Plastic Surgery marks

On Thursday's studio session I wanted to do some practical work for my sketchbook so based on the theme of plus size women and how some wish to slim I worked on some surgery related experiments.

Firstly I got images of the model I have been using for my experiments and made a print of her face without any alterations; then I used her lips which were enlarged to stitch back onto her face (on the print). With this work I wasn't really trying to get any particular message out but unknowingly I think I created something that had a lot more meaning than I initially intended. The stitched lips gave a sense of surgery marks, almost representing that they are fake and had been retouched in order to fit into the perception of 'perfection', the experiment turned out way better than I thought visually and conceptually. 

I wanted to carry on working with stitching to represent plastic surgery because essentially that is what happens, the face gets cut up and then altered to get the 'perfect' feature. Continuing on with this development I sewed on some enlarged eyes onto a print of thw same model, the reason for selecting this feature of the face was because women like to have large eyes, even men prefer women with larger eyes. Big eyes are seen as a bonus point for models because it gives a look of innocence (similar to a babys large eyes) or even a doll and this is why women get eye lifts done, this essentially lifts the top part of the eye giving the eyes a larger feel and younger look. Anyway I stitched the eyes on and this again turned out to be a really good experiment therefore I carried on developing my idea.

At this point I just wanted to do more experiments with the same idea but didn't know which particular facial feature to focus on, so I thought people get surgery done all over the face trying to correct different parts. I decdided to do sections of the face, so I stitched on sections of the face onto a black&white print I had made earlier. The sections really showed up as I printed them in colour and purposely used a red thread so it would be more visible.  This was another great experiment but I feel like the other two are the best.