicle in getting the messages I wanted to get across with the hand lettered typography I had used. Overall I was very pleased with the outcome of the project, and in this case I do not regret my somewhat appalling time management, as I found treating this project as a one day affair, allowed me to spend more time on focussing on the final outcome of the project (the gifs) rather than being too caught up in the process.

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A While after I had finished the evolution project, I decided to revisit it. As by this time I had figured out how to make gifs on photoshop, and I really thought animating some of my work from ‘Explaining Evolution’ would enhance the ‘Explaining’ part; Especially as what I wanted to illustrate was self growth. I think the motion in the animations really help show this, and annunciate the point I was trying to make

I was overall very pleased with the final outcome to the explain project. I believe that I managed to translate my exact vision of what Evolution looks like in my head on paper, and convey to an audience that evolution doesn’t just have to be scientific, and that is one of many things, Evolution is personal growth, its looking back and learning to accept what happened and even though this is a slow and painful process it is learning that you can grow and evolve, and past experiences don’t have to define you, its a journey of realisation.

I was pleased with the overall aesthetic of the A1 piece, and was happy to leave the whole drawing as monochromatic as I think it added to the diagramatic quality that I wanted to covey in the piece.