Personal Identity: Part Two - Research

For the Personal Identity project I really liked the idea of producing some illustrations that included meaning, texture and myself in them. I gathered lots of images of my tattoos, people with tattoos and general illustrations that I thought were really interesting to use as inspiration for taking my project further and developing it more.


Below is a collection of illustrations that I found inspiring. In particular I selected images that I thought were a little different and eye catching because of their use of colour and texture within the work. Some of the illustrations I found we based on "tattoo style" illustrating but I expanded to include lots of styles and variation to inspire me.

Below is a collection of photographs I gathered from on-line sources to explore tattoos and identity. I selected images where the person's face was and was not visible to look at identity and how tattoos stand alone as identifications without a face. I actually thing that the most effective images in this collection are those where the face is not visible  - I think that the art speaks for itself and you find yourself creating a story for the person with the tattoos more when you cannot see their face and assume what they are like thought their facial features and expressions. With this in mind, although I am keen to use my tattoos in my work I do not want my identity to be visible - so my face wouldn't be included in my work. However, I may decided to have faces within my work, but as illustrations rather than portraits or photographs.

As well as this I wanted to document my own tattoos in a slightly different way than just photographing them to see if I could gather any more inspiration from what I have tattooed on myself. To do this I simply placed my arms/legs on my scanner and scanned them into the computer. By complete accident I left the scanner on auto grey scale mode and I actually found that the scan that appeared on my computer screen to be really haunting and beautiful and really had a lot of character. I was so chuffed with this cool little mishap I decided to continue using the grey scale mode for the scans. I thought that the scanned skin came out really effectively and I also thought that it was a good starting point for the textures idea that I wanted to explore. I really like the blurred edges that give the scans a haunting look and the way you can see different parts of the skin pressed on the scanner glass.