Second Choice Assignment: Verbal-visual- Life of Pi

Second Choice Assignment: Verbal-visual

For my second choice assignment I decided to pick two passages from the book that created a picture in my head because of detailed description written by Yann Martel and I visualise it by creating two pieces of art expressing the image that appeared in my head.

In the novel Life of Pi one main food source is fish. Pi calls these fish "flying fish" because they jump from the water into the lifeboat and since they are jumping there is a certain time where the fish are flying by themselves without wings. This created an image in my head which I tried to visualise with my drawing.
I started thinking about the process of what was happening and what would make sense expressing it. I chose to make a path of three fish that are one and the same. The first one starts off by exiting the water by jumping out of it using its own power. It starts in the water and so I made the background blue and tried to make it look like the water is actually moving. My second fish represents the actual flying period and since Pi calls these fish flying fish, I thought about birds and so I added colourful wings to the body of the fish. I chose to have colourful wings because I thought about the importance of the fish as a food source which was one of the only food Pi and Richard Parker had to survive the fish expresses joy and happiness concerning that it was food and you need food to survive. The background colour changed its tone because we are now in the air and the air is lighter than the ocean water. Now we are looking at the last part of the flying process which is the third fish entering the zone of Pi and Richard Parker because the fish lands on the lifeboat and the lifeboat is orange so I changed the background colour and the closer it gets to the lifeboat the stronger the orange gets.

The second passage I chose was the scene were Pi is dreaming of his favourite food in huge amounts because he is starving. "The less I had to eat, the larger became my portions I dreamed of." (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, p.235)
Starting from the outside we can see quotes from the novel which I have used in order to do my drawing. I used quotes like: "Ice cream heaped as high as the Himalayas." (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, p.235), "Bowls of rice as big as Uttar Tradesh." (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, p.235), "My fantasy meals grew to the size of India." (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, p.235), "Hot chapattis the size of Rajasthan." (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, p.235) Now looking at the orange coloured part of my project we can see many different indian dishes. The orange part in general is supposed to represent India since he says that his fantasy meals grew to the size of India. He dreams of "ice cream heaped as high as the Himalayas" (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, p.235) and so I placed a picture of his dreams in the right spot where the Himalayas are. This was my idea in general: placing the food of his fantasy meals in the right spot of India and all over India. Another example which shows this is the rice. The bowls of rice are placed where Uttar Tradesh is, right under the Himalayas.
Now if you are wondering why India is surrounded by a blue background, well the answer is that I have decided to take India and place it in the Pacific ocean concerning the fact that Pi's current place is the Pacific Ocean and that's where he dreams of all these huge amounts of indian traditional food.