The finished passport for research week

All our research and drawing experiments during the first week accumulated to one final outcome, a creative passport that documented our identities.

To replicate the front cover of a passport, instead of printing out a picture of the front, I traced over the design with a gold marker on acetate. I felt that the contrast of the two colours, black and gold was very affective, showing as much detail as possible.

For the first double page of the passport, I thought about how I could replicate the photo page and ID part of my actual passport. Writing my name, I also cut out a printed map of the UK as seen on the same page in an actual passport. To reveal my identity in detail, i decided to circle and show the countries from which my parents came from, England and Scotland. In addition in place of an ID picture in an actual passport I put a picture of my family.

To further portray my identity, on the second double page I chose to show a very important factor of my identity, my sister. To reveal an integral part of our relationship I chose to cut out a picture of us as children and stuck in a comical phase cut out from a birthday card I found, which I felt was very fitting.

For the next pages I chose to reveal aspects of my child hood by sticking in a photograph of lots of older photographs collaged together. I also stuck in a composition of lots of traced images on tracing paper and acetate layered on top of each other, which in turn portrayed the many different memories I have as a child and how it has made me the person I am today.

To continue the theme of childhood memories, I created another photograph and watercolour composition, cutting up one photograph and rearranging it so that the other lay in the middle, and i then painted what i imagined would be in the surrounding landscape.

For the next pages I decided to feature my dogs. I have always had a dog growing up and therefore they are hugely important to me. We rescued both my dogs from the charity "Many Tears Animal Rescue" and I wanted to show their early beginnings and journey into our family. To illustrate this I printed out pictures I took from the rescue website at the time of their adoption, showing their pictures and original names and what we changed them to.

To fill in empty spaces throughout the passport I extended some photographs by adding a bit of water colour to the page, as can be seen in the picture above. I felt this made the pages slightly more interesting to look at and that it also made them increasingly personal as this is a medium which I love to use.

On this page I have used different forms of decoration and ways of expressing my love for my dogs, by drawing and cutting out paw prints of different sizes with a scalpel and then filling these negative spaces with some interesting craft paper I found.

On this double page I chose to share a place that I love and have many memories of as a child. Highgate woods is a place that we have always walked our dogs for many years, thus explaining why I have chosen to include this page in my passport immediately after the pages about my dogs.

This page explores another love of mine, baking and food, but in particular cupcakes (mmm...). To present this I cut out part of the illustration for the Hummingbird bakery logo and some other pictures of cupcakes from the internet. I also flicked different colours of watercolour paint onto the page using the paint brush and my finger to illustrate the image of sprinkles that are usually used to decorate cupcakes.

Dance has always been a huge part of my life as I have been doing it since I was three. It is something that I love to do and am really passionate about, therefore I thought it was appropriate to include a reference to it in my passport.

Another activity that I love which is perhaps much more unusual is flying trapeze. Two years ago when I was on holiday in Mauritius I decided to try the activity. From the moment I was in the air and swinging from the bar I loved it. It gave me a sense of freedom, as though I was actually experiencing what it felt like to fly. To present my love for the sport I decided to paint a wash of varying blue tones in the background to represent the sky. I then traced over a picture of me executing what is called a "catch" onto acetate with a black marker. The silhouetted scene against the blue-tone wash creates a contrast which I felt would make the viewer feel slightly unsettled, perhaps echoing the feeling one might feel when trying this activity for the first time.

For the last double page I decided to include something that I feel has been engraved in my identity and that has contributed considerably to the person I am today. In the summer of 2014 I was fortunate enough to be chosen to go on a partnership programme with my school to Nicaragua, to help in a centre that provided sanctuary for disabled children in the country. As my elder sister also visited this place three years earlier I feel that it has an extra special place in my heart. Therefore I decided to include a picture of both our hand prints that we placed one of the walls at the centre as it represents the fact that, not only has the experience permanently imprinted on our characters, but a part of our identities have also been left behind in the country through our hand prints.

On the last day we were asked to present our passports to "passport control" which consisted of showing our final product to our tutor. The purpose of this was to act as a ticket into the foundation course and a medium in which to reveal and introduce others to our own identity.

If I had more time I would have liked to have done more pages on the things I like, my hobbies and on the different places I have been around the world, using photocopies of the stamps in my passport. Although I felt some pages were a bit rushed at the end due to time constraints, overall I was happy with the way my passport turned out as I felt it fulfilled its purpose in illustrating my identity.