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Towers Project Evaluation

1. Flow Map

The piece of research that has impacted my work the most was probably this image as it influenced how I developed my own 3D pieces from the stacking of DVDs and the way I photographed them to the way I interpreted my own photos through artwork. Particularly the use of geometrical shapes and light.

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-Sharp, Contrasting, Angular,

-Geometrical, Free, Haphazard,

2. During this project I have heavily developed my use of colour via sharpies; previously I have used them a lot but always for sharp black and white outcomes, this project I think I have really pushed my use of colour and drawing style alongside it. Evidence of this are in the “fairytale” style drawings of stacked houses which I have developed towards the end of the project.

3. At the beginning of this project I quite struggled with creative inspiration, partly due to being in lockdown I think, but I definitely noticed myself being more unsure of the direction of my work in the first half of the project. I enjoyed doing the geometrical experiment drawings shown above but I struggled with coming up with ideas for 3D pieces due being fairly stuck in the house and as I haven’t really delved into things such as sculpture before which is what the “towers” subject of this project was centred around. The idea of the abstract fairytale structures actually came to me through a music video I watched with lots of references to Disney and castles.

4. The image at the top was what I used as basis for the drawings shown below, with the initial shape of the houses being the idea of them like boxes stacked on top of each other.

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My work

These were the first couple of outcomes I did from my photography. At this point in the project I was unsure of what direction I wanted to take with my work so I experimented with different media's such as oil pastels even in a 'still life' style, (shown right)

I then went on to test black and white photography which led to these more detailed abstract drawings done in black sharpie. With the first one in particular I tried to focus on the detail of the objects such as where a book may have curves from being bent

After I did the DVD photography I wanted my work to be more outlandish to reflect the scale created by the unique angles of my photos. To do this I used A3 size paper and developed sketches of the photos focusing on the shapes within them, this is shown in the top left with the corners of the DVDs all piled against each other to make quite a complex shape.

The style of these outcomes actually came as something of a surprise as the inspiration for these was almost subconscious. I had watched a music video on YouTube the previous night of a song two guys had done for fun trying to include as many Disney puns in it as possible and there was lots of fairytale imagery in the video of castles and such which I think is what inspired me even subconsciously to make these.

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Self made Structure Photography

These are the photos I took of structures made of somewhat random object I found around the house. I really tried to be as experimental as possible in terms of making things perfectly balanced on top of each other and getting lots of different angles of my creations aswell.

I also spent time editing my photos to provide the right level of contrast in the lighting that I was looking for to support my black and white drawings.

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Thursday 14th January

Unique Tower Research Task

Hive, Hexagonal, Twinning, Outlandish, Over-Zealous,

Ridiculous, Distinctive, Recognisable. Deluxe, Attraction

Abstract, Geometrical, Experimental, Complex, Expensive,

Luxurious, wealthy, Purposeful, Welcoming. Comfortable.

Futuristic, Inclusive, Environmental, Unusual, Dystopian,

Eccentric, landmark, visionary, stylistic, extreme,

Alien, strange, unnecessary, different, deliberate,

Structured, improvised, converted, quirky, unique,

Artistic, impressionist,sculpted,intentional,landmark

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Outer Research on Vikings and Nordic Culture

- The Last Kingdom

TLK is an epic four season drama around the story of Uthred, the only heir to the Earl of Wessex , who is captured at the age of 11 by Danes when they invade England and ends up being adopted by a chieftain of them. Years later he travels across England learning of his past and wanting to lay claim to his land which is controlled by a selfish uncle who killed his father after he was kidnapped as he was next in line.

I watched all of The Last Kingdom about a year ago and decided to come back to it as part of my research into Vikings as it is set a few hundreds years later but is still very much of the time period and depicts romance in a similar way to which it is described in the Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent Tongue. For women of status at the time it appears to be quite hit and miss between how men treated them, either very well or very poorly; but the same customs are shown where in the SGST Helga the fair is given poetry and gifts to win her attention and the same with the key female roles in TLK.

Another Similarity is the idea of honourable combat in both, as my book SGST ends with Gunnlug and Thorstein duelling to the death for Helga and there are many examples of this in TLK.

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Researching The Creative Industries

The Creative Industries are split into 16 unique sectors:

Advertising, Architecture, Visual Art, Crafts, Fashion & Textiles, Design, Performing Arts, Music, Photography, Film & Video, Gaming, Radio & TV, Writing & Publishing, Heritage, Software/Electronic Publishing, and finally Cultural Education.

Roles That Interest Me:

Video Game Concept Artist-

The role of a concept artist in the game production industry is to effectively communicate with a development team, namely a/the creative director and transfer their initial ideas, whether they be characters, features or maps to be within in the game into a visual representation which once developed will be given to dedicated 3D / Computer Modelling artists on the team. A Concept artist needs to Creative firsthand, have great communication skills, be very good at drawing by hand but also capable with various design software and able to understand different genres such as sci-fi to give a theme to their artwork that ties with the needs of the game, and also a wide knowledge of games and gaming itself. I feel I would be very aptly suited for a role such as this as I have a lot of first hand drawing experience and skill with pen and pencil; I also have good communication skills and have experience working in a professional team environment despite it not being directly related to art. Not to mention I have a great love and knowledge of gaming and video games in general, which I think would aid me in the communication of design ideas; the only area I would slightly uncertain of my capability would be with drawing software as I have somewhat little experience and would likely need to take a short term course or on-the-job training which is unlikely for this role.

Fine Artist-

A modern day fine artist requires several skills in order to be successful: a hardworking business like mind with a good understanding of the industry and how to communicate with people in it aswell as portray themselves in the best possible way to encourage involvement from galleries and customers looking for comissions. But most importantly a very strong creative drive with a lot of of passion for their work in order to ‘sell’ it to others, they should have a unique style that makes their work easily recognisable in order to stand out from the crowd due to the competition in the industry. A Fine Artist will most likely be largely self employed through commissions aside from selling their own works and therefore should also know how to handle their finances in order to successfully run their own business, this also includes administrative tasks such as communicating with galleries and clients aswell as managing a studio which they’d be working from. I would be interested in a position like this as i believe it is every artists dream to essentially be doing whatever they would like in their own artwork and exploring their own ideas,  however the issue for me could be the ‘real life’ side of it which is being very independent and confident in handling things such as finance when there is not necessarily consistent income like their would be in a company workplace. 

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Evaluation Part 2

Best Outcome

The piece I'd have to say I'm most proud of from this project would either be my self portrait in Luke Dixon's style or my large geometrical piece inspired by the experimental triangles I did with Derek.

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8th of January

Evaluation Part 1

What have I been inspired by?

One piece of research that has impacted on my artwork is Luke Dixon; I have developed the way I use line and the way I think about how it impacts the form and shape of the subject as a whole, particularly in the portrait pieces I experimented with towards the end of the project.

My main source of inspiration this project has been around the Nordic context of my black book story; I've done research into the culture and art from Vikings and all of the symbolism that relates to their beliefs, because of this I have incorporated lots runes and symbols into my book work.

What have I learnt this project?

Intaglio and Drypoint Printing is something I had never put much time into before, and experimenting with this new media I found slightly challenging but enjoyable, I really had to pay close attention to detail during the process of applying the ink and printing to ensure I got the outcome I desired. I'm not sure how inclined I would be to create serious artwork with this technique but I would definitely want to continue with experimentation at some point.

Being more open-minded & experimental;

Something I think I've learnt particularly in the Thursday drawing sessions with Derek is being more open-minded about the creative process, especially when it comes to traditional media such as pen & pencil being able to try something quite unusual to create my work I think has helped me understand the more abstract side of line based artwork as opposed to more traditional detailed realism. Examples of this shown below are the triangle designs we made using from drawing around random objects and the graphite pieces that were inspired by a simple twisted bit of paper.

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Wednesday 30th December

Black Book  Artwork Update

As you can see above, I continued developing this particular page of my book by adding imagery of snakes, following a theme in the story of Gunnlaug being the 'serpent-tongue' in relation to his talent for poetry. I used black sharpie to create silhouettes of Serpent in different positions to fit the spaces between the checkered lines. Overall this gives the page an almost 'snakes and ladders' appearance.

I initially struggled with ideas for this page so I did my own research into Norse artwork and illustration as my book is an Icelandic tale of that time. With the inspiration of Vikings I drew the boat on the left, as also that point in the story Gunnlaug was at sea so I used the style of norse art particularly for the way I created the clouds and the waves with a circular pattern. On the right page created a slightly abstract illustration of a viking, focusing on the detail in the helmet. For the linework underneath i looked into Norse runes (shown below), I felt their meanings and what they represent reflected the emotion shown in the story and so have continued to use them throughout my book.

In the next double page I continued to heavily featured the nordic runes and illustrations but decided to focus more on the poetry and language which is a theme throughout the book. I did this by single-ing it out and creating space from other text on the pages and covering it in illustrations.

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Wednesday 5th January

Black Book Completed

For these pages I took heavy inspiration from Nordic artwork and imagery. My drawing on the left is of Fenrir, a giant wolf from norse mythology, inspired by the artwork in the middle photo.

Following the previous page, I continued experimenting with ways of highlighting certain parts of the text on each page and drawing more of the viewer's attention to meanings behind it through my illustrations (this is also evident in the photo below). On the right hand side I tried something more unique with inspiration from the artist Anagret Soltau who I covered earlier in this project ; with this page I experimented with creating a focal point in the text using thread / sewing. I also first largely rubbed out the text on the page as I discovered this was a good way of fading the lettering and creating more contrast in the piece against the black thread which I actually folded over 4 times to create the right line thickness.

I wanted this final page to be detailed and expressive, showing off all the unique techniques I had discovered / experimented with in the rest of the book. The left is my own interpretation of the norse equivalent of a church in Christianity known as a Stave Church shown below, which reflects the cultural research I have done for this book. My idea for this is at the end of the tale the main characters Gunnlaug and Hrafn fight to the death and are / were laid to rest most likely in a building like this.

For the final page I wanted to include as much illustrative imagery based of the poetic descriptions as possible. So looking closely you will see the direct correlations between the text and drawings. Like i said above I wanted to include some of the features throughout my work in this book on this one page. For example The runes at the top in black and white I specifically looked up to match what is happening: the leftmost is known as Perth, the rune of the unknown, represents mystery and destiny. The next one is 'Laguz' which represents water and the idea of going with the flow and also the unknown.

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Tuesday 15th December (Continued)

Board Prints

Today I also used the silk screen printing technique for our constellation boards I made towards the start of the project. Out of the various typography designs I created on the 14th November using words from my black book and imagery inspired by it, I chose one which was then made into a template on a silk screen. This is what I used today to create these board outcomes by experimenting with different compositions and designs.

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Tuesday 15th of December

Drypoint and Intaglio Printing

Today I used the templates created yesterday to experiment with this printing technique; First I had to cover the plates in ink and spread it even across, then scrape off as much as I thought would look effective based on the design as it otherwise creates a vignette effect on the piece. I also used a special threaded cloth to clean certain areas so that the print would better show some of the finer details in the designs. I then placed the plate on top of blotting paper which had been soaked in water and slightly dried off beforehand as the paper being wet allows it to absorb much more of the ink and give a better outcome. After this I put it through the press and then separated the plate and paper to reveal the print (shown below).

I’m quite happy with the outcomes I produced, I think they could have been improved by making the designs less abstract and possibly more detailed or intricate, as some imagery of vikings based more directly of my black book could have looked quite cool. However i do like the simplicity and clean lines of my geometrical outcomes, and think they work very well over the pages of text as shown below.

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Thursday 3rd December

Masked Line Self Portraits

When I was in college on Monday I had a photo taken of me, today I got given an A3 print-out of that photo and using a lightpad I traced lines around all the areas that were a different colour or shade: where the light was shining on my hair, different parts of my face and skin. This created a detailed geometrical outcome which I then photocopied and worked into in Luke Dixon's style of using contour lines - varying spacing between lines to show shadow, the closer the lines are together the darker it makes that area - Doing this also creates depth in the portrait that you can't see in the initial, flat, tracing of the photo.

In my own time at the weekend I also took a photocopy of the original trace and went over it Sharpie, I enjoyed the outcome of this as it takes the original portrait and makes the linework much bolder & darker and gives the overall piece more impact on the viewer.

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Wednesday 2nd December

Artist Research: Luke Dixon

Dixon is a graphic artist, illustrator and print maker from northern England; He is most famous for his detailed linework designs often incorporating portraiture or depictions of animals and objects. Dixon also incorporates colour into some of his works creating vivid and sometimes abstract illustrations.

A large part of the creative process for his pieces is the use of contour lines, which are most often seen in maps to depict the shape of the land shown. Dixon takes a similar approach particularly in his portraiture - using tightly packed lines to show darker or differing areas of the face and more spaced-out or no lines at all to show flat areas in the piece - doing this also creates form and shape in his outcomes and gives a more 3-Dimensional impression of the subject for the viewer.

I aim to experiment with this technique in my own work in order to improve my consideration of how it effects the viewer's impression of an outcome.

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Monday 30th November

Working into my Black Book

Constellation Imagery: Today I worked the constellations into my black book by using black Sharpie and white pen aswell as imagery of some of the stars in the Andromeda constellation. This technique was quite effective as the white lines are very harsh and heavily contrast with the black space created on the pages by the sharpie.

Spray Painting: Today I also experimented with Spray-Painting for the first time, first I spent time in class making templates for my design of a Viking ship on the sea, then went outside and had to use what colour there were available to create it. Once it had dried I later worked into it with my craft knife to create the rough texture of the white in the waves.

- Update (Tomorrow) 1st December I used the custom silk screen design to fill the white space where the paint had gone over the edge of the template and mixed & blurred on the other page; I really like how this turned out as it adds layering and typography to the outcome.

This is some extra slightly random design work I did in my book today. I just relaxed with a Sharpie and experimented with the black linework. I quite like the block outcome (top left) as I think the way it highlights certain words and spaces them out creates alot of impact in the piece for the viewer to really consider the meaning behind the words in the book and how they may relate to it's story. I continued to experiment with this on the next page (top right) but going for a very different style of filling the page with very busy and complex lines while leaving a particular part empty where it shows a short poem in the book.

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Thursday 19th November

Experimental Drawing

Today we experimented with graphite by taking pieces of paper that we crumpled and twisted and drawing the geometrical shapes.

I enjoyed this exercise because I think the combination of the dark graphite media with the sharp geometrical shapes creates a really strong and impactful piece which I can imagine would have even greater effects on a larger scale.

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Thursday 19th November

Experimental Drawing II

After the graphite drawings we did a 'Stones & Bones' exercise where we used a triangle outline and created abstract linework in it by drawing around different rocks and bones while moving them around the page. After making the initial shapes we worked into them heavily with different types of pen such as fineliner and sharpie with idea of making a centre or focal point of each of the triangles.

The ones above are some of my favourites as with the 4th I really like the line technique I used to create form and shapes out of the random lines; I also think the 2nd and 3rd ones are good because of the contrast & balance between black and white. However with the first one it is the minimalism of the very thin straight lines which I enjoy the look of.

With the final stage of developing these triangles I added some type using words from my book which I think has much more impact on the viewer because of the patterns around it, especially the fourth "Saga" piece as it could be that the crazy lines and unusual shapes represent the chaos of the saga of my book: The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue.