Required Assignment 1 - World in a Box

The Two Perspectives
I collect used, small plastic toys which I purchase mostly from car boot sales. I have used a small sample of these:
four  sheep, a baby, a television screen, a construction vehicle,  a dinosaur and a world globe.
I decided to position them on a deliberately  constructed 2-dimensional surface with two vanishing points.

Sketchbook Assignment 4 - Keeping Time.

Would you go back in time?
I am often intrigued by people's investment in the past, their desire to relive certain experiences, to go back to their childhood homes, to keep returning to events that happened in the past in order to relive it, looking at old photographs and so on. This is perhaps because I find that need totally lacking in myself. It is not that I had a bad past. Or that I fear reliving it. I just do not really want to. I would say I am much more interested in the future than the past. And of course, the moment.

I created this "time series" by drawing a picture in Paint, saving it at irregular intervals (16 times), and then putting it together in a mosaic by using software (Bighugelabs' Mosaic Maker) I found it quite interesting to note my emotions as I interrupted myself to save the drawing with a different name each time.. I was not sure what I would draw, I did not really plan it. The words came as I was drawing. "Would you want to go back in time?" To erase or add or change a feature? Or perhaps a part of your past? Of course, in the series I could do exactly that, but I did not have to go back to previous saved files to change the image. I simply could adapt the drawing in each next step. In effect, I was going forward in time, but affecting past decisions.  Maybe there is a lesson in there somewhere ...

Sketchbook Assignment 3 - Characters Drawn from Life (and Death).

Dead on Arrival
X (Nee Z) Y 06.01.1957 - 09.03.2014 Cherished mother and friend taken from us too soon. We will miss our adventures together and we’ll hold you in our hearts forever. Your loving memory remains with us, always, A and B

I chose the above death notice for this project for the following reasons:

1. The deceased is a female, and I wanted to depict a female for this sketchbook assignment

2. The death occurred only a few days ago, which makes it contemporary. It will enable me better to imagine the time and place inhabited by the character.

3. The deceased was still relatively young - 57 years - only two years older than I am. I could therefore relate better to the character.

Constructing the character. 

A woman, middle-aged, in what should have been some of her best years. A mother. But also described as a friend by the two signees. I imagine for her the following life: She grew up in the Karoo, an arid yet beautiful region of my country. At 15 she was "discovered" and taken to New York to model in the early 1970's. She stayed there for three years, and then suddenly, she was back. Something had happened in New York which had changed her forever, she said, but never disclosed to her family, or later her children, what this was. Back in South Africa she studied nursing. Soon afterwards she met and married a doctor, P, who was 30 years her senior. By all accounts they had a very happy and fulfilling marriage and family life. P died in Decelmber 2013, aged 88. On Sunday 9 March X was found in her home by a friend. She seemed to be in a coma. She was rushed to hospital but was announced dead on arrival. The police reported that no foul play was suspected, and that there was no evidence of suicide. Perhaps she simply died of a broken heart.

Dead on Arrival, 2014. (collage with photocopied magazine photo and found objects. altered with black and white pens, own drawing of heart, gauze, thread.),

Sketchbook Assignment 1 - My World and the Art World.

William Kentridge:

Hugo Naude: