Testing and Development

I initially favoured my sensory portrait and amplified that concept further by using softer, coloured pencils to show less defined edges - as a closer representation to what I can see out of my small window of vision. I took a step further, again using the same medium, this time joining together the common lines and contours to redraw my face entirely in a semi-accurate way. After further exploration of other ideas I didn't continue with my original intention of a sensory mask, but this is a concept I would like to revisit at some point in the near future during a more in-depth brief that calls for a deeper understanding and use of visual language techniques.

Looking back at my foundation of original sketches, I was able to determine that the strawberry and Guide Dog Tami ideas were among my favourites. I enquired further with combining specific features of both, along with my own, to make it truly personal and played with line width and cross-hatched shading. Potential colours were considered too; the Strawberry Dog eventually being eliminated from consideration as I didn't think the colours teamed together well enough. 

In this stage of testing and developing, in preparation for my final outcome, I wanted to produce swatches of the media that was available to me in the studio. I chose a common colour and observed the mark-making, tone saturation, spread on the paper and drying time. In my small examples I tried different media to outline with including drawing ink, fineliner pens and markers. The drawing ink provided a much better coverage over each of the materials used and kept its original dark shade when completely dry.

I really had fun with the looseness of the Brusho powder when combining different shades together - and this influenced my final and chosen design; a happy Blind Strawberry with galactic UV glasses! The vibrance and blending of the colours reminded me of a nebula which ignited the idea. I find the elements within the strawberry convey me perfectly - vibrant, warm, fun, happy, someone who loves accessorising and sees the world differently to everyone else.

Here is a step-by-step guide to how I created my Blind Strawberry mask.

The process was relatively straight-forward, with no obstacles, and took around 2 and a half hours to complete (including drying time of the PVA glue, drawing ink and acrylic paints). The only element that needed rectifying was the nebula created by the Brusho. While it created a vibrant base, I wasn't entirely happy with how it turned out and it didn't evoke the image of a nebula as much as my test swatch did on my work sheet. This could be for a variety of reasons including the base material (paper absorbed the Brusho more successfully than cardboard), using different shades than the ones I originally chose in the test swatch, the scarlet shade being too prominent, not enough water sprayed onto the powder or not enough powder added. It looked too dry and the colours hadn't bled together as well I had hoped. 

I reworked the astral background with pastel-toned acrylic paints and a dry sponge to create more cloud-like shapes as seen in typical nebula imagery. When dry, I created a template from a piece of paper and used this to cut out a pair of UV glasses, finishing with white gel pen to add constellations and scattered stars. As a final touch, I added gold sequins to represent the seeds on the outside of a strawberry; adding some much-needed bling. Overall, I am extremely happy with how my mask turned out. It is fun, vibrant and unique!