Images for my collages

I wrote a list of all the smaller images I need to produce for for albatross silhouettes, and have spent the last few days creating a lot of this work. 

Firstly I created a few quick watercolour and pen drawings of baby Laysan albatross, as our plastic effects them more than the adult birds. 

I also have drawn and created my own plastic bottles and items. I created these 2 out of felt, as I enjoyed working in felt in my previous project and wanted to have that aspect included in my work still. 

Watercolour and pen drawing of a fishing boat, as the fishing industry is one of the main contributors towards the plastic pollution in the ocean. 

Here are some quick fishes I created out of felt again to go in my sea scenes.

Originally, I was going to draw a modern day passenger jet as bird strike is another (although minor) threat to the albatrosses. However, I researched into World War II today which had an iconic navy battle around Midway Atoll. I therefore decided to change this plane into a WWII Douglas Dauntless which was used to bomb Japanese navy ships nearby the atoll. This plane therefore symbolises two different things related to Midway Atoll. 

A quick painting of the beach showing plastic washed up on shore. I'm intended to use this as a background somewhere.

A spinner dolphin, another animal that lives near Midway Atoll and is effected by the plastic pollution. 

Getting there with the first final piece

So in the last few days I've been starting on the final pieces. I've been creating lots of smaller images that will be put together inside the silhouettes of the birds.

Here's one small image of a Green Sea Turtle. I created it with a combination of pen, colouring pencils and water colours. I'm particularly proud of this image. I only meant to spend 20 minutes or so on it but it ended up taking over 3 hours. Think it was worth the effort though. The Green Sea Turtle is another species of animal from the Midway Islands which is effect by the North Pacific Garbage Patch.

And here is one of the albatrosses that I have started working on. It's slowly getting there. It's not quite complete yet as I want to add text and a few other things, but I'm pleased with how it's looking so far.

The Beginning of the Final Images

So earlier this week I have finally stopped writing lists of ideas and things to do and cracked on with the final images. Even though I now know what I want to do for the final images I'm still struggling with how exactly I'm going to make them, what media I want to include and what images exactly I want to collage into them. So my method at the moment is to bang out lots of images and experiments for the next few days and see what happens.

Last week I decided on 6 photographs of birds (from the Midway Facebook page) that I wanted to base my silhouettes on. However, I'm not sure if I want to have some detail of the bird showing through the image, or use purely just a silhouette of it.

This week I've been painting the base images of the birds. Some of them I prefer to others, but I'm going to scan them all into photoshop and see what happens!

Above the six images together. Below are the three that I am particularly happy with.

My plan for these now is too get some acetate (which I have currently done for a couple of them) and draw feathers and other details on, similar to what I would do if I was screen printing. But instead of going into the print room (because I'm not a fan of it) I'm going to scan into photoshop and experiment in there. Then after this it's onto creating more images for collaging. 

Recent doodles and a tutorial with Pete

So over Easter I hit a bit of a wall. I had done quite a few drawings of the Laysan Albatross, but I just couldn't come up with any ideas for my final piece that I liked enough to stick with.

At first, I thought about making a stuffed 3D albatross and ripping its stomach open to show the plastic coming out of it - slightly crude but though it would be attention grabbing. I made a bird in the style of Mark Hearld which was fun but I don't think I wanted to make more similar birds for the degree show.

Yesterday I spent most of the day on photoshop and scanned in some of my previous doodles and improved them. I was hoping that I would suddenly get inspiration from doing that.

I created this image which was influenced by Andy Warhol's soup cans. This was inspired by an interview I was reading of Chris Jordan who was talking about the North Pacific Garbage Patch, where   the Albatrosses collect food for their young and unfortunately pick up plastic at the same time. Jordan described the garbage patch as a "giant floating soup". 

I created a new font type over Easter. I enjoyed using my own font in my last project, but I didn't want to use the same font as it was too child-like, so I created a new one. 

I used another quote from Chris Jordan for this image. I used my original drawing and used a photograph taken by Jordan for the Midway Project as the background image, to show how the albatrosses nest among the plastic. 

A quote used at the beginning of the Midway trailer, and a plastic heart. However, I couldn't find a better image of a plastic heart so would want to possible photograph a plastic heart charm myself and use that.

Tutorial with Pete and a possible final piece 

I had a bit of a brain wave last night. I thought back to last year where I created a collage for my Fairy Tales and Folklore project which Pete and Jonny really liked and said had potential. 

I showed Pete in my tutorial today what I had done so far and told him about my new possible idea which would be to create a huge collage of the midway landscape. I refreshed his memory with the collage I did last year and we talked about my idea further.

In the end, my idea is to create a series of albatross silhouettes (possibly 5 or 6 at this stage) and create a collage inside the shapes of the birds. I want the collages to make people aware of what we are doing to the earth. Each bird silhouette will be showing something slightly different, for example, one may show other animals that are being effected by our pollution on the Midway Islands and another may show how the fishing industry is contributing towards the amount of plastic pollution. I still need to decided to certain on what I will be showing in each bird though.

Updated Timetable

Also, here is my most recently updated version of my timetable. I changed it slightly when I altered my idea a few weeks back.