'Record' Project: Journal So Far.

I decided I'll do a post reflecting on the work in my drawing journal so far. I think it'll help me pick out what I like and what works and think about how I could expand the work I have now, and what techniques I can apply to future drawings. I picked out and scanned in my favourite pages.

I've really enjoyed including text, and also layering up work. I like the how busy some of the pages are. 

I think the pencil texture looks great, I always lean on pen and I need to push myself to work with a much larger range of media in my journal. I've started laying grounds too, to avoid those plain backgrounds.

I was being more careful with colour here which I think kind of works, but also looks a little harsh and boring. I wish I had included some collage in these images. 

I need to keep producing more work, and make sure I'm always drawing on transport when I have nothing else to do. Other than that, focus on experimenting with a wider range of media.

To expand from these I think I'll do some found image style collages, based around my theme as well as what I've produced so far. I'd also like to try the oil on paper/transparent technique as I didn't quite have time today. 

'Record' Project: Drawing Workshop and Development.

To generate ideas and begin work for out final major project, we had to bring in items to work from that were related to our theme. I chose glasses and toy cars. My project is called 'Record', I thought the glasses represented observation and the toy cars could relate to the everyday things you see around you. We were using them for a drawing workshop. This workshop was really fast paced, and covered a whole range of different experimental drawing techniques. I worked on sizes A4 to A2, and also on grounds we built ourselves.

I'm not sure how I feel about this piece, I think in some areas it really works, like the glasses cut out and where the oil has covered that. It gives it an interesting texture and almost looks like a print. I think I should have placed the large car cut out elsewhere, as the rectangle shape is cutting off the rest of the image. 

This one is tiny, only on A4. It worked initially but I regret cutting out a large section of the image. After that I struggled to find any use for the piece, or make it work with any other images.

This was the largest piece of work I did, A2. You can see that halfway through I managed to spill a whole pot of ink all over the paper. I did my best to half cover the spill with tracing paper and masking tape. It worked and I actually think it creates layers and texture. As a whole though, it definitely doesn't work. There is too much happening.

You can see that this was originally one piece, which I then cut up and developed, adding collage and layering up tissue and tracing paper, also adding a black ink drawing (bottom left). I think these were my favourite outcomes from the day. Cutting the image in half created two separate pieces that were decent. 

At home I wanted to develop another piece of work, using a viewfinder I tried to pick out areas from different pieces of work that I thought could stand on their own. 

The second image is my favourite, really toned down. In the end I actually made a completely different decision, and cut up the A2 piece of work (3rd image on the post). I really wasn't happy with it. I got rid of the car cut out, and places the glasses cut out over the ink spill, and then added some red found materials because it needed some colour. It's still really messy, but I'm glad I took the risk and cut it up because I'm much happier with the outcome now.

Overall, the workshop was perfectly timed for me. I think I was slipping back into being too careful and not taking any risks. Working this way reminded me that I need to start from scratch and really work on generating ideas rather than focusing on outcomes from the beginning. My work was clumsy and messy but it doesn't matter, because developing my work allowed me to really focus on moving forward and improving what I had. I'll definitely keep working this way every now and again, and hopefully come back and work on/from the pieces I produced.

'Hello Beautiful' Brief: More Observational Work.

After doing my found imagery collages, I decided to focus on the other two words I hadn't used, 'Growth' and 'Life'. For this I thought I would do some object drawing with plants and flowers, since I thought they fit those words very nicely, and they're beautiful and resilient! I was focusing mainly on shapes and leaves.

I started with this, still trying to keep the work in minimal colours, I think this spread works because of the masking tape, I'm not sure why! 

Some flower studies in different drawing techniques, I'm particularly enjoying the green felt tip and the black fineliner! 

I wasn't sure about this but it's growing on me! I think the masking tape and cut out silhouettes work well, it was the scans and placement I wasn't sure about. 

I did a very simple plain fineliner study, then picked out details and etched them into the page with scissors, revealing them with shoe polish. I love the texture this creates. I want to keep on this track, as I think there is much more I can do with it and I'm enjoying the outcomes. 

Body Parts: Experimenting with Photoshop.

As part of my brief, I started looking towards recreating a collage but in a kind of more illustrative/graphic style. It started just from some observational drawings I was doing of my hands, which I then decided to scan in! 

I haven't used photoshop properly in a long time, but I do have a basic knowledge of how to work it. So I decided to try and teach myself how to colour in drawings using photoshop. To begin with I was doing really simple ones, playing around with the sizes and areas of colour. I liked how these looked, however the lines are a little sloppy (and are throughout!).

You can see the heavy lines around the fingernails below, I think this is mainly to do with the original drawing, so if I do more I will have to be more careful.

After this, I learnt how to rotate the brushes! This gave me much more options in terms of placement and composition, which I then started to take into more consideration. I made the images busier this time and tried to create connections within the image. I think the use of colour is more fluent too and they look more like a set.

For my last two images I wanted to be a little more experimental. Finished you can see that it was less about the drawings and more about colour blocking and experimenting with overlapping the images. I think the last two look great and I'm happy with how the idea evolved as I was working through it. (Again, I apologise for the really close up shabby lines in the second image!) I think this was a great place to start in terms of trying to work within the pathway I'll hopefully be moving on to! Re-training myself in photoshop was frustrating but fun too, I'd like to come back to this way of working at a further point and experiment with more possibilities. 

3D Design: Making/Connecting Tubes.

The challenge was to make two tubes, with a hole in either side/can be connected in some way. After looking through some examples of artists work I decided I wanted to create something similar to Eva Hesse's work. Her sculptures (particularly the strand/rope like ones) have a really natural/organic feel to them, even somewhat resembling body parts. I loved these long thin layered/textured pieces and wanted to create something similar.

So I started by testing with materials, and then made my first piece. Using the canvas as a base I rolled it into a long tube shape, I then layered it up with all different sorts of material. Using rope/bin bags to shape the tube properly, and wire/masking/gaffa tape for texture. I found that using these layers and bounding it tightly also made the tube more flexible. 

We then went to photography and worked in pairs/a big group, using our tubes to connect us together. I do not have the photos at this minute and so will make a separate post for those.

Our group was then set a challenge of connecting all our tubes together to make one big structure. We decided on having two towers on either end, joined by string/attached to the ceiling. All tubes in the middle were hanging from ceiling/hung on sticks. It was pretty difficult to get stable, but once we did it looked great!

As it was a lovely day, we went outside to capture our tubes with everyday objects. I tied my tubes to a tree, put them inside a plant with similar looking leaves, weaved them through a fence, leant them against a handle bar and (my favourite) looped the tubes round a bike chain. I tried to capture my tubes looking as natural as possible. Some didn't quite work, but I enjoyed experimenting with different ideas and objects. 

Fine Art: Experimental Drawing: Artist Research

Recently in the Fine Art block we've been experimenting with different and unusual ways of drawing/mark making. We've been trying out everything from ink and stick, card and wash, to thread and sponging shoe polish! In conjunction with this we've been researching artists who also choose to use experimental methods to create their work.

The first artist I looked at was Gavin Turk. I was surprised by the fairly large range of work his has. Turk uses all sorts of different materials to create his work. From polystyrene, tea staining, footprints, neon lights and newspaper cutouts, egg shells and more! I just really enjoyed looking through this work and exploring the different techniques he's included.

The next artist I looked at was Jane Grisewood. My favourite work was the performance pieces she does, exploring time and memory with continuous line drawing and repetition. I have never heard of something like this being done, where the artist creates the work there and then as a piece, so for me this was new and a very interesting take on drawing.