I found my story thoroughly inspiring from the beginning, this guy looking back on his childhood experience of taking part in a dragon parade and immediately knew the dragon had to be my main focus of the piece. Working with different materials through my experimentation then finally being drawn to a method of collage which I loved due to the childish feel of it, using paper and later fabric to build up the design which felt like an activity from primary school. Which worked wonderfully as I could represent the period from my story (Primary school age) through the actual method of creation which later became appliqué.
I wanted to capture the movement I pictured when listening to his story, I could really feel like I was there in the moment, so I focused on the actual dragon wrapping across the screen, almost as if his family could watch his dragon fly again. I also focused on filling out the background with beading, I loved the texture beads create especially when listening to his story and how he described the vibrancy, I experimented with coloured paint splatters on paper which ultimately led to these paint splatters being recreated through beads. I then added hand embroidery stitches to my final dragon design working around the red colour he described, but also bringing in some oranges and yellows, highlighted with the odd use of green.
Follow the link to Adedapo’s story https://g-foew.art/story/part-of-a-dragon/