For this major study, I plan to produce an illustrated anthology of short stories. Stories and fairy tales have always been used as a way to understand the world around us. They give us warnings and help us see things in a new perspective. Stories, legends, tales, mysteries and traditions all create a person's culture and identity. I wanted to explore how a person creates their own set of ethics built on the stories, interactions, and experiences a person has gone through. I used the Tarot cards as an anchor to tie my stories together. Tarot cards, used for divination, are a way to reveal hidden dynamics in a person's life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The connection between these cards, the icons they represent, and the meaning they may hold fits the stories. As part of fortune telling and divination practices people will adapt their lives to what they are told, I wanted to use and explore this phenomenon in my findings. I used small excerpts, snippets and some abstract story summaries to allow the audience to shape and manipulate what they are reading into something personally recognisable. When I read anthologies I always jump between stories and don't follow the order. From my reflection at the end of the last two practices, I realized that I wanted to create tangible textural illustrations for this final project with elements of 3D, mixed media and collage. I've identified a few key inspirations in the form of current artists and illustrators, and they all influence me. I used the Hermit archetype as a way to tell the stories. The hermit is a person on the fringes of society, a person who can sometimes be marginalized and marginalized. Collecting stories begins to make the audience think about things outside of our society or about people who are different from us. People are made by the stories and experiences we live, the people closest to us often share the same stories, family stories, local stories, so the more we connect with others the more enriched our experiences will become. The stories and illustrations force people to think differently about the icons used and how they relate to their own lives. Within my discourse and reflection module, I explored and investigated how modern figures/celebrities fit within well-known archetypes; Trump plays the Fool. The stories I have presented give the audience the ability to connect archetypes, with the arcana of the tarot, with current figures. Within my project, I wasn't sure how I would present my project or what I would produce. I started exploring and looking at decks of cards like tarot cards. I wanted to see how I could use the cards to tell stories, similar to the cards/cubes for creating children's stories. I became interested in how a person can interact with a story and adapt it to their own experiences, however I began to look too much at the written narrative and needed to refocus on my images and visuals. I decided to use story snippets to allow the reader to imagine what might happen next and leaving out details creates a mystery similar to how Brett Helquist used frames in his illustrations for a series of unfortunate events, you always want to see what's beyond the frame. The images also create an air of mystery: cut-out things, dark shadows etc. The images are all somehow connected to the real world but it is not clear how they are. Within my 22 images, I produced an artifact thatrefers to each story. Artifacts are all cultural tools used for storytelling, puppets, models, books, statues all have strong cultural meaning in themselves. I decided to create this work because I felt there weren't enough illustrated anthology stories for young adults to explore. Fairy tales and folklore stories are always very popular mediums and have been presented on many occasions in many ways, they are stories that we all know. I wanted to add a new perspective to some of the stories we know and compare them to other stories from history and legend to show that all stories have a place and a purpose. I've explored three-dimensional illustration in my previous projects, so I knew I wanted to explore it again. Within my practice, I always experiment a lot with materials and techniques and one of my strongest skills is using a wide range of materials. As with my other 3D illustrations, the final results become flat through the capture of a camera, this takes away the essence of the artefacts I am producing. In the recent history of visual arts, many designers and illustrators work with textures and tactile mediums, there is a reaction to digital methods and I wanted to join the conversation along the same lines as illustrators like Shaun Tan, Dave McKean and Chris Sickels. Anthology books can be used in the same way as Tarot. Divination tools such as Tarot or Rune or Oracle cards give the audience a reason to look at their life from a different or specific perspective. The Tarot cards themselves all have many meanings behind them that people fit into their own lives, as we read a book, or watch a movie, or listen to lyrics, we search our lives to see how we can connect to the art we are experiencing. My philosophy of approach to image creation is an interesting and ever-evolving process. I often start with an idea but don't plan what I will do, then I let the materials tell me what they want to do, I don't try to force the materials to do what I want, I use them the way they want, the quilted paper keys have developed into a distinct design for each key. Working with the stone for the High Priestess sculpture was difficult and a new process for me, the soapstone didn't want to be smooth and shiny, when I spent hours polishing it and making it smooth it didn't communicate in the right way so I had to -filed and sanded again and it looked better a little unfinished. My tactile illustrations bring a sense of touch with a contemporary, dark twist on artisanal techniques, using physical materials such as paper, sculpture, fabric and found objects. For my images and images I took inspiration from both folk art and design/applied art craftsmanship. concepts. Folk art has never been "art for art's sake", this helped me finalize the objects I used for my images, thinking about how these stories would be told. I could see my anthology as the beginning of a collection of books on different themes, stories, traditions and legends, all brought together for a new audience. The use of tactile illustrations brings the stories into a new perspective. The Hermit would explore further worlds and places and gather more stories. There may be explorations of other cultures, stories about gods, animals, and so on. I suggest that this project will be appropriate for both older teenagers and people in their 20s and 30s. I am mainly focusing on Western stories as these are the stories I grew up with and that my local audience will also identify with the most. Also, if I tried to include stories from all over the world, it would be a bit.