My proposal is to document different areas of London with rich natural beauty. I will focus on the landscapes, plants and hopefully some animals. Also I will document some interactions of people and man made structures with nature. I want to focus on natural environments to highlight the how much natural beauty there still is in cities like London and the importance of maintaining these environments. While areas like Hyde park are not all natural I want to show that nature is still thriving. I will use primary observational sketches and photographs to document the areas. I don’t want to interact with the people there as I want to capture authentic and genuine interactions with nature.
I will produce an art book with my sketches. It will have 2 chapters, one for each location I visit. I plan to visit 2 locations, 1 well known and famous location and 1 more obscure natural area. I think it will be interesting to compare them as well and just being enjoyable to experience drawing in different types of locations. I’ve done some research about different areas and the popular location I’d like to visit is Hyde Park. The smaller area is in Vauxhall and it’s called the Bonnington Square Pleasure Gardens. Before drawing at these locations I plan to visit all of them to check that I’m happy to use those locations and see which particular bits interested me to document.
Here are some photos of the locations I’ve mentioned, Hyde Park and Bonnington Pleasure Gardens. I visited the Gardens in Vauxhall and there was lots of parts of it that interests me so I’m definitely gonna use this location.
Next week I will try to visit Hyde Park and finalise my plan then I can move onto creating the illustrations. I was doing some research of nature illustrations and found a website called the Society of Wildlife Artists and I really like some of the artists style so I’m gonna take inspiration from some of those including David Measures and Marco Brodde. Also a big influence on me since my childhood has been the work of Beatrix Potter. I love her natural illustrative style as it’s very warm and sweet and I’d like to try and capture this through my images.
David Measures
Marco Brodde
Beatrix Potter
Below are images by 3 documentary illustrators that I will be taking inspiration for when creating my illustrations. They are George Butler, Lucinda Rogers and Jim Butler (in that order).
Also I will be taking inspiration from this book titled the Lost Words. It depicts a different animal or plant for each letter of the alphabetic as a way of documenting and preserving the worlds natural beauty. I both really like the concept and art style of the illustrations.
I’ve been thinking more about the central theme that I want to tie all my images together and I’m leaning towards the ideas of nature taking over. This is in reference to the animals that come and enjoy the areas then move on and the growing of plant life.
Samuel Green Illustration 