Initial brainstorming

I started off by getting down all my ideas after reading the poem and taking all the research I had been doing for the last few days on board to start create some kind of imagery to reflect her life. I had an idea that, because the poem suggests to me that Maya is trapped in a cage, and she is in fact singing with the bird there to represent her - I could draw her as the bird in the cage. My initial ideas were thinking about success and accomplishment as I feel  throughout her life she has ended it with a great degree of achievement, looking back. I want this idea to be reflected in my final outcomes. I had the idea of drawing Maya lifting up the cage from her head to represent freedom and victory against those who treated her with with any kind of disrespect because of the colour of her skin. 

I was also very aware of another one of her poems titled 'And still I rise' which I feel is a reflection of her life as well and portrays her power to keep on rising despite the people trying to bring her down.

Because Maya decided not to speak for 5 years because she thought she had killed her uncle due to the power of her words - I was thinking I could try and visually communicate this idea somehow. With illustrator Noma Bar in mind, I created a silhouette of Maya with a gun in the position of her mouth to represent the power of her deadly words. I do quite like the sinister idea of this design but I feel like maybe perhaps this doesn't reflect her life and it is probably although a huge part of her life, maybe a part of her life she may prefer to forget. After all I do want to create something which reflects the success of her life. The other drawing was just an experiment with colour. I definitely like the idea of introducing colour as a way of accentuating certain areas of the image and to show a sense of positivity.

Maya Angelou is also known for her very tall height and beautiful hair bandannas. I tried to incorporate my previous ideas into her hair, blending in. The big hair also conveys the idea of it being full of stories, Having the letters mashed and fragmented add to this idea. 

Future plans: I want to start using various types of media to communicate different ideas. I like the idea of using photocopies of Maya, cutting them up and playing around with creating imagery. I also really enjoyed mono printing and think it could be really interesting with this project, the overlaying and combinations of colours.