Firstly I did a brainstorm on the word, ‘beginnings’, this helped me to explore different ideas and themes connected to beginnings. On this brainstorm, I added some personally drawn drawings and some pictures from books and the Internet relating to the ideas of words that were developed from the theme, ‘beginnings’. Of all these ideas from the brainstorm, the particular theme that I was especially interested in was death. Death is not only the end of life but is also a beginning, but what it is a beginning of is based on people’s opinions. For my final piece I drew my painting on my belief about what I thought occurred after death with an addition to the perspective and view of death from the particular artist I studied. But before reaching to this stage, I performed many more activities in my sketchbook leading towards this. As I was particularly interested in death, I researched on this topic, learning that whatever does happen after death is based on peoples views, and their opinion of what happens after death can never be for definite a fact. Many people believe in different things, by using the Internet and personally asking people, it seemed to be that death was an issue that everybody had a different belief in, even if it was just slightly different, they were different beliefs from different religions and cultures. While most Hindu’s chose to believe in reincarnation, others chose to believe in a place called heaven. In the religion Buddhism, I learnt that in general they believe death is similar to a candle. The body is the candle, whereas the soul is the flame. As the candle slowly burns down and dies, the candle survives and can transferred to another candle. This is the idea that the soul lives in the body, when our temporary body eventually dies out; our soul survives and then lives in another body. I researched death and explored the ideas of many, which affected and altered my personal opinion.
I made some direct observations by drawing some natural still life drawings. I firstly drew some still life drawings to experiment with a variety of methods and medias, I drew a cactus few times and experimented different ways in drawing it. I firstly drew a realistic copy in pencil, then using charcoal I drew an abstract version that was a very simplistic view of the cactus, lastly I drew the cactus in the form of a pattern using pastels. After having done these still life drawings, I decided to draw some still life drawings that could be directly related to my chosen theme, death, I drew with a pen an extremely simplistic view of a tree branch and a very tonal drawing of a log and skull. The tree branch could have been a representation of natural growth, when we die we stop growing as people. But growth is still important in death because whether our soul yet grows or stop growing when our body dies is a very open discussion for many opinions. The log is linked with the tree, it can show the beginning of the tree and death is beginning for many people and not just the end. The skull is very useful in representing the death of a body and in fact it is true that when our body is dead the only system that can survive is the skeletal system as our other four systems, (the immune, digestive, circulatory and nervous systems) all need to work with the soul to control our body, but the skeletal system is just the bodies structure and is in no need for our soul. Therefore the skull can be directly related to death too. The last direct observations that I did were drawings of different gestures. The gestures that a person makes can reveal a lot to us about what a person is feeling. In my painting of death, I wanted to represent emotions that the soul would feel during death. When the soul is finally released from the body, after having lived and worked in a very consistent and sometimes repetitive structure of our body, I think to be released, it must feel like a release of pressure that has built up, the soul may feel in a very desperate manner to be released, very wanting and reaching. I drew a realistic hand gesture to portray this emotion as well as a very exaggerated version to emphasize these emotions and feeling. I also drew a realistic copy of a fist, this showing anger, in which the soul may also be feeling at this very critical moment, I also exaggerated this to again emphasize the anger, I did this by sharpening the curves, making more edges and making thicker darker lines, I also used a pen for the exaggerated version to help it be deeper and darker. I preferred in overall the exaggerated versions as I think the soul must feel very intense, strong and deep emotions.
With my observational drawings and my theme of death to work from, I explored deeper into death. I looked for paintings related to death and found an artist, ‘Kim Marie’ that was particularly drawing many paintings similar to this topic. I stuck in my sketchbook, many of her paintings and also her personal past and biography. I then printed enlarged copies of five of her paintings that I especially liked and which were related to death. These five paintings that I analyzed and studied very deeply all had a connection with death, the five paintings, ‘life giver’, destination’, ‘lost souls’, ‘elements’ and ‘isolation’ all had a big impact on to my final painting. From these paintings, I inferred a lot of knowledge about Kim Marie’s perception of death and used her ideas about death with an addition to my personal views and the ones I learnt about during my initial research about different cultures and also those who I know that I asked. Kim Marie’s ideas influenced my ideas about death, as well as those of people whom I asked and those I learnt of from different cultures. Together I had a very altered and more definite view of death.
Kim Marie inspired me in many ways for my final piece. I knew I wanted to for definite add an image of a body and a soul as these two were extremely important in the process of death. All five of Kim Marie’s paintings helped me extremely build an image of a soul, the body is an image that we all know, we know what it looks like and we can find out for a fact how it looks inside. But nobody has for a definite fact seen a soul, and knows what it looks like. The first painting, ‘life giver’ helped me create a personal image of the peaceful, comforting atmosphere surrounding the soul after it has left the body, the second painting ‘destination’, may show the way in which the soul feels when it is about to leave the body, the posture of the bodies in this painting show us the emotions and feelings of the soul before its is just about to leave the body. This posture gives a similar emotion to one of the gestures I had drawn earlier. A very desperate feeling of wanting to reach somewhere, to reach a destination. The third painting ‘lost souls’ gives firstly an outside image of how a soul looks but also suggests without the body, the soul alone is lost, misguided and almost innocently unaware. This painting helps me feel about how the soul feels without the body and also how it looks, (a completely white copy of the body). The fourth painting ‘elements’ also adds to the souls emotions at the time of death. Like four elements make up our atmosphere, maybe it is the same for the soul, four elements could be a metaphor for four emotions. All of the elements differ incredibly and when used in the context of emotions. They all may represent different emotions, for example the fire may show the soul is feeling raging anger when it is released from the body, (similar feeling implied from the fist). The last painting drawn by Kim Marie that I studied was ‘isolation’, Kim Marie as a victim of abuse as a child, I think is representing a lot of her personal emotions during this horrific time of her past. The loneliness, depression and isolation are clearly shown through the posture of the woman in the painting. This similar emotion could be felt when the soul is released from the body, without the body, it must feel lonely, and coming into something new without the usual constant dependent, it may feel depressed and isolated as well as lost (‘lost souls’). This is a great posture to show how the soul is feeling. In my painting when representing the soul I think I want to concentrate more on revealing how the soul is feeling through the posture and gesture of it rather than the outer look or image of it. At different times of death, I think the soul will be feeling differently, and according to the stage of death the soul is, I will represent the soul in completely different postures and gestures. Although the soul will always look the same from its outer appearance, I think it is more effecting to concentrate on its posture and gestures. My idea of death was greatly developed during the research and analyzing of the artist’s paintings as it offered a much greater depth about the concept of my painting and was a great addition to my personal thoughts on the topic of death.
Throughout my sketchbook, I experimented with many different media. Including, pencils of a different range (2b, 3b, 4b, 5b, 6b), color pencils, pens of different colours, charcoal, pastels, watercolour paints, acrylic paint, tissue, carrier bags, crisp packets and cotton wool. I think I used most of the media well, but some could have been improved. Cutting the carrier bags and crisp packets was difficult at times and could have been done more accurately, I think some of my acrylic paintings, could have also been improved as when I used thick paint it would sometimes become less neat, depending on how I am using the paint adds to the difficulty I may have.
In my sketchbook, I firstly focused on the theme beginnings, from this I chose the topic ‘death’, and I then drew still life drawings and gestures linked to this, after having done that I researched on this topic and also an artist, by analyzing some of this artists paintings I developed the definite idea of including both a body and soul in my painting, I researched both these topics using the perception of each created by the artist research and analyzing, these helped me in deciding to add angels, clouds and a volcanic explosion in my painting, after I had decided the main things I wanted in my painting, I played around with different compositions and using the good points of each I formed a final idea.
