Painting

Back on the ole paper shapes grind.

Audible sighs.

It's tricky, really.  Everybody seems to have been galvanised by the move to working from found objects, and the step back has been demoralising to the class.  I understand, both sides of the group working from the same source means everyone has a comparable base to examine.  But everyone is done, mentally, with those shapes now. 

So anyway.  Painting is a bit misleading as a title, as this was more an 'Ink Washing' sort of exercise.  Very tricky to get my head around to begin with.  It's been a long time since I worked a wash, (less so ink, of course) and the white on white of the paper pieces was another challenge, even more so given my images are very flat.  Not much room to get into the creases and crumples when there isn't any.  First four images didn't work too well, but I was starting to get a handle on the ink at least, and I was annoyed with myself that I rushed the last one, and got some nasty bleed.

After a quick break we returned and really seemed as a group to get tuned into the medium. Speaking for myself, I learned a bit of patience and not to rush the work.  Delicate work isn't my forte, and so I was pleased with how the next couple came out, the first one back certainly had a very painterly quality. 

But it all seemed to be lost again after lunch.  Adding white paint to the mix, to try and pull back some areas that had maybe gone dark.  Something had changed though, and although the first one of the new set wasn't too bad, after that the works tailed off.  The end of day couldn't really come quick enough, and the mood in the room fell off pretty quick.

Why Draw? 5

The objects we bought from home were used today, for the firstest ever time!  My objects were an old Samsung smartphone, and old Rock Lord toy and a Generation 1 Crosshairs from 1988.  Of course I'm gonna draw the Transformer...

So now Crosshairs is a social media star, appearing on the Derby Uni Fine Art Instagram, in both plastic and art interpreted form.  Crazy.

Spent a lot of time working up a lot of large images on the keyword 'expressive' some more successful than others.  The general feeling was that my more pictoral images were less expressive, but I would argue that.  You can be pictoral and expressive both, and my observational drawings are a lot tighter than the first image above, but it seems that to a general audience expressive means almost abstract, so I pushed in that direction.  My expression veered towards an expression of frustration at times, and things started to head towards a minimalist approach for a time.   I found some images that I liked and worked well together, although still more minimalist than expressive to my mind.  Ah well, onwards and upwards!

Why Draw? 3

YEAR ONE DAY NINE

Morning of super quick drawings in sketchbook.  Started with a fifteen minute warm up, then a ten minute one.  Then just a line drawing, then two drawings consisting of one continuous unbroken line.  Then a short break, a longer drawing again, and then two left handed drawings.  and finally closing out with a series of drawings in ever decreasing time frames from a minute down to five seconds.  It was a challenge and a good one, although pretty intensive.  I think some folks were pretty done with the drawing for the day.

Worked on a few more things in the sketchbook, and then bailed at about three. 

I think things are going well.

Why Draw? 2

YEAR ONE DAY EIGHT

Studio day.  Not much to say, blew through about twelve pages of my sketchbook.  Taking images in new abstract directions, crossing pages, using weird new media.   Looks good or shoddy, depending on the page, but that's what Sketchbooks are for, right?

Tired and not much to analyse today, really.

Printmaking

YEAR ONE DAY SEVEN

I didn't take many pictures today.  I thought I had. 

Print room induction today, and introduced to a practice I believe was called Callographing.  It took a a while to get going, as we were making plates from Enviromount, a cheap form of mountboard. The thing with this material is it is made from three distinct layers, so when you have your shape cut out, you can then dig down to those layers, creating different textures as the different qualities of it's construction come to the fore.  And them you can do all the more 'drawing' stuff on top, score lines, make holes, pinpricks.  It is surprisingly malleable.

Then the plates needed varnishing, and let alone for an hour or so to set and make non-porous.

I think I struggled with the initial shapes, I tend to find bold simple lines and not the more subtle textures that my fellow students were able to produce, and then I compounded my error by adding too much ink to the plates on the first try.  I had to stop for a little bit there, and let my mind almost reset and process what I'd done and learn from it.   After watching the rest of the groups first run prints being made, while they started the second runs, my time was spent trying to clean the plates rears of ink.

So I came into my second run late, and it was a more successful try.  After that, I started experimenting, first on a piece that had been created yesterday instead of onto a plain sheet of paper, and then by reprinting onto the same sheet multiple times with the same image, getting a cascadeing and fading effect that I kind of liked.

I'm considering returning at some point later in the week if I have chance.

Why Draw?

YEAR ONE DAY SIX

I wonder how long I can keep that up?

Anyway.  Good day today.    Asked us to consider the questions 'Why draw?' and 'What is drawing?' (note, I've started pronouncing the 'w' in drawing like a fuckin' Jersey accent).  Upshot being that we were set with Tasks.  One: fill sketchbook with drawings of the object from week one, and two: flatten out the objects to form a kind of 3D to 2D drawing, and then use that as the basis of more drawings.

Shapes flattened

Using compressed charcoal and a couple of other materials (Graphite might have been one, I'll update when I remember), started off by taking rubbings of the flattened shapes.  After seeing how the shapes fit on the paper, began to play around with making more complete pieces.  Then some of us took the original shapes and had a play on the photocopier, which produced some new perspectives and opened up new avenues to explore.   

3D shapes photocopied, producing 2D shapes

The aim of the afternoon work was to reduce the pile down to 3-5 images (photocopies included).  I kind of cheated as the photocopies had produced to images I wanted to chase up, so after working on the first for a while, I quickly pulled out  a couple for the second image.  So I ended up with two sets of images, each consisting of three images.

I'm not Christie

Folding Paper 5

YEAR ONE DAY FIVE

You will never guess.  I mean, okay you probably will, you've read the blog title.  I hope.  Aw, who am I kidding, nobody reads this.  Just my voice bleating into the darkness.  Trying to make meaning from my days actions and usually failing. 

Jeez, look at that.  Took punk to be goth and too depressed to be either.  Grunge it do be then, a dead genre for a depressed soul.

Anyway, more paper folding.  I was only in for a couple of hours before my hypnotherapy session.  And I must say, I think everyone else is handling this a lot better than I am, the works that my fellow students are creating is so good, I'm feeling a tad...  out of place. I've struggled to hit a consistent level, whereas everyone else seems to be getting better and better.  Maybe my level isn't that high after all?

But to be fair, I've always struggled to translate the things in my head to the real world anyway.  I'm clumsy and too big to be an intricate artist, and that's something that's always been the case. I can paint what I like, and that's tided me over.   It's only being taken out of that comfort zone where I'm found wanting.  Just keep pushing, do your best and hope.

So yeah, last day of folding paper.  Clear the decks, one last push and lets see what happens.  And what happens is I take the work from Wednesday, and refine and alter it, cutting into it so the shapes fit together better, are more integrated.  It does not stay together, the shapes are not locked, but I think I learned from yesterday that that's fun.  You can play and move them around, which is cool.  Also it's a little less sexual.  Hooray!

And that's when the inspiration kinda dried up.  To the extent that I'm struggling to even find the enthusiasm to write about those next experiments, to remember what went into making them.  Certainly, there was no verb, I was just playing with the paper, seeing what it would do. So that was a mistake, and probably something I'll need to work on..  I could possibly bullshit a verb and reason backwards, but that wouldn't be honest, to be honest.

So yeah, my therapy threw me out of what little creative headspace I had managed to achieve, and again, being honest, I'm probably not right again yet.  I'm writing this on Saturday, after having been awake since 5am, and I don't know where to go next.

Folding Paper 4

YEAR ONE DAY FOUR

More paper.  More folding.  More lack of progression.

I dunno man.  The work was good, the process fun.  But that was because of the person I was making with, I think.  Jokes and fun and folding and cutting the fucking paper.

Like, overall, the experience is good and I am not regretting the extra time I am spending in the studio.  But this afternoon has felt more stagnant than before, a feeling of repetition. Maybe the thinking was an 'easy' day after a morning of being talked at again, but I think we all wanted to be engaged, something to wake us up. 

Anyway.

Today, we made the paper in teams of two, using a shared verb.  I've forgotten the verb. 

I'm actually struggling to remember this.

We made a shape, with the plan of draping it over the side of the studio.  But when we reached that stage, it looked clumsy, so that idea was dropped.  Working smaller, and playing with those two pieces, moving them around.

And that is literally about it.

Have a picture.

Folding Paper 3

YEAR ONE DAY THREE

Back to basics indeed.  A3 paper.  Scissors allowed, no tape.  ( I didn't bring scissors and didn't fancy dropping money on them in the shop, so we persevere.  I wasn't even supposed to be in today, after all)  And... a frustrating morning, really. Mostly.  Half of it.

Not gonna lie, there did come a point where I wondered what I was doing there.  Everything seemed to be going wrong, and I even had my music on random, thus messing up the music I was listening to.   A3 was proving too big for what I was trying to do, and you'd have thought I'd be primed by yesterday but...  I had no idea how to stabilise the pieces, the paper wouldn't hold a curl and I couldn't tear a straight line (against the grain or with it) to save my life.

I found myself wondering what could be done with a pair of scissors, and realised, not much.  My head, my perception works around bold images.  Straight lines and the way they cut across one another.  Taking shapes out of the paper or adding new structure to the edges wouldn't have helped.  I simply wasn't dealing with the paper as well as I had hoped.

I wasn't even missing the tape.  That would have implied that my objects were working if only I could hold them together, and that wasn't the case.  They were just not working.  I folded some lines randomly across a new sheet, stood it against the wall, and took five minutes out to write and try and pull myself together.

And always remember kids: When in doubt, KISS.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

So I cam back, and went for the simplest idea I could think of.  Divide the paper into quarters.  fold up from each quarter.  Then fold across the middle, and...  hey, that's not a bad shape, actually.  I liked it.  It had form, structure and depth, and the possibility of variation. So that's what I did.  The next two I made were with some slight variation as to where the main folding over line would go.  Giving extra depth and shadow.  Subtle variations, but variations none the less.  And the fourth had the biggest variance. The fold over line occurred perpendicular to the others.  This produced a much wider, shallower piece.  Similar, but much different.  Taken with the last pre-break object, the five pieces worked well together, forms of a likeness, similarly constructed and born of conflicting emotions, and yet different.  Maybe I'll crack this after all..

There is, I realised later, an inherently sexuality to these.  I'm going to hold off on mentioning that until I see if anyone else picks up on it...

Folding Paper 2

YEAR ONE DAY TWO

Day of mixed halves, really.  More successful morning than afternoon, but a more fun afternoon. Perhaps also first evidence how serious the faculty will be and a difference of tolerance...

So yeah, still folding paper, but with an unsanctioned (at times) rush towards masking tape.In the morning this was okay, as we had, as a group, pushed the objects as far as they could go on a flat surface and wanted a different perspective.  Table, then floor, then...  wall.  Unfortunately the objects didn't lend themselves to unsecured hanging, like, at all. So tape needed to be deployed to aid in that extra experimentation.  Jerry was okay with this (or at least, he raised no objection).  Carl, on the other hand...

I do get the criticism.  I understand the criticism. But I wish the tutors had gotten on the same page beforehand with this.  The goalposts kind of moved between morning and afternoon, and while, with no tutor present in the afternoon people reached for tape and a more pictorial approach both, I feel that certainly in our case, it was an exploration of the inherent design of the paper still.  We just got caught up in the design and it's possibilities and wanted to explore that further, after it had been taken as far as that design could go unaided.

I am sure the tutors would say that they gave us an inch and we took a mile.

An incorrect approach then, rather than anything else.  Taking onboard the crit, and trying to not let my perception of the slightly unfair nature of it colour me, we should have found a way of making the work hold together better, rather than being focused on trying to maintain the purity of the line.

Interestingly, both objects displayed my hallmarks of exploring the intersecionality of lines, which makes me wonder: Despite being in two different groups, was I the dominant personality?  Something to watch for.  Perhaps the nature of the medium just lends itself to that.

Of note, also, that our afternoon group was the only one to not produce something that could be described as a depiction of something.  So we were able to carry that through from the morning sessions too.

And there was some Bauhaus inspired mindfulness, too.  Odd how the Germans came up with an Eastern meditation, isn't it?