For deforestation I looked at how quickly trees are being cut down and thought about what the world will do when there's only one tree left. So I thought about having the tree in a pod which no-one is allowed near as it is being protected by the government.
I then thought of the animals who are losing their homes to deforestation. And played around with ideas of lots of animals protesting (like humans do) trying to save their homes. But with these ideas there was a lot going on in the image. So I focussed on one animal and looked at some ideas of how orang-utans are affected by deforestation. I had a few different composition ideas, but found that the orang-utan holding its baby as the main focus of the image and a man behind her cutting down 'the last tree' and her losing her home was more effective.
I then looked into flowers. I started with experimenting with images of flowers. Flowers with eleven petals and they're falling off until only one healthy petal was left. But I found that this idea was quite plain and boring and more of a story needed to be told in the image. So I drew an idea of one healthy flower and it's surrounded by a number of decaying/dead flowers. I felt that this was a strong idea but there was still something missing, some sort of story.
So in a tutorial there was a suggestion of including bees in the image. I liked this idea and drew some bees into the design. This helped with the story of my illustration as there is only one healthy flower that the bees can get pollen from, but there are some bees that are caught and trapped in the dead flowers and cant find their way out, so will ultimately die along with the flowers.
When presenting my designs in the group discussion of what ideas we should go ahead with, both of my designs were liked, however the bees idea came out as favourite. I was pleased about this decision as it was also my favourite. In the peer feedback, there was a suggestion of having a larger bee flying into the image. I could see how this would give my image more depth, so I went away and thought about how I could incorporate this into my idea.
I began painting my illustration using acrylic paints as I can layer the colours and I feel this would be the most effective media to use for my image. After using colouring pencil for the first two workshops and not being overly happy with how the finished artwork turned out due to time consumption and how the background and the foreground wouldn't work well together, I thought it would be good to use a different type of media. Acrylic paint allows me to work a bit faster and I can create detail that I think I would struggle with if using colouring pencil.
I kept the design how it originally was as I felt it worked as a drawing. However, I soon found that once the image was beginning to take colour that something wasn't quite working. I had another tutorial and we found that the bee that should have been the main focus was getting lost in the centre of the flower. It was too small and the colouring of the flower and bee didn't work well together. So we decided that I should cover that bee over (which was successful after a lot of layers of paint) and to then draw in another bee slightly larger and over the lilac petals of the flower, this was a lot more successful and effective as the eye is drawn to the bee! This also proves that acrylic paint was the correct media to use, as if I had used colouring pencil, I would not have been able to make these alterations and I would have had to have started the piece of work again.
I then painted in the decaying flowers keeping all of them a sepia colour which worked really well and helps to keep the main focus on the coloured flower and bees. However, I had only drawn three bees into the original design and I felt like this wasn't enough. The flowers needed more bees to compliment them and to help tell the story behind my illustration. I drew and painted in another few bees and this really helped my image and story.
I then painted a sepia background separate to the design and put the two layers together on Photoshop.
I used the smudge tool on Photoshop to make the background more blended and smooth which was very effective and allowed the flowers and bees to sit on top of the image effectively.
When transferring the flower layer there was a lot of touch ups required as there were white lines around the flowers and bees, which was far from desirable and a couple of the bees didn't copy very well so this needed altering. After a couple of hours working on the image digitally, I'm very pleased with the outcome and I think I have created a very successful piece of work.
The sepia colours really compliment the pastel lilac and the sharpness of the yellow on the bees causing them to stand out. I also really like the murkiness and mystery of the background against the crisp, clear and sharp painting of the flowers and bees in the rest of the image. The colours tie everything together and the mixture of soft and sharp textures keep the main focus on the foreground. I really enjoyed studying this module. The one day workshops helped me with speeding up my idea process and getting an idea down on paper. It also helped me to criticise my own work and recognise my weak areas that I can improve on. Peer reviews also helped with this because sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can see something different to what I can see and the constructive criticism can help with work I will go on to produce. I really enjoyed the idea process and I benefitted a lot from the group discussions and tutorials. They were very useful as we all helped each other generate different thoughts that could be linked to 'The Eleventh Hour'. I thought it was a good idea to create two different designs as this allowed two different thought processes to be portrayed and as a group we were able to decide on the idea that we collectively felt would work best in OLIO 11.
