New Brief and Totem Poles!

Okay so today I got my new brief, it's about Totem poles. We viewed a slide show of totem poles made by other artists and by the Red Indians, the slide show really made me ready to go out there and make some totem posts myself! So I had a look at some totem posts, to get the idea of exactly what we were being asked.


A brief history of totem poles:


I've been making all sorts of creatures and people, to explore many different ways of illustrating things. Here are a small selection of what I have made:




Along with making some animals and looking at totem posts, comes the actual purpose of the animals and people. The animals and people, (or really whatever you feel relates to you) represent your personal attributes. The emotions I focus on are:

• A Weakness: I don't like to talk about my weaknesses! I think that is a weakness!
• A Strength: I can be very tolerant.
• A Hope: Health and that I am successful in life.
• A Fear: I fear that I will lose the people i love in life, and the sea!
• An Alter-ego: I don't really know! I suppose I can be very shy, but once you get to know me, well then you know how I am!

So after brainstorming each emotion, you find a way to represent this. For example, I have a fear of the sea, so I could use a sea creature to represent it and then you begin to build your totem pole. So right now I've just done my brainstorming and I'm beginning to think about how I'm going to represent each attribute.