Exam Evaluation

Ideas and Conception, my ideas from the beginning of the project to the end of changed quite dramatically. My original ideas for this project was to create illustrations for Through the Looking Glass in a surreal wonderland. This is a concept that I had thought through and was ready to develop my most early experiments, I had created initial drawings and ideas towards the theme. I then moved away from Through the Looking Glass and started deliberating ideas for a The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe themed set of illustrations. I had many ideas for this theme, my first idea was to create a series of illustrations of the creatures from the world Narnia escaping the Wardrobe, coming into this world. This idea was to be very realistic and the characters would lose all personality urning into actual wild animals as they escaped the magic of their world making creatures like Aslan would be extremely violent and raw character. This was linked obviously with the exam theme of Inside, Outside and In between as the animals were inside their own world, in between the wardrobe and the real world and then finally outside the wardrobe to the real world. I then went on to my final idea and the one I developed further and went with, which is the graphic portrayal of the last battle chapter of the The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe story. My interpretation of how it links to the exam brief is slightly more abstract than the previous idea, the inside is the world of Narnia, the outside is the graphic retelling which is extremely violent and realistic and the in between is the watercolour illustration which link the two sides which are also soft and rough contrasts.

My inspirations, my main inspiration was Alison Fennel a watercolour artist which eavily influenced my approach towards watercolor technique, I also played with her technique using water colour pencil techniques in different ways to create different desired effects. I heavily researched Alison as a specific inspiration to my project. I also took heavy inspiration from artists and illustrators such as Nicholas Kole and Giovanni Maisto that I discovered on Behance and Pinterest through independent research. These are artist that I would like to emulate not only in these project but also in the future as I feel they are the best representatives of what I wanted to achieve in this project.

Experimentation and Development, this was a heavy focus for this project I found that unlike many other projects that ideas for experimentation came frequently. This led to me doing the most drawings i have done for any brief up to now, I did several types of drawing incorporating the The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe theme into them. To get a better grasp on animal structures which was to play a major role in my piece, I made a trip to London Zoo were I took may photographs from several angele staying to capture as many aspects as possible to make it easy for me to draw from any position or stance I felt necessary. I still and a difficult task as for obvious reasons not all situations were practical to my idea and in the exam I had to draw some animal body parts on to human bodies and vice versa. I also did lots of digital experimentation to tet the medium even though by this time I was quite set on the illustration method for this theme.

To conclude, my overall thoughts on the project, are positive, I feel I represented myself well in my outcomes trying to incorporate as many different aspects and interpretations of the last battle into my images. I feel that I used a lot of different drawing techniques in conjunction with various angles weaponry and Narnia characters. I feel if I had approximately 2 hours more I could have made some minor differences in my final product which I feel would be improvements. I ffel the preparto n work up to final is key to creating a well rounded product and that is exactly how my preparation influenced my product. The preparation leading up stops you going onto the final without testing out ideas that may be milling in your head and allows you to experiment thoroughly  before making irrational decisions in the exam.