In my last blog post I used the words “plant hybrids” by plant hybrids I mean, the shapes I began seeing in the curated images of different parts of plants merging together. The idea of telling a story without using human characteristics in the illustrations became quite exciting for me. The thin paper in my sketchbook was useful because you can see the next drawing through it, this is something I embraced and took forward to my next exploration of this idea. It made me think of the power of nature and the chaos you experience walking through a rural setting. I realised here that whilst my broader question was about how humans interact with nature in general, my zoomed in question was how can I use plant illustrations to explore the power and chaos of nature.
That’s where this book Formidable Shrubs came from. With a focus on materiality and medium use to explore the theme of chaos in nature. I think this project was successful and unsuccessful simultaneously. The material choices were helpful in moving my thinking forward and making me question how I could make the form of work engage with the line of enquiry. Thinking about chaos and power also made me think about Romanticism which was important to my research paper. I think what’s unsuccessful is that I could have made further iterations of this project. This is just ink drawings on tracing paper, I question what could have happened if I used different kinds of thin paper or added colour. I missed out here because I feel like it could have had an impact on the intention of the work.