Amy Lowe Honours Project

 I have finished two further illustrations: hibiscus and violet. The hibiscus illustration wa primarily insipred my Kali, a goddess in Hinduism. From what I read about her, she is portrayed as a being of chaos. However, in othe instances she is a divine mother who blesses people with one hand and deals punishment with the other. I found the contrast to be interesting so I made my character fairly masculine in a very feminine environment. Initial sketches My first idea was to have her in a gym First drawing of the composition I went with The phone charms were repurposed for her earings in the final Final draft Finished piece She is among nature since it felt wrong to keep her inside. She is having a picnic with dried hibiscus and hibiscus tea. On the embroidery there is the golden sun bird which is the insipiration for the emblem of Chengdu which is city in China. It is nicknamed the hibiscus city. This originated with Lord Mengchang, an aristocrat in Ancient China, ordered hibiscus...

I finished the aster illsutration last thursday.       The flower meaning that influenced my illustration the most was Love of variety. It personally reminded me of asexuality. Just to understand their sexuality, asexual people break down their experiences of love into categories. It’s important to do this because even though we don’t feel sexually attracted to others that doesn’t mean we are robots who can’t love at all.      Alongside the flower meanings, I found three stories that used the aster: two from Greek mythology and one Cherokee legend. The story that most inspired the direction I took was the myth of Astraea.      Astraea is the virgin goddess of innocence, justice, purity, and precision. In Greek mythology, there is a myth that once the gods lived amongst the people during the golden age. Over time, technology progressed during the bronze and iron ages. This resulted in the development of weapons and war and the gods fleein...

       Before I get into my recent work, I'll just acknowledge some stuff I did before Christmas that I didn't get round to posting about. I made adaptations of two works; The Seasons by Alphonse Mucha and Jimson Weed / White Flower no.1 by Georgia O'Keefe respectively: The Seasons Alphonse Mucha (1896) Jimson Weed / White Flower no.1 Georgia O'Keefe 1936     The idea was to study the pieces and to adapt them for my project concept to try and develop my ideas further. For The Seasons, I researched into flowers that grew in each season that also matched with the personalities I associated with them. I used crocus meaning cheerfulness for spring, snapdragon meaning presumption for summer, chysanthemum meaning condolences for autumn and snowdrop meaning hope for winter.       For White Flower no.1, I was already given a flower: datura meaning deception. O'Keeffe's work has been analysed as beeing representative of female sexuality; the flor...