During the first year of A-Levels one of the projects we were assigned was ‘Man vs Nature’. For many this symbolised a divide between the natural world and humanity but I wanted to attempt to merge the two through the humanity’s innate need for technological progression. To me this project became a study about what is considered natural human instinct and how, in the modern world, a lot of what we do everyday is based on technology. Artificial Intelligence is about our natural dependency on the unnatural.

Above are a few pages from the sketchbook I created for this project. For the first section of the assignment we focused on the word ‘Manmade’ looking into various artists and ideas which would eventually lead into the second half of the sketchbook where we got to choose our topic. For my focus on artificial intelligence I wanted to incorporate as many elements as I could, so naturally I was drawn to portraits and stemmed from there. As you can see in my development pages, I experimented with lots of different materials and ideas until I finally came across my favourite; foil.

Final Piece

My final piece for this project involved a mixture of materials incorporated into the main portrait. For the background I used Polyfilla, acrylic and white pen. The use of Polyfilla added a new dimension to the drawing and added intrigue to the drawing because of this. The metal used on the portrait, and slight use of white pen around the cheekbone and eyes gave the portrait a futuristic element, contributing to the idea that human evolution is naturally linked to technological advancement. Overall, this is definitely one of my favourite final pieces largely because it gave me the opportunity to work with metal, which I was also able to embellish. Through carving patterns with biro and adding a small amount black paint I was able to create a more 3D effect than would have been already present.