Process: 

For the final project in my Drawing II class each student set up their paper and easel and we took turns doing one minute gesture drawings on each persons’ paper. After drawing our model once on each easel we all ended up with drawings covered in others’ gestures and were instructed to create whatever we wanted with the lines created on our paper. 

Story: 

I had written a series of poems  that follow the perspective of a girl, Iris, who is the only human living on earth. The scene is set in a version of the planet where humans do not exist, Iris being the only exception as a vessel for the narrative, but does not take place during a specific time or location in history. She is then transported to the world as it is today and sees how deforestation, noise pollution, infrastructure, etc. negatively affect the flora and fauna of the earth. 

Illustration: 

This drawing is a visual representation of those poems and can be viewed from both directions vertically, one way representing the “natural world” and the other representing the “human world.” The two flipped views represent the differences between the two but connections made show how they affect each other. 

The Human World depicts images of humans in their natural form, confidentantly posing, representing their perceived human superiority. I decided not to depict their faces so they could be a broad representation of humans as they disconnect from the natural world and see it as a supply of resources rather than life. 

The Natural World can be viewed the other way and shows trees and plants that humans use the most or that have become extinct due to humans. The animals are all species that humans test on the most and use for experiments, risking the animals’ safety before a human’s. I aimed to illustrate the faces of the animals to be looking towards the viewer in desperation. 

The Cry Violet was found exclusively in France and went extinct by the 1950s because they were plucked faster than they could be planted. From the Natural World view it looks like the plants are growing up naturally as they should be, including the Crying Violet and is a place where extinct and cut down flora can thrive along with unharmed fauna. But from the Human World perspective, it appears that the humans are growing out from the flora, illustrating their reliance on nature as they trample it. In this perspective, the animals are upside down, separating them from the importance that humans place upon themselves in comparison, allowing them to fall beneath their feet. From this view, the Crying Violet is wilting towards its death in the hands of my character, Iris, praying for this destruction to end.

Link to poems: https://bamboo-trout.squarespace.com/s/22The-Worlds22-Poems-fbw4.pdf