Speculative Drawings

Transcription of Gil Elvgren's Pinups 

Given the overwhelming nature of my map of understanding, I decided to put down the books, step away from the internet and just start drawing to try and make sense of all the information I had. I started by doing some transcriptions of Gil Elvgren's work in order to try and understand what it was about his pinups that made them different to previous ones. Other than their busty, curvy physiques what was it about their gesture and expressions that made them so irresistible to the males of 1950s America. 

Jeremy Deller - The History of the World

I made a few notes and whilst I was learning from these drawings I felt as though they weren't really helping me to further my research or narrow down what I wanted my final visual diagram to be about. At this point I sought some advice and Matt pointed me in the direction of Jeremy Deller's 'The History of the World'. This was an integral point in the development of my visual diagram. Rather than trying to solve this giant moral question of what was considered to be empowering or derogatory to women and the way women's sexuality was being represented, maybe it would be more productive and effective to just EXPOSE how women's sexuality was being pictured, and at times, exploited. 

'List of smut'

Thus my vague 'map of smut' was born. I started by making list's consisting of things I'd previously researched through either my essay or map of understanding and then expanding on them. I tried to loosely categorize these ideas as I thought that might make it easier to form links between them for the final visual diagram.

Victoria's Secret speculative drawings

Then I began drawing with research. I continued to look into each of these things in more depth; drawing upon articles discussing their opinions, facts and statistics, documentaries ect. I began to find that the more I researched into each of these things the more I found them starting to link together. My visual speculative drawings were also heavily important during this time; through my sketchbook I started making visual links which alongside research meant that legitimate links were beginning to form. Through questioning my research and getting multiple views and opinions on them I found I was able to understand them better and begin the form my own opinions and links.

Hugh Hefner; Playboy, Activist and Rebel

(Documentary I watched while researching Playboy)

Playboy speculative drawings

Links between playboy and fancy dress made through visual research

Links between fancy dress and American Apparel 

American Apparel 'Back to school range' photos with people's opinions on twitter

Banned American Apparel Ads in UK

At this point, through both research and speculative drawings, I'd began to understand how many of these things were linking together, but I needed to come up with a succinct way of displaying this information for my visual poster. Here I was playing around with the idea of grouping the ones I felt linked together best into group like social clicks at a high school. While this could show how certain things impacted other I felt it might look a bit messier and wouldn't describe the relationship between all the things that I'd researched in a clear and informative way.

'Social clicks' idea for final poster