#linedrawings – Heather’s blog

‘Ophelia’ By John Everett Millais. This pre raphaeite painting I felt connected well with my theme due to the model’s dream like connection with nature.Altho the meaning of the painting has a darker turn as the painting is based on Ophelia from Shakesphere’s Ophelia who sang whilst floating down the river before drowning. I quite like the sinister turn of events as i feel this fits well with my theme.

After collecting a sucession of various items from the abandoned village I decided to make some ‘ready mades’ and then draw continous line drawings from there.Some of these ready mades were a mixture of natural and non-natural found items.As I felt this was important considering that one of the themes is one of people going back to nature and it kind of shows that transition or partial transition through use of materials.One of the ready mades included a corroding saucepan lid and the inner tube of a bike tyre.I felt encouraged to use both these items as I felt they were representative of hobbies that people may be rediscovering currently or doing more of since their infrastructure has crumbled.

After making a dream catcher like item from the inner of the bike tube in order to make a connection with the native Americans i then decided to transform it into a pagan like headpiece by adding pieces of bark and wild flowers.

My partner owns a gas mask which I decided to use whilst wearing the headpiece as i felt that it connected well with the surgical masks people are currently wearing but also to an era where people may of been feeling emotions similar to what they are feeling now.Such as fear,vunerabilty and numbness.I also created a stick which I tied a plastic cable and bolt to which i found in the woods my ititial reaction whilst creating it was thinking of the spirit stick a Native American may of used during ritual/ceremonys but during the photo’s it had a different effect and started to look quite threatening and more like a weapon. Also getting feedback from peers and a thought i had myself is that i feel like the clothing either needs to go or prehaps experimentation with symbolic marks on the body using the red clay like mud which is very much present in this part of scotland.

Initially i took the photo’s with a stone wall in the background but I realised that the headpiece was soon being lost to the background as the colours merged too much and i felt that we needed greenery in the background in order for it to ‘pop’ and it order for the idea to better connect to nature.On the day of the shoot it was really sunny so much so that at times it was hard to get the right angle without the shadow of the photographer falling onto the model.What I did like tho was the rainbow like effect that was brought on by the sun.Also the angle my partner shot the photo’s of me from wasn’t the angle i was looking for but worked suprisingly well as due to his height it looked like I was being looked down on and gave quite an intimidating effect.I then decided to follow on from that by walking round the model and getting my partner to walk around me whilst filming.I felt that this gave the feeling that there was something out there watching you that you have no control of and yet it controls you just like the panidemic has done with many people.

In the first video you will noticed I have left me talking to my partner (Louis) in at the beggining of the video as it has quite a muffled yet eerie effect which I like.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nlQfDJWrLeyYTyRbe7ZW7yMPA7Jjrs-H

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ncR28kCXrYl6HOxosolxmbmC5dJQ4j3J

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1n7I5YORRb-L3KPCSIE6i90rz56DW5GFi

Photo’s of the headpiece also worked quite well within nature.I also decided to capture the slight breeze moving which moved the headpiece ever so slighy on video and to create a feeling of intimidation by walking around the model

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nO-NmXnGPJtbXbClo2ThJDgKadTy-YaO

I have started to experiement with line drawings of the photo’s and what i hope to do is pick out shapes from these line drawrings and try to connect them with shapes within nature in order to make some kind of symbols out of them.

The pictures have a surreal ‘trippy’ like quality to them

Whilst shooting photo’s in the woods I found stones by the river which had very primitive looking marks on them.I found this very interesting and it has given me inspiration for using a stick with some of the afore mentioned red clay mud in order to make similar marks.