Initial Sketches - Art Fund - Competition Brief

I began creating initial sketches for the Art Fund campaign, considering potential illustrative or animation avenues. All of these ideas focus on being transported from day to day life, perceiving the museum or gallery as a 'detox' as the brief suggests.

The first sketches show a selection of people with weeds growing from their heads, then to have the weeds bloom into flowers by entering into a gallery - a statue or other figure holding the watering can. The second idea shows a woman entering into a museum, with half her body ordinary and the half within the museum showing Celtic dress - as if she is Boudicca. This was to show how entering into a museum can transport you out of your body into another life - liking to my research about seeing the world from another persons eyes. The third sketch also linked to this idea, showing the shape of glasses or eyes looking on a scene, with the design within the glasses appearing like a historic scene, whilst the outside looking like an ordinary museum. Alluding to the change in perspective and the immersive experience a museum or gallery can give you.

I then began doing several rough sketches based on the plant idea. These illustrations showed general figures with the heads opened for plants to come out of. However, none of these initial sketches appeared how I envisioned, especially the digital experiment which used handmade texture. This appeared flat and badly drawn, although could have been refined further. The handmade textures were to allude to the immersive and tactile insight a museum can give into the past.

Some more varied poster ideas were created then. With someone purposefully loosing their marbles in a museum, which could have been collaged. This however felt that it could have given the wrong idea, with a museum/gallery actually worsening your mental health. There were several other ideas involving having a path up to a museum which could contain animals and historic figures all leading the way, whist the space to the side of the path being black and white, with people walking aimlessly or on the phones - this could have linked nicely to the detox objective, but could have been quite difficult to illustrate to a high quality standard.

There was also some further experimental sketched for a more abstract interpretation of the 'grow your mind' line. With reams of flowers and weeds sprouting from a head, becoming more of an artistic interpretation. One key idea was to outline the face with just a line, linking to the Artfund branding which generally involves continuous lines simpler diverting on a page. This could be enhanced to draw the face of a person with flowers growing from their head.