Woodcut

For these 3 weeks I am doing woodblock with Sercan. As my take on the brief is very personal, I wanted the image itself to be personal so I drew a comic book style self portrait. I was thinking about how I felt when I did make a mistake in my words, and I almost felt as if I was being choked. I then drew an image of a mans muscely hand coming in from the right hand side and choking me. Even though I really liked the image, It would confuse others as it didnt emphasis the meaning of image. I then drew in some lichtenstein-like "pop" word bubbles, with words like my stutters. So for when I got a mental block i chose to put in a silence - "..." and when I stuttered I just put in fragmented words - "ch-ch-ch". I decided that this picture was still quite dark with the choking hand and the scared expression. I decided to think about what I'm scared about in relation to my speech. I'm very very scared of public speaking and speaking in social situations. This idea also ties in nicely with the protest title as public speaking would be a big part of this. I then replaced the image of the hand with myself clutching a microphone with the terrified expression on my face. Im using 5 colours in this woodcut (including black and white) using a light blue, a dark blue and a deep red.