Showing posts with label University work. Show all posts

Back to Body Painting


I was encouraged to move straight into body painting to practice technique and understand the process. So these are my 'lace structures' inspired plant cells, I have used the skin and photography to create my own lace.




I have also played around with body distortion which I suppose is also what the previous images are about as well. This is really interesting because I think it moves my work away from being 'sexy' which is an image I don't want to create at this point.



This is another idea I have explored before. Fabric becoming part of the body, This is more about the imposition I was thinking about before, making it look like the pattern is seeping into the skin.

Lace


I'm combining the visuals from my fungi studies, which is for the Nexus exhibition, with the idea of creating a different image for lace. I am hoping to use and challenge paper as a material so I can create my own lace. I want to translate my work onto the body but I don't want it to be 'sexy' because it is such a common image for lace, I'd rather show it as an imposition on the body or to the skin, so that's what I will be working on.

Chiharu Shiota - Lost in Lace - Birmingham 2012

This image is inspiration for how space can be used effectively using a simple material. It also shows how the body can be utilised without actually being present.

Beginning third year



 My proposal specified that I wanted to look at touch and how it can be visualised. After looking at this texture in great detail and getting myself going with different drawing techniques, I realised that touch is not what I'm focussing on. I'm obviously looking at the patterns created within this texture.
(Source of drawings)
I don't see the texture as an experience of touching any more, I'm looking at the potential of the pattern and the possibilities with material. I think this is because after working on the fungi and playing with materials I have found a new interest in form and pattern that I was determined to brush aside before, thinking that I wasn't capable of producing anything interesting.


Saying that, I don't think this particular work is very interesting because the techniques haven't been used to there full potential yet, though maybe working on a much larger scale would help to see them in a new light.  However, I do believe that if I allow myself to be playful with techniques and materials I could possibly hit on something worth developing into an installation or bring into a concept, like visualising touch, at a later date.

Binge-Flying

 This project was all about consumerism.
I wanted to look at second-hand goods, specifically clothing from charity shop because charity shops are a big part of my life.
I work very closely with the charity in my local community in Leeds and half of my wardrobe comes from generous donations given to charity shops around Leeds and Manchester!
I think second-hand goods and reusing what we have is the answer to issues around consumerism, cutting down waste and increasing individualism.
 So basically what I tried to create were advertisements for second-hand goods, promoting clothing in charity shops.

The body painting is a technique I've used previous in my 1st Year and it was a way of portraying denim (which was the project title) becoming a part of us as it is used so commonly all around the world.
I wanted to create this theme again but in celebration of letting second-hand goods become a part of us and a part of our every-day lives.




The still images developed into this sort of stop animation that I did make into a fully constructed T.V. advertisement but looking back it's not as successful as I first thought! These stills get the point across though.
I then developed a proposal for a website where people could become a member and share their second-hand purchases, ask for advice on how to up-cycle or simply spread word about second-hand goods trading.
Overall I was happy with the idea and it's something I might re-address but the execution wasn't brilliant and the pictures are a little embarrassing.  

Place and Space

 This was a self-negotiated project and I thought it would be easier to start on a subject I was already reading about. I was doing an essay with the question: 'Portable living has obliterated our need for place. Discuss with specific examples.'
I took a philosophical approach in my essay so this is what I wanted to do in my practical work. However, visualising my ideas became extremely difficult and it was a big learning curve for me.
I started by trying to look at how we shape our space and I went straight into the looking at straight lines i.e. fences etc.


I did some pretty basic and uninspiring drawings and then moved onto the idea of mapping. which also didn't work very well. I did a lot of artist research for this project but it was so broad that it just became confusing and I wasn't sure what to focus on. 


I my tutorial I was told to be more experimental with my drawing. So I needed drawing material. This lead me onto film to act as a source of visual information that I could work from in the studio. I filmed a journey that I was familiar with because a lot of the mapping research I found was about everyday journeys that individuals took and how they could be visualised. 

There were some interesting visuals from the filming, because my hand was swinging by my side everything looked like it moving quite dramatically. I tried to capture the movement in drawing and used a much larger scale to try and get out of my sketchbook.

I tried to used a range of media and styles but I wasn't happy with them because I didn't feel like they would move me forward. Although my tutorial group liked them I decided not to carry on with this style of drawing.
















I carried on with this, very different, style of drawing because I found it the most enjoyable. I was taking shapes, colours and patterns from the film footage I had and then reconfiguring them to create some new and original imagery. I like them but I don't know how much they are telling me about space and place. Have I taken the images from a space and created a personal place with them?

These are the kind of questions I have to start thinking about if I'm going to come to any sort of conclusion in 6 weeks.

I moved on to something a bit more familiar, sound drawings, as well as drawings recording touch specifically on the feet whilst walking a journey. At this point I have chosen a specific journey to focus on to narrow down the amount of information that could possibly be recorded. I think the only interesting thing that emerged from these recordings was the sock that I stitched.

I would have liked to carry on with this but I guess I just didn't see the potential. I was using stitch which obviously is something I want to consider in my work but I didn't see how this was solving my problem when trying to understand space and place. However, I think that this way of visualising the effects of a space translates onto the body and it could be said that a space turns into place when a body is present within it. This could have been an interesting route to go down but it was not the route I chose.




After getting really stuck and confused again I just went back to some large scale drawings and just let myself paint. The results weren't great but I was definitely interested by how much it reminded me of some of the film footage I had taken at night, there were a lot of cars and shop lights and with the movement of my hand they were very blurred.







On top of these paintings I put some of the very initial drawings I did from the filming and this is where I hit my break through. In terms of space and place I came to the definitions:
Place = the experience of a space
Space= the physical and the visual aspects
This is a very brief explanation of how I got to this and what I mean so I tried to create more examples and samples to confirm my findings.








There was also this image which was significant for me because it started to look into 'shaping' an experience. Maybe it's about the space shaping our experience of it and therefore form the feeling of place or not as the case may be; because not every space may feel like a place. It also has tracing paper overlapping the edges to represent the 'unclear' nature of this idea and process because I can only work (in this time) on my own thoughts and feelings, so it won't apply to everyone or even anyone else.













This was based on another experience of the same journey. I travelled whilst drawing what I saw and noting what I felt. Then back in the studio I started to draw from these notes. The drawings weren't right, I thought that making it 3D and putting it in a space and also upping the scale would help so that's what I did. It worked much better in a large space but due to lack room I settled on making a model as an installation proposal. Again, I have translated the experience using colours and textures along with images I drew along the way to create the visual representation of space and place.


















I also wanted to look at different kinds of experiences and different 'spaces' now that I am some what comfortable with the definitions of space and place and have a process to work from. This experience is based on memories and photo's taken. I had been thinking recently about photo's and how many week take that will we probably never look at again. So for a while I tried taking pictures of things that only had a specific memory or emotion attached to them. Going to the ballet production of Madame Butterfly at The Grand Theatre, Leeds was one of the experience I only wanted to document what I knew I would remember. Unfortunately I couldn't record any of the dancing.

Anyway, I drew from the photographs I had taken and also started creating some patterns that complimented the memory of the experience.






I ended up with some very intricate cut work and built lots of layers I this piece. I definitely don't think it's my most successful but it is another example of how this process can change very dramatically depending on the space and place I'm in.









 I finished my project on one final example and this was not a journey or a memory but rather sitting in a space and drawing what I saw and what I felt was significant. It was a bright and warm day and I was sitting in the small park outside uni with friends eating an ice-cream. My imagery was of the surroundings and to portray my experience I chose a different material which was transparent, coloured plastic. I chose this because I wanted something light and I knew I wanted to hanging this in a space as is shown below.

This was an extremely tough project and writing down my journey through it has been difficult but I am happy with my final sample and I think it was something I can take forward and maybe translate for a competition about lace, using the cut work.

Weave

Weave wasn't my first choice for supporting study but I ended up really enjoying it.
These ere the colour combinations and proportions I created using inspiration from previous drawings and the orange collage I posted before.
I chose a really simple combination for my warp because I thought I'd have more scope to create some interesting patterns in the weft.


 I documented this after I'd cut my weaving off. I liked how all the threads had stuck together making thick spaghetti-type strands.

 I was told in my tutorial that my threads wraps were really good and that i should focus on making some very sophisticated and refined samples. I tried this my keep things simple, using thin threads to keep a delicate looking pattern and following some of simple warp patterns as the weft.


Here I was just tried to see what I could produce in such a short amount of time. Apparently you wouldn't usually create independent shapes on a loom but I quite like it. The yarns are a lot chunkier than the others I'd been using as well so it has a lovely quilted feel to it.

 These two samples were again just trying out different techniques.

This one has one of the warp colours weaving in and out of the pattern to create a bold red line throughout the sample. I came up with the idea for this through some very basic collages, using stips cut out from magazines and playing around with compositions.



This one is using paper. I started this just to create some longer samples! But I think it really worked and created the opportunity to play around with much more complex patterns and textures, which is what I was hoping to do originally.

Protection

 Started looking at dream catchers. All imagery for mood board was orange and blue for some reason. I kept being told to look into why this was as if it had some great meaning but it didn't in the end. I think that really confused me I shouldn't have started my work with a mood board.

I jumped straight into drawing thinking that my drawing was successful and it was definitely enjoyable. But what can you draw from dream catchers? Apparently just feathers.
 I couldn't draw the web with any interesting outcome so I used shadow and photographs to achieve the desired effect. After this I knew I wanted to work with shadow. I had been obsessed for a long while before this project and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to use it.
 However, it was what type of shadows to document was the main problem. I was stuck by a very narrow visual inspiration. I was using this fabric because it was personal to me, an old skirt, which is the way traditional dream catchers were made.

This had something in it but I was blind to what it was.
 Now after a heavy tutorial with a new voice, I was asked to go back to the beginning an ask myself what it is about dream catchers I actually liked.

1) They protect you from something invisible and and psychological i.e. dreams
2) They use personal items so that they will work for that specific culture or even individual.

I went on to recording dreams through abstract drawing to keep my privacy, and trapping these images in a 'web', using netting.
The imagery here is moving away from dreams and into memories.

I definitely use threads and stitches as a tool to achieve my visual goals, rather than exploring the limits of the thread or stitch itself.

Wrapping objects part 2

 These pieces were all inspired by the other mood board I did, it was all black & white and had images of movement in terms of old film technology.

These images of tights were my main inspiration for my visual studies and samples. I liked the way the pull of gravity is evident even in the image.
 I still had to wrap something as it was all part of the same project as the oranges so I decided to use the tights and see their potential first.

I really like the pattern created and I thought it would lend itself well into stitch, which was something sitting at the back of my mind. Also the way the colour changes according to the density of threads is interesting.
 This was my translation into stitch. Not much to say about it really, I think it's nice but not extremely interesting.










This is where it got interesting for me. I was trying to create a more appropriate texture using different materials I don't normally work with and stitch. When I'd finished messing around with and went to hang it on the wall the static from the plastic against the wall literally pulled it out of my hands. It hung there for a day and a night looking all crinkly and strange. It came to life in a way.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)