Amy Hazelgrave

[amyhazel]

PEDRO REYES

The grasshopper burger

These grasshopper burgers were created by Reyes to show that there are more sustainable food sources on the planet and better ways of eating that won’t destroy the world in the way we are destroying it now.

“We still need to feed the 7 billion (and counting) earthlings, who are on course to first eat everything on the planet and then eat each other. Entomophagists have devised a new über-food: the grasshopper burger, aka the grass-whopper.” - PEDRO REYES

[amyhazel]

HO TZU NYEN

One or several tigers

One or several tigers by Ho Tzu Nyen is a piece that really inspired my tiger collage in my studio practice work as the detailing of the tiger pouncing onto the people makes it look so life like, so in my biro studies I was trying to replicate the realness of the tiger.

My tiger drawing inspired by Ho Tzu Nyen

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[amyhazel]

CHRIS JORDAN

Portraits of consumption

Chris Jordan’s work is something that really spoke to me when I was creating my own work for studio practice as his work shows the horrible side to what we are doing to our planet and how we as a throw away society have contributed to society in such an awful way.

These images he has created are to shock the audience and to show how bad things are getting.

[amyhazel]

CONTRAST IN COLOUR

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CONTRAST IN COLOUR

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USING MACHINE STITCH

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ADDING COLOUR

I looked into how to develop my ink fish studies as it was something that I really enjoyed creating in my studio practice, so firstly I created my drawings on a A4 scale.

My first drawing is of several different fish heads. I decided to draw just the fish heads as they tend to be something in the fishmonger industry that is just thrown away or thrown back into the sea. These drawings were done in black and white as here I was only experimenting with the size of the paper and the composition of the fish.

I then looked into adding colour to my work. I decided to look into the salmon fish as in the Seaspiracy documentary that I watched, salmon is the fish that is so over produced on fish farms and the conditions that they are living in are awful. The fish contract so many infections in the farm and due to each cage being so over crowded, a lot of the fish are very ill when they are then caught to produce food for us. Some companies even use food colouring to make the salmon look nicer because they know the diseases that are being passed on in the farms with the over breeding of the fish.

[amyhazel]

COLLAGE

I decided to create some work in collage as it is something that I haven’t really done before and I think it is always good to challenge yourself and look into working with new media. I decided that I would carry on with looking into animal eyes, so I created my collages based on this. I created a collage based on a owls eye, so I cut up pieces of coloured paper into really small sizes and then I collages them onto a sheet of white A4 paper.

When looking upon this collage I thought to myself how could I develop this?

I then looked at adding more detail to a piece and then looking into increasing the size of the pice. My second collage was of a crocodile eye. Straight away this piece was a lot more detailed as this piece required a lot more different coloured paper so that you could tell where the scales were of the crocodile. Overall, I think that my second collage on the A3 paper was my best as I think I became more confident with collage as time went on and my second one became a lot more detailed than my other collage which made it look better.

[amyhazel]

SEASPIRACY

Seaspiracy is a original Netflix documentary that is about a film maker that is passionate about wildlife however this documentary shows how our seas are in a serious crisis and how the human race is completely destroying the ocean wildlife. The film maker travels around the world trying to film the graphic truth of where our food comes from and how far people are willing to go to destroy our wildlife.

When watching this documentary it hits really hard about the dark truths of what is going on in the world and the Propaganda of what type of plastic is killing our wildlife. We are told that our house hold plastic for example we are told we need to stop using one use plastics and plastic straws as they are harming the ocean wildlife, where in reality it is the plastic fishing nets / fishing equipment that is thrown over board in the seas that is harming the sea wildlife on a huge level.

One of the shocking discoveries that the film maker shows us is how the people who are supposed to be helping protect the ocean wildlife are lying to us. When fishermen fish for the tuna that goes in the cans for us to consume advertises that it is “dolphin friendly” however it is a lie as the fishermen don’t care about killing the dolphins as they just want the profit they will make from catching tuna. The most eye opening aspect of this is the wildlife company knows that the tuna is not dolphin safe but they will just turn a blind eye to what the fishermen are doing,

[amyhazel]

FISH DRAWINGS

I drew these fish drawings as I felt really inspired to look into the dying sea wildlife. I drew these images after watching the Netflix documentary called Seaspiracy. By watching this documentary it really helped me in looking into the wildlife of the sea and all the animals in danger due to what we are doing as a human race.

I used black ink to draw the fish and once I was happy with my sketch I then blended out the ink with water as I felt it was appropriate as the water links with the fish. I liked how bleeding the ink with the water added a dramatic aspect to my piece.

[amyhazel]

Creating work on a bigger scale

After my group critique session I have decided to take on board the aspect of creating more work but on a bigger scale. This is when I decided that I wanted to form a series of works on an A3 scale. The media that I chose to use for this piece of work was a biro pen. The subject of my drawings was the endangered Bengal tiger, I chose to draw this piece as I feel as though the tigers eyes show a lot of meaning behind them, and I feel as though this is suited to my theme of this studio practice work.

I began these studies by drawing three tigers by hand, I had to draw them out separately as I don’t have access to a photocopier at this moment of time. It made the process longer, however I really like how each tiger that I drew was different.

Once I had drawn out my three tigers which were going to be the focus of this piece, I then cut up the images and glued them down onto brown A3 paper as a collage of the image. When I created these collage images in my sketchbook, I really distorted the image of the animal however for this series of brio drawings I felt that it was more appropriate to collage the image where the drawing of the tiger was more visual.

Once I was happy with my composition of the way I had placed the cut up pieces of paper onto the page, I then glued down the images. I then wanted to see how the drawings looked together as a series, therefore I stuck them onto my studio wall and I looking back at the images I was really happy with the way that they turned out and I think that using the brown recycled paper to mount my images onto really linked with my theme of the environment and even in art how we as artists should try to recycle and reuse things.

[amyhazel]

Group Crit with Angela

Today I had a group crit session with 5 of my other peers and in this session we all took turns into explaining what we have done so far with our work and where we hope to go with it.

These group sessions are so helpful to us as they are a great way of getting feedback off others as they look and asses what we are showing to the group. The feedback from this session was so helpful to me and I feel that I am in a stronger position as to how I could develop my work into different ways.

The feedback that I received was:

To work on a bigger scale and stray away from just using my sketchbook as a way of experimentation.

Use stitch as a type of media in my work.

Think about maybe looking into collage work.

Using embroidery hoops as a frame for stitch work.

Notes from my group crit session.

[amyhazel]

Adding Colour

when reflecting upon my biro drawings, I thought “how could I improve on this?”

This is when I then decided to experiment with colour. I chose to use watercolour for this experiment as I didn’t want a paint too thick that I would cover my biro drawings. I decided to paint over each image in one flat colour as I didn’t want it to take away from the image that I was portraying across to the audience.

When choosing the colour that I wanted to apply to the page, I thought of which colour suited the animal in an appropriate way.

I really enjoyed creating these smaller size images and a way that I could further develop my work I could try to do this on a larger scale.

[amyhazel]

Cutting up my drawings

I decided that I wanted to cut my drawings up into different sections as I thought that I would be a good way to show the falling apart/fading of our species of animals. Firstly I decided to cut up the drawings and put them together but in a way where you could still see what type of animal that I drew.

After I had arranged these drawings like this, I wanted to create a more abstract design of these endangered animals. This is when I had the idea of swapping and changing over the pieces of paper with the drawings on them.

Once I was happy with the composition of my piece I then decided that this would be a good idea to stick down these images in the abstract way.

[amyhazel]

Biro Sketches

In my sketchbook I decided to do a series of small biro sketches of a select few endangered species. These were 4 small quick sketches however I think they worked out really well as I wasn’t thinking too much about adding lots of detail into them.

Reflecting upon these short drawings, I think that I could develop them by experimenting further with the images and seeing if there is anything I could do to maybe put a more abstract twist onto the drawings and make them not just look like the animal they are supposed to portray.

[amyhazel]

Animal Eyes

When I was researching into endangered animals for my studio work, I came across how the eyes of an animal can portray a lot of pain and this makes the audience who is looking at the picture feel empathy for these endangered animals and makes people want to help out. This is where I decided to use some coloured pencils and experiment in my sketchbook by using different coloured papers and see if I could portray the feeling of the animal by just drawing its eye.

The first drawing I did was onto a black piece of paper and it was the eye of a crocodile.

This was a quick sketchy piece that I decided to work with using a mixture of greens and yellows. The second eye drawing I did using coloured pencils was of an elephant. When looking upon both of my drawings, I do prefer the one of the elephant, because I managed to capture more detail and I feel you can see the pain of what the elephant is feeling just by the way that I have positioned the eye.