Proposal - January 13th

Proposal: Senior Studio I

By Juliana Ford

I intend to explore the themes and motifs found within early children's illustration and literature as a form of story telling. Using techniques focusing on thick line-work and the use of the indented burns to create space, I'd like to explore the process of pyrography and how I can use it to create narrative. I will be using different types of wood and plaques with this technique to create illustrative pieces. These will convey a narrative through each piece. To start, I'd like to create 3 major pieces, that connect to each other in their theming and overall story. These will be produced on wooden plaques and slabs I have found second hand and have sanded and prepped. There will be a focus on floral motifs and line-work in both the subject and background and will be repeated through each piece. There a specific artists that I am inspired by, such as Ash Rudolph: https://ashrudolph.carrd.co/#contact for direction in the practice itself, and early children illustrators such as Thomas Bewick. http://www.bewicksociety.org/ There are also other inspirations I will use, such as floral and botanical motifs that I believe heighten the aspect of illustration and wonder in each of the pieces The questions I'd like to ask of my work is how does my medium lend itself to storytelling? I have been fascinated by this form of creation for a major part of my practice, and now that I have the chance to explore it, I want to discover why I'm drawn to it. I'd also like to ask how this will relate to my goal to become a teacher, and it's significance to my philosophy of literature being an important aspect to education.My schedule begins with learning the medium, and experimenting with line weights and patterning on spare and scrap blocks of wood/wood cookies. From there and after some more research, I'd like to begin illustrating my designs digitally, and once I decide on a final composition, beginning to burn each one on each plaque. I currently am unsure as to how long each piece in this triptych will take to create, but if the process is finished by the second critique, I'd like to continue to work on a large major piece that progresses a story across its entire surface.