HEALTH: MEGA CRIT
C R I T S E S S I O N
For this crit session we were given one question to ask our peers, I chose to ask about how I could draw HEALTH without it becoming the typical ill-informed high school projects on the sad aspects of mental health. Below I chose to include all of the feedback I received as the majority of it was incredibly helpful towards furthering my ideas.
How can I draw HEALTH without being too generic?
"On a microscopic scale? Look into nano-science. Great imagery."
"What do you find interesting about the theme HEALTH, you seem interested in the tools, maybe the tools tell a story?"
"'HEALTH' - such a broad term. What specifically do you want to say about it? Is it the history? Is it peoples opinions? is it new research? Choose something you're really interested in and use it as a more refined starting point."
"MRI stuff. Weird drugs. Oldie superstitious 'cures' some which work (like honey and meant on wounds like the Egyptians did)"
"Historical point of view? Experimental, trial and error throughout history?"
"I actually love where this is going already - it reminds me of old anatomical drawings and has a really clinical feel which I really like."
"The overlaying of drawings becomes a more interesting conversation. Verbs, rather than nouns. Doings and happenings. What, specifically do you want to say about health. Keep drawing and overlaying objects to generate more specific enquiry. Medication, psychiatry, mental health...?"
After having the chance to see the work my peers had produced in response to their own themes and the feedback given towards mine, I felt as though I should have pushed my self to produce more work, I was doubting myself and the direction I was taking with this project, I should have had more confidence in my own ideas because seeing the sketchbooks and extensive research done by my peers had me wanting to create more of my own work, not for the sake of having quantity, but for the desire I had to research further into the areas of medical science that interest me, because thats how the best work is produced, when you have a passion for it, and that is what I saw in many of my peers work.
I began my new exploration in to the theme of HEALTH by reflecting on a comment made in my feedback, someone had mentioned how the images in my sketchbook reminded them of "old anatomical drawings", and so using my Gray's Anatomy book I began creating observational drawings from a secondary source. I find the linework of nineteenth century medical illustrations to be somewhat unbelievable, in a time when accuracy was demanded for these images to be considered legitimate many of the illustrators were in fact doctors and surgeons themselves, which is something incredible to me, how accurate these illustrations are.
Through various online and book based research I was able to produce more drawings and ideas around different aspects of HEALTH, I'm quite uncertain about which particular route I want to explore further right now, but I imagine through more image making I will develop a route I want to take with this project. Something I really need to work on is experimenting with media, I have used only fine liners and coloured pens, which has worked well for me so far, but exploring new methods and application of media might be what helps me develop my new idea.
