COURSEWORK EVALUATION.

From the very beginning of my coursework, my main intention was to show the differences in animals and humans in my work, however I abandoned that idea gradually and changed to a slightly different, more developed concept. I have still kept the idea of using animals however, more in a response to them and nature, rather than just drawing them. I was intent on portraying animals in the style of Amy Hamilton, yet I found myself with new artists, whose style and technique I preferred. My intended genre of work was abstract realism, which is what I managed to keep consistent through my whole project, mostly taking inspiration from Agnus Cecile’s work; I took inspiration from her work by combining realistic work, the portrait and then more expressive work along with this.

Meanwhile, over time, I started to gain new influences to help develop my work, rather than sticking with my original artists, whilst also abandoning some of my original ideas. This automatically took me in a new direction as my project became more about nature and my work in a way began celebrating it as I believe that nature is something we all need to protect and preserve, this is why I revolved my work around a butterfly and other aspects of nature. Rather than just representing nature on a page, which would be much easier, I started to create responses to it and how I think nature feels, referring to my textural work. I also believe that a main turning point in my work was when I began to realise that I was being too respectful of the subject in the photo by only placing the marks and textures in the unimportant areas of the frame. I started experimenting with composition, which then led me to place the textures onto acetate so that I could move them easily on the photo; I then had the idea to shoot in the studio whilst also placing the textures in front of the subject which ultimately led to my final outcome.

When it came to my working process I think that it went fairly well when regarding concentration and enjoyment of my work and style. I think that in the beginning I found it difficult to combine influences from multiple artists to create a more unique style however, when it came to around the mid-point of the coursework, I was much more comfortable with coming up with ideas for possible final outcomes and ways to combine my inspirations. I think that I was much more comfortable when I finally felt free to create a variety of experiments to show textures and colour as I started to realise that I don’t always need to be so organised and concise in my work, especially when it came to the textural work. My main weakness throughout the personal investigation was the fact that towards the start of my project and early work, I wasn’t aware of the time and how much I would have left to complete the work, which as a result led to some of my work being slightly rushed. A positive of this is that it has better prepared me for my upcoming exam and in turn sparked more refined ideas for my final outcome.

Furthermore, if I were given more time with my personal investigation I would be able to refine my final outcome by looking deeper into my artists work and deeper into the more textural aspects of my work. I was unable to revisit some of my older work so that I could maybe try to re-contextualise it and refine it to fit my updated concept and style. This would have showed development on a much higher level. Moreover, if I were given more money to create my work, I would most likely have created a final outcome that is on a much larger scale to create a bigger impact on the viewer and I would have probably tried to use more expensive equipment when taking the photos so that the outcome was at a much higher quality. I would have also been able to use more high quality, more expensive materials in my work to widen my range of creative making skills, however this was not possible due to lack of money.

One thing that I would like to develop in my exam is to photograph more stages of the creative making process to back up my techniques and annotate them to compare to my artists technique and process. I would also like to record observations and ideas much more so that I have more record of plans for when it comes to coming up with a final idea for a final outcome as I don’t think that I have planned to the best of my ability for a final outcome, leading to a more refined consistent final piece.