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Atlas of Illustrated Feelings

Lesson at a glance

Suitable for: Key stage 1, Key stage 2

Curriculum topics: Medicine through time, Mental Health

Suggested inquiry questions: How are you feeling today?

Potential activities: Create your own atlas of illustrated feelings using paper and pens or whatever art materials you would like. Practice automatic drawing to see how you feel and talk about your drawings with your family or friends.

How are you feeling today?

Today’s episode is brought to you by Merlin, a medical illustrator, who has delved into the archive to bring you some unexpected documents.  You can take part at any time you like, and don’t forget to check the equipment list before you start. 

Materials list:

  • Pencils or felt-tip pens or crayons
  • Coloured ones too
  • Paper

Follow these instructions for Merlin’s creative activity.  Using the selection of Handouts available on the webpage, you will be able to make an Illustrated Body map.  This will explore feelings in your body and what they look like as a picture.

Tasks

Archive inspiration

1. Take a look at Handout 1, where you can see images of the archive documents which have inspired Merlin.

Chinese anatomical diagrams 1857-1859 labelled to show nails, lines of zones, body map, lungs and heart. The question asks what is he feeling?

Automatic Drawing

2. Take a look at Handout 2 on Automatic Drawings. Using a pen/pencil and sheet of paper, let your hand over randomly across the page in any direction you want.  You aren’t trying to draw anything specific, just making free form ‘marks’ (lines) on the paper.  You can close your eyes if it’s easier for you, just take your pen for a walk!  You can see Merlin’s example on Handout 3.

Automatic Drawings - Miro practised automatic drawing where the hand is allowed to move randomly across the paper to make many of his paintings. Illustration shows a loose squiggle representing random movements leading into an image of an artist drawing on a page. Labelled are an illustration of a piece of white paper and a pencil.An example of Merlin's automatic drawing with many curls and flourishes. The text reads 'I drew this spontaneously while listening to music. I had headphones in... I wonder if this explains why my mind was drawn to notes/musical score patterns?'

Characters

We are going to be mapping our thoughts and feelings on paper, creating an Atlas of Illustrated Feelings.

3. Take a look at Handouts 4 and 5. These are character figures that you can use to create your own atlas.  Or, you can draw your own!  Top tip, if you decide to draw your own, keep it simple with the drawing so that you can easily map feelings on it afterwards.

If you use Merlin’s, use Handout 5 as it is larger!

Character design for body. Four illustrations of a young person in a bobble hat and dungarees showing them facing left, then forward, then slightly to the right, then fully facing right.

Full Body. The character design facing forward.

Mapping feelings

For this next part, find a selection of colour pencils/pens. Colours can mean different things to people, and can be used to express a variety of emotions. Colours also mean different things in different cultures too.

4. Think about how you’re feeling right now in your body. This is called a body scan.  Close your eyes, and starting at your head, ‘scan’ down from top to bottom, noticing how different parts are feeling.  Merlin thinks about her eyes feeling tired!

5. Start to make some automatic marks on Handout 5 or your own figure to represent your feelings. Merlin used an orange pen to mark strong lines by her eyes.

6. Repeat this for different areas of your body, using colours and shapes to express how you’re feeling.

Well done, you have now created a Felt Anatomy drawing, you can see Merlin’s example in Handout 6.

Felt anatomy. Illustration of the character with colour coded scribbles representing different feelings. Blue dots on the head show tiredness. Black dots around the body show worry. Yellow lines across the body show excited. Green scribbles in the tummy show nervous. Pink scribbles on the cheeks show shy. Orange triangles by the eyes show tired. A red heart in the chest shows love.

Share!

You can work with a partner, finding out about how each of you are feeling by talking about the marks and colours that you’ve both used.

You can also do a follow-up activity.  Using a very big piece of paper, or many sheets taped together, draw around the outline of your body and create a life-size atlas of illustrated feelings!

 

Share your work with us as we’d love to see what you create!

timetravelclub@nationalarchives.gov.uk  @UKNatArcEdu   #timetravelclub

Background

The Chinese anatomical drawings are real documents in the collection. Anatomical means to do with parts of the human body.  They date from 1857-1859, and come from our ADM collection – ADM 101/163.

ADM is the beginning of what we call a reference code (so that we can find the individual documents in the repository store rooms.  ADM means ‘Admiralty’, so that’s to do with the Navy.  101 means it is to do with the medical department, which makes sense as these are types of medical drawings.

The drawings are part of a much larger file of documents to do with medicine in China and Japan.  They were collected by a man called Charles Courtney, who was a naval surgeon. A Naval Surgeon was somebody who was in charge of keeping the sailors aboard the ship healthy and well. It is likely that he was aboard a Royal Navy ship in China during the Anglo-Chinese war which was taking place at this time.  Charles may have found the detailed drawings useful in his job as a surgeon, as well as being interested in the human body.

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Lesson at a glance

Suitable for: Key stage 1, Key stage 2

Curriculum topics: Medicine through time, Mental Health

Suggested inquiry questions: How are you feeling today?

Potential activities: Create your own atlas of illustrated feelings using paper and pens or whatever art materials you would like. Practice automatic drawing to see how you feel and talk about your drawings with your family or friends.