London Mapping the Makers project, I looked at Kew Gardens and my brief was to create a short concept film portraying Kew in a new light suitable for a different target audience than usual, for example teenagers.
I looked at botanical art, Japanese shoji screens, psychedelic art, silhouettes and cyanotype as my main sources of inspiration.
Franz Andreas Bauer was born in Austria, March 14, 1758 and died December 11, 1840) He was a microscopist and botanical artist/illustrator. His brother Ferndinand also worked as a botanical illustrator. (they were later known as the Bauer brothers)
Franz and Ferdinand learnt about botanical illustration due to the arrival of Father Norbert Boccius, Abbot of Feldsberg in 1763 and under his guidance they produced over 2000 watercolour drawings of plant specimens. They also worked as flower painters in Vienna for Count Dietrichstein. Franz met Joseph Franz von Jacquin while working at the Schönbrunn Imperial Gardens and he accompanied Joseph and his father to London. His talent was quickly recognised and he was secured a posit as the first botanical illustrator to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew (also known as Kew Gardens) in 1790. He stayed at Kew for the rest of his life produced a vast collection of botanical and anatomical illustrations. He was also appointed ‘Botanic Painter to His Majesty; King George III.
He did many detailed paintings and drawings including flower dissections and microscopic details. Taking great care to colour match precisely to produce an almost identical image of the real plants.
Enter the Void Opening Credits, skip to 1.54 for part mentioned in sketchbook
Enter the Void DMT Trip scene, Hallucinations skip to 4.00
The Weeknd Live For Video (first 30 seconds only)
Here is the link to my final video: https://vimeo.com/93131179
Evaluation
For this project I wanted to look at botanical illustration because I thought it would give me an opportunity to do more painting and drawing. I found out about an artist called Franz Bauer who was the first ever botanical illustrator at Kew Gardens.
I started the project with a trip to Kew where I visited the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of botanical art, the palm house and the Japanese garden. I also observed cacti, other plants and silhouettes in the sunset.
I really liked the observational paintings and drawings I completed while I was at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, particularly the leaf as I think I matched the colours with the original quite well.
I used drawing to record the colours I saw, form and shape of the plants, outline, surface qualities and texture. For my brief I wanted to create a film which would show Kew in a new light that would be interesting to a different age group than their normal target market, for example teenagers.
Hopefully this would bring more visitors to Kew in the future.
Throughout this project I think I could have managed my time a lot better, I chose tasks which took quite long to complete and often put off doing work I did not enjoy such as film editing. I ended up with a lot of work left to do at the last minute. At the beginning of the project however I think I planned my time well, I set time out to go on the visit to Kew and also gave myself enough time to do research.
I researched into Japanese shoji screens and the way that they are used to filter light, this gave me the idea to start making screens including plant form silhouettes taken from my first hand photographs and initials drawings. I also did more research into botanical art and found out about the importance of negative space in compositions.
Later on in the project my secondhand research into psychedelic art proved to be very informative for the creation of my final piece, also looking at cyanotype research was a good way for me to decide on colours.
I think i developed my ideas really well throughout this project, I feel that I spent a lot of time re thinking about my ideas and improving on my previous attempts, my sketchbook follows a clear story and I think I used contextual references very accurately to inform my own ideas.
I think I could have spent a bit more time drawing to really refine the images that I used in my final piece, especially as I planned to do more drawing in this project.
I chose to use iMovie to edit my final film as it was the only program I had available to me at the time, I found it quite confusing a first and spent a while watching online tutorials and eventually started to understand the program. Once I knew what i was doing, it was very a quick to edit footage.
A huge contextual influence in my work was the footage from the film Enter the Void and also the Live For video by The Weeknd, these videos gave me the idea of flashing strobe like effects and fast paced, psychedelic and trippy clips. This was the main focus of my film and really made it come alive. This was a huge contributor to the look of my film.
I wanted to try and communicate the huge collection that Kew Gardens possess and also the diversity of this collection. I was able to include a lot of different images in my film as it was so fast paced and I think this was a good way of putting this message across.
Keywords to describe my final piece: Trippy, psychedelic, fast, strobe, flashing images, busy. ornate, kaleidoscope, complex.
I think I follow my brief quite well, I believe that I created a film that would appeal to a younger audience yet still put forward the concept that Kew's collection is very stunning and diverse.
If I could repeat the project I would include brighter colours in my final piece, a lot of my initial studies and contextual research suggested this however I did not have the capabilities to do this well due to editing software limitations.
During this project I have been able to practice my observational drawing skills and also have learnt how to use a new computer program, iMovie. It was interesting to experiment with different media when creating my screens and I think I leant a lot about how to compose images, sometimes less is more, like in botanical illustration.
I knew that I usually work better under pressure however I feel that during this project I became a bit overwhelmed and stressed and this prevented me from doing good work. I also found it very difficult to develop my own ideas when I had received a lot of mixed feedback from various people including teachers and peer students.
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