Kintsugi

This digitally drawing is made from one of the lovely young women (Ashely E) who answered the Brokenness questionnaire. I had her send over a few portrait pictures she had taken, and used that to create a realistic digital drawing.

I used different levels for different features eg.eyes,hair,skin, so that they didn't interfere with each other when I drew them individually.

To then incorporate more of what I had researched, I drew inspiration from Sage Barnes and how his artwork seems to be destroyed usually on the head. Then, combining it with Kintsugi I created an effect that made it seem as if Ashely's face where in sections joined by gold.

I believe the drawing came out very well and accurate in terms of proportion as well as colour matching to the picture. The added gold cracked effect links well to my work and adds another layer of interest and beauty to the image through the brokenness.

If I had more time I would have liked to do more women and try different colours for the kintsugi cracks to see how that would look. Also if I had accessibility to more recourses, doing a collage or paper manipulated effect with the portrait would've been effective to make it more personal like some sort of world for the female id chosen.

This was a jewellery box I had found in my house which I proceeded to do Kintsugi on. It was easy enough to all the steps and so it gave me more confidence in the idea and ability to continue and develop the idea.

These are initially photos of me attempting to make pottery from scratch. I had ordered clay and sculped it around items I had in my house to give me more of an accurate shape for my bowls. This made things come out a lot better as my first few efforts to make a bowl in my hand.

I struggled with the clay at first, especially getting an equal thickness to the clay all over the bowl. I'm always focused on making my work perfectly neat, but a big factor of this topic that id chosen if that its meant to highlight the beauty in things that aren't perfect. So I decided to stop trying so hard to make if the perfect width all over (despite actually having a rolling pin or any other equipment to do this in the first place.)

I then painted nipples onto the bowls to make them relate to women a bit more as the shape and painted detail resembled the female body part of breasts. I call them my 'jug bowls'.

I like that having them on the bottom of the bowl also as you only realise they're there when you turn them over, so they're less crude from every other angle with the surprise at the bottom.

The bowls are perfectly smooth in terms of thickness but I think that gives them more character like real boobs. They also had some cracks in them from how the clay had dried tightly. This then lead it to be easier for Kintsugi to take place. I had attempted the process on a bit of clay I had played around with, but found that it wouldn't actually stick together. When they clay had broken it crumbled and those excess parts were left handing by fibres in the clay. The clay had too many hairy fibres that instead absorbed the glue deeper into clay instead of allow it to stick to the pieces that were broken.

So in fear of ruining the work that I had done already, I searched the bowls for the natural cracks that it had and filled those in with gold paint.

I had the idea to do egg shells as smaller bowls to do Kintsugi to. The egg is a feminine symbol, they're related to gametes and fertilisation. They're also delicate and so that gave me the idea to use them to represent the lovely 25 young women who had answered my questionnaire. Each eggs represents their own personal story.

I tried painting the eggs initially with acrylic paint but it was really thick and harsh, and I wanted a softer affect, sort of marble and loose, so that's why I opted for water colour.

Each egg was painted with colours that I felt their answers best displayed. I based it on feelings and emotions for the brush strokes as well as composition.

My methodology was to read the someone's answers and paint an egg towards the end of reading it so I was still effected by the feelings their writing produced. These colours then began to match up and look like a rainbow, so I focused my work towards that light joyful aesthetic.