In these double pages, I had explored the idea of centring my Encounters project around aged, tattooed skin. I got this idea from a book I had purchased, titled 'Tattoos: an Illustrated History', by Tina Brown, after I had viewed the Tim Walker exhibition at the V&A Museum. I read the book on my train journey home, and had decided that I wanted to create a piece that would replicate the images of ancient, tattooed skin, that feature heavily within the book; something that I could tattoo myself, as to begin my journey as a tattoo artist. As tattooing an actual person would be too risky for both this project, and health and safety within the college, creating a textured latex slab was my only option within this unit; so, I had created clay slabs, which I textured using orange pel and an abrasive flannel, to then fill them with plaster, which when dry, I could pour and layer latex on them. Since I had to wait for my plaster to dry, I had to research what imagery I would be depicting upon my latex slabs. I had used my World Atlas of Tattoos, as to understand the tattoo cultures around the world, specifically looking at cultures where tattoos are used as identification, as rites of passages, or used medically and spiritually, etc. I had come across the Berber symbols, that are/were commonly used in African tattoo culture, and that of Otzi the iceman, who famously had 61 tattoos spread across his body - continuously, my Wold Atlas of Tattoos showed me the tattoo cultures of Latin America, Asia, Australia and other Oceanic Islands.
From my resources, I created some small pieces influenced by the styles I had studied; I had attempted to respectively portray contemporary designs, deriving from mainly Asian, African, and Oceanic influences. Taking the ideas I preferred, I created a mock design using stencils I had traced from my initial sketches, and placed them around an outline I had drawn from the largest of my dried plaster slabs.
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