PRINT

I started to look at the hospital gown for inspiration. Yes, they are quite boring. They often have a bland half drop motif pattern such as squares or flowers. I wanted to take the boring motif element of these patterns and turn it into something acidic.

After a couple different designs, I decided to move on from it. This was because, yet again, I felt as if I wasn't providing an answer/solution to my political issue. This was incredibly frustrating and time wasting! I had to start a fresh in order to move on.

I then had a brain wave. I wanted to approach the issue from a little girls point of view as it would have been at the time of the abuse.

I worked with my younger cousin to really get a sense of the innocence inside her head, untainted and imaginative. The ideal pre-teen.

Her favourite thing to do is draw, so I asked her to take over a page in my sketchbook to assess how her mind unravelled. This was such an enlightening process as it gave me various print ideas. I let her draw free hand and also made a couple of requests. I asked her to draw a cigar butt. Of course, she didn't what that was. so I showed her a picture of Saville smoking one. She immediately interpreted the cigar as a troll snorkel, employing that Saville, to her, resembled a troll.

From this initial experimentation, I took to photoshop to develop the ideas digitally. Unfortunately, I felt that my cousin's drawing weren't strong enough on their own. They didn't impact on the answer that I was trying to give.

I combined some ideas from the act of rape development that I did and also looked back at my mood board. I merged the imagery of ripped fabric and the rose tinted view of pre-teen girls overlaid onto my cousin's drawings to produce print that I call "Smoke Away My Innocence".

I feel like this print has been successful as it's very simple, yet still delivers an impact. I asked among my peers for feedback and they all came back positive. They liked the fact that it portrayed vulnerability through that child's drawing but possessed the power and impact of a confident woman.

Overall, I am really happy with how the print has developed and what it represents. I will have to be vary with designing now as I want to showcase this print clearly so that it still delivers the message that was intended.