Half-term visit to the Herbert Art Gallery

In the half-term, I visited the Herbert Art Gallery hoping to take a look around at the War Games exhibition. However, this was not the case as this had left by the time I got there. Luckily, there was still the exhibition based on Coventry in World War II for me to delve into. I looked at the Home Front during this period and the effects of the war, for example the severe attack on 24 November 1940, when a bomb raid left the cathedral as a burning shell and over 554 people were killed, with over 1000 being injured. Despite all this, the city continued to produce war machinery, with the factories being operated by mostly women 24 hours a day. This proves that morale was kept high throughout the city and so I decided to look at the propaganda surrounding this issue. I found a poster that promotes saving energy, like coal, electricity, gas and paraffin to help ration power.

I have researched the propaganda that was used during World War II to encourage men to join the military and for citizens to contribute to the war effort. The poster above is of Lord Kitchener, one that is famous for driving recruitment in Britain. Propaganda was also delivered over the radio in political speeches, in the newspapers and in leaflets.

While I was there, I also photographed a baby's gas helmet and the old cathedral from the outside. Unfortunately, due to an event being set up inside, I couldn't enter the old cathedral.

In this week I drew a line drawing of a section ofa camouflaged uniform and captured the shape of the pocket. I did another study on a section of uniform and added newspaper, photographs and marker pen to distinguish between each colour in the material. After this, I added more detail with biro, for example the stitching and shadows in the trouser.

I took inspiration from the rationing poster and mimicked the red pattern over the top of some photographs. I applied part of the name and identification number using my finger. The red seems to create an alarm of danger in this because of the photographs being of soldiers, rather than creating an alert for help like in the Coventry poster. The red is very vivid and this comes to be explosive, which I like. The identification number doesn't stand out a lot but I like how it is engulfed by the explosion of the red. To improve this is I would organise the photos in a more collective fashion as they are quite spaced out.

Furthermore, I stuck newspaper to the page and applied coffee stain in the shape of Nuneaton bus station. I drew the metal bars of the station in pencil, however, I used a solid tone and therefore it isn't recognisably a metal frame. I layered camouflage on top of this using chalk as it is a soft medium and makes the writing stand out more. I painted the word 'Britons' at the top of the piece like in the Lord Kitchener poster using acrylic. As a composition, I think that the frame of the bus station becomes to look like a tunnel that the men signing up to the army are lead down. The camouflage at the bottom suggests how the uniform removes their identity after pursuing the route through the tunnel of the army.