One Week Map: Creating Our Map Screens

What challenges did we face?

• We really struggled to agree on a general idea or theme as we all had such different ideas. All that we could decide on was that we wanted to play around with some of the different shapes that we saw on the journey in addition to texture. As a result, we all did our own separate drawings which we were going to cut up and put together. However, everyone drew quite figurative things, causing us to move away from our original plan. I think that having a theme would have tied our piece together better and it ould have meant that we wasted less time initially unsure of what we were doing.

• Another challenge that we faced was trying to incorporate the map into our design when the drawings already stretched across both layers. We tried to form our map out of images (cutting off some so that they only filled the outside and others so that they only filled the inside). However, this looked messy and visually confusing. We resolved this by placing our images only around the map. This worked well but still wasn’t totally clear, so we just put in outlines between the objects which worked really well (an outline all the way around would have been too imposing).

• We also struggled to draw solid forms onto the acetate. Most of the markers we tried smudged, so we had to use a permanent marker but you could see through it when we held the acetate up to the light. We therefore that knew it wouldn’t develop properly. The only way we found of creating solid shapes was to paint directly onto the acetate with acrylic paint. However, this was difficult to do on the more detailed areas.

What went well?

• I think that our choice of colour is really nice (the only thing that we could agree on as a group). We used red and blue, two quite naive primary colours used to reflect the playground that my group spent lots of time drawing. The cold blue also reflects the miserable weather that day.

• We also found that a chinagraph pencil drew really well onto the acetate, creating a really interesting texture. I am excited to see how this comes out when we print the design. 

• Having struggled to work collaboratively at the start I think that we really came together and worked well as a group when transferring our design onto the acetate. Assigning everyone a different role work really well as it meant that we weren’t working on top of one another. One person continued to draw new objects to fill the gaps, while another person traced the outlines of the objects onto the acetate, then the third group member filled them in with different textures and the fourth then proceeded to paint in the most solid areas.

How are we going to move forward?

• I am really happy with our positives and I think that they are going to print really well. The only thing I think that we should do is maybe add another layer of pen to the pomegranate. This will hopefully mean that it retains its texture, while making it print more solidly. We could also maybe altar the exposure time to accommodate for the greyer areas of our positives?

• If We were to do this again, we would have definitely thought of a theme/ concept before starting to draw, rather than wasting time making it up as we went along.