Pitt Rivers project

Photos from the making of my model for the exhibition project at Brookes for the Pitt  Rivers museum in Oxford.  The title is 'Space and Time'.  I was inspired by the compasses and sundials in the museum and the museum of the history of science, so decided to do a piece about  ancient Chinese compasses.  This wooden fish will be the float for a magnetised needle that will be placed in the jar above.  Because it's magnetised, the needle will make the fish point south in the water.  On the outside of the jar are illustrations, two are signs of the zodiac, and all are linked to star constellations.  Each represents a point of the compass according to the Chinese.  It is a very basic, early form of navigation discovered by the Chinese 2000 BC, originally used to align houses, graves and crops to Feng Shui principles.  When it's finished, the bottle/jar will hang from a chain so it can be worn around the neck.

Painting towards abstraction

First week of elective projects, I chose a Fine Art brief on painting.  It's so different from the style that I normally paint in, so I was doubtful that I'd get into to the swing of things, but I actually found that it was quite fun.  These are painted from looking at a glass jar full of random objects, like material, a bracelet, shells, etc.  The idea was to focus on colour and shape, and become more abstract with each study.  Our initial studies were drawn by looking at the jar, then the next set of development paintings were done from just looking at the studies.
(Oil on paper and wood)