My Presentation

Although my presentation on where I am currently situated with my project is not until Wednesday I felt it important to create the presentation over the last few days. Probably since after watching my peers present I realised how some people seemed to really understand their project, others seemed less clear and in some cases the audience might have understood the project more than the speaker.
As I stated in a previous blog that as I watched others present I felt quite comfortable with my own project, I feel it is now taking some form of direction. Creating the presentation now was helpful in seeing if these thoughts were correct as I prepared slides on which I will discuss.

With my first slide I intend to discuss where I am with the lead question that will drive the project. Although I have stated my current question I have also tried to show how I feel about my question through the image portrait. Funnily enough I realise I have tried to show my thoughts on a question about visual metaphors through a visual metaphor. I do feel often that I am at a crossroads with my question, however I do think that this will resolve itself once I begin to collate the information I have been looking through. This will allow me to evaluate what I have picked out and maybe give me a better understanding of the questions I am asking asking by the information that seems important to me, this will happen most likely after my presentation next week.

The next slide is to give indication as to why I wish to portrait my work through the picture book format. I will explain my interest in the medium and also the topics I find most interesting. Usually these are rather taboo topics such as war, migration, death, environmental issues etc. Themes which seem rather more adult orientated even though many are marketed as children's books.

I wish to then discuss my proposed concept. This is to use a story from hundreds of years ago when a battle to place in Dunbar. The Scots who were captured were sent to Barbados to work in the sugar cane fields as slaves. There are still direct decedents of these people living there today, they have been given the nickname red legs passed down from their forefathers. This was due to their light skin burning in the Caribbean heat of Barbados. The story is not intended to be historical or educational but will serve as the common thread through my story. This will hopefully allow me to raise the issue of modern slavery to give the story more of a sense of meaning and purpose.

My approaches to the project will then be discussed. My work so far has been mostly theoretical, however rather than working through my concept I have instead exposed myself to the work of others through exhibitions etc. I realise that what I have been trying to do is feed myself, with both information and inspiration that will hopefully show through my work once I begin a more practised based type of research.

I will then cover the aims and objectives of my project as shown above.

Discussing a lecture we had on creativity, a paper I read on embodied metaphors and creative acts and how they have affected my project. Explaining the concept of the experiments carried out as part of the issues studied in the paper and how they lead me to look at other sources of inspiration out with the field of picture books or illustration.

Detail how and why I thought it would be useful to watch the wordless play Dragon. Discuss my thoughts on breaking down the play into small thumbnails to see if I could transform the play into a picture book.

Opening myself up to highly conceptual works which are effectively visual metaphors. Discuss the works of Ai WeiWei in particular the two pieces bed and fragments. Which although entirely different pieces of work are actually the same thing, maps of china.

Discuss why I felt it important to attend workshops such as the one with Dominic MacKenzie. Run through the types of exercises we done trying to create visual metaphors for words as images, portrait metaphors, using articles and trying to compress them into one single image.

My aim in seeing the waterloo cartoon was to gain an insight into techniques. The fundamentals of tone, line to admire the draughtsmanship within the piece. The surprise that the most impressive aspect being the composition, the thought, the preparation and preliminary works that must have even preceded the cartoon itself.

Considering my own practices, talking about the works of E.H Shepard from the first world war. My realisation about my lack of good habits once I had read through my little urban sketching book. This has lead to me trying to draw much more from real life and establish a habit within myself that will serve me well as an artist.

My conclusion and discuss any issues with peers and tutors, take notes on any feedback.