Alexander Davies

The theme of my project is Covid-19 and how it has affected people’s social lives. I combined my specialist subjects of Fine Art and Visual Communications to create a series of digitally printed posters that draw on human anatomy and the mask.  I have also created merchandise, such as a T-shirts, from my designs, and I experimented with products such as hats, school bags, bottles, wallets and shoes. 

The main artist I have been inspired by is Andy Warhol.  Cutrone commented on Warhol’s work: ‘to paint a skull is to paint the portrait of everybody in the world’ (Foster, 2001, p. 79). This relates to my motif – the skull; because I could not draw everyone in the world – the skull represents everyone.   

I made a series of drawings of different types of skulls wearing a mask and I edited these in Photoshop to manipulate the component parts of the images. I used the brush tool to draw and fill in the skull.  A strong colour palette was important such as red to look like the virus. I used the gradient tool for the frame, using blue and red.  These colours were chosen to communicate the feelings of being bad, angry, sad and then good to represent the future as a contrast. The triangle behind the skull is to represent people’s social lives.  

Ken Taylor screen printed work, Screaming Hand (2021), contains fine bone textures, which inspired me to do the same.  I have enhanced my posters, adding a bone texture onto the skull, light on the top of the virus and darker tones to the eyes to create a more 3D appearance and to create a more realistic look. I have added the text ‘COVID’ on to the mask.  I explored different backgrounds to the skull; I am happy with these and feel I have enhanced the skull and the background.