WEEK 3

CTS

 

Research materials! So many research materials!

Also : Refer to essay “why reference?”

 

STUDIO

 

Research Research Research

 

Often times I’ve come up with ideas for drawings, paintings or project by myself, purely basing it on my current mind design. Research is often seen as a burden within our field of work – it’s often confused as being separate from the creative processes, thought of as a tool of copying etc.  On the Monday session, we were introduced to this new idea that research doesn’t have to be boring and it worked! I’m interested in researching my projects now more than ever. I’m interested to look deeper into themes and explore beyond the surface.

 

On Tuesday, we were presented with a short ‘Quirky” text which we then had to interpret into three drawings. We dissected the text and spoke about what that text communicates to us as individuals before we carried on to visualize our concepts.

I was very skeptical of this task – it seemed uncomfortable and problematic, which is precisely why it was so successful. This task gave me the opportunity to realize my habit of the need to make sense of everything – to tie it all together. I explored the text in a more expressive and broad way, which game my work substance and made it personal.

 

The British Museum: Another challenge of 50 drawings, this time with the additional complexity of 3 different materials(topics) per drawing.

 

photo credit – my own

WEEK 2

CTS

Feminism: a form of social justice or a load of crap?

First Wave Feminism is greatly defined by the infamous Suffragettes and their courteous ways of fighting for women’s rights. The primary principles of the suffragette movement were to abolish gender double standards such as allowing female education, female vote and bettering working conditions.

Over a hundred years later, feminism is now a major activist movement known as “second wave feminism” that seeks for “social” women’s liberation- freedom from stereotypes, ban on catcalling, etc. ( I know.. how horrible right? As if people aren’t dying from hunger somewhere and you’re here protesting by not shaving your legs)

 

Moving past feminism, a subject of interest was brought to my attention by Laura Mulvey and further enriched by Alison Bechdel.

Laura Mulvey is the woman behind “The Male Gaze Theory” which argues that the way films are made (camera movements, shots and scripts) and the way we view cinema is through the eyes of a man. This implies that the way we portray and view women is sexualised and characterised to fit female stereotypes and ideologies.

This interests me as a female filmmaker in terms of my own approach to character development and portrayal, especially women characters. Further down my exploration of the art of filmmaking, I’m interested to develop a sensitivity to the gender portrayals and my choice of protagonists – cinema is widely known for its male leads as well as male filmmakers.

Another topic I’d like to explore and come back to another time is this:

Why are there more famous male artists, filmmakers and artists of all kinds?

I can name at least 10 famous male painters but not women.

What About You?

 

STUDIO

 

Movement – Flow – Feeling

 

Capturing the moving figures and landscapes in The Wizard of Oz was the first time I really allowed myself to feel out the drawing. The most nerve-wracking aspect of this studio practice was letting go of beauty. This sounds silly and unimportant, but truth be told, we live in the name of beauty and we recognize beautiful things as being equivalent to good(pure).

 

The good thing about this practice speaking in personal terms is the fact that this allowed us(the class) to move away from illustration and explore a more fine arty approach to making art/marks. This means we had the opportunity to “feel” what we draw and in general explore drawing in a broader sense. This relates to the day prior to this session, where we were asked to visit the Jerwood Space and speculate a drawing exhibition, which informed us of mediums and modern approaches to drawing.

 

On Friday we were blown away with a task of completing 50 drawing in three hours. This was after we were showered with some very profound words of wisdom and I quote:

 

“Don’t just draw to make things pretty; draw to make, portray something real”

Karl Foster, 2k17

 

Photo credit: my own  (screen grab from my short film “Child Water”)

Jerwood Space

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Jerwood Space is a quaint gallery space providing both wonderful art and a picturesque lounging area surrounded with plants and a sky-view.

The Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition currently displayed at the gallery, holds a large number of exciting drawings and mixed media pieces, all coherent in terms of aesthetic value. The drawings are innovative and unexpected – although mainly using traditional drawing techniques. The most fascinating aspect of the nominees’ drawings was their subjects and their approach to them. I was particularly interested in the “monotonous” drawings and abstract, landscape pieces. This is mainly because of my own practice and tendency to make “similar”, question raising work.

One of my favourite pieces is titled “science”, which features a small pencil drawing of a man dressed in black in a desert-like scene. I was specifically drawn to this piece as it reminded me of Federico Fellini’s film 8 ½ and a very ambiguous scene of a woman dancing in the desert. Besides the drawing looking like a still from a film, the worn-out, tiresome grey reminded me of my dreams and distant memories of past lives.

The one aspect I did find fascinating about all the pieces was the selected scale. I found that the smaller pieces tended to draw in the viewer into the world, as a smaller scale required less detail (in some cases), leaving the art photo-like, unable to be zoomed in. In retrospect the larger pieces often demonstrated a certain mark-making technique and allowed the viewer to expand their eye horizon, to understand things(or art, or the art piece) in a broader sense.

To conclude, this exhibition was one of my favourite exhibitions I have visited and has inspired me to re-examine my own subject of interest and my approach to executing my work. I am particularly interested to explore using graphite and charcoal and also drawing out my dreams ( refer to drawing “science”).

 

 

ROBERT KIPNISS uses the technique of mezzotint in means to translate his language of seeing. Various perspectives of trees, simplistic houses and bare landscapes are Kipniss’ signature objects of interest and are portrayed in a dusty, dim atmosphere, where the scene becomes an image taken from our own unsolved dreams.

 

 

 

Dark, nostalgic and lingering, ELAINE GREEN’s charcoal drawings are close to my heart and my artful eye. The Soft edges and lost-in-the-shadows imagery brings me back to my own memories which appear to me in black and white, with a bright shimmer as if viewed through an aged camera.

 

WEEK 1

CTS

What is illustration ?

In simple terms, an illustration is a picture; a visual portrayal of a narrative; interpretation of a situation, person, idea; or simply a decorative picture.

The word illustration comes from late middle English “illuminate”. To relate this to my own practice, my personal objective as a human and an artists is to enlighten (illuminate) myself and others of the bizarreness of life, existence, cosmos etc.

Illustration is often misunderstood and sometimes demeaned. I know this because I was one of those people who viewed it as a commercialised “art” and frankly, I am not too sure I’ve gotten rid of this outlook. In my defence, there is no defence, I’ve been conditioned.

RANT OVER

 

STUDIO

Tight deadlines and pressure have proven to do wonders on me – I would never have produced as much work in such a short amount of time if it weren’t for the fear. Ah fear. My bitter ally.

Although I’m happy with my results (considering the timeframe and my other duties), I’m not sure about the thoroughness of my creative process and feel there was a great lack of time for reflection, thought settlement and in general depth of understanding the theme.

From the walk around, I had the opportunity to relate my practice to my peers and have decided that indeed I am on an illustration course. Although my work was illustrative (a ticket to see the 2094 eclipse) It had a more fine art approach- I tried to develop a deeper understanding of the theme and look for a profound message the theme carried.

This made me think – how can I make illustration a form of profound expression? How can I use illustration to change people’s lives on a deeper level?

One way illustration is superior to fine art is it is more accessible- ideas are executed in a more contextual and narrated way- making illustration a tool for global communication.

The way in which I can answer these questions is to explore themes of interest to me and to develop my approach to tackling them.

 

(image credit: my own)