Weeks 5 &6 - keep on (re)searching!

Following my blog post reflecting on week 4 and timetabling my plans, I started following my timetable to keep myself to a schedule and stay organised - I will do it for this project!

My main focus was continuing research - I wanted to have a diverse and strong bundle of things that caught my eye and inspired me for my projects so I didn't limit myself with minimal research. I used on-line sources, blogs, books, magazines and more - I even reflected back on my own dissertation to keep me inspired.

I made small skectes, doodles, and wrote down key ideas in my reflective journal to help create a necessary source for myself to keep refering back to and working with. Although I liked a lot of my research and some of sketches but I also found that I wasn't as excited as I wanted to be. I felt that with my work and ideas, I was slowly getting somewhere but it wasn't as exciting as I was planning for it to be.

Small sketches of ideas I had.

Right is an idea that I had for the quote side of my projects. I'm keen to include what I consider to be "traditional" aspects of tattoos within my illustrations, for example using typical tattoo style banners for the quote and using them to create a frame around the illustration itself.

Above and bottom right are small layout sketches- as I have yet to have my appifany for this project I sketched out small ideas that could be starting points for characters, illustrations or simply ideas such as layout. As I know I at least want to have more than one illustration to display and use as a final piece looking at how I could portray people in style and format is important to me.


Currently, my main research and illustration inspiration have been pieces of modern illustrations and of a new- wave take on traditional tattoo styles and influences.
I have done this because although I am keen to include the main aspects of traditional tattoos within my work, I'm am looking to keep it new, creating pieces that show influences and appreciations from all tattoo time scales, old, modern, traditional and new. My  scope of  research will keep growings as my project grows. Examples of pieces of research can be found below.