Mapping My Process (week 5)

Here are some sketches I did for my first Drawing 3 project. In Jeremy Wood’s piece, Meridians, it is apparent that Wood chose the location very carefully to best express the quote he chose. He was conscious in his decisions on the size, shape, and location of each word. Without this attention to detail and planning, his work would not have the same effect or meaning. I wanted to make my piece as strong as possible to best convey my concept, so I chose the subject very carefully. In Julie Mehretu’s, Looking Back to a Bright New Future, the imagery is very abstract and the message is hard to decipher. The work seems to rely on its name to give the viewers a sense of what the artist is getting at. I decided to use the human figure and road maps for my subject to make sure that my message is clear. The model had to have captivating eyes so that she would be intriguing even with out any facial expression. I didn’t want my audience to be focused on an expression and try to see meaning that wasn’t intended. I wanted her body to stretch across the page and be a surface for the topographic effect and road map that I wanted to incorporate. I also wanted her to have light color hair so it wouldn’t be distracting or disrupt the visual balance. I did 12 sketches in my sketchbook using a few stock photos of women that fit my criteria. I focused on body position and looking at the negative space to decide what to do for my final piece. I did not feel inspired and was going to resort to combining the sketches, folding it up like a map, and treating the paper to look old. Instead, I kept looking for a photo and found one that didn’t fit my criteria, but after one more sketch I new what I wanted to do for the final work. This model had the eyes I was looking for but her body is not visible and her hair is dark, so I decide to use her hair to map the ideology I want to use.