World War One soldiers research

These soldiers have been my main inspiraton for this project

The Great War marked a turning porint in plastic surgery, these types had injuries had rarely been seen before and so people were shocked with how there men looked returning home from battle. Many ways were researched in creating small moulds of skin-like masks that these soldiers wore each day to cover their injuries.

Paddy Heartley research

This project has been very much inspired by a particular Artist called Paddy Hartley,intially I was interested in the way he combines text and image. Although from researching his work further It gave me further inspiration for his apprection for the different shapes he could create with the human face. I wanted in my own work to explore the distorted marks left on the soldiers faces from battle and see how I could interpret this idea in my own work.

Sketchbook work from Imperial War Museum

Some observational drawings i did in my sketchbook when at the Museum

Some more images, but I felt that these images best related to my project. Here I found the medical section, the images show some of the medicines and leg splints that would have been used during the time of the Great War. Here there is some sketchbook work exploring line drawing from observing the images i took at the museum of the medical equipment.

Imperial War Museum North pictures

The Imperial War Museum North

A selection of images I photographed at the museum, I then drew some of these objects from observation in my sketchbook.

Me and my Dog!

Several pages from my current sketchbook exploring very different tecniques.

WW1 sketchbook essay

Sketchbook exhibition essay

I have always considered that the way I express the meanings of my projects in quite an illustrative way. The project I am currently working on shows a journey of a World War One soldier.

I began my Sketchbook with some continuous line drawings of some images of WW1 soldiers; my intention was to create a sense of a continuous journey. As part of my research I found some poems based on events that happened during the first World War, I always like to link my drawings with small captions of text, the words form themselves into images and this is what I intend to express in my drawings. I have always thought that poems, stories or just small parts of text are a great inspiration to how I initially start a project, I then tell the story in images. However I think I should include more writing in my sketchbook, referring to what I’m thinking of doing next and about things that have maybe gone wrong but then working out ways to improve.  

For this particular project I have arranged the things I place onto the pages in a certain way, so it makes them look like they could be part of a museum exhibition. It keeps in place the historical aspects of the project. For me this is my natural way of working, I want to make the pages look like they have a story to tell, this also effects the way I arrange text on the page, I don’t want it to be too overbearing, so I tend to keep the amount of text quite minimal but the words I choose are always express the point I want to make.

I think my sketchbook expresses how my ideas have developed from the initial drawings into stitched pieces. Also showing variation in the types of materials I have used and how I have combined certain materials to create different textures.

I could show more evidence of my museum visits, at the moment there are only the observational drawings I did at the museum, so I shall also include the photographs I took as further evidence.  I tend to keep my artist research separate from my main sketchbook, although from seeing some of the other student’s sketchbooks I like how they included their artist research into their work.  From the feedback I received back, this was one of the main issues being brought up, that they would like to see more evidence of my research.

I was satisfied with the feedback I got back; however it would have been good to have had more comments, as some comments were quite similar. Seeing other peoples sketchbooks is always a good way to get inspiration, I was inspired by the layout of the research a it is something i shall be exploring with my project.