A Timeline of Development.How I went from Angela Carter to my final pieces.

I read her book ‘Bluebeard’ and felt inspired by the harsh imagery and her word choices.

I completed a workshop session that involved making marks to represent certain words and symbolise certain images within her text.

I then reread her books and chose the most evocative words and created marks and textures based upon how they made me feel and want to react with my materials.

I created a playlist of the music I felt Carter would listen to. It was predominantly Jazz which dated back to her first husband who got her into it, whilst they lived in Bristol.

Using the same marks from the earlier tasks, I collaged them together whilst listening to her playlist. It was spontaneous and autonomous in its approach.

Carter was influenced by surrealism. I tried to release my subconscious imagination through these tasks, just as the surreal artists aimed to.

Using a combination of the subject featured in her stories and the textures that I had created, I created collages representing each different tale within ‘Bluebeard’.

I then created further marks in response to the jazz music.

I then simplified all of the mark making and textures down, so I could work with them digitally.

After a peer review, it was suggested that I looked into the covers of ‘Bluenote’ records. The random marks and spontaneity really inspired me to work in a similar manner. I felt the music through the imagery.

I completed a mono-printing workshop that encouraged me to look at random shapes, textures and how to balance such forms in a composition.

Using the stained stencils from mono printing, I collaged by hand. This gave me more control of the results and allowed more planning.

I did a screen printing session and loved the unplanned textures created from it, rather than digital printing.

Using the hand crafted monoprints and textures, I experimented and tried to combine them together using photoshop.

Realising the colour limitations, I began to experiment with the textures and shapes, in monochrome and a bright ‘pop’ shade of colour.

I researched artists using similar techniques for further inspiration.

Researching colour palettes from the 60s and 70s, enable me to choose which colours would be most suited for my digital collages.

I created a rough mock up to see how they worked as a set.

I chose the most well suited paper, based on my budget and the quality that I wanted to represent in my final presentation.

I had lots of printing issues, which I persevered through and will learn from.

My final prints were formed. Surreal and abstract works, informed directly from my initial research.