MA Week 25 - reflection on April

Reflection on April – 29^th April 2016

April turned out to be a pretty rubbish month all round, to be honest. Some very difficult personal circumstances consumed most of my energy and wherewithal so I got little done on my MA studies. 

One thing I did try was to use post-its to record reflections within the sketchbook I’d started. This worked to a certain extent. I deliberately didn’t want that book filling with writing and this seemed like a reasonable way to capture my thoughts at the time, without reams of writing. I will probably continue using this technique although not all the time.

Answers on a post-it

 

I moved seamlessly on from working on pictures of cranes to images of pylons. There is a similarity of structure between the two somehow, with the criss-cross struts. I tried drawing a little pylon-based scene as a basis for a drypoint but it was very poor and I got really disheartened with myself. Mentioning this to my lovely classmates, a few of them said they’d also had non-productive Aprils, which perked me up a bit. I decided to break the cycle of not being able to draw by trying some drawn monoprinting. 

My first attempts were not brilliant but they were a damn sight better than the pencil drawings I’d done earlier in the week. The best one is shown here, although there is an issue in the paper taking up the ink where I’ve moved my hand over the surface as I made the marks on the back. Lyndon advised me to use an arm rest to try to eradicate this “smudging”. This is based on a picture I took of some industrial installation or other next to the M1 in Rotherham on a journey down South (disclaimer: I wasn’t driving).

 

Mucky monoprint

The monoprinting allows looser marks than I seem to be able to make with a pencil and this loosening of the marks seemed to help to loosen the general creative tension a little bit.

MA Week 25 - Crits

Crits – 29^th April 2016 

Today’s taught session was a Socratic crit and it was good to get some different input into my work. I showed some of the work I’d done last term, as mentioned in my week 20 reflection.  

I talked a bit about my theories of heritage and identity and how I had been exploring printing and laser cutting. My classmate Callum kindly made notes and I added into them later. His “X” diagram is interesting; I am becoming more and more interested in this shape but I had not really seen it as a metaphor for journeys in different directions or for me trying to pull things (ideas, techniques, pieces of work) together. If my work is concerned with the decay of industry, do the cross-braces still need to be at 90 degrees to each other? Should they be decaying too? Should they be strong and distinct or rather more faint?  

Crit : salient points

 

I was asked if I identified the laser cutting as an industrial process and whether this tied in with my theory. It wasn’t the question I expected – I felt that my etching experiences were nearer to the industrial somehow. My classmates were more interested than I expected in my laser cut images of myself. In my thinking of further exploration of drawing and printing, I’d rather sidelined the idea of laser cutting but there were suggestions to bring it back in, such as laser cutting some of my drawings and prints. I later thought I could use the laser cut faces as a resist in monoprinting (though I haven’t tried this yet). Another suggestion was to use the multi-colours that I’d done with the laser cut faces on a print of some kind.  

The suggestion also came to use portions of the face images as a repeat pattern. I’d really resisted the idea of doing repeat patterns as it’s a technique I’ve fallen back on so many times when I don’t know what to do next. But later, in the group discussion, we talked about how we can easily dismiss ideas and that we should be open to considering an idea – however basic a technique it is, however many times it’s been used before – and dismiss it only with reason in this particular circumstance, not just completely out of hand.  

The ideas that came out most strongly were around degradation and about not dismissing the laser cutting. I am still trying to pursue my print making and drawing but I will try to let these themes come into the “mix” as needed.

MA Week 24 - Use of social media in practice

Use of social media in practice – 22^nd April 2016

This was a useful and practical session from Annabeth. A third of the world’s population are on social media! Lots of hints and tips.

General

Get a good square image for our avatar and use the same one across all platforms.

Promote your blog via Twitter/Facebook/Instagram

Use social media as an “additional library” e.g. online tutorials on YouTube. It can become a part of your personal learning environment

Take all opportunities to build connections

Get a hashtag for your project/exhibition and use it across all platforms to increase impact.

Use direct messaging when this is more appropriate.

Think about what you make public and what you keep private (e.g. something you might just want to share with your tutor).  

Do you need a separate identity for self/professional self/project?

Blog – use pictures at 72dpi so people can’t steal and print

 

Twitter

Lists group tweets from all persons in that list. You can create a list yourself (go to “cog” icon). Think about subscribing to a list. Block the list creator to remove yourself from a list.

Use a widget to generate html – copy & paste into your website.

Set up a chain to cross post to other platforms

Can use Tweetdeck to follow certain hashtags and bring up a live feed

 Video/sound

YouTube - use playlists to organise, e.g. sketches and tests, projects – akin to a portfolio. You can create a new playlist or add to an existing one; you can them embed it onto your website.

Record yourself doing something and upload it to YouTube as part of your journal

Vimeo – this is pro-film service you can use for self-publishing

Record a podcast, upload to Soundcloud and add timed comments

NB – people are moving from Soundcloud to Mixcloud. 

Others

issuu – could use for books, zines, portfolio, exhibition catalogues etc

Feedly – curates RSS feeds

Wikipedia – don’t be afraid to use this as a starting point to get an understanding of an issue. Use the references on the page to move forward with your research.

Slideshare – can upload powerpoint and share via social media from there.

 

Reflection (July 2016)

 

I don’t really have a relationship with the moving image so I couldn’t see myself putting something onto YouTube. As I tend to think in writing, I doubt if I would use a podcast. But never say never! I’ve started to use YouTube to gain understanding of practical techniques recently. I’ve seen a couple of really good introductions to etching. I think the reason I’d not previously made much use of it is because of my tendency to think in writing. However, you can learn so much more than I’d imagined from a good 4 or 6 minute video clip. So this has definitely made it into my “personal learning environment”! I’m quite active on Twitter, and I’ve tweeted 2 or 3 of my blogposts recently – now that I feel I have something definite to say, and a little bit of confidence in saying it. Previously I think I was only getting views from a couple of friends and a few bots. By tweeting I have received up to twice the average number of views. A small start, but hopefully it will move on from there.

MA Week 23 - Creative Practitioner visits

Creative practitioner visits – 15^th April 2016

 Visits from two established creative practitioners today, Luke Stephenson and Karen Stansfield. Unfortunately I missed Luke’s presentation due to other circumstances, but found plenty of interest in Karen’s talk. 

Karen had originally trained as a printmaker in textile design. However, throughout her career she has undertaken different roles and was keen to point out that you should take something from all your experiences and to bring together past learning, your other experience and current learning. She worked as a machinist whilst raising her children and then decided to return to learning in the form of a full-time degree in theatre. From this and her machinist experience she forged a career as a costumier. She is now a studio holder at West Yorkshire Print Workshop.  

Karen described herself as an “emotive mark maker” and she shared a couple of life experiences which had affected her deeply.  She lost a friend and decided to undertake work based on his work, using etching plates. She also used mark making to deal with an obstacle in her life, making marks on paper against an object, helping her to work round the problem, not knowing how things would turn out on the paper. She showed us the marks and they became almost organic and floral as she worked through the problem. I could really identify with this and talked to her afterwards about using creative visual practice to help heal yourself. It is not art therapy as such, but it is “therapising” yourself. 

She also talked about giving yourself “permission” to do things; she had done a course with one of the other studio holders at the workshop, experimenting, playing. My own thoughts on the “permission” issue are that sometimes you need to go through bad experiences to allow yourself to do things – courses, use your favourite notebook, buy some new paints – and again I could understand what Karen was talking about.  I also liked the fact that she was keen on using all your experience. I’m very aware that my past business experience is really useful in helping me to organise my time and express myself. Finally, I was heartened by the fact that Karen had not been afraid to move on and to learn new creative skills. She didn’t restrict herself in this area and I will take that as an example. 

After lunch Karen and Luke did a Q&A session for us. Some interesting points:

• Do personal work alongside paid work to keep yourself fresh
• Do blogs, follow blogs, put films on your blogs
• What are your specialities/unique selling points?
• Use all the strings to your bow.
• Do you want to develop a style/brand image?
• Don’t be afraid to take an unpaid opportunity if it gives you experience you need.

 

 

MA Week 23 - re-starting

Term 3 – where now?

I can’t believe it is already term 3. I’d intended to do lots of reading over Easter, but of course I didn’t. I needed a break from it as the build-up to the hand-in of the last module had got quite intense. So, back to it, with a new module to think about. 

This is a long module, with the deadline in August, so there is plenty of time to do lots of things. That obviously includes doing nothing, so I need to keep myself up to my work.  The intention is to take the experimentation done last term, and to push forward some of the ideas, giving rise to a very practical module. So I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do: 

• Prioritise the visual. Give myself permission to write less.
• Further printmaking research. Continue with drypoint. Monoprints? Etching?
• Experiment with ink/acrylic and smudgy materials e.g. charcoal.
• How do the drawn/painted/printed marks relate to each other and to what I am expressing?

I’ve already done a little bit of experimentation. The results are not earth shattering but they provide a potential basis for development. I drew the same view (from the famous Armley generative wandering) three times in different materials. Obviously it got easier to draw each time I did it. I liked the last one best, in ink and ink wash, as some of the marks were close to etched marks, and they were really nice and definite and black.

Armley in ink wash

I have also now taken some photos of cranes (latest obsession, replacing gasometers) and used the colours in the photos as a background, working them up in acrylic wash, then drawing the cranes (using variously graphite crayon/pencil, charcoal, and ink) and overpainting them with the wash. I thought this would give a more layered look than it did, but I think the wash was too thin. I usually use acrylic at tube consistency so this was a bit of a departure for me. Not too sure about the results, but still like the blackness of the ink.

Crazy colour cranes

I want to pull some of these ideas into printing now, so the next thing will probably be to sketch something to do in drypoint in the next week or so.

MA Week 22 : Practice Based Research

Practice Based Research – 8^th April 2016

This session from Karen was based around four clips from Canterbury Christ Church University’sCentre for Practice-Based Research in the Arts. Pertinent points from the four clips: 

Goran Stefanovski

• He writes for the theatre so need to consider his audience from the outset.
• Ideas come from who we are – “sparks from crossed wires” – the idea gets you, not the other way round.
• Quality control – a battle with the material and oneself to get to the end. An exercise in perseverance.
• He is showing, performing and acting ideas, not describing them; the practice of theory.

I particularly liked the assertion that you have to wait for the idea. This has happened to me several times during the course. It is frustrating but I have learnt to accept these times and treat them almost as a short break. 

Bryan Hawkins

• He makes sculptures, paintings and photographs.
• He finds two difficult things – starting and finishing.
• He has worked on his own personal experience, then on others’ experience, the history and place. He also said that the idea comes to find him.
• He suggests going to a place repeatedly and letting it “seep into you”; he did this with WW2 pill boxes, drawing, painting, photographing in an almost spiritual way.

I identified with this very much, particularly the repeated visiting of a place. The place then becomes yours. I think you can then produce something more fundamentally representative of the place. Hawkins’s work is figurative but mine often becomes more abstract.  

Anthea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin

• These people are film-makers.
• They had responded to place in their work. They let work take shape without scripts.
• Memory is one of their themes and they deal with its presentation and re-presentation.

Their film dipped about all over the place and I paid little attention. It was left to others in the class to point out that memory is not linear and this is the point they were making. I am such a philistine when it comes to film.

Rebecca Pattinson

• She uses analogue photography in the digital age.
• She believes that film has a tangible relationship with reality that digital doesn’t have, and that film makes it less possible to manipulate an image compared to digital.

I could understand her perspective although I don’t know if I share it. Both this artist and the previous one used silence in their clips. I didn’t even notice! My classmate Ali, who used to be a radio producer, pointed this out. 

Two things struck me from this session. The first was how I tuned out the latter two clips as they were not talking about anything that interested me directly. How often do I miss out on inspiration by not being engaged? Am I creating a “bubble” of my own by only tuning in when it suits me? The second was that the session was directly relevant and easily accessible, unlike some of the previous research methods sessions. It almost felt like this session should have taken place much earlier in the course. It offered clarity on what practice-based research is because it gave real examples from real artists.