A small book looking again into using buildings as a form of portraiture.  In the book I have drawn portraits of some friends and then put an illustration of each person’s house next to them. (I look like I cant stand my own house!)  I wanted to make my audience think about relationships between people and their houses.  I always find it really interesting looking at portraits of people I know nothing about, with things which are important to them.  It makes me wonder about who these people are and what they think about their possessions (or in this case their homes).  This is my take on the portraits the upper classes had done with their estates when it was fashionable to do so.  

Another concertina, this time trying to communicate how diverse buildings which have the same purpose can be.  As I had so many reference photos of pubs from my FMP, I thought I would do start with a pubs one, however I would also like to communicate the same thing with other buildings, including schools, churches, libraries etc.  I think these might give me a greater diversity in architecture, since there are some dire churches, schools and libraries, and also some beautiful ones.  

Experiment into communicating the sorts of buildings you might find in certain areas.  These buildings are all from the centre of oxford.  I could apply this format and subject to anywhere.  I want to do one for cheltenham, as it would probably show people that most of cheltenham was built in the 1800s and has a lot of regency architecture.  It’s quite nice to choose areas which have a lot of similar architecture.  I think it would also be interesting to do one for the Cotswolds, and one for an area with more modern buildings.

This is an experiment into how I can communicate architectural history, and also the geography of a town or city.  So with these tiny models, I would either draw out a timeline and make it so people would have to guess when the buildings were built, and place them on the timeline on the correct dates, or draw a map which had a number on each place where the building exists, and make it so people have to place the building on the map in the order they think they were built.  

1830 - Pittville Pump Room
1929 - Westal Green Sub Station
1965 - United Church of St. Micheal
1970 - St. Barnabas Church
1984 - Regent Arcade
2004 - The Centaur  

This one’s a tad better I think…same styles and the scale doesn’t look quite as wrong as the building is in the background.  I think what I need to do is be a little more thoughtful when merging the two images.  Overlapping doesn’t work for me.  Enjoyed going back to inks for a change.  

Black and white experiment.  Again I think the styles of the portrait and the building need to be the same….don’t much like these…losing the face….scale’s wrong…

Leonie + Brighton Pavilion 

I don’t think these work very well because the styles don’t really match.  Its a portrait of someone with their favourite building layered on top.  I made the layers different colours to make this clear but I want to try one where the layers are the same colour.  The blue portrait (George) with the red building (Radcliffe Camera) is the better of the two I think.  My mum says she finds the scaling (massive face compared to small building) unnerving! 

Work in progress…

Media experiment for using my buildings illustrations as a form of portraiture.  Obviously I would just be illustrating one building instead of a row.  I will also look at including quotes with the illustration.  I thought that I could represent peoples strong or faded memories through the subtle and brighter colours.  Wet tissue paper left to dry on top of the drawing.     

Layers experiment, one of the ideas for showing different fashions of architecture.  Each layer would be a row of buildings from a different era, made into a book so that I could put info about the architectural fashions of each era on the back.  

Last ideas, for showing fashions and how buildings with the same purpose differ.  

Ideas for showing connections between well known people, geography and buildings as portraiture.  I can mix and match concepts/content and format with a lot of these ideas. 

Ideas for how to show world/uk or local history using buildings.

Ideas of how to show the history of a building…on another note, I think the Radcliffe Camera would make a brilliant hat.

The ramblings of my brain.  Sorting out the direction of my research project and trying to pin down my objectives again.  Useful, going to re-write my objectives…(See The Point…)