Futures Project Part 3

This is the first painting I did for this project. I painted with a looser, more expressive style than I used to during A Levels, and subsequently this took be a fraction of the time that a painting usually would. I think that this makes the piece more interesting than if it was realistic, and it also allowed me to take certain liberties with the anatomy of the figure as my reference was a life drawing that was nowhere near perfect and so the body would never be perfect.

The face in this painting is not as soft and delicate as I at first wanted, and the nose looks unfinished. I also think that I should have gone further with the expression of the piece and made it much less realistic and more stylised.

I started with an underpainting to get the general shape of the figure, then I gradually built up layers of detail until I reached the desired affect.

The main flaw with this painting is that I painted mostly from memory. This means that I am unconsciously projecting my own ideals of what the body should look like-or perhaps what I want my body to look like- onto the painting. This is a result of schema: the scene that my brain built up as a memory. This is generally not an accurate representation of the body as I only remember certain aspects correctly and my brain makes up the rest- it reconstructs it- as perceived by Bartlett in Reconstructive Memory Theory.

Above are some more responses to the painting, and what I might do on top of the actual painting. I think that I am going to write phrases over and over again all over the painting, but make it look like the first slide. I want to make sure that the finished piece of work doesn’t look like a life painting as it does now.

I also did an experiment sheet using acetate sheets over printed copies of the paintings that I then painted on top of.

Futures Project Part 2

I decided that I wanted to do oil paintings of women and then distort them; perhaps using words or scribbles. I did a series of really quick life drawings with the intent of using them as references for my paintings.

Before I started my first painting I looked at Lisa Wright. I really like her way of covering the body using patterns and motifs. I think that this is a clever way to paint bodies without them looking overtly sexual and instead enhances the beauty of the body.

I decided that I want to cover my paintings in writing that replicates the scribbled motif on some of Wright’s paintings.

Futures Project Part 1

Our new project was to do with the future of: Play, Mind, Body, Home or Travel. We were to choose one of these categories and explore it within our practice. at First I was looking into the future of the mind, but I also had ideas about the future of the body so I did mind maps for both ideas and ended up having a lot more information on the Future of the Body.

I decided that I want to explore ideas about why we need feminism in the future, and why it isn’t something we just needed in the past to get the vote and equal pay. We need feminism because women are criticised for speaking up against sexist commercials and calling for less gender specific toys for children. We need feminism because rapists are not charged sufficiently in order to save their reputation and make sure they have a future. Girls are taught from a young age that their bodies are sexual and should be hidden. Women may still have the traditional role of wife and mother, but this role has not been reinvented to accommodate life now. They are expected to juggle all aspects of their lives as well as family life.

I started studying artists such as Cecily Brown, focusing on how she portrays women in her art. I particularly like her watercolour drawings and I ended up doing life drawing that is inspired by this.

This is my life drawing inspired by Cecily Brown

Derive Project Part 2

One new skill I started working with for this project was darkroom photography. We printed out images onto acetate sheets and then laid them on top of the photography paper and then exposed the image, creating a negative image when we developed it.

The top image I also used as a reference for my screen print. The bottom image is what inspired my oil painting. I really like these prints because they have really strong contrast which is very effective and striking. I also like that they are negative prints because this makes them look more abstract. I made the bottom image by drawing onto the acetate sheet with a marker pen rather than printing an image onto it.

After I had taken photos of the test tubes I had another darkroom photography session.

First I printed out the image onto acetate, and then I made a negative print using it. I decided that I also wanted to make a positive print from this negate, so I made a contact print by laying another piece of photography paper onto the negative and then exposing this for around 15 seconds. I really like how this positive print turned out, and I think that any imperfections just add to the piece.

This is another example of the above process. This image was quite dark, however, and so it took a bit of editing to make it bright enough so that there would be a print that worked well. Also, there are some lines running across the image; an imperfection made by the printer when it was transferring the image onto acetate, but I decided that I actually preferred the image with this imperfection and so decided to expose it anyway. I made another contact print to get the positive from the negative and I am very happy with how it turned out. When I was developing the negative, the top of the image got darker very fast and so I lifted this end of the image out of the developing solution. This made the bottom of the image develop more and reveal more detail in this area without the top of the image getting so dark that it obscured the detail.

I used the acetate image from earlier and scraped away some of the ink on the sheet using a sharp pencil. I also added some details onto it with a marker pen. I did this three times in order to produce this small series of images where it appears as if something is growing in the last three test tubes. These images could alternatively be placed the other way round to look like something is dissolving in the tubes.

To improve this series I would take it further by adding more and more into the test tubes until they are completely full. I think that this would make for a more effective piece of work.

Derive Project Part 1

In the derive project we had to walk to a point on a map, wandering as we went and collecting as much data as possible. I also wrote my streams of consciousness for part of the walk. I took rubbings of trees and picked up leaves, and as I passes puddles I started to think about how I could collect data from them. At first I tried to lay paper in the puddles, but this didn’t work as the puddles were not muddy enough to deposit anything meaningful onto the paper. I instead decided to order some test tubes online and collect water in these. I also took images of the walk on a disposable camera.

I also did a screen print based on one of the images I took of the overflowing river going through the centre of town. It was a monoprint as I used the screen-printing inks to paint the image through the screen.

The image is the reflected water from the river, it is a reflection of a fence. I drew through the screen with charcoal to make the fence and then use a clear medium to seal it.

I also did some dark room photography of the river- I am going to make a separate blog post about this. I used a photo during this photography and it inspired me to make a painting of it as I loved how the river looked misty and dream-like.

The image is portrait which is unusual as it depicts a landscape, but because of the shape of the water this works; the water is long and thin. What looks like a river is actually a meadow called the Water Meadow, and it is part of Magdalen College in Oxford. It is called the Water Meadow a it is a flood plain for the river to empty onto if it overflows due to rain.

The painting on the right is an oil painting onto a sheet of A4 sized acetate. It was heavily inspired by the darkroom photography I had done, where I used a pen to make marks that represented the shape of the meadow and trees. This is a more abstract representation of the original image.

The watercolour painting on the left is a more literal representation of the original image. I used masking fluid to block off parts of the painting that I wanted to be lighter; such as the tree in the foreground on the right. I worked wet on wet for the most part, building up colour gradually until the paint was thicker and the colours were rich. The reference image didn’t have as much colour in the trees, but I wanted to add more colour because I thought that it suited the scene and it made this painting have more contrast with the oil painting.

I have paired these two paintings together because they are depicting the same image, and also because they show my skills in using both oil and watercolour; mediums that work very differently. They also show different levels of abstraction. I would have liked the oil painting to turn out more abstract and have thicker layers of paint on it, but it would not have dried fast enough if I had done this so I opted for thinner layers of paint.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

We were given a lecture on six possible titles we can use for our Unit Three projects. These include ‘the future of’: play, work, body, mind, travel and home. After some initial research on the titles, I worked out that I am most interested in the future of mind and the future of body.

One of the artists that was mentioned was Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Abu Hamdan produced an acoustic investigation into the Syrian prison Saydnaya. Over 16 000 people have been executed there since 2011. No visitors are allowed inside the prison, so the on record of what it is like there is what we can find out from people who have been let out from the prison itself. Furthermore, the prisoners were kept in darkness or had their eyes covered, so we only know what the prison sounded like.

The piece above is a visual representation of a sound piece that is played in the room from a soundbox that autonomously changes in response to the voices in the room. The lightbox shows (from left to right) the sound of a voice talking at a normal volume, the level at which one could speak at Saydnaya before the 2011 protests and the level at which one could speak after the protests. There is a nineteen decibel drop from the beginning to the end of this sound piece.

Photography Taxonomies

A taxonomy is a collection of related images classified by theme, colour, content or object. The photos can seem mundane or even boring, but when viewed together their sense of uniformity is appealing to the eye.

Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series takes place in Mexico and depicts a series of abstracted female forms with a variety of mediums such as: flowers, tree branches, moss, gunpowder and fire.

These forms are the objects that link the series of photos together. I think that the images are very interesting on their own, however together they hold more power. The repeating pattern of the form allows the piece to gather more meaning as it becomes apparent that this is a recurring thought within the artist’s mind.

Winding Towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher

Above is a more obvious example of a photographic taxonomy. I like the more structural, industrial examples of the Becher’s photographs as they look so uniform as a series. Their works were often referred to as sculptural and they even won sculpture awards due to the fact that they were able to capture sculptural qualities of buildings.

Test Tube Videos

When taking photos of my test tube for both my fine art and my photography projects I decided to also video them. I was originally going to video them with a blank background, but the sunlight was casting shadows on the wall where I was stationed and so I decided to incorporate it into the video by positioning the test tube so that the sun would shine through the tube. I think that the result is very striking, I enjoy the contrast that this gives the video. I also like that the video doesn’t seem t be moving as you watch it, but in fact the shadows on the backdrop and the particles in the test tube are moving very slowly, and the tube looks completely different at the end of the video compared to at the beginning.

I later used screen captures such as this for my darkroom photography.

As the sun soon set, I then used the artificial studio lighting to video the other test tubes.

Above are screenshots from the beginning of each of the videos of the ten test tubes. In order to solve the problem of the video jumping around as I changed the test tube, I used a blank piece of white paper to make an infinity backdrop, then drew an ‘x’ on it to mark where I would place the test tube. I also put the camera on a tripod so that it would be stationary throughout the videos.

I think that the lighting in the videos could have been brighter, however there was no other studio lighting available when I was filming.

Reflecting on Others’ Work

During our formative assessment this week we reflected on other people’s work. We wrote them notes on their assessment sheets so that we could use our peers’ opinions on our work to improve it before the summative assessment.

I worked out that I need to include more evidence of reflection in my blog and sketchbook. I also want to write more blog posts on processes that I learnt during this Unit. I also want to include more research for photography in my sketchbook, along with getting two more sheets of photos printed before my assessment in February.

The Water Museum

As part of my Fine Art project I collected ten test tubes of water from puddles as I was on my walk. I intend to further my project using these as inspiration for the rest of my project.

In order to find more inspiration for what I am going to do with the water samples I found an artist called Amy Sharrocks. Sharrocks has collected water from the Thames to a puddle in Birmingham, and they are displayed in what is called ‘The Museum of Water’. She did this to help future generations feel a connection with the water they use everyday and understand how important it is. This is important because it is easy for us to use water readily, as we are soothed by the certainty that we can turn a tap on and water will appear. If we understand that water is a resource that is fundamental to our living; our most basic need, then we are more likely to use it wisely. Whilst the collection was started by Amy Sharrocks, many more artists and others have contributed to the collection. The website encourages visitors to bring their own water in a container and the museum will ‘look after’ it for you.

Bethia Howard Art

Art and Design Foundation student

Author: Bethia howard