 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spent the day up in Printmaking...this is probably what I'll be doing until mid-December. Which also means walking around with grubby tramp-hands until mid-December. Anyway, quite a productive day, trial-wise - figured out the best setting for the press and the nicest paper to use, even though it took all day, (ironically not Somerset! Somerset is too grainy). Got gorgeous, smooth results on cheap-ass cartridge paper. Here's a couple of the screens I made up. I love how they look before they're printed. Sometimes moreso than the actual prints:   Also, I just carved the smallest pumpkin in the world without injuring myself. A friend gave it to me a few weeks ago and seriously, it's the size of an apple - and the candle actually cooks the lid somewhat! Anyway, it's a baby pumpkin so it only has one tooth :)  Tags: halloween, perspex, pumpkin, screen
Current Mood:  tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Today has been the most remotely productive evening in a while. I am fighting tiredness and pressing on. There seems to be no time to do anything during the day and then, as early as 6/7, I feel dead on my feet. Is it Seasonal Affective Disorder? Depression? Little sleep? Or a general lack of direction? Maybe a bit of everything. I feel happiest when I'm sleeping I think. Anyway, I've spent a week taking Streetcar apart scene by scene, writing down everything that took my fancy, everything that was visual, beautiful, surreal...by the end of the week I had a wad of text and no visual material. If only my dissertation reading and note-taking was going as well as this text-breakdown. If only it was going at all. Maybe I should have studied English Lit? Mind, this is the very thing I hated doing when I did do English Lit. I just happened to be freakishly competent at it. I've made a few things, started thinking about what it all looks like. It's quite literal at the moment, but I think it's essential to get the literal crap out of the way first. I felt intimidated by a white page so I've gone through some paper and done washes over it to work with. Also thinking of doodling from the film. I've been turning it on to doodle for the past 4 evenings and something has always managed to distract my attention. Eventually I want these to be quite colourful monoprints. Bought some turquoise printing ink the other day. It's really nice. Can't wait to use it for something decent.    In other news, I've been thinking about a friend's album art. Going for robots at the moment. Been doodling robots. Robots are so fun and effortless to doodle:  I do however intend to digitally collage them up from envelope bits, which has resulted in my cataloging my sad collection of the insides of envelopes. Thinking of working them into a brown or a green though...or a grey for that matter. Blue is too watery. Water and robots = bad idea. But otherwise they just seem so impersonal and institutional, symmetrical and harsh. Robots, envelopes. Yeah:     It's making me want to get a little wind up robot just to have on my desk and smile at. Had a look on eBay. Can't see one that I like yet, though. Over and out. Tags: a streetcar named desire
Current Mood:  nostalgic
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Been thinking a lot about spindly hands lately. I think it may become another obsession, alongside cute little houses and nudity. Did a quick spindly drawing today with minimal colour:   Also, really been wanting to get back into bleach and ink. Made a few sheets, been doodling:   Been reading for my dissertation. It's all very interesting. Don't know what to do with it though. Read quite a bit about outsider art. Finding all the biographies really engaging - like an intellectualized version of Take a Break magazine or something - and all the theoretical rubbish is unfortunately really, REALLY boring. Can't make sense of anything. This one guy I read about, Clarence Schmidt - he spent 30 years building a house out of junk alongside a mountain. By the time he was done, it was 7 stories high and had something like 35 rooms. He was a nice old man and liked visitors, especially if they bought him unwanted things that he could use. However, his materialistic cunt neighbours were worried that the prices of their properties might go down due to the weird structure that was erected so close by...so they burnt it down (or at least we assume this). The old man was upset, but what he did was incredible - he just started building it again from scratch. This is the awesome house:  I know that he was just a crazy old man, but he's a role model I think. I need to be more like him, than like myself at the moment. Who am I kidding? I've not done anything. Current Mood:  crushed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm afraid there was hardly any time for drawing, so I have mainly been scrap-booking. This is rather pointless and memories are already evading me. In fact, I got told off for drawing twice - the first, in a museum and the second time by a woman at a market stall, who was incredibly rude and was close to swearing at me...just for standing some 5 meters away from her with a sketchbook... ...so yes, little drawing...but, nonetheless, this is all I have; a mess drenched in the usual pathos:      And I wrote this, unable to sleep on a 13-hour night train, while watching the stars on the jet-black sky at about 4am: I want to let my body rest
And look out to the sky,
Then maybe I could get a glimpse
Of centuries gone by.
Large flocks of stars watch over us
And hear all that we say,
As shepherds of the dawn creep in
To mind their cattle's play.
I asked the very brightest star
If it has loved before;
It smiled and glowed and faded pale
Until it was no more.That's all. Current Mood:  blank
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So, today, after hours at the LCC library, I've learned about The 'Humors' of a person. According to the Greek physician Hippocrates (4th century BC) we are governed by natural 'juices' that are essential to the life of all things. These are blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Apparently one enjoys perfect health when these elements are proportioned with one another, and experiences pain when there is an excess or a defect of one or more of these elements.
- Blood is the most positive humor - a person governed by blood is the Sanguine type - adaptable, hopeful, optimistic and in a good state of mind.
- Yellow Bile is symbolic of the Choleric - he or she are prone to hyperactivity and flying into irritable and violent rages.
- Black bile governs the indolent, timid and ailing Melancholic. They are darkly introspective and intermittently creative.
- Phlegm is the docile and somnambulant Phlegmatic. Apparently these are also applicable to different points in people's lives and complimented by seasons:
Blood - Youth
Yellow Bile - Maturity
Black Bile - Middle Age
Phlegm - Old Age
And hence - spring, summer, autumn, winter. Also, these 17th century engravings complimenting each one were amazing. The more you look at them, the more graphic they become. I love the hinged body parts, as though the people are cupboards, and the symbolism in the birds carrying the seasonal banners...and the last one is so scary!  Anyway, I thought that it was an interesting way to categorize life and people and, although everyone is essentially a mix of most humors, it's amazing that at one point basic medicine was based on this sort of spiritual, mythical kinda thing. I'm so good at expressing myself. The Melancholic I find is particularly accurate in a strange way - I mean, I definitely know a few people like that. Hence, I also really loved looking at Dürer's 'Melencolia', 1514.  </a> This girl is surrounded by failed attempts at creation. In a more Aristotelian kind of way (Physiognomics etc), the black bile within her seeps through her dark and morose complexion. Her saddened companions (a worn hunting dog and a scary toddler) and her folded wings are definitely not taking her to any happy places either. However, there are the scales, the sand clock and the bell which allude to some sort of impending future - but good or bad, who knows? There is also ambivalence in the sunrise/set and the rainbow over it - from one point of view, it could be an optimistic sign, from another we can perceive that all happiness and rebirth is taken over by the demonic bat which drapes the eponymous banner across this idyllic view. Notably, it is the melancholics that are the most creative - "when set free by the humour melancholicus, the soul is fully concentrated in the imagination, and it immediately becomes a habitation for the lower spirits, from whom it often receives wonderful instruction in the manual arts..." - Agrippa. So this is why we can't seem to create unless we are on the brink of depression or madness. Well, at least I can't...though recently I can't at all. Anyway, I want to touch again on Physiognomy - this is the idea that the soul and the form of the body are interconnected. And so, when the character of the soul changes, so does the form of the body. Simple but true. I liked how the text alluded to madness as the affection of the soul and stated that nonetheless, by purging the body with drugs, physicians are able to free the soul from madness. Also, I thought this Charles le Brun was fun:  It looks like I've done so much research, but this is all coming from one book so far...and to be honest, I started off looking for materials related to humans associating themselves with animals....and somehow spent all day thinking about all this stuff instead. I don't know how I'm going to do this dissertation. Even when you do find extremely relevant things then there they are, right? How are you supposed to write anything interesting or original? So, so, so stuck and stupid...but enlightened about blood and bile and phlegm...what what about if there's an over-abundance of semen? Does that make good rapists? I couldn't resist. In other news, I really, really, really want to go to the pub right now. Or better still - onto the sofa with a can of cold beer and someone to talk rubbish at and dance like morons to happy music with :( Oh, and a 2-second doodle from last night, which I really liked for some reason. You know, when you just like something that you've done in 2 seconds? And what the fuck is it about rosy cheeks being so satisfying on doodles and so annoying in real life? Gotta stop putting goddamn rosy cheeks on everything one of these days..  Current Mood: sad
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I've really slacked. I'm not even going to try and make out as though I haven't. It's not even due to procrastination - more like lack of energy to even scan things in and gather my thoughts together. Everything has been happening all at once, the year is coming to a close. The only thing I have managed to upload are some images from a drawing workshop the other week. It really challenged everyone's way of looking at things and, although it probably will not directly affect my work, I'm sure it will feed some sort of subconscious texture. We were basically focusing on negative space vs the object, tone vs line and the ability to pretend you've never seen something before and hence you are able to split it up into abstract parts instead of working from preconceptions. I've scanned in some that I liked the best:    This is the one that Peter liked the best:  And these are some drawings of Peter when he did a half an hour sitting for us, which was very kind of him. I focused on the surroundings and negative spaces for both, but they are very different. I was really focusing on the first one, enjoying the textures that I could see, particularly the hair and bristle; I was beginning to enjoy the jumper, but ran out of time...I guess I was being more myself in the first one and more someone new in the second one, who knows:    I think these sessions are a great idea for next year. Current Mood: tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yay! It's finally finished! Woo!      I would like to propose an illustrated publication of Mikhail Lermontov’s ‘A Hero of Our Time’. Due to the fact that I have been working on this book as a personal project, I am attaching a series of five ready images that embody my concepts and may be altered if required. The book is split into five short stories, following a few periods in the life of a young Russian officer, Gregory Pechórin, who has been sent to serve in the Caucasus as penalty for arranging a duel. We grow to understand that the protagonist is an internally lonely and bitter man, who is convinced that he is worse than he actually is and hence perpetually models his actions from his inner state. As a result, throughout the five stories, he hurts, devastates and destroys – both, emotionally and physically – the people who show him kindness and offer him companionship. Abandoning traditional illustrated scenes, I propose to center the images around the protagonist’s victims, without actually shedding light on him. Pechórin is in what appears to be an internal struggle with himself and, despite his reoccurring plotting and harsh expressions, the reader can occasionally glimpse goodness – however, I think it is important to highlight that it is unfortunately his actions and not his thoughts, that shape a man. I have chosen to execute the series through working into and printmaking from inked-up Perspex, which is a form of monoprinting. Pechórin’s attitude to people is a disposable one; he generalizes and fails to differentiate between playthings and individuals with feelings. In the same way, the notion of a print ultimately connotes faceless repetition whilst, in contrary, the fact that it is a monoprint – a technique in which only one decent print can be taken from a single surface – emphasizes that these people are infact individuals. The use of black ink and areas of high contrast are a manifestation of the dark places that these people get rooted in – loneliness, depression, nervous breakdowns and death. The elongated format endeavours to alienate and seclude the subject and – drawing attention away from backgrounds etc – to create the illusion of being stood in a doorway looking at them, growing trapped with them in impenetrable sorrow. The illustrations at present have no connection with the typography and are intended to sit on their own page at the relevant points in the book. The concept of not attempting to illustrate the protagonist owes its existence to the timeless nature of the story. Lermontov writes – “The Hero of our time is certainly a portrait, my readers, but not of a single individual: the portrait is drawn from the fully developed vices of our entire generation.” The protagonist is therefore a collective metaphor of a generation gone wrong and, despite its contextual niche in 1840, I feel that his story sounds as true and poignant in any epoch – from the latter year, up until many centuries onwards from today. Each new generation is increasingly plagued with its own set of Pechórins – confused, inconsiderate, self-loathing and fundamentally lonely – and I think it is essential to shed light on this with a modern, and hence more accessible to surface-readers, conceptually illustrated publication of this book. Current Mood:  accomplished
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Slowly been working on the Four Corners competition stuff. Got about a month from today to really bring it together, so really need to start putting things on the shelf and tying up lose ends and general sickness and procrastination. Four Corners requires a concept - so basically there is no getting away with wishy-washy book illustration...not that anyone would want to do that, but it is a trap that, nonetheless, one can easily fall into. I've been looking at 'A Hero of Our Time' by Mikhail Lermontov, which is basically about a young Russian officer named Pechorin who ruins a lot of people's lives. He's an ultimate anti-hero and acts as a portrait of an entire generation of apathetic, bored, selfish extremists, hidden by that of an individual. I just thought it was interesting how not much has changed really - and that every generation seems to be increasingly plagued with such attributes. Anyway my, ahem, 'concept' so far has been to focus on Pechorin's victims, without actually including him in any of the images. In a strange roundabout way that seems to be the sort of thing that everybody is doing for this (book-applicable of course), but I guess that I am not one to come up with anything crazy and mind-bending either - maybe something will develop out of it as I go along? Here are a few things I've been working on for this:     I don't know why any of it is black and white or anything - there's no deep meaning behind that. I guess that I've been thinking about the idea of sadness and emotional despair and black seems natural for it for now. I guess I've also been trying to work straight onto paper with mediums that do not give me precise control - like ink and charcoal. And those, too, tend to be sort of...black. Perhaps when I have some images that I am satisfied with I will try to take them all into lino cuts to try and tie my hands behind my back further. Maybe. I like having my hands tied behind my back. In other news, and speaking of lino - a bit of of date now - but this was the final 'Penny Dreadful' series for the Publish project:         Then there is the personal project, which I've not really fallen into yet...mainly because it seems like I want to do something that is natural for me anyway - keeping a sketchbook. That I am doing, but I guess that it needs to be avid rather than leisurely now. Fine, I can do that. I have always been of the notion that drawing as much as possible will not hurt anyone...but I guess that I have mainly been thinking about people, expressions, bodies...I know that I am stuck in this, but it is the only way I will ever succeed in anything. Still been drawing from image generators, trains, home videos. Home videos...  Also the External project - hopefully something will happen with that one day or another, but this is the most recent thing I made for it. It is about strange habits and I couldn't think of a better way of saying that I like hanging on to people's smelly old clothes...you know, like keeping an old friend's hat, or wearing your boyfriend's shirt when he's away...that kinda thing. Probably less strange and more stupid:  Right-o. Tags: a hero of our time, habits, lermontov, penny dreadful, russian
Current Mood: blah
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
After a manic week of full days in the printmaking department and the possibility of getting something done on Monday also, I am looking at about 6 prints. Life has become a lot easier with the press, though of course I am still picking a lot of things up. The fact that these are reduction prints is actually quite frustrating because I am unable to go back and re-do things with the new knowledge applied, but the experience has been invaluable; I've always hated lino...and printmaking in general...it felt compulsory and rushed...but I've really gotten into this and I think that I may spend a lot more time up in Printmaking after this project. After Mary's suggestion a couple of weeks ago, I have dropped the black entirely and have been experimenting with browns as the final layer(s) of the reduction cuts. I feel that this has been quite successful and that the images have certainly lifted somewhat in comparison to my character submission - things do not actually need to have a black outline. As much as this is a concept that is hard to lose when drawing, it seems to be a lot more accessible in print. In fact, I have really fallen in love with the constraints of printmaking. Drawing, the ability to produce a perfectly guided line, I feel actually puts an image-maker under more pressure. Having total control also a means to dwell in chaos. Printing has been spontaneous and fun for me and, as much as there is a lot of backwards-thinking and a certain degree of control involved in the reduction process, it is all a matter of experience and I feel that it is more...surprising? Unexpected? Playful? The suspense of what your work will actually look like is great. Six odd years of being somehow involved in print, and I am only realising and appreciating these things now.            It's a shame about, most likely, not being able to finish all sixteen prints for the assessment but, in all honesty, what ought to be truly assessable. and what is valuable to me here, is the experience and the thinking processes that have been happening over the past few weeks. I know that I'll have a million more breakdowns about my work, but for now I believe I might be entering a new niche. Current Mood:  silly
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cliches just eat away at you, don't they? Most people probably imagine very similar things when certain words are uttered. Anyway, after getting a lot of cliched crap out of the way (as seen in the previous post) I thought - but what the hell did real women look like in the 1920's? It was more difficult to find sources - naturally, everything was saturated by the likes of Paul Poiret:  But in the end, I found a lot of photographs of female office clerks on some very odd websites and, feeling akin to a bizarre office enthusiast, I managed to get a bit of doodling done. Note, for some reason everyone was a short-haired brunette back then - and that's not even a cliche. Adam says it's because all of the office clerks were Jews. I dunno...     This woman, in my story, she rides a bicycle. She uses it at night to dispose of the bodies. There's no way a woman could have the strength to dismember and transport a body in real life, but I guess that's why this is folklore; everything is a exaggerated and anything is possible. She always wears green to all these shindigs she goes to because she has read somewhere that green was a colour much avoided by London tailors because it was symbolic of danger and misfortune. I guess she liked that and thought it made her cool or something. She wears a mask too, but it's considered normal because she wears it to masked balls, so everyone wears one. But it kinda gives her a lack of identity, which I enjoy. So the natural turn was then to doodle women on bicycles and masks and things:     And so I ended up with something like this for the initial character design:  Looking at that image, I feel like I have gone in a full circle with this avoiding cliche thing, but I guess there is still time to think about it and it will do for now. I can't part with the thought that she just looks like a female superhero on a BMX. Oh dear. This will take a lot of work. Thankfully, the fact that I intend to take all of this through to lino will mean that I can be more free and spare myself a lot of silly details that pen and ink and pencil, in contrary, condone. Also. She needs a name. Still. I really don't want to lose thing now...:( Stupid character. I just want to think about houses and backdrops now or something.  Current Mood:  anxious
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm having trouble hosting because some of my drawings are a bit...dirty. Photobucket keeps deleting them, so I'm trying it again with a new host. I think now you have to click on thumbnails to make them big, which is a pain in the arse but also makes for good selective viewing. Some more random doodles from a few weeks ago:        Uni-wise, new project is pretty cool. I returned to the course with a flat sense of dread and typed up a huge, angry art-and-self-detesting progress sheet for my tutorial but, following a good chat and some general looking around, things aren't so bad now. I'm just trying to completely drown myself in something and it's vaguely been working. So the new project - 'Publish'. It's based on folklore. We have to take an existing story or invent our own and develop a protagonist for it, followed by 3 editions of 16 or so sequential prints. The week the project was set, Adam took me the the Museum of London. It only went up to 1666 though, and I left with nothing but a few doodles of Roman ash-containers with faces and medieval castration tools. Light-heartedly, we started joking about a woman who goes to all these masked balls and lures unsuspecting men back to her Georgian house in Vauxhall somewhere, where she castrates them and makes these pots with their face on them to keep their genitals in. I thought about going with the first thing you think of, and somehow it morphed into the actual base for my project. Anyway, all these body parts keep turning up in the Thames...and she has a cupboard full of these pots in her bedroom. But she's not all bad - she actually does all this to spite an old lover who, back in the day, caused her to miscarry a child. So I guess she's the archetypal anti-hero; a goodie-turned-baddie due to a trauma. I don't know, it all sounds kinda cheesy, but I've been having fun with it. I've been thinking about all these pots a lot and went through tens of sheets of paper doing tacky stuff like this:  But all of that took me to more interesting places, like this:    I kinda like how they get rather creepy towards the end. They're still almost smiling. Dead young men smiling with teeth. Right. So I was thinking of doing the whole thing in lino and have been doing some test prints to remind myself that I could still do it. I could do with a press though. May have to go and print them in the Printmaking department on the relief press for the final ones. Anyway, I printed about a million, but they're all along the lines of:   We also went to the V&A on Saturday and found lots of cool stuff there, which was very irrelevant for the project, except maybe a couple of 20's-ish dresses. I've started developing the character by pushing the most obvious stereotypes out of the way and just enjoying drawing again:     I've been feeding my love-hate relationship with aestheticism by thinking about ornate things too, like nice staircases and fences. I think that this is relevant to the historical context and could look pretty good in print. The V&A has an awesome collection of iron stuff taken off random buildings all over the world. Here are some of my favorites:        I've also been looking at a 100-kilo book of Kandinsky's woodcuts. Really, really incredible stuff; Mary may have been right in thinking that this could be the the strange no-man's land between the intuitive and the aesthetic that I subconsciously appear to be after. The lines are both playful and complex. I've been getting really excited about these. Again, some my favorite prints out of the album:        And also - general German expressionism; - again, very odd, wonderful stuff:         I guess that things have been nicely falling into place. I don't want to lose this sudden surge of enthusiasm, so I am trying to remain neutral on the exterior, as to not to jinx it or something. Mary reckons that my problems are actually more temperament-related than directly linked to my work. Apparently, there is no problem with my work. Go figure. But yes, I shouldn't deprive myself of my right to make work, to do things. But it seems that I am contradictory in the sense that I am attracted to the beautiful and the aesthetic, but am also repulsed by it and excited about intuitive and loose work. Therefore, I need to find Nina and try to position myself somewhere in-between those two points. Think crude versus refined. STOP looking at other illustrators' work and focus on what gives ME pleasure. Perhaps right now it is better to focus rather than to broaden. Film should also be a consideration for future projects. Next step is developing this crazy woman by Tuesday. Back to the drawing board :) Tags: 1920's, 20's, castration, folklore, german expressionism, lino printing, london, miscarriage, museum of london, printmaking, relief printing, v&a, vauxhall
Current Mood: bouncy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our external Group Project is at the moment based on setting small drawing and making tasks. One of the holiday ones we decided on (surprise surprise) was "What I did on Christmas Day". I spent a lot of the morning writing my FLAW German coursework and panicking that I've forgotten everything...so I knocked this out...it's banal and obvious and didn't take long, but whatever, it was also intuitive...and I like how the scribbly pencil does not permit any nice smooth colour...almost shows the childlike frustration of being shit at something, perhaps:  Also have been making further tens and tens of drawings from random images and adding colour to some of them. Sometimes I'm very happy with the turn out, sometimes everything feels shit and frustrating. I definitely know that I hate backgrounds...they feel to me as though I were picking the positions of actors on a stage and constraining them to an environment. I know that this won't do, but I'm just really interested in characters at the moment. And I also, think it's important to note that I've not turned into a crazed rapist (not any more than the one I already am, at any rate)...but it's just that 90% of the internet seems to be porn, and I just happen to think that bodies are fascinating, no matter what they're doing...so yeah, a lot of it is still blatant porn...but drawn porn at that.       Lines are hard. Colour is hard. Art is hard. But I still feel the need to do it, which is good. Maybe. Current Mood: okay
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 
I got quite stuck with this project over the past few weeks, possibly because it had lasted all summer and well into the first semester. I felt like I’d exhausted my thoughts and was finding it very hard to look at the story with fresh eyes.
Last year I focused primarily on animation and collage but I’ve been doing a lot of pure observational drawing over the summer, project related and otherwise, and strongly felt a rediscovery of how important and informative it was, but also how fun and free-flowing. In close proximity to the deadline, I began to get the dreaded, mandatory feeling of having to gather together all of my drawings, summer photographs and research and collectively create something monumental out of them. A lot of my later preparation work, in which I had attempted the latter, began to look stylized and condensed, almost like flat theatre backdrops – framed clearly and restrained by the page. I felt that this stylizing was heavily influenced by existing work of the likes of Kay Nielsen, Peter Doig, Egon Schiele and Georg Philipp Wörlen. Everything that was there felt amazing. Everything I did felt stupid. I paused work for a good week and fell into frustration. After my tutorial I had realized that perhaps this entire project is about drawing for me and that instead of abandoning my true findings and wasting hours trying to invent a stylized world, a product of my findings, I should instead make my findings into my final piece. So I decided to simply draw.
 
 
 
 
 
Therefore, in the end, what pleases me the most about this project is the extent of observational drawings that fuelled it. Every problem I had been faced with could be addressed with a quick sketch from life – angles that felt unimaginable while sat in front of reference books and Google image search suddenly all fell together when I placed myself in front of the real thing. I’ve also started discovering interesting ways of building a narrative and pace using cropping, selective rendering, repetition etc One of the main things that I wish had gone differently was the timing – I would have liked for my thoughts to fall into place a great deal earlier, so that I could have more time to think and plan the rendering and the narrative during the final stage. Saying that, I would also greatly like to be able to step over myself and stop feeling like the final outcome has to be something polished, refined and unlike everything that came before it. I feel that this really makes my work lifeless and stiff and, in all honesty, I am more pleased with some of my life doodles than I am with the final outcome. I like work that feels loose and immediate, so it is beyond me why I cannot work in this way. All I can comfort myself with is that this limbo is possibly an essential part of a learning curve of sorts. I also realise that, after a long build-up of the forest, the continuity of the narrative is lost once the vertical binding of the trees and the cages ceases and nude figures appear to be floating in space.I could perhaps alter this by somehow playing on the idea of the hair, and working it in as vertical lines...but I am unsure as to how effective this will be. However, this project has been an invaluable lesson in observation, intuition and timing and I hope that I can carry these forward effectively into ‘Fact’.Current Mood:  indifferent
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
...there's people who succeed, but never try too hard. It’s been a pretty hectic start to the year, I guess. A lot more productive…or perhaps we’re all going out of our skin to try and make it more productive. At any rate, it makes sense to claim our money back for last year, in comparison to this one. I’ve been heavily submerged in theory…in fact, I suspect that I’ve been doing more reading and note-taking than drawing over the past couple of weeks. So drawing is something I ought to press on with now, particularly in the light of upcoming deadlines.
The little visual work I have done has been for the Fiction (Erlking) project. Just been exploring different mediums, ways of creating atmospheres, leading the reader through visually, different perspectives, and mainly fast, impulse-led work. A good portion of the story is a description of an autumnal forest engulfing the protagonist, making her lost and confused. One of the first things to trigger many more, were repetitive ink drawings of trees.
In my second set of ink studies I mainly focused on atmosphere. I quote
“A sky hunkered with grey clouds that bulge with more rain”,
“introspective weather, a sickroom hush”,
“The woods enclose and enclose again, like a system of Chinese boxes opening one into another”,
“Piercingly, now, there came again the call of the bird, as desolate as if it came from the throat of the last bird left alive” etc
 
Then, later, and much loosely so, the chalk and charcoal sketches began to explore viewpoints of the characters. However, for the past few weeks, I’ve been drawn to the idea of not showing the protagonist at all in the imagery, translating it into her own vision and language. 
Later, I worked on an A1 piece for quite an interesting task, which was to depict the entire narrative in one image. I did quite a lot of preparatory doodles around it and referenced some of the site-drawing I did over the summer. These are a few life drawings I made in preparation, actually semi-posing and drawing at the same time:
 
Hopefully, soon I’ll figure out how to get a good scan of the A1 piece. As mentioned earlier, here I played on the idea of drawing in first-person i.e. the legs belong to the girl, who has the Erlking’s head resting in her lap and we are seeing what she is seeing. This is something I’d like to continue with for the final images.
 
 
Still feeling very inspired by Schiele – bony bodies aside, his drawings of houses somewhat echo the Erlking’s hut to me…also Peter Doig’s trees and Kay Nielsen’s extraordinary fairytale imagery.     Finally, to cut a long story short, I ended up sitting around for an hour in St. Paul's Cathedral this afternoon. Here's some compulsive doodling:   Current Mood:  determined
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I feel as though I've been doing stuff, but at the same time I feel stumped and futile and restricted by my body, the tired and numb state of which does not compliment the creative turmoil that's continuously taking place in my mind. I seem to wake up tired these days. I'm not sure whether it's because I'm long overdue and nice lie-in or whether I'm secretly stressed about something but man, am I tired all the time.
On a slightly more awake note, last week I spent 5 days in Vienna and it was an incredible experience. As it goes, we did cultural things during the day and rowdy things during the night. Saw so much art out there that I’m still kind of numbed by it all...in Austria I felt inspired as hell, now back in Stockwell I’m just paralyzed. I know that the only way to get into something is just to do it but, more often than not, it's very hard to do and you just drown in errands and boredom and general blah blah. Saw a lot of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt in about 4 different galleries. I'm convinced that seeing Klimt out there really made up (if not even stepped up from) never making it to the visiting exhibition in Liverpool Tate. Also, I really just want to paint more...but then again, I said the same thing after going to the Peter Doig exhibition back in April. I can't seem to find any online examples of a lot of the people that I found to be influential - Georg Philipp W örlen, Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel to name a few - where's all their stuff!? Were they that obscure? Got a lot of natural visual ideas from those guys. Some good trees and such. Also loved all the Koloman Moser, it's all very aesthetic but incredibly impressive...and the start of that whole aesthetic thing at the start of the 20th century. And we saw the real life Secession! Eeh!
This is the cover of a Moser Secession pamphlet and the view from the top of the Leopold Museum :
 
Going back to Schiele, it was amazing to discover the true scales and colours of the paintings I've been looking at for years and not giving much thought. I don't care how cliche it is coming from an illustrator, but this is the first stuff to really truly touch and inspire me in quite a while. A few months ago it suddenly really hit me. And, I've had these notions before the trip, but in Vienna I really thought how Schiele-esque the Erl-King is in my head - like most of the self portraits, really - the very skeletal structure of him, the eeriness, the combined sex appeal and repulsion:
  
I intend to get some life drawing in sometime next week, because the characters are actually what I'm really tuck on at the moment. It's all easy to get the nature and the animals and the birds but the core of it all, the Erl-King and his lover, I'm stuck with them like...like...something that's stuck.
Also went to the zoo, which is apparently the oldest in Europe...also managed to fit some doodling in there although, when you're in a new place you kind of just want to stare at everything and absorb it...absorb as much as you can. But here's a few sketchbook pages anyway:
  
Another aspect of the brief I've partially neglected is the spaces and locations, but it's all in semi-progress I guess. After getting back from Vienna I went and spent two days in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Adam showed me a deteriorating stately home - well no, actually a completely ruined one - and it had a lot of cool overgrown stuff all around it. For a moment I saw the Erl-king's home in an ancient wooden door that was propped up against the wall and then similar surroundings in the remains of a staircase...it all looked such state that it could easily have been built by a man in the woods:
 
So yes. Stuff is happening, but I don't feel like it is. Warum? :(
On a happier note, here's some inhabitants of Adam's bathroom:
Tags: austria, egon schiele, fish, gustav klimy, stratford-upon-avon, vienna, woods, zoo
Current Mood: weird
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The summer work is going quite slowly, but to be honest I didn't exactly expect to be making images at the speed of light. I want to make things I'm really happy with before October and I'm not too bothered about the proposed quantity of 60 drawings. Doodles, yes but images - that's becoming something slightly more ritualistic for me. I'm looking for myself again. I'm trying to remember that I am capable of drawing as well as making fast communicative images. I've missed it. I've seriously missed sitting around with a simple 2B pencil for hours and reshaping, shading, thinking. It sounds like regression but I suspect it's progress. So I've been looking at 'The Erl King', as retold by Angela Carter in 'The Bloody Chamber'. I've found the main restriction of working from observation particularly shifting. When something's in front of you and you try your best not to think about it too much, the drawing comes out quite naturally. The moment I stare at a still image, I suffer and feel the need to perfect and analyse and it takes me a lot longer to do anything that feels right. Anyway, the story is quite dark. It's set in an autumnal/winter forest in an unspecified country. I've been drawing trees and leaves and stuff loads. Been to Kew Gardens and Epping Forest for some photographs and some doodling and had a really good time. All in all the summer's being quite hippyish, really. Below are some bark from Kew and an amazing boob/eye tree that we saw in Epping.   Also started to think about the characters a little, namely the Erl King himself...who is a strange forest man with berry nipples and hair that constantly sheds leaves...possibly a metaphor for a womaniser for he keeps all of these birds, which were once women, in cages. My starting point has been Adam, mainly because he's around a lot and I'm absolutely in love with him. I could probably draw him for hours actually...but nonetheless I expect to exaggerate some of his features to fit the character more as the project progresses. Though I suspect that the Erl King is more attractive than creepy. Not sure why. But yes...here's a few studies done in and after Epping forest, the last is available for full view :)    Next step is to find a load of animals and birds...maybe take a trip to the zoo, maybe doodle the rabbit. To our amazement there was a white goat at Epping, who actually also makes an appearance in the story! I'm so happy and I'm so high on life and feelings at the moment...and I really want to make stuff...and I know that my mood will probably change a million times over from now but I would love to remain in this happy and productive state for as long as possible... Current Mood: happy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So I've finally got a working tile method. Decided that the patterns look better large anyway, so no need for heavy tiling. Yours truly being incredibly great at narrowing things down, the ten million proposals mainly come down to tone:   I love the above colours as colours, but I'm thinking that the further muted ones below are more atmospheric and relevant to the poetry perhaps? The pretty much black and white one in particular. I don't know, I'm drawn to them more for some reason, but please correct me if you think otherwise:   Also - there is the experiment with light, which I'm not so keen on anymore, possibly due to the improvement of the scanned design:  Artists, non-artists and cake-makers - Help! I'm so tired! Feedback! By the way, if you're viewing imported version of facespace check out the 'original post' for nicer res images. Cheers! Some fun porn from today to come when I summon the energy to scan it. Sod it, may as well be now. Current Mood: sleepy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's been a month since my last entry here - I've really not been updating as much as I'd like to. Somehow having things cluttered here in this single non-existent space really used to help me organise things and, since I've retreated from it, everything's been a massive mess all over my desk, drawers, books, not making sense, not evolving, turning, churning, but simultaneously painfully stale and static. I've been working slowly on the repeat pattern poetry jacket. It's trickier to think about these things than it seems. I've been working with quite simple things because it's allowed me to step back and think about things like placement, colour and meaning. If I work on something complex, I sometimes overwork it, ruin it. This time I'm being a minimalist - I know that I'm not going to come up with anything elaborate and Chris Morris-esque and at any rate it is questionable whether that kind of thing is at all relevant here anyway. I've decided to go with Sylvia Plath for this mainly because she is somebody I've read and read in the past but always overlooked too, if that makes any sense. But reading a small anthology back and forth for the past month, it's grown on me. I've read a few books about wallpaper too which have been useful for technical consideration, but then I just went on a thinky-feely spree so... When I read her work I see mainly a curtain of semi-faint teal...not solid but quite prominent - so a potent wash I suppose. And I see natural things - minus cliches - just soft, light, glowy shapes. Plath covers many emotional, hopeless issues and frequently exploits natural metaphors*, so I couldn't imagine working entirely with something harsh and straight, though her diplomatic cynicism is reflected in the faint straight lines that fall down my pages. *Stuff like "Gulls mulled in the greenest light" nice or nice? Anyway - my starting point were a few A3 sheets washed in teal ink, white acrylic and the lid of an ink bottle (later upgraded to a corkscrew). The colours are a bit highhh from the scanning, but - I actually like them more this way. They look something like this (in order of making):    The last image includes a test for some leaves, which I half-wanted from the beginning but am not too sure whether they are a bit of an overload now? Also I like the muted nature of that one. What does anyone think? And now for something completely different, as they say. I accidentally saw one of these up against the light and suddenly felt a lot more positive about this. So I went about photographing all of them against the light - really wobbly, but if the idea takes off I'd have to iron the final one out and suspend it in front of a light on string or something for the final photograph. But yeah, those look something like this:      So yes, a lot happier with that...and also the organic nature of the printed circles. They have a glow about them due to a traceround a small roll of selotape with watered down ink and...I don't know. It just makes everything more real. Would be good to hear any thoughts, ramblings, abuse because I'm at a point where I've looked at this stuff for so many weeks that it has started to make very little sense to me. In other news, stepping away from suicidal confessional poets, I'm waiting to finally get a little time to do some work for a friend of mine. I've started doodling and thinking around his words but it's amazing how limitless fairly abstract poetry is and how easy it is to suddenly be blunt and obvious. Also been drawing, folding paper, writing, going galleries and being happy...  Tags: book jacket, confessional, poetry, repeat pattern, sylvia plath
Current Location: Stockywell!
Current Mood: busy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Right. Started pressing on with the rest of these covers earlier tonight and I guess it's been somewhat productive. One down, two to go, though I suppose that a good way of looking at creating a series is that once you've done one you've done most of the work for the others too. I'm getting a fairly clear idea of how it's going to work out in my head at any rate.  This is for The White Ship, a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. When I picked horror as a genre I was expecting a bit more...horror, you know? But so far all the Lovecraft I've read has been slightly confusing/psychological/drug-trip-esque. ..but not scary. So I think I'm pushing these more from the story than from the supposed genre. So many book covers get it all wrong just because of an ascribed unfitting genre. Not to say that I'm getting it right. Anyway - in the story the protagonist sails around odd lands which all seem to be metaphors for life experience, following a blue bird. Then he gets to a land where he's really happy but he still wants to go to the forbidden land so he goes and there's a shipwreck and everything gets fucked up...and then he wakes up, pretty much in the same place that he left all those many happy years ago. Only thing is there's a mangled dead bird outside...so it's all like - "did it happen or not?" I liked the idea of this bird as a sort of beacon throughout the story, though I chose to have it dead on the cover because...well, it's more interesting than a pretty, aesthetically-pleasing flying bird. There's something nice about skipping to the end right on the cover - it remains confusing and doesn't do anything generic like drawing a white ship would have been. Though, like I said, I don't know what's right and what isn't. I'm blindly poking around most of the time. Oh. The framing suited it more to a series format I think...it is believable that 10/20 and so on of these could be published with slightly varying covers. And the torn, light tissue paper is a comment on the ambiguity of the whole thing. I'm still doodling for myself. A lot gets doodled. Especially after a beer or two. But I feel like I've fallen back a little with university work. Or the lack of it for many long months and then an incredible overload as soon as I decide to move house. It's been a strange year. Just have to get through the assessment next week, and then carry on doing and enjoying a lot of the personal work I'd really like to get done over the summer...and recharge my batteries.  Right, it's late. Crashhhh... Current Mood: blank
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tonight started off with one of the worst blocks I've had in a while. I don't know whether it's the fact that my thoughts are tangled in issues of the soul or whether they are just packed away in boxes in anticipation of moving house. Everyone agreed that what I produced for the crit on Thursday looked too decorative and nice. I agreed. I agreed before I was even told. I went in there with work that I hated, despite staying up until stupid o'clock making it, which I really dislike myself for doing. Anyway, tonight I decided to knuckle down to this thing but, in hopes of quickly achieving something, I spent 3 hours drawing weeds and ivy and about 2 of those hours getting distracted by everything BUT what I was doing. Then I thought, "Right, fuck this, it's going nowhere" and rummaged through my half-packed art crap to find a clean rubber! I hacked at it with a Stanley and made an ivy stamp. Stamp it lots of times and it makes an ivy chain. Very exciting, of course. Then, wondering why the hell I made it, I thought back to my 'Vasilisa' illustration and it clicked. I drew a chap pretty much off the top of my head and smothered him in this damn evil plant. In Bradbury's text the protagonists trek over Venus through continuous, vicious rain. They're pretty much worn away by it and stuff. And everything is white from this rain, everything is losing colour, and these plants, these weeds and flowers and things are constantly growing, engulfing everything. Even when the men sleep, their bodies are enveloped in plants and their lungs can fill with rain. Anyway, the dude on my cover image is pretty much dead. Colours limited to Brown, Black and White. I hope the Orange Penguin logo doesn't count as another colour. It probably doesn't - it's on every cover ever. Yes, so - does the image look sad, hopeless, helpless, impending? Or is it still just 'wallpaper'? I'd really appreciate some feedback before Tuesday morrow because I'm currently stuck between these two versions and can only submit one:   Ok, so I know they're almost exactly the same. But the fundamental difference is that one of them has the ivy climbing out of the visible page. This suggests that it's a lot more evil and massive than we can see, that it might just be engulfing the whole universe. The concept is stronger there. The other one, where the ivy stays within the frame, I just think looks better. But maybe that's just me? Please let me know what you think, somebody! Which book would you buy, if any? I'm happy to at least have made an image that I like tonight though. And also - it turned out to be a very personal piece of work too, despite being an 'image with intent'. Maybe I'm happy with it because the selfish fine artist bum in me has got a little bit of attention? Anyway. Ramble ramble. In other news:  Current Mood: accomplished
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ninamalysheva's journal
Previous
sick
worried
frustrated
rushed
