MA Week 53 - Progress (or lack of it)

Reflection on the past two weeks, 24^th January 2017

 

Having restarted reasonably well, I sadly faltered almost immediately, going down with an infection. The combination of that and strong antibiotics knocked me out for a couple of weeks. I tried to get back into the print room last Friday to carry on with the Mabgate drypoint, but due to a mix-up it turned out to be booked out for BA students so I couldn’t get in. Ho hum. In the end I did a bit of mark making.

Feeling under pressure due to losing so much time, I started an acrylic painting on paper on Saturday. I was aware when I was doing it that I was a bit rushed and I didn’t quite know what I was doing. When I looked at it the next morning, I knew it was time to hit the brakes. I hadn’t tested the composition and I hadn’t tested the paint mixing. Would I ever have put a computer program live without testing? No. A wake up call – get back to my proper working processes… develop, test, think, act, review, repeat.

So I’ve done a bit more mark making, and I quite like one of the results. I need to experiment with it further, then hopefully it could work up into perhaps acrylic and/or oil pastel and/or pastel. The earlier marks I made could also come into this piece or possibly a piece of their own. I feel a bit more organised and hopeful, but there’s a lot more thinking to do.

 

Possibilities....

Something more positive is that I’ve volunteered to help with the organisation of the End of Year show. We don’t yet know when it will be, so planning is a bit difficult, but we’ve already identified tasks that need doing. I’ve set us up a twitter account, though there’s not a lot to tweet at the moment, but we are ready when there is!

 

MA Week 51 - Restarting ... for the final time

Reflection on the past week, 9^th January 2017

 

It feels really odd to think that I’m starting the final module of the MA, although it is seven months until I need to hand in. I’ve now taken back all the library books from before Christmas, except one, and I have to re-start the visual.

 No prizes for guessing I was immediately back into the print room. It was good to be back. I’ve started a print based on the technique demonstrated by Cath Brooke back in December (see this week 50 blogpost). It’s a drypoint of one of the Mabgate photos into a thin, transparent plastic plate. It’s taken a bit of working out how to ink and wipe it, and I’m still experimenting on that score, but below is an image of progress so far. I want to work further on it, learning more about selective inking and wiping, which hopefully I can do this coming week. There are also some issues about whether I should hatch some more of the plate. I think possibly not, but I need to have a good look at it.

 

Mabgate prints

Another thing I did was a pretty basic drawing of the same building in charcoal on acrylic-paint paper. Both this and the prints were also experiments to see if I could paint into them with some acrylic paint. The results are inconclusive so far, but I have other ideas for working into them.

I need to get inspired and active pretty quickly as I have a deadline of 22^nd February, which is the date that I’ll hopefully be able to exhibit a couple of pieces of work at the Manchester Metropolitan University PGR conference. The theme is “Changing Lives” and I discussed this in my tutorial today. I’ve based my abstract submission on that premise that telling my own story using visual means has changed the way I view my own life, and that by encouraging others by showing my work, they could tell their story too. It goes back to the concept of the everyday being important and speaking truth to power.

 The building that’s the subject of my drypoint surely has stories to tell – as far as I can recall, it was an office building, and I thought they were pulling it down. Parts of it are now swathed in thick plastic so I imagine it is being refurbished. There are elements of decay, repurposing, layering. I expect it will feature in some way in my submission to the PGR conference.