Moodboard // Culture Night Belfast Plans

This year I’m taking part in Culture Night Belfast. My plans are to create a large scale illustration, inspired by the city of Belfast and the festival’s 2014 theme of growth. The attendees can pose and take a photo, and share those snaps online using a hashtag.

That’s it in a nutshell, anyway.

In terms of a more in-depth plan, the illustration will be of Maia, a Greek and Roman Goddess who embodied the concept of growth, and was the eldest of the seven Pleiades. Her portrait will be heavily influenced by the Edwardian Baroque architecture present all throughout Belfast, especially in respect to the human stone figures on many of the city’s buildings. (I think the correct term is “grotesques”, sculptures consisting of the interweaving of human and animal forms with flowers and foliage.) I would also like to use the Pleiades constellation in some form.

I actually hit upon this idea after going through photographs I had just taken while on a walk through Belfast (a few of which are used in this post). I have always loved architecture (I nearly became an architect, but, even through I was good at maths, didn’t want a career that so heavily employed its use), and the various styles popular between 1880 and 1920 have always been a favourite of mine. Looking through my photos, I had found myself subconsciously focusing on the city’s Edwardian Baroque buildings; they far outnumbered any other subject matter I had captured. And within these photos, the ornamentation was so often floral, organic life that told of Belfast city’s past (such as the prominence of the linen trade at the time). And the stone faces were always just amazing. The first row of photographs above are just three of at least five faces present on what was seed warehouses near the old docks (now the Malmaison Hotel), and the faces represent people from all over the world.

So my plan is to look at all the photos I have taken and see how the floral elements have been drawn. Maia will then be surrounded by ornamentation inspired by these pieces, therefore creating an illustration representing both growth and Belfast city itself. It will be drawn in a similar style to other recent illustrations I have created, notably like my girl Beryl.

As a way to promote the piece, I will encourage attendees to the festival to take photos of themselves with Maia, and to post these on different social media platforms using a specific hashtag. I’ll also create a simple website that will gather these snaps together. In order to entice people to post, I think I’ll have Maia looking down at them from above (just as stone figures on buildings do), and have a space below where they can stand without hiding her.

The funny thing is, this idea feeds back directly into the examples of inspiration that have been on the mood board I created for my rebrand a while back. I’m finding myself attracted to similar things in my strive to create a style of my own, which delights me. Now if I could just find a name I want to use for the business going forward, things would be going so much better!