A Day in the Life - Evaluation

A Day in the Life - Evaluation

My initial idea was based around emotions and the variety of way that they're expressed.

I was inspired by my two younger brothers, Max and Tommy. I watch them experience an assortment of emotions every single day and was interested in what sorts of things cause these bursts of emotion and how they're able to show the emotion they're feeling. Through this idea I was able to analyse my 'A Day in the Life' photographs of my brothers at a park. I looked at the brightly coloured environment that they were in and how that affected them. I also looked at the way that they were expressing themselves and I came to the conclusion that there are two main elements to expressing emotion, these are, body language and facial expression. I also found that something that makes us express these emotions are colours. From this I came up with the idea of using colour, body language and facial expression to show a diverse range of emotions in my final piece.

To help me understand more about the affect of colour on emotions I researched Colour Psychology. I came across a few pages that talked about the affect that colour has on people when placed in strategic areas such as hospitals and offices to give a sense of calmness. I also found websites that showed how advertising and marketing companies use colour to help send the right message with a product, an example of this is Coca-Cola, they use the colour red as according to colour psychology it gives a sense of boldness and excitement. Despite the fact that this was very interesting I didn't seem like the sort of colour psychology I was thinking of, I have an image that I took in my backgarden of the sunset and it made me feel a whole range of emotions and to me that's what Colour Psychology was, i feeling you get when looking at an image, so I decided to interpret Colour Psychology myself.
I found that the four psychological primary colours are red, blue, green and yellow so with the information I decided to state what the four colours mean to me. I came up with this (see psychological primary colours picture). These are the four colours with a reference to emotion that I decided to use in my final piece.

When it came to making my final piece "The Psychology of Human Emotion"

I didn't have any major problems. The background went well, it had a chalky smoke vibe to it which is what I was looking for, for me it symbolises the confusion of human emotion in the brain but I didn't want to influence peoples emotions with the background, I wanted it to be neutral which is why I decided to make it black and white. The foam board is where I had a few issues, I couldn't get the lines to be straight. I ended up cutting and cutting but then I just had to stop and leave it otherwise I would be doing more harm then good, but I don't think that it's too distracting to the piece. The splatter pattern on each foam board represents the feeling of seeing a static image, static can be irritating but I've found myself just staring at static with no emotion which is really what I wanted to emulate with its speckled pattern. With the images I decided to transfer them onto acetate, peel the backing off thus making them translucent, I then pasted coloured card onto the back giving them a worn filter feel. To me this worked out very well and is exactly how I envisaged. I believe the colours work harmoniously each other as they're not bold enough to drown each other out. To add, the sketch pictures of the body language where made to enhance the emotions on the canvas, I think that they do that, the angular converging lines creates emotion and physical depth and their monochrome colours makes space for personal interpretation without being influenced by Colour Psychology. Overall I am very happy with my final piece, I think that the softness of the diffused black and white on the background contrasts again the sharp lines of the pictures and foam board which gives a conflicting emotion feel to the whole piece which is what I was initially aiming for.


One of the successes this project have been the experiments, I've really enjoyed making new images especially with some new materials such as bleach. I used bleach to draw the colour out of black paper and a variety of tissue paper and despite the fact that I didn't use it on my final piece I would definitely consider using it again as it gives a really unique look on black paper. I've also enjoyed the fact that my project is unique to me and it's very personal, it involves my family and confronts emotional issues that I and many others face everyday. Having looked at my successes one thing I have recognised that I would go back and change if I could would be to research  more artists, I think that if I'd have had stronger influences then maybe I would have been inspired to try a lot more new things. Targets that I need to set myself to enable further development are, being more precise and think about what I'm by planning more, I think that if I had planned more about how I should spend my time I could have been more precise, not only with my final piece but also with all of my book work. To conclude I am satisfied with my final piece but had I have planned more and thought more carefully about how to spend my time, then all my work would be considerably more coherent and improved.


Megan Chilcott.