For my A0 works I wanted to continue exploring what I’d been doing in my A3 works. I used both acrylic and watercolour paints and made an effort to vary the size of my mark-making on the large sheets.
For these two works I wanted to once again explore the alteration of hair and the ways in which we control it. On the left, I began with large brush strokes to make the braids and then went in with a smaller brush to create thin ‘cut here’ lines to show decreasing lengths of the hair. As for the piece on the right, I created smaller marks to create a pattern of braids painted in various styles, mimicking the repetitive nature of the hairstyle itself.
These two works are mainly exploring the relationship between the long, braided hair in my animation and femininity. On the left, I continued getting bolder with my mark making and used a bigger brush to paint the large female symbol over the braided hair. I then layered several watercolours over the top, using a small pipette to make drops that then ran down the page. For the piece on the right, I wrote the word ‘woman’ repetitively to match the flow of the hair being braided from my animation. I wanted to show how it can feel as though long hair is part of what makes you a woman, part of what makes you feminine, and that to sever it would be to make you less of a woman, less feminine. I also started off this piece by writing ‘woman’ quite small, with my hand pressed against the page as it would be if I was working in a notebook. While working on it, I adjusted to larger movements and lifted my hand from the page, leading to bolder writing. The way the hair twists in this piece reminds me of a DNA strand. This isn’t something I thought about while making but is interesting to me while considering the relationship between our physical appearance and gender identity.