This post is long over-due, but better late than never they say!
So, I have started my final year at University (scary times!) and my first task was to decide on a project theme which could carry me through the whole year. No easy task although I was sure of my interests, it was just a case of crafting it so it would contain both visual and contextual substance.
Therefore, after much thought I decided that I would look into
Animal Rights and the Environment, focusing on several aspects of this theme and developing them into a large body of work. As well as this, I have a desire to make sure my work is as professional as it can be at this stage, even though my first module consists of mainly research.
As an initial starting point I decided to research into local aspects of the theme, bringing the environmental side to the foreground and saving the Animal Rights aspect until I gathered some decent literary research.
Having a desire to be unique and create my own style, primary source research is important to me as an illustrator. Due to this, my first step was to go out and take my own photographs of the environment, with an aim to capture the relationship between the immediate urban landscape and nature:
These images were taken around Huddersfield and it soon became evident how man-made forms either take over certain areas of the landscape, or intrude on the natural beauty of the landscape which is already there. Another point I noticed was that much of the landscape will have been planted by men, so therefore is it natural? Or is it man-made nature?
Questions constantly popped up into my mind, and I so from this I am eager to bring nature into the foreground of beauty and push the urban landscape into the background as an attempt to regain some of what is left of nature. Even though I have questioned some of the natural aspects of the landscape, in my illustrations I will capture them in a beautiful, natural sense to highlight nature's importance in comparison to man-made forms such as roads, buildings and cars.
