Decoration and Pattern

The sketches done at Ipswich Museum lend to be linked in with one piece of my work in the form of the mandala lion piece called Lionel, not only is the image taken from a tattoo but the idea of the brush strokes came from the Ipswich Museum visit with the lion sitting on top of a rock and its furry like mane brushed around its face, in this I found the idea to link not only dots within the image but brush strokes as well and this may lead to create similar patterns and shapes not only with the backgrounds but the images themselves. I found the stuffed animals and skulls more interesting than the rest of the artefacts within the museum because they always feel so alive and the detail of those animals are perfectly preserved and that is the feel I want the viewer to feel when they are looking at my work. So I started to bring the dots closer together but still maintain that sense of really looking at the image in order for it to be visible and abstract as well as if transforming the viewer to another time and place, within a different world. I chose again to change my media to ink and it gave a strong and powerful contrast to the sketches and gave character to not only the dots themselves but the object making it have texture and giving off a statement as well as telling a story within the sketch making it new and bold. Also I chose to play around with using the ink to create strange and wonderful backgrounds in the forms of dripping the ink, bold circles and even flicking it on the page with a brush, this has inspired me when it comes to the backgrounds of my much larger pieces. I found that the colours I chose were simple mostly black, blue and red because I didn’t want to overpower the page and the dots were really solid when using the ink that I found that just sticking to three of these colours made it look clean and eye catching.