Workshop.3-CHARACTERS OF LONDON

this workshop was good!at first iw asnt sure what i would get out of it that might be relevant for me to pursue, but turns out i took quite alot of ideas!

We were learning about 'characters'-how a character is effectively a visual manifestation of the elements of something [such as a place, a company etc] and that characters represents all the aspects that makes something what it is

Our brief in this workshop was to CHARACTERISE LONDON

out of all the boroughs in london we had to pick one, research it and develop a character on that area

in our freindly group we picked ISLINGTON

we found through research there are alot of contrasts in this area. there is urban and countryside, rich and poor, old and new, there are old expensive homes and antique shops-and 2 prisons for example!

so we wanted to pick up on this, and we felt the shape of the borough resembled an angel. and as ANGEL and KINGS CROSS are two major stations in the area we set about making a KINGS CROSS ANGEL

after research and discussion, we set about finding materials round the school-for the first time i visited the 3-d workshop and picked up loads of mad bits of wood and plastics-ill be going back there! [as an aside i found all these odd shapes and textures of wood which got my artistic side excited-some will be great for doing wood cuts of london-an extention of rachels monoprinting idea. and even these odd bits of wood and old doors outside would be brilliant to paint on!] 

so we looked at what we had and constructed our crazy spikey angel. we painted camoflage patterns on it in contrasting colours to further reflect the contrast

WHAT IM GOING TO DO NEXT:

-i really like the idea of furthering this using illustration. theres about 30 odd boroughs which is far too many, so i aim to pick 4-simply north,south,west and east and develop these into illustrated characters, and either paint these with chalk in the areas or fly paste them. it will be tricky so many areas so diverse into one, but i may simplify it, such as a cockney for east, a yuppie for west, an office worker for north and a pikey for south. ill see what fruits my research bears.

or maybe even characterising significant buildings or elements of london, such as the tube, police, rich history, diversity. infact that would give some very extreme and interesting off the wall characters.