11 Coursework Updates

Many things have happened since my last update. I've started sketching some of my inspirations as well as possible compositions for my coursework. Below is some of my work so far- I'll try to put up some of my inspirations next time as well! Meanwhile I'm moving on to painting and more of composition, so that's putting some of my sketches together to form my own manipulations.

original mindmap of ideas

This was a fun, kind of stream-of-consciousness thing where I just listed things as I thought of them. Although of course it's quite difficult because 'dreams' is a very nebulous theme and you can't just grasp hold of them; ideas of dreams are quite like clouds. Very thin, wispy cotton-wool clouds.

my very first sketch!! done without any research whatsoever. I just thought of myths and fairy tales and stories and drew them in as I thought of them. To list- Snow White/Sleeping Beauty, Ariel (the little mermaid), Jack and Jill, Sound of Music, Jack and the Beanstalk, Medusa, Adam and Eve, Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter (of course that had to come in somewhere)... and Rapunzel. See if you can spot the seven dwarves!

I planned to edit it to make it cleaner and sharper with neater ideas but that plan failed because it's just too hard to link such a huge plethora of tales. At the left is a list of some stories I remembered... as well as very failed sketchy sketches of Pocahantas and Black Swan. 

Working on my first idea- the childhood dream of being a ballerina. The impossibly graceful ballerina I did not do justice to above is Darcey Bussell. When I was young my mother bought me a book "written" by her (now I realize she only wrote the introduction) with ballet stories which I loved and still do. I didn't realize then how famous she was, though! It's a pity she's retired. Judging by the photos of her in the book, I would love to see her perform live.

I don't like the way the dancer's head looks here, but the arms and feet are pretty good in my opinion! :D I must not be scared to shade and make more definite lines, though.

A very cute drawing of little ballet shoes which took AGES to do due to the huge amount of details (the original had more, I think). I was nearly falling asleep by the time I drew in the last rose (peony? chrysanthemum? what's that flower?). But I love how there are hearts and stars scattered in between, even in the original- and of course the albatross-bird things. One of my most recent obsessions in art (and fashion) is bird motifs. They're pretty awesome.
The wonders of dark line art here :)

a dreamcatcher! don't you just love its name! It's a North American custom. I bought one once when I went to Canada but sadly it's very delicate and got tangled in the luggage. I found an interesting nugget of info about dreamcatchers on Wikipedia:

As dreamcatchers are made of willow and sinew, they are not meant to last forever but are intended to dry out and collapse as the child enters the age of wonderment.^{[citation needed]}
The Ojibwa believe that a dreamcatcher changes a person's dreams. According to Konrad J. Kaweczynski, "Only good dreams would be allowed to filter through . . . Bad dreams would stay in the net, disappearing with the light of day."^[4] Good dreams would pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper.
Another version from the same article was, "Luscious dreams pass through the center hole to the sleeping person. The bad dreams are trapped in the web, where they perish in the light of dawn."^[4]

Isn't that beautiful?

This was adapted from an image I found on the Net, again with a dreamcatcher! The original was a little... darker in theme, I think, and not quite so dreamy-looking, so I made her into a half-butterfly half-dancer fairy. Sitting on a moon. Which makes for a very nice combination of things that are related to dreams, right? :)

my all-time favourite childhood heroine, Ariel! This is arguably one of her most famous scenes, where she's singing the reprise of Part of Your World and the waves just splash out from behind her. I got a bit lazy doing the waves, though.

Once again, bird motifs! I love the birds in this one, though it's obvious I used a different pencil for the last four because it's lighter. I love the idea of being borne by birds, but maybe I'll have to change the guy's silhouette if I use this idea in my coursework. It's a bit too ordinary and motivation-poster-y.

Moving on to the epitome of human beauty- Clemence Poesy! She's a French actress but I've only ever seen her in the Harry Potter film franchise. Loved her nonetheless, she's absolutely beautiful, and the original picture of this was unspeakably stunning. Unfortunately I cannot draw proportions and her head seems a little bent back with her eye looking all funny and the butterfly all flat.

I realized butterflies are yet another common motif in my sketches...

I LOVE this sketch. It was my first sketch-manipulation-thing where I combined two of my favourite pictures (outside art) of all time. The one on the left is also of Clemence Poesy, while the one on the right was from a Lookbook user. Both original pictures were edited with the most wonderful starry backgrounds but unfortunately I couldn't draw them in. It looks nice this way too, though, right?

Clemence looks a bit like a bobble-head here but I think that's cool in an artsy way because it looks like the kind of indie thing you'd see printed on bags in a collaboration between some hip artist and an upscale designer. (I wish.)

That's it for my sketches for now!