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Love this film, Jed! Did you have any influences when you were designing this?

i designed a custom ouija board, it came out rad

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Thanks for sharing, Cat. Do you think anything would have let you enjoy this session more? Or was the topic just not for you? Can you think of any types of mapping which you would enjoy more? ....Flight paths?!

Mapping.

I hated this task.

I looked around the room and everyone seemed to have these awesome maps… I don’t know if it’s because it didn’t really interest me or if I just wasn’t myself that day but I really didn’t enjoy it and it seemed to look like some kind of juvenile pirates treasure map where X marks the spot. Not the sort of thing I would usually draw at all. But hey, I gave it a go.

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Lovely patterns emerging - Maybe this pattern would lend itself well to screenprinting?

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Have a search for John Baldessari’s collages - I have a feeling you’d like!

A very minimalist collage

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Haha! Maybe the broken trellis will have a new life in your studio??? There’s an interesting relationship between this and your drawings...

I really like lines and patterns Picture i took of the broken trellis in my garden then edited on Tumblr.. again to add the oomf!!

Note to self…: “To buy new trellis before April”

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Haha! I really like the buildings being ‘uncomfortably linked’ - an interesting point to make.

Mapping. Didn’t really know what to do with this idea so I decided to go for something for more literal, I wanted to interpret mapping in my own way, so I draw a map of my journey from home to my university using my mind’s eye. Where I live right now, I’m always drawn to the fact that the buildings I pass seem to be uncomfortably linked. The banks next the bar and pubs, which brings you to church…possibly so you can pray for forgiveness the morning after, the number of homeless that sleep nearby the church..mostly alcoholics and addicts who are the edge, then over the bridge…a hospital, for the ones who are too far gone. I don’t know if this has been done on purpose as it is an ancient coal mining town. But it does seem rather strange that the locals there seem to be stuck in some kind of hamster cage in the town.

Once I drew the picture I figured out ways I would like to portray it. I’m interested in textiles and decided I would like to do an embroidery and appliqué piece.

In the afternoon of my course, we had a photoshop technique session, so I put my idea to work by putting my drawing on on screen then adding textures and colours to it, to see what would work. It turned out pretty well so I will continue to research this and see where it takes me.

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A really reflective piece of writing, Sarah! It’s interesting to note those little things that the brain remembers (or doesn’t remember!). Did you find yourself being inspired by any particular artists when making this?

Mapping…

As part of our exploration of ‘Identity’ we looked at how other artists have created maps to speak about their national identity or in a kind of autobiographical way.

I tried to sketch my usual journey into uni from memory but found it very difficult as I usually end up day dreaming on the bus and take no notice of my surroundings 😱. So I printed off my actual route on Google maps!

I used a graphite stick to roughly sketch the route and the start point (my house). The only building I usually notice on my journey is New Cross hospital so I drew the heart and lung centre that usually pass and an ambulance. I start to pay attention going through the hospital grounds because it means I’m near the city centre and I like to look at all the different people, patients, doctors, nurses, porters etc.

For the majority of the journey I’m usually half asleep and only recall that there are mostly fields to my right and riws of houses to my left, so I tried to depict these as I see them: a fuzz of green to the right because of the blurring fields and lines of boring brown brick to the left.

Just outside my house I’ve drawn the lollipop lady who usually ushers me across the road and says good morning, however I can’t remember any features of her face so just wrote “good morning” where the face would be 😝.

The whole table was using the same large piece of paper to map their route so we decided to make the centre of the page the university where all the routes would lead to. I like how different each of our journeys are and even for the people who come a similar route, the way they have illustrated it and what they notice is very different. Standing back it’s quite effective how they all lead to the same destination.

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There’s something quite nice about how minimal these drawings are. Maybe they don’t need to be complicated by making them more ‘interesting’, but perhaps explored more formally in terms of minimal drawing? If that’s something you are interested in, you will be able to find lots of information on it in the library. Look for the artist Sol LeWitt, as one example.

Maps

The first picture is of the route from my house to my dads house. I decided to draw this because I take this route a lot and thought I would be able to remember it fairly accurately but apparently I was wrong. The drawing on the right is from memory and the drawing on the left is from Google maps.

My second map is about the train journey from where I live (Telford) to the Wolverhampton school of art. The drawing at the top is of my house and the drawing at the bottom is of the art building. I think I could make this map more interesting but I haven’t been able to come up with a way of doing that yet.

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These are really interesting drawings, Rachel. I’m also intrigued by how you have chosen to compose the different images collectively together. Were you inspired by any particular artists in making this? Where did your influences come from?

This piece of work is charcoal tracings of my favourite family photos. I don’t know what else to write about it.

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This is lovely, Gaurish! Really enjoy how the subtle layers and colours build up into something. I could see similar effects being created with light, or with tinted acetate... Were you inspired by any artists to make this?

A lil work i did in class

#mapping Created by using pastel and sticky tapes underneath the paper to add the patterns. I really enjoyed this. More of this to come. Maybe ill use more solid patterns next time and experience more with creating different patterns using sticky tapes.

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Also helpful in relation to this blog!

This is something we were given to help us discuss our work and reflect. It’s something I’ve started to use not just in my own work but in lots of things. I don’t always write it down or say it out loud but I find it helps me make sense of things in my head. Productive.

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Interesting collection of typography, Rachel! What drew you to photograph these?

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Fantastic! What is it about this process that you enjoy, Loren?

“IDENTITY” Inspired by our photography based session on Monday, I used objects from my house that resemble the word identity 

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I love how in the second image, the drawing doesn’t seem to end where your sketchbook does - the marks on the table seem to become a part of it! Very interesting. You could look up ‘drawing in the expanded field’ if that is something which interests you - could make an interesting blog post?

Tuesday - 31/10/17 - Abstract Art, Kandinsky

On Tuesday we had a lecture on Abstract Art and Julia introduced us to Kandinsky which most of us knew about. We analysed his work by trying to decipher what we could see in his paintings to understand what they were about. We also had a look his book called Sounds (1913) which contains woodcut prints, poems and typography. We also learned that it was believed that Kandinsky had synaesthesia which is the individual is able to join objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people’s names with a sensory perception such as smell, color or flavour, which perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight. He also combined music with painting. He recalls hearing a strange hissing noise when mixing colours in his paintbox as a child.

After the lecture we were then asked to make our type of abstract art based our selfs, starting by drawing different lines or forms using charcoal and graphite. For this I produced a range of lines, circles and crosshatch in different sizes I based this mostly of I did in the past and what Kandinsky mostly included in is works. We were then asked to collect texture, I used the radiator and the wall in the corridor for this. I started off by going by putting less pressure at the start and then applied more pressure to get a different outcomes. We then cut them out to make a collage or if you wanted to a mask. For the first collage I made a range of shapes by cutting out different sized circles and triangle and also fold paper in a diamond shape and also ripped paper. I first tried different types of combinations be deciding on the final outcome. I felt like this worked well as the different types of shapes I made seem to join up at some point also combining the two different piece of work well as the first one was light and delicate and the other was rough and combined together make an interesting piece of work. For the second collage I did the same but added colour by using inks. I used my brush to splat the ink so it spreads in parts of the collage and also make rings by using their lids as when opened contained a lot of ink. I used the fingerprint as the ink got on my fingers when I opened them and the first time it happened by accident look great so I decided to do more of them.

Back in secondary school in Year 7 we did an exercise on synaesthesia, our art teacher at the time gave us a plain piece of paper and a range of colours to use, she then played different types of music and we then had to draw what we could see or what colours we can associate with the music. After each song we look at each others work we had done we could see that everyone had a different perspective on the music played as we could see that people used different colours and drew different figures and some people only had lines. The music played as generated different emotions which Kandinsky most used as most of his works look very expressive.

I personal like Kandinsky having used him many times in the past for Art and Photography as a source of inspiration. I would mostly look at his Composition series when working, as they contain a lot of detail which makes it interesting to look at and the style is very expressive and also are they are probably my favourite series from Kandinsky. I’ve use is Composition for my Photography A-Level in Six Form looking at Street Photography, I would make stencils using the different types of line and shape and used them for sketchbook work on portraits and buildings. I also created a final piece using image transferring technique which allows to transfer your work on any surface, which I did for MDF. I then use different types of spray paint and used the stencils I’ve made to create a composition. I have also tape to create thick lines in certain ares. The piece I create is one of my Art/Photography teacher’s favourite piece of work I’ve made.

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No, there’s some lovely qualities in that! Look at Fiona Rae!!

Illustrator workshop is going really well. This is sarcasm.

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Lovely examples of artist research, Laura. Great selection of images, too! Where do you see the cross-overs between Rachel Maclean’s work and your own?

Rachel Maclean was born in Edinburgh, 1987, and is a multi media artist and film maker. Maclean plays most of the characters in her films and uses green screen to create imaginary worlds that are all at once colourful, macarbe and darkly humerous. Her work comments on themes such as celebrity culture, consumerism and in her film ‘Feed Me’ the sexualisation of childhood and obsession with youth.

I think the success of Maclean’s work lies with how effectively and accurately she parodies the things she aims to criticise, as well as the juxtaposition and contrast between the dark nature yet bright appearances of her characters, who are all well executed. This is also backed up with superb use of shock value; which always manages to avoid coming across as cheap.

Photos are from 'Feed Me’ and 'Eyes To Me’

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Would be good to see some of your thoughts on these as you’re developing them, Jed. Where have you taken inspiration from? Where may it go next?

collage 2 - photoshop, illustrator

photoshop experiment- photoshop + adobe draw