Assignment One: A personal narrative.

I used an A2 size, 200 gr. for my final assignment in Part One. Mix media paper from Fabiano, soft pastel pencils Giokonda from Koh-I-Noor, black ink pens, and red smooth ink pens.
The drawing below represents a continuous narrative, gathering major points in historical dates in early January 2022 my country lived through. This year from January 3rd till January 15th people of Kazakhstan ended 30 years of oppressive dictatorship regime, standing up and spending a week in social unrest. But, unfortunately, the long-awaited end of the dictatorship cost us 225 unarmed peaceful civilian people shot dead, including a four years old girl. These days had a tremendous impact on social consciousness in Kazakhstan. Below you can find some photos that became iconic for our people and reflect the tragic days and hardships of the fair uprising.
For this project, I needed a large-size format paper to have enough space to allocate the story and its major elements. One crucial element was the Qazaq ornament, which I am quite attached to, and it is overwhelmingly powerful in its symmetry and complexity. Therefore, I emphasized it, allocating a lot of space to outline the ethnic background of the uprising. The Qazaq ornament symbolizes a national idea which unites people, providing power and inspiration to fight for their rights and the bright future of their children. The row of people in the centre, holding a long sign with words -” we are are just people; we are not terrorists”. This powerful photo was taken minutes before snipers shot them. They made this sign naively, hoping to stop military forces arranged by the government to suppress the uprising, publicly claiming that all people in protest were terrorists. I decided to work with pencils because I wanted to create an effect of fog and cold weather of those days. The black ink pen was perfect for drawing people’s figures. There was no objective for me to create many figures with individual facial features; I wanted to show ordinary people’s unity, fragility and vulnerability. So I drew figures and left them white. The whole composition is satisfactory to me at this point. I managed to place all the important symbols. Indeed, I could do better with figurative drawing, which has always been a great challenge. However, I did more or less well with the central row of people. My main idea was to show that they were ordinary, unarmed, and unprotected people who protested peacefully. The central part, around the guy with a flag, should be developed further with details, showing the details of Square, where those heroes were standing that evening. These details would add historical reality and would make the drawing stronger, enhancing the emotional impact.

I used the following, became iconic photos for my reference:

Work in progress: