Authors progress

To further overcome my block with this brief, I sat down and wrote my three favourite ideas/methods that I have used so far:

• Working with shape
• Painting medical bottles and jars
• Looking at conditions

I realised that the top two did't really have as much drive to move forward and develop my ideas, so I decided to revisit looking at conditions. I rediscovered some of the early patient studies I did and picked out a few conditions that I thought were interesting:

• Visual Agnosia
• Prosopagnosia (face blindness)
• Tourettes syndrome
• Post-encephalitis 
• Strokes 

Another thing that I thought would be helpful in terms of the direction of my work was asking myself what I wanted to achieve from my images. Oliver Sacks wanted to help the patients suffering from these complex conditions, I couldn't do the same, so the best I could do would be to inform others about what it is like to live with neurological disorders; the frustrations, the humorous aspects and of course the dark aspects.

Initial Sketches

I came up with the idea of showing the side profile of a face, also exposing the brain activity. Using a little person to illustrate the brain activity is a metaphor to emphasise the point that it is not always clear to see what is going on in the mind, especially when certain conditions make it difficult for the interior and exterior to work in unison.

I thought that this would be an effective idea from the things I have read about how patients cope with their conditions, for example people with Tourette's syndrome find it difficult to see their Tourettes as an external condition, as their tics and impulses can over time feel like part of who they are. I have tried to show how the mind would react in a typical scenario:

• Tourette's: The 'raging' storm of impulses, the energy that comes when an interruption sparks off a tic
• Post-encephalitis: The feeling of being imprisoned in a paralysed state, the mind being warped and down trodden as a result
• Prosopagnosia: The frustration, confusion and embarrassment when one is unable to recognise a familiar face

Thumbnail Development

Using reference imagery I developed my interior mind characters

I am unsure of the final colour scheme as of yet, but I thought that black and white was a solid starting point. The characters at this stage are simple silhouette figures with white eyes; this was an important factor because I did't want the characters to show too much emotion and individuality because they are supposed to be a metaphorical representation of the patient.

Initial sketch development

Tourette's Syndrome

 Post-Encephalitis

 Prosopagnosia

I am pleased with the outcome of my initial sketches, and the fact that I am finally making some progress! I did have another idea; which was to show the same scenario (e.g. a public situation) through the eyes of each of the different patients. This is something I could work on but for now I am pretty confident with this idea. 

Production plan from this point:

• Get some peer feedback on my ideas, and tips about how I could further develop the concepts and imagery
• Decide which method of printing that would be the most successful