The word I was given to work with, was the word ‘Britain’.  Immediately these images popped into my head; the Union Jack, the Pound Sterling, the Queen, Scones and tea, red telephone boxes, black cabs, the Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace.

However, I wanted to stick to simplicity. I wanted people to immediately recognise the word ‘Britain’ in my work, and to me that meant using the map of Great Britain, and the Union Jack, which symbolises the union between the four nations. I did not want to overcrowd my image and make it confusing. I wanted my work to be simple, yet effective.

The stitching within my first image symbolises that the four nations were sown together in the past to form Great Britain, but in recent years and since Brexit negotiations started, there has been tension, and so the stitches have come undone in places (seen in image two with the scissors).

I placed the scissors at the left top corner between Northern Ireland and Scotland, because that is where the most tension lies within the union of Britain due to Brexit negotiations. It also visually balances the weight of the strong Union Jack on the bottom right corner.  The scissors depict the looming threat that Britain as we know it, might look different in future if some of the nations cut themselves loose to be independent.

I created my first image on tracing paper with paint, which did not work very well because it made the tracing fold, so I created the second image on normal paper. The paint also didn’t stick to the tracing paper very well and therefore the second image appears darker.

For this task we were challenged to create two similar images- one that perfectly encapsulates the keyword and another that would change the meaning. My word was ‘Protest’. At first I had difficulty figuring out where to go as protest could mean so many different things, it meant I found it hard sticking to an idea. Eventually I decided to explore two variations of protest, one being huge organised protest in which large groups of people come together, and the other being a more individual and vulnerable protest. The oppressive force in both of these images would be the policeman, due to the recent examples of police brutality throughout the world as well as that same brutality but on a much more personal scale (for instance, domestic violence). Both images include the policeman in full riot gear, with one of them having silhouetted protesters in the foreground, and the other having a mother and child. I definitely think I could have detailed these images better to perhaps push further the idea as I don’t think it is easy enough to understand without the explanation with it.

This project was firstly about creating an image which explained a noun. I was given the term ‘City’. In the first image I have drawn an outline of Earth which is surrounded by a few of some famous landmarks we have in our awesome cities. After sketching them in, I have painted over a wash of mixed watercolour over each of them. The 2 colours on every attraction symbolises the flags of their respective countries. After that, we had to take the image we had created and add a second element to change the original nature and meaning. The second image I have created has an educational aspect to it. I decided to incorporate the idea of LEDC’s and MEDC’s. I realised that a simple outline of any building skyline represents ‘Cities’ well, therefore I decided to circulate that outside the drawing of the Earth. I have included a collage of text (names of cities) which are written in an ordered way. Where the buildings are taller, the cities are more economically developed and where the buildings are shorter, the cities are less economically developed.

The first interpretation of the term ‘Cities’, gives us a flawless and perfect view of our Earth, however the second image changes this idea of perfection and encourages us to look deeper into the problems in our cities.