It's taken me months to write up this experiment. While I started it in December, much disruption took hold over the new year, and I found myself in January feeling completely burnt out. This has made my ability to activate on non-stimulating tasks incredibly difficult.
I managed to get to a point of clearing some desk space and starting the task. I started by using the work "Making" from the list of prompts and used a notebook to write down different options using the word.
I went through the list and made an initial shortlist of ones I wanted to attempt to turn into images. To help remove any anxiety around the work, I decided to do the image-making using simple photocopier paper and a rollerball pen. I didn't start with any particular order in mind. Once I started looking through the list I felt that some of the options in my shortlist were probably too difficult for where my head was at, so shortened the list further (which you can see with the set of ticks on the left-hand side of the image above). Here are the images I created:
I tried to be loose with the sketching and was more interested in getting it done than it being perfect. When it came to looking at the set of images I had created, a certain narrative started to form in my mind. I am very conscientious about not wasting paper if I have to during exercises and the thought of printing off many copies of the images at different sizes in order to play with the layout really frustrated me.
Given that I would need to scan the images anyway to print them out, I decided instead to just play with each of them digitally, allowing me to crop and re-size the individual elements. I went through about ten different iterations, quickly changing and refining the composition until finally, I settled on this final version:
I am pretty pleased with the final result given how much of a struggle it was to do this exercise. I think there is a good amount of playfulness and narrative, and I like the way that lots of things are happening. It reminds me of a comic spread or cover in comics like the Beano or Dandy, with all your favourite characters doing something in the composite scene.
The exercise was quite fun once I was able to start, and had I been in better mental health, I am sure I could have done more to create more options and show the variation in compositions. But I think most importantly, I finished the exercise and moved on, slowly building up personal confidence and mental energy to get back to speed on my studies.
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