Self-Refelection: Ava Kennedy
When exploring London, I found the atmosphere of each borough to vary hugely. So, using the Barbican as a starting point, I wanted to capture colour, texture, form and pattern to build a map of the city.
I started with a collage and a mixed media approach, using newspaper trimmings, rubbish, eg. receipts and flyers, photography, felt tips and oil pastels, to gather the experience of the Barbican as a whole estate. While I like this outcome, it did not feel representative of my art style, therefore when moving onto the other drawings, I wanted to focus on traditional art techniques.
I have used mostly watercolour in responding to ‘Talking Colour’, starting with finer observational drawings, the docks and industrial estate from Hackney, the cash machine from Brixton and a construction site in Farringdon. I like how these have focussed on detail and one object/scene, however I feel the drawings lack interest. Next, I want to focus more on drawing out colour, and pattern, to jump start design and development ideas.
The other ‘Talking Colour’ responses, I feel are more inspiring to me. I have experimented with mixing materials, such as inks and oil pastels, to see how layering can affect interpretation. Stimulated by the tile work from around the city, I have layered different green/yellow gouache and watercolour inks to create depth and degradation, and acetate paper to replicate shine.
For ‘Talking Pattern’, I still wanted colour to remain core to the development, I have used more expressive colours in my pattern work.This is an element I want to continue with in future projects. The rainbow swirls, inspired by iron railings, perhaps use too much colour, and can be simplified to be a cohesive design. Equally, the muted tones of the ‘grass’ drawing, just using diluted watercoloured inks, is satisfying and visually inspiring
I think I have responded well to the unit, but a higher volume of work produced, perhaps focussing on different scale, would have made this project more successful
9th November 2025 @ 8:55 pm
Self-Refelection: Ava Kennedy
When exploring London, I found the atmosphere of each borough to vary hugely. So, using the Barbican as a starting point, I wanted to capture colour, texture, form and pattern to build a map of the city.
I started with a collage and a mixed media approach, using newspaper trimmings, rubbish, eg. receipts and flyers, photography, felt tips and oil pastels, to gather the experience of the Barbican as a whole estate. While I like this outcome, it did not feel representative of my art style, therefore when moving onto the other drawings, I wanted to focus on traditional art techniques.
I have used mostly watercolour in responding to ‘Talking Colour’, starting with finer observational drawings, the docks and industrial estate from Hackney, the cash machine from Brixton and a construction site in Farringdon. I like how these have focussed on detail and one object/scene, however I feel the drawings lack interest. Next, I want to focus more on drawing out colour, and pattern, to jump start design and development ideas.
The other ‘Talking Colour’ responses, I feel are more inspiring to me. I have experimented with mixing materials, such as inks and oil pastels, to see how layering can affect interpretation. Stimulated by the tile work from around the city, I have layered different green/yellow gouache and watercolour inks to create depth and degradation, and acetate paper to replicate shine.
For ‘Talking Pattern’, I still wanted colour to remain core to the development, I have used more expressive colours in my pattern work.This is an element I want to continue with in future projects. The rainbow swirls, inspired by iron railings, perhaps use too much colour, and can be simplified to be a cohesive design. Equally, the muted tones of the ‘grass’ drawing, just using diluted watercoloured inks, is satisfying and visually inspiring
I think I have responded well to the unit, but a higher volume of work produced, perhaps focussing on different scale, would have made this project more successful