'Record' Project: Using Cut Outs / JP King

I talked before about starting to use negative space in my collage work. I first saw JP King's work when we started the course and were being introduced to the Visual Communication group. His use of cut outs is very slight and careful and not over the top. It often is the main focus or helps to compliment an image. I think it's very clever the difference these small differences can make.

My first try, I like the mix of materials, however I think I'm overcrowding the page. The negative space isn't as significant because there is so much going on around it. 

Another progression, thread is actually red but it didn't show up. I think this works quite well but the negative space still isn't clear enough! I think I overused the dress pattern instructions and all the words is a little too much.

Another one but this time I cut the words from a book, I wanted to try another way of showing conversation. The words are from a conversation in my journal. I wish I'd extended the cut out a little more to the right and not had it almost completely filled by the brown paper, other than this I quite like it.

using the negative space and making it work is much harder than you'd imagine! I want to keep incorporating this technique, as well as the collage into my work. I think its a more experimental way of exploring different elements of my theme, that and I'm really enjoying it.

'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.