Folklore i have used for my final images so far...

So far I have produced 3 A1 images all being based on Trinidad and Tobago carnival folklore each image being a different character using symbolism to show what his story tells.

Image 1 Papa Bois;

Papa bois live in the forest being a father to the animals, casting spells on bad hunters. He can change himself into a deer to be unseen carrying around a cow horn.

Image 2 Soucouyant;

A Soucouyant is a supernatural being who made a pact with the devil. She sheds her skin at night changing into either a ball of fire or an animal of the forest. she turns people she comes across also into animals. If she doesn't change back to her human figure before dawn it is said she would lose her powers.

Image 3 Gang Gang Sara;

Gang Gang Sara is a witch who lived to a great age. She once lived in africa getting blown over to trinidad in a storm many years ago. Since then she has been in search for her family. She is known for her wisdom and Kindness.

For my final 2 images I have decided I wanted to base them on the folklore characters;

1. Mama Glow;

Having long beautiful hair she combs constantly she is half women half snake known as the mother of the water. She is often found singing silent songs at the waters edge in the sunlight, a flash of green and she would be gone. Men that cause crime or hurt to the forest and animals find them selfs married to her for this life and the next.

2. Fairy maid;

Fairy maids are said to be beautiful women with loverly long hair but have one small foot as a deers hoof. She uses her power to attract men, turning their heads leading them to lose their shadows. Fairy maids are often found in caves, waterfalls or bridges. to discontinue a relationship with a fairy queen she must be offered with two pairs of shoes one to be burnt and the second to be thrown into the waves

Ahhh No A1

After my meeting with Peter I went into town to look for the best deal for scanning and printing in the local print operators. After visiting 4 different printers i found this wasn't that successful an idea. I found that I can get my work printed onto acetate but the biggest size available to me was A3.

O no i was stuck with what I wanted to do now! I really liked the idea of printing on to A1 or A2 acetate I thought that if I was to scale down my images to A3 they would come out too small and not as good.

After much consideration I decided I would go ahead and attempt to get my images scanned in so I had them on the computer ready to touch up or print of at different scales to experiment with. I also decided to get the images scaled down to A3 and printed on acetate costing me a great £35 pounds for the scanning and printing and for only 2 images!!

Once I had received the acetate images back I decided they was small but I quite liked them so would go ahead and attempt to add colour and see what i get.

my work needs colour!

At the beginning of this week I had a meeting with Peter Lloyd to find out how my work was coming along,  to get help with how I would add colour to my images and which was the best way for me to go for my final images.
I found out this week where in the Bargate gallery my space will be in. I have a wall space in the far corner which should fit roughly 5-6 A1 images. I am still to think about how I am going to hang these.

When showing Peter my work he told me I should stick to one style either the black and white images I was producing, working in acrylic or working in collage as up to now I had been working in all three. I felt that I wasn't skilled enough to produced more acrylic images at a good standard as I find this quite messy and I am pretty bad at adding detail in acrylic. I like the idea of collage but I felt this process wasn't as effective as the black and white images I was producing and i didn't get the same detail. I wasn't as keen on the collage images.

I choose to stick to the black and white A1 images I had been producing but I felt that they could of done with some colour I just didn't know how to go about this as I had attempted a design in pastels and it wasn't a great turnout.

Peter suggested several ways of adding colour to my images each having good and bad points;

1. Scan images and add colour on photoshop, but this wouldn't give a very textured effect it would be very solid colour.
2. Use the light box or a window and paint each section of colour onto a different sheet of paper, scan each piece in and using photoshop layer them onto the black and white image. this would give a nice textured effect like it had been painted but would be a lot of work to do in such a short space of time.
3. Get the images printed onto acetate and paint on the other side of the acetate. This would give a nice textured effect, blending colours well and leave me with a nice gloss final finish.

I decided the 3rd idea was the most suitable for me.