Starting to explore my stimulus, I decided to explore and experiment with different elements of design, starting with line. I did this through creating a few observational, continuous line drawings in different sets of time. the outcomes of this can be seen bellow : 

After completing a few continuous line drawings, I decided to experiment with some blind drawings. This proved to be very difficult and did not seem to improve with practice. When doing these blind drawings, I realised that I was slowly making my outline smaller and smaller. I really liked the spiral effect which this gave to the piece, even though it did not come out realistic.

As well as this, I decided to do a last experiment with continuous line, this time trying to create more contour lines. 

Mono Printing 

After creating my quick continuous line experiments, I wanted to refine the technique and experiment with a more controlled design. I decided to experiment with this using mono printing as I felt this was a quick and easy way to experiment. My first attempt was very messy. I really wanted to take my time to establish how I wanted to draw my lines, using my reference picture for guidance. Since I took longer, I think I applied too much pressure with my palm which cased the excess ink to come off. For my next attempt, I used my previous reference picture to follow the same line, this time using less ink, and applying less pressure. When lifting the paper from the perspex I noticed that there was a relief where the drawing was made. Out of curiosity, I rolled this design onto another piece of paper, and was surprised with the clarity of the image that came through. Lastly I decided to experiment with creating a gradient using warm colours.   

Overall I was really happy with how these experiments progressed. Looking forward I would like to elevate the design from being 2D, to having a bit more dimension. 

String Printing 

In my 3ed experiment, in attempt to correct the areas that were too dark, I accidentally made all the shadows too light. I decided however to use this experiment to add highlight with white pastel and shadow with ink, to mimic the tone seen in the artists work. 

I really liked the effect of this and so I created another print and applied the same highlight, creating my final piece. Overall I was very happy with the refined outcome of this piece, and felt that I had successfully created dramatic tones, which effectively created a more realistic image, when paired withe the highlights that I added with the pastel. 

This lead to new learning experiences, such as not realising that the ink had dried out and then when I had lifted it there was only half a drawing. Alternatively sometimes i put far too much ink which smudged the image. After redoing the pieces a few times and getting a hang for the right pressure and amount of ink, they started taking shape. To create the textured backgrounds, I used the pressure from my fingers to create smudges. My mum was very leased with the outcomes and so the pieces went into their frames.   

I was very happy with the outcomes of these pieces. I felt that I had captured my brother and sister very well, and was very happy with the texture that I achieved in the backgrounds. I did feel, however, that the portraits I had done of myself when experimenting were better than the final outcome of these pieces. This is likely because it was the first one I made and I was still learning how to adjust to the size of the piece. Because of this, the piece did not have the same depth as the other two. As well as this it is slightly larger than the other two, taking up more of the frame. These are all things I would have liked to correct for a better final outcome however these were the 3 my mum was happy with. 

Regardless of the difficulties, I cut out the rest of my design as carefully as I could in order to avoid further breakage. After my design was cut out, I covered the front with lino ink and started printing. Lifting the print revealed a striped design of my portrait. This was due to the under layered bits of card board showing through. I really liked the visual effect of these lines, as they made the piece very eye-catching and striking. That being said, the lines made it difficult to see certain features like the nose and eyes properly, but overall the design was still visible.

I first experimented on plain white paper to see the design. After this I wanted to print some on brown paper as it mimicked the cardboard. I then printed it on red paper. I found that the red was the most striking of the experiments and definitely my favourite outcome. The brown paper seemed flimsy and was the least visible of all 3. The white, although striking, seemed rather plain and boring.

After looking at the portraiture work of Bill Murphy and experimenting with cardboard prints, I discovered an artist called Guy Denning. Guy Denning is a self-taught English contemporary artist and painter based in France. He is the founder of the Neomodern group and part of the urban art scene in Bristol.

I was attracted to Denning's portraiture as, similar to Bill Murphy, he uses the subject matter of human form to convey powerful emotions in a way which is emotive to the viewer. As well as this, they often have political overtones which have always been something which I have been attracted to in art. An example of this approach can be seen in his "Icarus'' series of works. What I liked about his work was the fine care for detail and refinement in the portraiture, but also the contrast with his expressive, spontaneous application of lines, smudges and strokes. He, much like Bill Murphy, does not work to set motifs, but makes paintings and drawings from observation and photographic reference, as if to live in the moment.

Another example of these effects can be seen in a piece of his titled "GUY-DENNING-CAT2616". This piece can be seen below the piece previously mentioned. Once again the artist focuses on the features of the portrait, depicting a sad girl looking down. The rest of the portrait is made from rough lines and smudged areas, once again focusing the viewer's attention on the emotion of the subject. This piece, like the previous one, has designs of cardboard still on it such as the arrow that can be seen to the right of the woman's face. Although at first, this arrow seems to distract from the portrait and may feel out of place, when looking at it, the viewer follows the line of the arrow, meeting the girl's gaze, creating a human-like interaction with the piece, which forces the viewer an emotional connection with the piece. This piece also includes writing, however, the writing is from cut-out magazines which spell the word suivre which means "to follow.". This can be viewed as a reference to the arrow, in which both may be referring to the themes of war and how people were forced to endure or "follow" the orders of high authority during the war, causing resentment of those who died. Once again the cardboard shows the disposability of this situation and creates a statement of decay.

In my response, I wanted to recreate the artist's style by making a rough outline of the portrait with a refined facial expression. In order to do this, I sketched out my portrait from my previous experimentation with cardboard and started to draw in features using black chalk, adding chalk in the highlights in an attempt to bring out the true tones of the image to bring emotion and depth into my portrait in the same way the artist does. Once I was happy with the features, I scratched and smudged some charcoal to create the outline of my hair, making rough lines in spontaneous areas. I then tore some of the cardboard off of the sides to replicate the artist's style. In line with the artist's use of lettering, I decided to cut out magazine letters spelling out the word onthou meaning remember in Afrikaans (my home language) to bring back my theme of nostalgia. I did this as the portrait had a sense of maturity and seriousness to it which I wanted to combat with the idea of growing older and forgetting memories from when you were little.

Overall I was very happy with the outcomes of my response and felt that it accurately resembled the artist's style, and taught me a skill of combining my love for refined and detailed work with a more rough and careless technique.

Once the design was cut out, I was ready for stencilling. I used lino ink as it is very pigmented and the texture when sponged looks similar to using a lot of spray paint. I did a few experiments with black and red to test the shapes. When sponging the ink on, I got some ink on my hands, and in the process accidentally made a fingerprint on the edge of the stencil. I lifted the stencil out of curiosity and found that the edge of the stencil was still very clear with the fingerprint. I really liked this effect, and so I decided to do a full stencil using my finger to put the ink in. In my first attempt to do this, the fingerprints were not as clear as I thought they would be. This turned out to be because I was applying too much pressure to the page. In response to this, I tried again, applying less pressure. This produced a stencil which I was very happy with, as the fingerprints were visible as well as the stencil.

After I finished these fingerprints, there was a lot of ink on the stencil. This made me wonder what would happen if I tried reversing the stencil. I rolled a piece of paper over the wet stencil which produced an inverted stencil of my portrait. Because the ink was minimal, the design transferred quite blotchy. This made the piece look very grim and bloody which was very impactful to look at, but did not give off the peaceful emotions of nostalgia that I wanted to convey with my stencils.

Adding the finger prints in the stencil expressed my identity in memories like this photo which was something that I really liked and wanted to experiment with a bit more. I decided to print some single finger prints and enlarged them. After that I stencilled the image onto it. I first did this with red on black and then the other way round. I really loved the way these came out but overall preferred the red on black one. I preferred this one as the red ink was not entirely opaque, and so I could still see traces of the fingerprint showing through the portrait which made it look like I was part of my finger print.

Exploring line and shape, it reminded me of line and dot exercises which inspired me to revisit pointillism through the study of Natalie McIntyre. Natalie McIntyre creates hyper realistic artworks of insects using a variety of mediums including ink sketches, linos, acrylic and pencil. Her work is inspired by the diversity of the shape, colour and texture of insects and the different ways in which they can be depicted. In an interview when asked about her inspirations, McIntyre stated : " I am in awe of the explorers who went to such great lengths to find and illustrate new specimens such as Maria Sibylla Merian in the late 17th century", highlighting the importance of documentation through time.

"Wildlife in the House and Home" is a screen print, featuring a bedroom filled with insects, printed in black and red ink, on a pink background. When looking at this piece, the viewer's eye is drawn to the striking red of the spiders and bees. The use of the red, paired with the venomous nature of these insects, sets an immediate atmosphere of aggression and harshness. The viewer's eyes are then directed to the rest of the pieces, where we can notice the set up of a bedroom. The focal point of the bed stands tall and prominent in the centre of the room. Above it, a large grasshopper and on its side a dragonfly. It is only then that the viewer will notice the woman in the bottom left corner, after which they may observe the smaller details such as, the mosquitos in the bed and maggots in the carpets. The artist's chosen media of screen printing allows for a high level of texture and tone which can be best noted in the duvet of the bed, where the creases demonstrate contrasts of light and shadow as well as having a linen-like texture.

Although this piece is wildly open for interpretation, in my opinion this piece represents the retaliation of nature against man kind. This interpretation stems from the composition of the bugs and beetles. The grasshopper placed on top of the bed shows a status of power when placed above the woman. This is very effective, as the woman is made physically smaller than all of the insects. Additionally, the sense of aggression created by the use of red, emphasises the power which nature holds. The phrase written on the bottom of the piece which states: "She was forced to sleep outside while the bugs, bees and maggots took over her room", clearly expresses the true magnitude of power held by nature. It provides an analogy which successfully emphasises mother nature's ability to belittle and manipulate mankind; in just the same way that mankind does to nature. 

Another example of Natalie McIntyre's work is "Attacus Atlas", which features a butterfly on top of aged book pages. Upon first inspection, this piece looks like a dried butterfly mounted to two pages of a book however, upon closer inspection, we start to notice that the piece is actually primarily made using intricate levels of pointillism to create depth in the image. Paying closer attention to the background of this work, the viewer can notice pages from a book which refers to the progressive stages of change in the life cycle of a butterfly. This is complimented by the aged book pages which create a sense of time passing, aiding the overall theme of change. 

The piece that stood out most to me, however, was "Auratus beetle". This piece stood out to me due to my previous interest in creating pointillism insects, as I remember being absolutely fascinated by the artist's refined use of space and texture, and how she utilised this to create an illusion of light and shadow which I was unable to achieve in my work at the time.

Upon first glance, this piece appears to be a monochromatic, scientific photograph of a beetle; however, upon closer inspection we can see that the image is in fact made up of pointillism dots. The use of pointillism in this instance is very effective as from afar it created a recreational grainy texture, typical to the exoskeleton of a beetle. Complementing this, the artist uses shape to her advantage, creating solid blocks of black and white, fading lighter and darker using dots to do so. The solid blocks of light, created through lack of dots, and shadow helps to create depth helping with the illusion of dents and pumps, as expected on the body of a beetle.

I decided to respond to Natalie through recreating this piece to gain a better understanding about how Natalie uses shape to manipulate tone and depth. I found when responding to this piece that, in order to understand where to more densely pack the dots, I needed to have a good understanding about the texture of the shell, as well as where the light was coming from. I was surprised by the amount of time and precision that was necessary to recreate this piece effectively, however in retrospect this process allowed me to understand the rewards of patience which overall improved my own work. The ability to learn and apply Natalie's techniques to my own work was crucial to the development of my project throughout the A-level.

Unfortunately, My response to "Chrysochus Auratus" was lost. This was a shame as the piece took me very long to finish and held I high level of detail that I was very proud of. The only images I had of the piece before it was lost are seen above this text. In oder to still finish the piece, I uploaded the image I had and edited the unfinished pieces, using the pieces I already had. The journey of this can be seen in the slides bellow. 

Overall I was really pleased with the outcome of my final response. But above all I found the technique that it taught me very valuable. I learned a lot about how to manipulate space and shape to create a convincing depiction if light and shade as well as texture, and this helped me a lot with a large scale piece I created later on. 

After looking at Giuseppe Penone and Natalie McIntyre, I was reminded of another artist which I saw at the exhibition called Ruba Salameh.

Ruba Salameh, born in Nazareth in 1985, is a visual artist that focuses on the political topics of notions of land, geographies and displacement. She works with a variety of mediums including painting, video and installation. Her work involved the use of ants to symbolise "colonial structures which contributed heavily to the detachment of Palestinian geographies", using cubism as a form of symbolism for land.

This political movement can be seen in many of Salameh's paintings. One which I was particularly moved by was a piece titled "Allaias". This piece shows a cubism piece of some coloured rectangles surrounded by a dominated white. Some rectangles are covered by the light, and can only be seen faintly. Over the top there are many ants, running in random directions. In my interpretation, The rectangles represent the division within Palestine due to cultural and religious segregation. The faint rectangles show how Palestinians once lived together as a whole, and the faintness shows how that is fading. The white is representative of Israel and the pressure that they put on Palestine. This can once again be linked as the white consuming the colours of Palestine, segregating them, and causing harsh uniform boxes. In contrast to the uniform boxes, the viewer is brought to the attention of the ants. This is contrasting to the uniform boxes as ants are spontaneous and free flowing. This is open to the viewer's interpretation, however in my interpretation, the ants are representative of Palestine's tunnel systems which Palestine has used for transporting goods, and connecting with surrounding countries like Egypt as ants live in colonies and move around in tunnels, as well as representing the free flow of the people.

Although many of Salameh's work is seen in this cubism style, the one which I was originally attracted to in the exhibition was a circle of ants rippling off of one another. The piece is titled "Ants Work"

The first step was documentation of the patterns. This was where art met science and Robert R. Dunn (the leading Biologist) hired an artist who works with textiles Meredith West, to work with the biologists to document the exoskeletons of the ants. Meredith would come to use tools similar to those they were using, but she introduced techniques, outlooks and language that were new to them. This resulted in a new approach to depicting the morphology of the ants, and proved a method more useful to science than what scientists had been using at the time. In addition, the prints Meredith made were not only new to science, but also new to art. To Meredith, each of the prints has artistic meaning. To the biologists, each print showed the pattern of a particular ant's head. These are patterns that evolved under natural selection for specific functions, patterns Meredith helped make easier to see and hence explain.

I found this concept absolutely fascinating, as biology has always been one of my interests and I was drawn to how it linked with art. In my interpretation, the uniqueness of each ant's exoskeleton was like their own thumb prints and strangely mimicked a similar appearance to human thumb prints. I decided I wanted to create my own interpretation of an ant's exoskeleton in the same way that the artist had done. I did this through looking up zoomed in photos of an ant which I could use as a reference to create my own pattern. Once I had this, I used a digital design program called Procreate. At first I struggled coming up with colour combinations and different ways of laying out the design. In the end I decided to go over the prominent lines. After some further experimentation, I enlarged this, and made the background a solid colour. I then made multiple layers of the lines and played around with colours until I found a combination that I was really happy with. This can all be seen in the video below.

Once I had my final design, I was inspired to put it on a pillow the same as Meredith had done with her designs. Therefore, I took my design and used a preview website on the internet to put my design on various products. I felt the design looked beautifully striking and vibrant on the products and overall was most happy with how it looked on the pillow, book and clock. If I were to develop this piece in the future, I would have liked to look into designing a dress with the fabric.

After experimenting with my Ant prints through making digital designs , I decided to experiment with creating lino prints. I did this through taking my digital print and using tracing paper to copy the outline. After this, I transferred the design to my lino, and carved it out. I then rolled out different coloured backgrounds and printed different colours of my print onto them. I experimented with layering different colours, and found that layering two colours had a very effective and striking effect. I found that out of all of the background colours, yellow was most effective. This was because it was light enough to allow the other colours to stand out, but also contributed to the bright bold colours of the print. The blue was the least effective, as it was too dark, and even with the bright yellow on top, muddled the print. The green print, although more vivid than the blue, also did not show the colours as clearly as the yellow.

 The layered inverted print reminded me of the lines on hand prints, which gave me the idea of layering the two. I did this through painting red paint onto my hand, and doing a print of my hand. I then layered it with a print of the ant lino in black to contrast with the red. Although I didn't like how this came out, I was inspired by the hand print concept, and was interested in developing it further. 

These lino prints can be seen bellow :

Whilst looking at zoomed in photos of the ants, I found one from the sign that looked almost exactly like a fingerprint, which gave me the idea of making a piece in which I could use my fingerprints to make the ant. I did this through making the general shape of the ant with my fingerprints using ink. Once I had done this, I digitally enlarged it, and edited features of the ant from the image to combine with my creation. I was extremely happy with how this came out as I felt it looked exactly the way I wanted it to come out as, and showed both the exoskeleton and the fingerprint in a way which connects both.

Bellow are the videos that demonstrate my creative vision and process of this quick experiment. :

Overall I was very happy all of the experiments that stemmed from this research. I was very interested in the link between human and insect identity and the different ways in which art can be used to explore this. I was most happy with the last few experiments I did tying together ants exoskeletons and human thumbprints and am interested to further explore identity though thumbprints and hand prints, inspired by my lino prints. 

After experimenting with my ant prints and discovering the concept of the hand print, I was inspired to further develop this idea. I spent some time on the internet looking through artworks created around the theme of handprints until I came across a small-scale artist that goes by the handle name, @crayon2papier. The piece that stuck out to me specifically was a piece he made entitled "identity". The piece is of an abstract hand print consisting of 5 fingers made of the silhouettes of people. This 6B pencil piece elegantly illustrates themes of identity and heritage through the use of abstract figures that can be interpreted as family members. Alternatively, The figures can represent the individual throughout different stages of their life, which is my personal interpretation. The use of charcoal emphasises this as the smokey effect can visually create an impression of a flashback or memory. The dark use of shape creates a bold and meaningful look to the imagery that almost gives the piece a dark atmosphere. Leading from my previous interpretation of the figure transitioning through different stages of their life, I felt that this could possibly represent the idea of death, bringing a more somber theme of life to the surface. 

When I saw this piece I was inspired to create my own impression of it. As soon as I saw it I had the idea of recreating it with my own family members. This was perfect, as my family consists of 5 people, one for each finger ; my mother, my father, my sister, my brother and me. I wanted to do this as my family is very close and I wanted to express my passion and love for my family through tying us all together in one piece or art.

I decided to do this digitally, as I felt I had more opportunity to manipulate the image and play around with different edits and tools. To do this, I first uploaded the image I took of my hand from the ant print I had made before. After doing this, I spent some time sorting through photos of each member of my family until I found appropriate images of each of them. I based this mainly out of looking for the most recognisable silhouettes of each member. After doing this, I uploaded my chosen images of each member and placed them on top of each finger. I then brought down the opacity of the image and started experimenting. After playing around with different tools, I chose a charcoal tool and started following in the shapes. The tool I chose was less harsh and dark than the original piece, however I found this favourable as it made the piece less sombre and gave it a softer feel. I focused on areas and shapes that I found had more shadow and through this created my abstract silhouettes.

Overall I was very pleased with the outcomes of my digital designs and preferred them to the physical pieces. I enjoyed the process of digitally manipulating traditional art and combining it with digital art. This is something which I hope to continue looking at in my future work. 

Upon first inspection of this piece, the detailed use of fine lines, dots, and impeccable use of tone creates a piece that looks no different from a large-scale photo. The light and shadow created through lighter and darker tones, bouncing off of the subject's hair and beard creates a sense of vibrancy and livelihood despite being a black-and-white image and having the subject stand still. However, the true unity and variety of this piece can be seen in the contrast between the smooth shapes of the subject's face and the bristling facial hair. The contrast in texture stimulates the viewer to glance around the portrait, looking for a prominent focal point, though this is never found. That being said, the light shining on the man's face, coming from the top right, creates a sense of movement as if the light was creating movement through shadow. As the viewer inspects the large-scale piece, it is made apparent that the movement is not in the work, but rather in the eyes of the viewer, trying to see every detail. As well as this, the dramatic shadows and sense of bright light, in combination with the negative space surrounding the subject, and the large scale of the piece, creates a sense of importance and make the subject appear stoic. This is very effective as Chuck Close creates these large-scale Portraitures through the use of scaled grid lines in hopes that the viewer will be able to see the detail of every square. Ultimately however, the style's realism is its most salient virtue, as it does not shy away from bringing attention to "blemishes" and "imperfections", this is due to the artist's aims in creating the artworks. Chuck Close had said: "I'm painting heads not portraits. A portrait is about the person, I'm not that interested in telling a story about the person." This is because his aim is more to capture the pure essence of a person and the things they have experienced in life through the marks on their faces stating: " there are all kinds of evidence, embedded in the person's face, as to what kind of life they've led".

Although the artist does not embed meaning into his art, as with most art, the meaning and impression the piece makes to individual viewers may be very different. Having spoken to some people about how the artwork makes them feel, many had noted that they feel a sense of connection and emotion towards the subject because they have interpreted a glimpse of sadness which when paired with the use of black and white creates a sombre atmosphere.

Although I would tend to agree with this interpretation, I tend closer to the artist's intention of capturing the image. I say this because, in my interpretation, the artwork is more about the subject than about the artist. Simple, fine details such as the fine smile line to the left of his mouth and lack of frown lines on his brows, suggest to me that the man in the photo has a positive demeanour and has a habit of smiling more than frowning.

Another piece of his that specifically stuck out to me was one called "Fanny/Fingerpainting" (1985). The style of this piece in many ways is very similar to the first in the sense that both focus on creating large-scale portraits with high levels of detail. That being said, Fanny/Fingerprint is created using thumbprints which in many ways can be seen as a more abstract approach. The artist demonstrates beautiful use of tone and highlight, similar to the first piece, through the use of dark blocks of shadow and a lack of prints to create highlights. After investigating the interpretations of others on this piece, many had said that the piece made them feel happy due to the woman's warm smile and had gone on to speak about a sense of underlined darkness created by the black and white, perhaps suggesting that the woman had passed away. My interpretation would go further into depth about the lines captured on the woman's face. The woman has many wrinkles created by the artist's prints, which suggests a long life, these lines once again are more prominent around the woman's mouth and eyes, suggesting a life of laughter and smiles.

I decided to do a response to his work, by creating a portrait of my dad using thumbprints. I decided to use my dad as my subject because, after my previous handprint portraits, I was inspired by my passion and love for my family. My father has always been a loving and caring figure in my life. His warm smile and silly jokes have always lightened up my days, and I really wanted to capture this in a portrait.

The first step I took in creating my piece was choosing a reference photo. I chose not to take one and rather look for one through photo albums because I wanted to capture my dad's raw expressions of joy and laughter, rather than use a "posed" image. I finally found the right image when looking through some holiday photos when I found a picture of my dad laughing. This image contained all of the prominent features of my dad that I wanted to include; the shimmer in his smiling eyes, his wild hair, his broad smile and an overall warm feeling.

After choosing the image, I decided to edit the photo to make the tonal values more prominent. I did this by firstly turning the image into a black-and-white image, and then playing around with an editing software called Pixelmator to posterize the image. This helped to split the image into a range of tones.

After completing my reference image, I had to start looking at the size and scale that I wanted to create the piece. After some consideration, I decided I wanted to do this piece on a very large scale. It was an intimidating task to take on, but I wanted to do it in a similar way to the artist. The scale of this piece caused me a lot of struggle. The first of these struggles was finding paper large enough for what I wanted to do. This was because I didn't want to use canvas, as the texture would cause a lack of definition in the thumbprints, and none of the stationary shops near me had paper the size that I wanted. Additionally, I struggled to find the paper of the right size online without having to buy it in large quantities. That being said after a lot of searching, I found a roll of the right-sized paper on amazon to use.

Now that I had the paper, I had to work out how I was going to transfer the image. The scale was too large for me to go in free hand, so I knew I had to find a way to transfer the image. At the time in which I was doing this, I was isolated at home, as I had covid. Because of this, to my knowledge at the time, I had no access to tracing paper or a projector. Because of this, I had to get creative with how I was going to transfer the image. To do this I first practised different transferring methods on smaller sections of my image. The first method I tried was using baking paper, as I had used this in the past when transferring digital designs. This however did not work, because there was no light emitting from the image as it would from my iPad, so I couldn't see the image. The next method I tried was rubbing a thin layer of chalk on the back and drawing on the image. This worked successfully, and so I started experimenting with creating different tonal values on that small section.

Shortly after this, it was the Queen's Jubilee, where I was once again asked to create a portrait for the reception's display. Since the technique was already developed, I simple followed the process and created the portrait. This can be seen bellow : 

Reflecting on my Chuck Close research, I found that I had learnt a lot about a broad range of technical elements of art. Starting with my BFG response, I learnt a lot about working with scale, and how to transfer small-scale skills to large-scale artworks. I also learnt a great deal about tonal values and how to create a convincing amount of depth in a piece. 

Moving on to my digital experiments, I largely valued the experience of combining traditional and digital art techniques to create my final outcomes. Although those outcomes did not share the same sense of extraordinaire as my BFG response, I found that it was a quick and effective method of creating a similar outcome. 

Lastly, when looking at the more abstract pieces, I learnt more about how to manipulate colour. The most extraordinary aspect of Close's abstract pieces is how when zoomed in, the individual squares hold no resemblance to a shape or tone but from afar create a convincing image. This was something that this piece challenged me with and I enjoyed exploring shape through this. 

After completing my Chuck Close research I wanted to reflect on the work that I had done and where it was heading. I felt that there were key elements of interest that could be drawn out. The first was when I established a passion and interest in exploring identity through thumbprints, which I first explored through stencilling. The next was when I developed my skill and interest in drawing insects when looking at Natalie McIntyre. A combination of the two led me to draw similarities between the identity of man through thumbprints, and ants through their exoskeletons. Finally, looking at Chuck Close exposed me to develop an interest in the striking appearances of large-scale work and its ability to make an impact.  

I wanted to create a piece which tied all these elements together to consolidate my main themes so far. It struck me that the message that I wanted to convey was the consistency of identity through life changes. This stemmed from previous explorations of nostalgia and identity. It was then that I came up with the idea for my large-scale thumbprint. The idea was simple in theory: an enlarged print of my thumbprint, and inside, a meticulous collection of insects drawn with a fine and intricate pointillism technique. 

The thumbprint represents my identity and the mark I leave behind, tying in with my passion for exploring my identity. The insects inside represent my South African heritage and a childhood love for insects, relating to my passion for nostalgia, but also making reference to my immigration to the UAE and how my heritage follows me. The insects are created in the style of Natalie McIntyre. The grand scale of the piece, inspired by the large-scale work of Chuck Close, asserts the piece as a message of importance which was my main aim of this piece. 

The process of this piece can be seen below :

After Creating my thumbprint piece, I was thinking about how long it had taken me to complete it due to the intricate design. Because of this, I started to wonder if there was any way that I could speed up the process, and was even more curious as to if there was a way to develop this as a digital process. After doing some research, I decided to try and make a repeat pattern from my design. I decided to do this physically on paper using a pen, as this would be the truest to the original design and my style of pen work. The process of doing this worked as follows:

Colour experiments : 

As well as being able to experiment with different colours, I was also able to experiment with placing the pattern on some commercialised products : 

I was very happy with these experiments and enjoyed the challenges of transferring the traditional design into a digital pattern. I also really enjoyed experimenting with placing the design onto different products and felt the power and impact of the design most when I was able to print my new school bag using the design. 

Sketchbook Pages :

Magnus Gjoen is a digital artist that creates artworks that look at and change people's preconceived notions of objects. His work aims to look past the object's conventional use and to see it as a design object or something of beauty rather than in some cases a killing machine, and in others diabolical objects such as bugs and organs.

A piece of his that stood out to me was one called "The Minton Scarab". This was a piece that I saw at the gallery. The piece depicts a scarab beetle manipulated to look like it is made of a vintage ceramic vase. Upon first impression, the image gave off an extreme amount of detail and depth that made the bug appear as though it were really a 3D sculpture. Upon closer inspection, however, the viewer realises that the piece is only a flat artwork. Something that I really loved about Magnus Gjoen's work, is how the fine ceramic patterns and details create almost an elegant appearance of the beetle rather than what people normally view as; disgusting and ugly. This was the first time that I truly connected with another artist as much of my own love for bugs and beetles comes from the unseen beauty in their form. In my interpretation, this is the artist's way of conveying a message that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Other than the pattern, the artist has not changed the shape of the bug, going to show that we are the ones that decide they are ugly. Another aspect of this piece that attracted me to it, was the artist's use of colour. The ceramic design itself uses harmonious colours of blue and gold which against the bright white background crest a beautiful bold design. As well as this, the plain green background allows the viewer not to be distracted by other components, and to only focus on the Beatle's outline, along with the beautiful design.

Looking further into Magnus Gjoen's work, I discovered another piece of his called "Ignant". This is yet another beetle, carefully manipulated to look like a ceramic piece. This one, however, uses the delicate patterns of china blue vases. Looking at this piece sparked a sense of nostalgia in me, as I was reminded of my grandmother's vintage tea sets. Vivid memories of this blue design came flooding back to me and overall inspired me even further to investigate this artist.

In response to Magnus Gjoen, I decided to attempt to replicate "The Minton Scarab" and "Ignant" using a digital software called Procreate. In my first creation, I first uploaded a picture of a dung beetle to work off of as a reference. I chose to do a dung beetle as they are bugs that I heavily associate with my nostalgia of living in South Africa, and I, therefore, wanted to pair it with the nostalgia of my grandmother's tea sets. Once I had done this, I drew the outline of the different parts of the beetle's body as solid blocks of colour. I then took a picture of a Victorian vase off of the internet and layered it on top of the different layers. From there on, I moved the image about, lining the curves with the curves of my beetle, and in some cases using a distortion tool to round some edges. Once I had done this, the design looked beautiful on the beetle, however, the beetle did not feel like it replaced Magnus Gjoen's 3D effect, so I then went in with an airbrush tool and created some more shadows on the curves of the different parts to create more definition. At this point, I was very happy with the depth of my piece but felt there was an element of ceramic missing from the piece. After some time of trying to work out what was missing, I realised that the piece lacked the shine of light that so many ceramics have. With this in mind, I added a line of reflection and lowered the opacity for it to appear like a reflecting light. After doing this I put the bug on a neutral plain colour in order to subject the beetle. Overall I was really happy with how this piece had come out and was at this point very inspired to keep experimenting.

With this in mind, I decided to replicate "Ignat" using the same dung beetle. This was a quicker process than the previous piece, as I already had the outline of the beetle, as well as had the experience of trailing different techniques to create a desirable piece. That being said, I searched the internet for beautiful China blue vases and kept looking until I found one which I really liked the design of. I then, repeating the steps of the previous piece, layered the vase on top, creating a beautiful China blue, ceramic bug.

I once again reused the same beetle outline from before and uploaded the new image. The first piece I uploaded was one called "The Butterfly Heart and The Sleeping Baobab Tree" by Caroline Cullinan. I fell in love with this piece when I was young because of the sense of peace the image created. Looking at this artwork, I always felt that there was a calm sense that overtook me when looking at it, almost as though I myself were in this garden. This was right off the bat more difficult than layering a vase, as this was a flat image. I now had to face a new challenge of creating a sense of depth in a flat image. I did this through a long process of trial and error, using the distortion tool until I finally found a technique that worked. I then Once again used the airbrush tool to create shadow and depth and layered the shine from the previous piece onto the bug. Lastly, I experimented with different background colours. I was impressed and happy with my ability to make this flat image look like a 3D sculpture, and felt proud of the hours of work I had put in to achieve it.

Due to this newfound success, I was inspired to experiment more, and so decided to create another piece, this time using the piece called " Multicoloured artwork" by Caroline Cullinan. I fell in love with this piece when I was young due to the lively atmosphere that the piece always created. Looking at the piece, I always felt that I could almost hear the music playing in the background as if I myself were in the picture. Having experienced all the trial and error of the previous piece, creating this one was much easier. With this in mind, I repeated the previous process until I created another 3D beetle. I once again experimented with different backgrounds, but again found that grey was the best background colour in order not to distract from the subject.

Lastly, I chose to do one more piece, using the work of Mapula embroidery. I used a combination of multiple pieces for the creation, as I wanted to incorporate different aspects of their work in my beetle. I fell in love with Mapula Embroidery because of the community that is created in their work. Every piece has a story to tell, in which any viewer can gain a good sense of what the environment is like. Pieces created of towns, depicting the townspeople and their passions, and the feeling that the viewer gained from looking at them. Once again, I replete the same process to create this piece, and as both of the previous pieces were done with a grey background, I thought that they would look beautiful as a tryptic, and therefore I made this background grey as well. 

Sketchbook Pages:

Planning :

Now the time was leading up to our Mock exam. Because of this, I started with some brainstorming. The first two things I did was to make a Venn diagram. the Venn diagram was broken into 3 sections: Nature, Nostalgia and Identity, as these were all the main themes that I had been looking at. I discovered that there was a big link between them relating to ideas of change. This was a theme that I had a lot of passion for and was very interested in exploring as I felt it had a lot of personal meaning. 

After this, I started to create some initial sketches. This was when I came up with the idea of using a dung beetle and its dung ball to represent the passing of time and the resilience of progress. This can be seen in the bottom of the page.

The Beetle (Experimentation) :

The dung beetle, one of the strongest animals on earth with respect to its size, would represent the strength and resilience of growth, with the growing dung ball representing the change of time. My idea was to place my thumbprint in the centre of this piece representing how I have 'shaped' my identity and the person that I am today. 

In my second experiment, I wanted to create a stencil. The way I planned to do this was to draw what I wanted cut out on black card, using a, and then cutting out these areas. However, I found that once I started the process of drawing with the white pen, I really enjoyed it, so I decided against making a stencil, and let myself explore the process of creating the detail with the pen. I found the outcome of this very unexpected yet very visually pleasing.

In my 3ed experiment, I decided to go back to my stencil idea and to rather create the basic outline of a bug. After cutting out the stencil, I experimented with different mediums and layering techniques. I found the effect of layering soft pastels on top of one another the most visually stimulating, as I liked the layered blur-like effect it created.

The effect of the soft pastels inspired me to create another beetle using charcoal. I found this medium very loose and expressive and liked the freedom leant by the shading and bold colour and really liked the outcome of this piece.

The last medium that I wanted to experiment with was hyperrealism using acrylic. This was the hardest of all the mediums I experimented with due to the high level of precision and detail required. At the start of creating the sample, I struggled to elevate the piece from 2D to 3D. After experimenting with textures and tones, I found that using a pointillism effect created the perfect texture.

The Dung (Experimentation) :

Composition :

After experimenting with my initial idea, I wanted to experiment with different compositions. I did this by picking my favourite experimentation from the previous experimentations to draw elements and inspiration from. Before focusing more on that I created a piece in which I was sitting on top of a colourful dung beetle. Although I really liked the use of colour in this piece, it lacked meaning and relevance to my project. That being said, having the primary focus be on the bug itself instead of the dung, as well as having the portrait simply sat, having removed the tire, I was inspired to develop and change the composition.

I started by making the beetle from above the head, similar to that of my Magnus Gjoen responses. Drawing inspiration from my use of storybook cutouts to create the thumbprints in my previous experiments, I had the idea to make the background a tile of these pages. I placed the thumbprint into the top half of the beetle as I had done in the dung in my initial experiments, using the cutouts to create the print. I then filled the bottom half of the bug with charcoal shading, as this was also something I liked a lot from my previous experiments, putting the portrait in the middle. Lastly, I had the idea of circling relevant words on the background pages and connecting them with lines.

I then started to wonder if the portrait should be created as a lino, so created more of a block design to see how this would look. As well as this I was curious to see how this could look printed in red to compliment the lines in the background. I found however that it had a need for something bold and dark in the portrait. In response to this, I created the portrait in black but made its background red. I found this to be very distracting and uncomplimentary, defeating the purpose of making it red. Due to this, I made the portrait plain black and having remembered my previous idea, removed the tire so that she was sitting in the beetle. Although I liked the way this looked without the tire, I did not like the positioning of the girl as her legs were hanging in between the legs of the beetle which looked visually distracting and overwhelming. In response to this, I swapped the girl and the thumbprint half of the beetle as well as removed the thin red lines in the background in a rough sketch of what I wanted to create for my final piece.

I decided to create a mock-up of this idea, to test the visual effects of what I wanted to create. I started this by sticking down pages from my chosen storybook. I chose the book "Charlie and the glass elevator" by Roald Dahl because as mentioned before in my name for my chuck close response "The BFG", my father used to read me Roald Dahl books when I was little and therefore they have a high level of nostalgic importance to me. After doing this, I painted the outline of the dung beetle using matt acrylic paint. I then tore bits of the words out and stuck them in a collage manner to create the thumbprint in the centre. After this, I shaded the edges of the thumbprint half using charcoal. I then added ceramic-like detail to the rest of the bug to mimic my Magnus Gjoen responses. Finally, I placed a printed cutout of my portrait on top. Overall I was very happy with the result of the change in composition and how the techniques looked when used together.

As a last experiment, I wanted to test two different techniques for the portrait: mono printing and lino. I started by creating a lino of the design by using my digital drawing as a design. I then also created a mono print version of the image and compared the two. Although the lino was very striking and appealing to look at, I found that the mono print was more visually stimulating and had more to offer in the visual language of art. This was due to control over tone, texture and realism. For these reasons, I chose to use mono printing.

Final Mock Piece :

Evaluation : 

In this practical exam, I set out to create a piece which expresses ideas of change and the fear of letting go to move on. My piece represents the emotional journey that I am on in trying to find my path in life going to university and becoming my own independent person, whilst being scared of letting go of the safety net of the past.

I came up with this concept by developing my theme of Passions and Obsessions, discovering 3 sub-themes of Nature, Nostalgia and Identity. Further experimentations within these sub-themes and the collection of what they stand for lead to a common theme of change. This is because, in essence, none of the 3 does change; memories will always remain the same, nature is forever nature and physical Identity is permanent. That being said, from a different perspective, those things are always changing; new memories are made, old ones are forgotten, nature is unpredictable and will in itself go through cycles of change and identity in an emotional sense changes with age. After identifying this theme, I could see the undeniable relevance to my personal experiences as of the last year. This is because I have found myself in a process of big changes and adaptations in preparation for university. As someone that does not cope well with drastic change, I often look for safety and comfort in certainty, memories, and identity, but in reality, there is a lot of foreseeing uncertainty approaching university, which requires letting go of those things.

My final piece is primarily inspired by the work of Magnus Gjoen, and Bill Murphy and my experimentation of putting bugs into a large thumbprint. I started my research with Bill Murphy whilst looking at mono printing. I chose to research and include inspiration from Bill Murphy in my final piece, as I was inspired by his work in capturing a moment or emotion in the form of portraiture, strongly linking to my sub-themes of nostalgia and memories. As well as this, upon making my Bill Murphy responses I gained a love for the technique of mono-printing and felt that the texture it would create would complement beautifully to the piece.

I chose to research and include inspiration from Magnus Gjoen as I found his use of insects had a very close connection to my passion for using them in my work. As well as this, I was inspired by his technique of placing imagery inside the beatles and the ceramic effect he creates through the use of light and shadow.

Lastly, I tied inspiration from my own previous work in placing insects inside of a thumbprint. I was inspired to reincorporate a similar concept as I was inspired by the effect it created from afar and how it intrigues the viewer to look closer.

The process of tying all of these elements and ideas together has changed many times and through this, I have created many thumbnail ideas which have developed into my final piece. Originally the composition of the piece was focused on the idea of dung being rolled and the imagery of my young self was in the dung rather than the beetle which was placed on top of the dung. I liked the idea of including the dung beetle and was drawn to the idea of hiding the thumbprint inside of the dung as well as wanting the imagery on top. Developing these ideas led me to a composition where the beetle was the subject of the piece with the thumbprint hidden inside of the shell and the imagery of the girl sitting on top. These changes lead to a more visually sound piece which more accurately used the visual elements of art to convey the message I was trying to express as well as tying closer connections to the artists and inspirations I had for this piece.

I created my final piece using techniques of mono printing, collage, painting and charcoal feathering. The process started with sticking the pages of my book to create the background. During this process, I had to choose whether I wanted the illustrations to be included or whether I wanted it to be only words. Ultimately I chose to only use the words as I didn't want the illustration of the girl to be competing for subjection. In the next step, I had to paint the beetle solid black. This was the task which required the most precision as it was important to me that the bug was symmetrical and that all the lines and shapes were in the right place to create a bold and striking subject. After doing this I started the process of collaging the thumbprint into the beetle's shell. This took the longest, as the reference picture had to be meticulously followed and the words cut out had to be placed very precisely to create the right shapes. Once this was finally done, I shadowed the sides using feathered charcoal to create more depth and to make the beetle appear more 3D. Once this was complete I was able to add highlights to the beetle to create the ceramic look inspired by the work of Magnus Gjoen. I did this by feathering white soft pastels on the areas with highlights after which I went back and highlighted further with white acrylic paint. Lastly, I created a monoprint of the photo of my young self. This also took some time as it was important to me to capture this image in a relative amount of detail to capture the moment the picture was taken as seen in the work of Bill Murphy. After creating this, I cut the piece out and stuck it on top after which I used some charcoal to create a shadow behind her legs to create depth.

The use of the text from Charlie and the Glass Elevator along with the imagery of my young self represents the concept of childhood innocence which when paired with the bold black beetle creates a sense of harshness. I have done this intending to convey a foreboding or dark atmosphere around the artwork. As well as this I have made the beetle much larger than the girl to create an effect in which the girl is made to look small and isolated to represent the idea of that innocence shrinking. The beetle itself, although visually representing fear and isolation, also represents strength and prosperity as the beetle is one of the strongest animals in terms of strength-to-weight ratio. The idea of the dung beetle also stems from the idea of shaping my future in the way that the beetle forms its dung. I have created a ceramic effect on the beetle drawing inspiration from my work looking at Magnus Gjoen but also to represent the idea of fragility in the topic being addressed. Lastly, I have placed my thumbprint inside of the beetle to create the idea that I am shaping my own future, and that my identity lies in the decisions I make which ultimately shape my future, or in the context of the beetle, the dung.

Overall I am very pleased with the visual and contextual outcome of my piece. Upon reflection, I feel I have done a good job at creating the thumbprint with the use of collage and am very pleased with the level of shadow and highlight that I have achieved in the beetle. If I were to further develop this piece, I would place the words inside of the thumbprint with more purpose and rather select words that relate to my message or that tell a story.

William Kentridge is a South African artist working primarily with mediums of drawing and prints and is well known for his work in animation and production. William Kentridge originally studied both Fine Art and Theatre together, which led to his work in animation, fusing both production and fine arts together

A good representation of his artwork mixed with moving pictures is a short film of his called "Journey to the Moon"(2003). Journey to the Moon depicts the story of the protagonist, played by Kentridge, travelling to the moon, and all the metaphorical lessons learnt along the way. I chose this film because of how the hidden meaning and messages resonated with me and where I am in life as well as the relevance this had in my project. As well as this, I was inspired by the artist's effective use of charcoal to create different scenes.

The film starts with a scene where Kentridge opens a book, and a picture of the moon starts to appear (1). He then walks away and uses a teacup as a looking glass, through which he sees a teapot, cup and saucer surrounded by ants (2). Kentridge then looks up at a reverted version of this image, depicting the dark night sky, with white ants representing the stars (3).

Kentridge then proceeds to look into another book, through the looking glass of his cup, looking at images relating to the progression of mankind, and science (4).

The viewer is then taken on a journey into space, using the teapot to depict the spaceship (5). At this point, the view is turned to inside the spaceship, where the atmosphere starts to lose the effects of gravity, and artworks start to float, placing themselves onto the walls (6). Amongst these papers, Kentridge catches a few pages from the air, revealing to the viewer the same drawings seen before, looking at the progression of mankind (7).

Finally reaching the moon, Kentridge looks through the window to find it is no different to Earth (8). This is followed by the figures from the pictures walking across the horizon (9).

Kentridge takes a last look at the book with the figures and spends the last few minutes of the film pacing the room in thought.

Kentridge states in a summary of the short film, that his intention was to create a story of him trying to escape the confines of his studio. The use of ants, Kentridge had said, came from the inspiration of his kitchen which at the time was swarmed by ants. Looking at the ants walk and move around, made him think of the night sky, and was later used in his film with double meaning, as the ants represented space, but contrasted as they related to the enclosed space of his studio.

In the context of the artist, Kentridge had once talked in an interview about the idea that when someone is certain about something, there is a sense of desperation in proving a certainty to understand the world, and that uncertainty philosophically, politically, or otherwise, is a lot closer to the reality of how the world works. This ideology can be seen in this short film in many ways. One is the scene where the atmosphere loses gravity. In this scene, as the papers start to float, they make their way back to the wall, where they all come together. In my interpretation, this is a metaphor for Kentridge's belief, as gravity is a strong force that is difficult to understand or explain, and in this instance, the moment this force is lost, everything comes together to create order. This could be to tell the viewer that when things are less forced, things fall into place and the world's intentions become clearer.

In my interpretation, the short film is more of a story about romanticising the future and the disappointment of unmet expectations. In my view, Kentridge's journey to the moon is an attempt to escape the past and go to the future where everything is better. The scene of 0 gravity then makes an appearance to remind the viewer that without force, things come together, and therefore through contrasting ideas of forcing an ideology of what the future can be, in this case on the moon, creates a break where the viewer has a chance to gain perspective on the story and its meaning. Following with my ideas and interpretations, Kentridge eventually makes it to the moon, where the landscape is no different to Earth, and the figures of the past walk along the horizon, representing the idea of unmet expectations, and as an alternative view makes a point about the past being something that can't be escaped.

Along with this animation, Kentridge uses the artworks he created to produce the animations, as their own body of work. My favourite piece from this body of work is a piece he created to summarise the story of "Journey to the Moon". I chose to analyse this piece, as I felt emotionally drawn to the scale and composition of this work, and felt that it very effectively captured the short film as a single piece.

This piece is 255 x 555 cm, creating a large and impactful piece of work, and is created using primarily charcoal with light appearances of ink. Kentridge uses charcoal, as he once said in an interview that he discovered a liking for animation through his use of the medium. It appealed to him that nothing was truly permanent and that when things were changed and manipulated that one could still see the faint lines of what was. Something which immediately stood out to me about this piece was the composition. The piece is created with a large chair to the left, followed by a complex collage of artworks from the animation, and tied off with a smaller chair at the top right. This gives a very clear line of view to the viewer and allows them to progress through the story in the right order. The way that the chair is positioned allows the viewer to make up the rest of the image, and to picture someone sitting in the chair, at which point they would be looking at the college as if looking back at a faint memory. The college itself takes the viewer on a journey to the moon and shows key elements from the short film ending with a smaller chair at the top. The chairs could represent a contrast between Kentridge's ideology of what the future could be with the disappointment after finishing the journey, with the smaller chair representing an idea of belittlement, however, the meaning of the chairs is widely open to the viewer's interpretation. The artist makes effective use of space in this piece, as the left side is much less used in comparison to the right creating a sense of imbalance. Many interpretations found in both my research and through asking my peers have suggested that the contrast in the balance between the busy side and the empty space represents isolation and loneliness. In my view, it represents the contrast between the past and future, as the empty left side represents the potential and a story which hasn't begun, contrasting with the right side which creates an explosion of a story.

I wanted to attempt an animated response to William Kentridge. I chose to try and recreate a part of his animation "2nd hand reading" (timestamp: 1:40 - 1:48) . In this clip, William Kentridge is walking across the pages. I had the idea to recreate this with a dung beetle walking across the pages instead. I started my experimentation by just creating a short clip mimicking the movement of the beetle. I did this with charcoal, erasing and redrawing the legs to create the movements. This can be seen in clip 1. This was fairly successful as a basic attempt so I decided to develop this to create my response (clip 2).

I created this response by pencil sketching the beetle on every page and then going back into it with charcoal. I then took a picture of each page and compiled them together into a video, forming my response. If I were to repeat the physical process of animation in this way, I would take more time with the frames. Although this is something which takes a long time, I think it would have added an element of fluidity which my response lacked.

In an attempt to improve this, I decided to create a digital response. Drawing inspiration from the chairs which William Kentridge walks over in his animation, I wanted to add another element of a dung ball into my piece. A mock-up of my concept can be seen in clip 3. In this clip, I also incorporated my last exam piece to combine traditional and digital techniques. Creating this mock-up allowed me to understand the process of animation better and gain a better understanding of the movement of the beetle.

The idea of using an old response was something which I really liked, so when creating my final response (clip 4) I decided to incorporate my thumbprint piece. Although this piece is only 16 seconds long, it took a very long to make. I used the thumbprint at the start to set the theme of the animation, being change and identity. The thumbprint then shrinks and forms a ball of dung which represents the circle of life and time. The beetle walks along the plane and walks on top of the dung ball. The ball then begins to spin. Originally I was going to keep this as the response, but I then had the idea of incorporating different pictures of important moments in my life in regards to the people I've met and the places I've been as well as that which shapes my identity, foreshadowed by the thumbprint. As I started adding these, I had the idea of the ball rolling progressively faster, representing the passing of time. I wanted the piece to express the theme of fear of change which I have been expressing throughout my project. This is what inspired the end of the piece. The ball spins rapidly and then stops for a brief moment and 3 figures appear; my mother, my father and me. The ball becomes dark from the outside in, isolating my figure, representing a fear of being alone. The ball continues to spin until the beatle cannot resist the momentum further, trapping its body below the ball, killing it… representing the circle of life.

Final Piece :

Creating this animation taught me a lot about the process of animation. When creating a piece like this, there are so many elements which the artist must take into consideration. In my case, I found it hard to treat the ball, the beetle and its legs as well as the images inside the ball as separate elements, all of which had to be animated slightly differently. It took many failed attempts to learn how to manipulate these elements harmoniously. That being said, I am very proud of the final outcome of this piece. If I were to look at creating a longer animation I would like to develop my skills in incorporating different elements to enhance the animation. I would also like to experiment with sound to stimulate more senses for the viewer.

Sketchbook Pages : 

Ekaterina Panikanova is a Russian artist born in 1975, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Panikanova experienced her childhood in a time dominated by the Cold War when nuclear bomb testing was a frequent occurrence. Despite obvious trauma from the conflict, Panikanova uses her childhood memories along with the theme of change as key elements of her work. Influence from the war can be seen in the subject of many of Panikanova's pieces, such as the appearance of old Soviet clothing or childhood toys.

A piece of hers that specifically stood out to me is one called "Father and daughter". I was drawn to this piece because of the imagery of the girl hugging her father, as the emotion resonated as a familiar feeling to me and sparked a sense of nostalgia in me. The piece captures the image of a young girl hugging her father which is composed of books puzzled together to create the image. The piece itself is made from ink in a monochrome scale. Upon inspection, the viewer can see that the pages of the book are factual texts and diagrams and mixed in between are some children's books.

The imagery painted on the books is taken from a photograph of Panikanova in her younger years and is created in a very high level of detail. The use of ink in this piece lends itself beautifully to the detail as the artist is able to create a large range of tones, bringing a large amount of depth to areas like the man's trousers or the girl's hair, which helps create a sense of liveliness to the piece. As well as this, the artist does not create these shadows with harsh rigid lines, but instead uses the ink in more of a circular motion creating a softer appearance, as can be seen in the girl's legs. Additionally, the artist strategically uses space when applying the ink, creating solid blocks of areas such as the father's suit to emphasise on shadow, but also through lack of application in areas such as the girl's legs to create a feel of highlight. The use of negative space creates a very distant feeling to the piece. This softer use of line helps create a dream-like and reminiscent tone which allows the viewer to feel like they are looking back at a memory. In contrast to this soft visual effect, the viewer can also notice harsh rigid likes from the books making up the background as well as the books being slightly disjointed, possibly representing the artist's disjointed past. As well as this, the old books, browning from age, might also represent the artist's memories crumbling and being forgotten. Complementing the texture of the texture created by the browned books, the artist's use of texture is also evident in the creases of the subject's clothing, adding a form to the material whilst still leaving a flat surface.

Upon a more in-depth inspection of the pages, the viewer can notice an ink reflection piece at the bottom left of the page. This is often used by psychologists to help dissect the psyche of patients suffering from trauma and therefore could symbolise the tribulations of the artist's past. In line with this theory, just to the right of this ink reflection, the viewer can see a double-page spread containing a milk carton on each side of the pages. In psychology, there is a rule called the milk carton rule which states that instead of dwelling on what you can't change, focus on what you can, which could be seen as a confrontation of the artist's trauma. Lastly, the viewer can also notice two pages from a children's book, coloured in, representing childhood innocence. This is the only coloured aspect of the artwork, possibly representing the idea of hope in chaos. Alternatively, this has been interpreted to be the progression from childhood to adulthood.

Looking at the composition of this piece, the viewer can notice that there is one book entirely coloured; the section of the image where the girl is being hugged by the father. In my interpretation, the artist has done this to direct the viewer's gaze to the embrace and allows us to empathise with this emotion of love and care. In my eyes, the piece represents the love of a father for his daughter with the pages of the books connecting them together. The combination of children's books and scientific texts obviously addresses the artist's childhood and the strict manners in which she was raised. The separated books create fragments of the memory but are not quite seamless, perhaps suggesting that the memory is broken and that there are aspects of trauma unseen by the viewer but felt by the artist.

In some pictures of this artwork, the pages are turned and the image therefore changed. In my interpretation, this suggests the concept that the physical ink and words on these pages will never change, but the pages can be turned, representing the artist's ethos of expressing change and moving on.

I wanted to respond to Panikanova's work by creating a similar piece of a family member and me. Looking through old photos, I came across a picture of my sister and me in the airport the day that we moved to the UAE. Looking at this picture, put me back into the time when the picture was taken. At the time my sister and I were closer than ever before and although I was scared about the prospect of moving, I was excited that my sister was coming on this journey with me. The picture put me in that moment and

brought back many fond memories which I felt was something which strongly emulates the work of Panikanova, which is why I chose this image. As well as this, I felt that the emotions of uncertainty I was experiencing in this image were very similar to that which I feel now adding a close link with my theme of change.

Tying back to my previous exam piece, I decided to create this piece using pages from a Roald Dahl book. This was created with a combination of the witches as well as Charlie and the chocolate factory. I stuck these pages onto a canvas and realised that one of the pages had a chapter called "Goodbye Georgina". This was a very good coincidence as my sister's name is Georgina, which made me come up with the idea to name the piece Goodbye Georgina and to create the piece with the intention that she could keep it as a leaving present from me when I leave to university, as a way for me to accept the change and say goodbye to my sister. Originally I started this piece by using a projector to project the image so that I could draw the outline after which I was able to start the piece.

I started using ink however I found that this was not reacting well with the paper as it started to crumble, and was drying in different shades than that which I was applying it with. I then tried using watercolours, however, found that this reacted in a similar way to the ink. I then tried Acrylic and although this made the colour more accurate, the paper was still crumbling. Having decided that the acrylic was working the best, I attempted to use this to create the piece however found that it was really difficult to create a smooth gradient. This can be seen in the experiment page attached. I then had the idea of using mono-printing as a technique and individually mono print each page as a tile. 

Coming up with my last idea on the previous page sparked inspiration in me. As I started to think about different ways to experiment with the ants, I was reminded of my childhood experience with rice ants.

In South Africa during the summer we experience a lot of rain. The humidity in the air brings out a specience of ants called rice ants. The ants crawl out of the ground and swarm areas in great masses. When we were younger, my siblings and I would often catch these ants with nets which sparked a nostalgic memory for me. Generally Rice ants are considered to be pests and have a lot of negative connotations attached to them as, the mass swarms often leads to the breaking down of crops and plants. As well as this, after the mass swarms, the floor is scattered with the wings which fell from some of the ants, leaving behind a trail of destruction however, something which is often over looked is the new life which follows from the chaos. The breaking down of

plants often makes way for new life and actually fertalizes the soil which stimulates new growth. I felt that this had a perfect connection to the message I was trying to portray with my final piece as well as having a strong nostalgic, personal link and relevance to my previous explorations of ants.

In order to start exploring ways in which I could incorporate the rice ants, I decided to create a pencil sketch of the ant. This process did not take very long but allowed me to think about its purpose and how I could use it in my project. This made me want to experiment further digitally. In order to do so, I wanted to create a procreate stamp of my sketch. With this in mind, i scanned the image in and programmed the brush until it had the desired effect. As well as this, I separated one wing and created a stamp from this alone.

This allowed me to experiment digitally with the consept. I had the idea of the swarm above my older selfs head to make it appear as if my younger self were looking up at them. This would represent the chaos and fear for change. Bellow I would place the wings to show the aftermath of chaos. This would represent the calm after the storm and the consept of memories left behind with the passing of time. The conplement all of this, the rice ants in them selves would represent the idea of rebirth sfter chaos. The consept of this idea along with the process of creating the dtamps can be seen bellow.

Although I liked the consept of this piece, I felt that the consept of the swarms had a lot of potential as an animation.

Final Piece :