Studio Brief 4 - A Matter of Opinion

So far with this brief I have been drafting ideas mainly through writing with imagery following it, but I think it is important for me to look into bringing drawing to the forefront. I have tried to focus on the shapes and line work I could use to represent life and it's continuity. The quote "When I die there is nobody to take my place" makes me think about us carrying on after death, just in another form of existence, so there is still a continuous circle of life that is completely our own and individual. The Hindu cycle of Samsara likens our body to a chariot which is owned by the soul and driven by the intellect, pulled along by five steeds that represent the senses, who are connected to the chariot via reigns which are the mind. You travel down the path of life and through resisting things like temptation you aim to reach enlightenment. They believe that we continue to exist even after death, and therefore you cannot be replaced - you just progress.

Scribbling all over a page in these bright colours kind of represents a continuous 'life force' - kind of how I'd imagine a bolt of electricity to look, I want my pieces of illustration to include lots of these simple shapes that come together to create something complex. I definitely want to include writing in my work though, and still feel as if I should push that in order to challenge myself and others as to what illustration can be. 

I think I get carried away and sometimes (like in this case) I completely lose sight of what I was even trying to communicate to begin with. I initially wanted to look at where our souls end up, which has resulted in this piece of work about the devil sucking in the world. I know this has become less about the topic and more about aesthetics for me, which is bad in that it doesn't necessarily communicate anything. The message becomes loose and indirect and I feel no real connection to this drawing. The only thing I can take forward is the intricate line work, I suppose it's good I practiced.

Another possible idea is to communicate someone's past and everything they do or have enjoyed. Simple things like crosswords and cats make quite nice patterns. The of layering imagery could be used to show the continuous growth of a person, I found out that out bodies renew nearly all of our cells every seven years. It made me think about what makes us 'us' and whether there is even anything to replace - how is something we can't define 'replaced'.