Odilia Bird FDA

 Castle project: Foraging for the first step in my project I foraged a variety of materials from a local forest including leaves, sticks and berries. Most of it was dead and I avoided snapping off fresh leaves and aimed to take things that had already fallen off and were dead. I managed to get a good variety, however, because it is winter I found that almost everything was dead and brown. Originally, I wanted to create some flower crowns using my found materials, however due to them being dead and brittle I found that this wouldn't be possible and that I would have to use fresh flowers instead. Going forwards I might use my leaves and sticks to recreate a still life scene and try out different compositions.  Ca

  Castle project: We have started our new project working with Nottingham castle, Our project brief is that we choose either a piece of artwork from the castles collection or an aspect of the castle and its grounds and we create a piece of artwork in response to it. This response will then be displayed through VR headsets. I am excited for this new project and the aspect of virtual reality is really interesting to me.  We took a trip up to the castle and I chose a painting named 'Still life with frog and goldfinch' by Matthias Withoos, a dutch painter born in 1627. I was instantly drawn to this painting due to the dark and rich colours used within it. When researching more about this painting I found out that it is a type of painting called a 'Vanitas' where the image will represent the cycle of life and death, and I found the composition fascinating with the tree and flowers in the foreground and a landscape of fields in the background which is considered odd for a sti...