This is the self portrait I ended up with. A little plant/ human hybrid sitting down.
During my surgery recovery I couldn’t really move much, which I suppose is to be expected when you’ve had your torso cut open. Also my moods were super up and down with lots of emotions etc. etc. etc. But I did manage to make a few drawings in my little sketchbook. I changed my medium, I didn’t really want to be drawing intricate things with a black pen anymore, I wanted to be making things that expressed how I was feeling, which quite frankly was really terrible and the surgery for me had been quite trauma inducing so I had a few things to figure out here. It was helpful so it was successful, I needed to make these drawings to be able to move forward with my work. I don’t like the pieces, they make me feel sad but I am glad that I made them.
I enjoyed the looseness of the oil pastel I had used in my sketchbook so I wanted to set the tightness of the previous illustration free, I drew over it with the loose oil pastels, ending that section of this project, breaking my practise and allowing it to move forward with a new intention. I wanted get far away from the introverted self-reflective illustrations and explore how I could create a narrative with plant characters. Important to note I also wanted to escape anthropomorphising them. My broader enquiry became about questioning the interaction between humans and nature and how I could use nature representation to investigate that relationship.
Using different methods of drawing like, ink, oil pastel, colouring crayon, pencil and chalk meant I could quickly document ideas. I set myself some rules like not taking the pen off the paper and giving myself time limits on the sketches.