January/February: Gun Emplacement and Infographics

This entry is written by Eleanor Winter, the 2015-2016 work-based trainee with the Visualisation team.

One of the 9-inch 12-ton guns at Fort Cumberland

The new year started with an exciting new project – the High Angle Fire battery in Fort Cumberland. This is where an enormous gun was mounted to fire out over the Solent in the late 19^th Century. Initially I admit I was somewhat intimidated by the project because I had not drawn anything to do with warfare as recent as the 19^th Century. Since the gun and its mounting are no longer in existence, all I had to work from was old technical drawings – one from the side, one from above. This took a lot of working out since the old drawings had been copied and copied again, losing their initial clarity. After a lot of decipherment and consultation, I managed to translate it all into something believable. By this point I was thriving on the challenge – I felt like I was getting somewhere with my model in SketchUp and I used this model to draw scenes from. A lot of work went in and it started to get satisfying, especially as it felt nearly impossible to begin with.

One of the stages of loading the gun in extremely rough form

The project involves drawing a sequence to show the loading and firing procedure of the gun. I tried to work this out from common sense and what I had read and seen – after sending this off to somebody very knowledgeable in the field, I found that the drill was both complicated and very specific! I had to translate these words into images just so that I could begin to understand. In the meantime I researched what the crew would have looked like and worn and had good fun thinking about their uniforms and their individual characters.

I was also tasked to produce a set of infographics for a document for the Research team. For this, I attended a meeting in the Swindon office with the team working on the document. While there I got the opportunity to see some of the Historic England archive and the wonderful resource that is the collection of aerial photography. I wished I had utilised this resource already! The infographics project has helped me to better understand what it is like to work to a very corporate brief. It has also helped me to really work on my Illustrator skills – I had only ever used this minimally before. Since these graphics are all shapes and text with no drawing by hand, it is a different type of project for me but a good one for learning how to use the software.

An infographic for the Research Stategy document

I added the final touches to my Carn Euny images in January and produced a potential final image of the watermill. These both involved landscapes and my supervisor noticed that this was indeed a weak spot for me – no surprises there. I have been tasked with drawing natural features around the Fort every day. I knew this would be really useful – and really difficult! I have tried several different approaches – focussing on tone, then on colour, then on mark-making and so on – and I hope to bring these together to something conclusive.

In early February I had the opportunity to go to the Digital Past 2016 conference in Llandudno. I had a great time and tried to meet as many people and soak up as much information as I could while there. I loved that the people at the conference had varied jobs within the sector so everybody had something interesting and new to tell me about. I came back enthused and with a better idea of what else is going on in the sector outside HE. I am now excited for the upcoming CIfA Conference in April.

I am also working on designing a display of the work that is produced by the Visualisation team at HE that will be in the corridor just outside the office. I think the work is so strong that it should impress everyone as it is but I must try to make it look its best as well. It is nice to have relative freedom with this, but I have to stay realistic with my vision! I hope it will end up being something everybody is pleased with.