Agoraphobia

Please end this please end this before it ends us, ends us, ends us

I want to stay inside

I want to stay inside for good

It’s been a struggle to get into a working headspace at home.  I don’t really have a dedicated studio area (city centre flats are not renowned for being spacious) and what little I’ve scrounged is still full of distractions.  Nevertheless, on Tuesday night I attempted a start. My process, to begin with, is almost action painting, I put blobs of colour on the surface, and then attempt to blend and smear them out.  I don’t actually know what this first layer is going to look like until I’ve finished.  This is a new practice for me, as before I started University, I always started with a shape, or a full image to work towards.  This is looser and is a much more seat of the pants approach.  I have no idea what this work is going to look like until it’s finished.  There’s always been an element of that to my work, but never from the get-go.
I wonder if these are too over produced and cluttered, though.  That seems to be a part of it, reflecting the mental state of a person in this position, and maybe as I hopefully achieve a clearer view of where I’m going, the works will too?  I’d like a cleaner, purer approach, but for now, the mess seems better.  Like, I like the clean, flatness of the work now, but I know it must be covered, messed up, made imperfect and damaged.  Psychic self portraits.

Ultimately, I don’t feel I’m happy, with myself, or as an artist.  This isn’t fulfilling, and I don’t know what is.  I feel like I’m just scabbing a wound, and occasionally scratching it a little deeper.  My trips to the British Museum and National Gallery stirred nothing in me, I could see the pretty pictures, appreciate the thought and explain why they were the way they were, but it was just a cold analytical experience, and I feel that about my own work at the moment.

It’s not enough.  And I don’t know what is.  

So feeling a little lost, I return to my sketchbook and work on something, that seems to call a little closer to me.  I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but it is a little more representational, and I feel that is something that I might need to bring back into my work, the illustrative side.  It’s not good, but it’s a start.

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