MA Weeks 57 & 58 - Finalising the Mabgate abstracts

Reflection on the past few days, 20^th February 2017

I had the equivalent of four days, spread over five, to produce the finalised pieces, which experience told me would be adequate, although in the end it was quite a squeeze.

As I mentioned in this Week 56 blogpost , when I looked at the sketches again, it was immediately clear that they were too complex and fractured to work up into finished pieces. The first job was therefore to simplify them. I'd expected this to take a couple of hours but it took all Wednesday afternoon. I had stretched and gessoed the two sheets of paper, so I was working over two separate boards on two mixed-media paintings that should combine to one piece. I decided to risk putting the simplified design straight onto the gessoed paper but hadn't realised how well the paper would take the graphite - in other words, it was more or less impossible to erase. The shapes I produced in the reworked design were not as pleasing as the originals, but given the time constraints and the graphite issue, I had to go with them. In retrospect I should have drawn the new design onto tracing paper in the exact size I wanted. Sketching onto gessoed paper is not an option! A learning point.

Design drawn onto paper on board

 

In contrast, on Thursday afternoon, the first layer of paint went on well. I was impressed how well the paper took the paint. I worked with the acrylics (both System 3 and Liquitex Basics) straight from the tube. I decided to work the earth and red-based colours from top left to bottom right, from light to dark and back. The blue and green-based colours went from top right to bottom left and from dark to light and back. It was (for me) an ambitious experiment in handling colour and balance. I started at the top left with neutral colours and worked from there.

 

First layer of paint

In essence the colours worked out for themselves where they would go, which was unexpected and welcome. I painted quite a lot of the top panel before attempting the bottom panel. This necessitated quite a bit of walking round both panels in an attempt to get some kind of balance and composition. The idea of looking at a piece in 360 degrees was something I learnt when doing the four pylon pieces last Summer.

 

Masked shapes, experimentations with tiles and letters

On Friday I added some shapes in masking fluid and in white acrylic, with a view to overpainting in the second layer. The idea was to add further shapes over the second layer of paint to go under a third layer. However, when I added the second layer on Saturday, the colour took much more deeply than I'd expected and a third layer simply wasn't going to work. I therefore added further shapes and simply scraped some paint over these areas. In the end I decided to paint the roads white. I did toy with the idea of putting some charcoal and/or grey into the final coat but I got to the point where I felt that I was possibly saying, "oh look, I thought of doing this too!" rather than it adding to the piece.

On Friday I also tested the idea of adding some small squares in a kind of “tile” pattern. The “tiles” are cut from a print of the Mabgate office building (see this week 51 blogpost) and a picture of the City of Mabgate pub photocopied onto acetate. They are therefore all monochrome black and white, but show very different tones, and the acetate and paper show different textures.  This all seemed fine and I expected it to take half a day to stick them on. However, when I came to do it on the Sunday, it took most of the day. The curves of the roads were quite difficult to work round. It also became apparent as I applied the tiles that this part of the painting was probably really a work in its own right, despite me testing it. As I was under time pressure, there was little else I could do but persevere.

 

Gluing the tiles to the painting

On Friday I’d also experimented with placing some of the letters that I’d lasercut the previous week onto the paintings. I found it quite inconclusive as I didn’t know whether the manilla or the grey worked better. I’d tried the letters cut from the acetate photocopy of the Mabgate pub, but they didn’t look right. However, once I’d got some pieces of the same image as part of the “tiles” on the Sunday, they seemed to work best so I used these.

 

The pieces in their final state on Sunday night, ready to be cut off the boards

I’m not really sure whether I like the outcomes or not. There are areas where I really like the colour – there is a kind of luminosity – but the tiles really need to be in a piece of their own. I did learn a lot about colour and paint, though. However, there isn’t enough complexity in the layering. I should have used more shapes and more letters. I’m also unsure about the roads being white. But I achieved what I’d set out to do, which was to produce some work based on the methodology I’d developed through my dissertation, of a size and format commensurate with the journey I would have to make over the Pennines and the area I was going to display them in. The ideas have also come a long way since their original concept. I will submit these pieces as part of my portfolio. They are finalised, although not necessarily “finished” – there is a lot of reflection to do about how to develop the ideas from here.

Monday got quite pressed for time too. I ended up having to cut the mounts for the prints by hand (with a lot of help from Nick). Having learnt how to make them in Illustrator, I'd cut them on the laser at college at lunchtime, but they'd burnt. Having tried it on two different cutters, it was clear that someone had been messing with the settings, but both technicians were teaching so I just had to leave it (and waste about £3 in mountboard - grr).

MA Week 56 - London, and moving on with the Mabgate abstracts

Reflection on the past week, 14^th February 2017

 

Mabgate abstracts

February has continued to be positive. I had another tutorial last Thursday and Sharon and I discussed the Mabgate sketches. I was struggling with the composition as the colours were falling too “half and half” but Sharon suggested I do 1/3 to 2/3 ratio of the colours in each of the two pieces. This made sense to me and is what I am intending to pursue. We also talked about the need for “quiet” and busy places in the paintings. Some of what is in the sketches is far too busy but even allowing for this I can see the need for “quiet” areas. 

We also talked at some length about whether the roads should be sharp or not, the use of different thicknesses of paint, and the possibilities of using the stencil of the word “self” (laser cut last week) with masking fluid to produce layering within the paint. Also the possibility of depicting your thoughts from the walk, or what you want to share. A lot of conceptual and practical food for thought. 

Today I laser cut some further lettering, once again including the word ”self”, and also “hope”, inspired by Hope Road which adjoins Mabgate. I’ve cut these out of card, some grey paper, and a manilla envelope. I also cut some out of a photo of the City of Mabgate Inn that I’d copied onto acetate. I found the choice of “hope” and “self” quite positive. I’ll use this lettering in the final pieces. 

Self, self, self

 

I’ve also looked again at the sketches and while they still bear some resemblance to the actual map of the area, they are too complex for what I’m trying to use them for and they fracture the space too much – even though I want to portray fragmentation, since time is fragmented by the act of walking, and the area itself is fragmented in its use, and its users and is likely to become more so with the advent of gentrification. I will therefore simplify them before I start on the finished versions tomorrow. 

Testing ideas on the sketch

I’ve also found another print amongst those from last week which isn’t the best ever but which will give me four I can take to MMU.  With the challenge of the painting I don’t think I will make it back into the print room before the conference.

 

London

We spent the weekend in London, something we used to do quite frequently and now do all too rarely. Part of the reason for the visit was to see the Hockney retrospective at Tate Britain and we also managed to fit in the Rauschenberg retrospective at Tate Modern. I’ll write about these separately. On a smaller scale, but equally interesting, were unexpectedly coming across two printmaking exhibitions. 

SouthbankPrintmakers  were exhibiting in the Oxo Building, and what a feast of printmaking - prints of all sizes and techniques and colours. The works by the entrance door were etchings of urban and industrial scenes by the printmaker Melanie Bellis. Seeing works like these (a) gives me something to aspire to and (b) helps me realise that the urban and industrial are not such unusual subjects, which is positive. By very happy coincidence, Melanie was curating the exhibition that day, and she discussed her work with me. She encouraged me to persevere with my etching into a ground and to be unafraid to experiment with smaller plates until I got my bearings with the techniques. I always find it gratifying when established artists are willing to share their time and give insights – it is a real encouragement. Shortly afterwards I found out via Twitter that Melanie has been granted associate membership of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, which was fantastic to hear.

Just around the corner, at the Royal Society of Watercolour Artists’ Bankside Gallery, there was an exhibition of woodcut prints by the Society of Wood Engravers. One of the exhibiting artists, Louise Hayward  was actually doing some demonstrations and I talked to her. Louise’s subject matter is also the urban, in particular, brutalist buildings. I was fascinated to find out that some of her work had been produced by effectively carving into plastic plates, not dissimilar to the type I’d been using for my drypoint etchings. However, they are then (obviously) printed relief rather than intaglio. I really enjoyed seeing the detail and structure of her prints, and once again found inspiration and encouragement by speaking to her.

 

MA Week 55 - a fruitful start to February

Reflection on the past two weeks, 6^th February 2017  

At last, some definite progress to report! First things first, though – I finally got my marks back for my dissertation and I got a very good mark. I was really pleased. My tutor also seemed to “get” what I was trying to say and the way I was trying to say it. That gave me a real boost, which was much-needed, and I felt all my efforts last term had been recognised.

I had a good tutorial towards the end of January which helped to confirm the viability of an idea I’d had, to base an abstract painting on a map of the Mabgate area. Sharon (my tutor) liked some of the marks I’d made, and the plan is to incorporate at least some of these into the painting. There will, hopefully, be the usual method of choosing colours based on what I saw (see this week 46 blogpost for more info on what I actually did see), and incorporating the shapes I encountered into layers within the painting.

I’ve gone for 300gsm cartridge paper which is now stretched and which I’ll gesso to help me use charcoal and graphite on it. I like the acrylic paper but I didn’t think this would work so well if I were to try to use charcoal. We’ll see! This is all a learning curve for me – I’ve only stretched one sheet of paper since I left school – and I was unsure how long to soak this paper for. I’ve not used cartridge paper of this weight, but one of the things I want to do this term is to learn more about paper, so this is a good opportunity to learn something.

I’ve started a sketch of the proposed piece (it’s in two parts) and I feel quite happy with the shapes which are based on the streets. I have experimentation to do with the layering, and the colours I’ve put down so far aren’t right, but that’s the point of making a sketch. I have another tutorial in a couple of days so the next two evenings will be spent applying further colour to the sketch so I can talk this through with Sharon. I feel much happier working with this methodical approach although I am still concerned about time.

Colours in progress

 

I finally managed to get back into the print room last Thursday and I spent a good day in there. I printed the office block that’s being gentrified several times. Susie, one of the technicians, helped me get a better print by packing on top of the paper/plate with tissue paper. I did some experimental inking, some of which worked and some didn’t. I’m not sure where next with this plate but some of the latest prints are OK. These are all on 140 gsm cartridge paper but I’ve been recommended to use Snowdon paper so I will be giving this a try in due course.

 

An experiment that probably didn't work

On Thursday lunchtime I laser cut some shapes that I’d drawn based on the map of the Mabgate area. I also cut out the word “self”. There is a self-storage place next to the gentrifying office block and I kept coming back to the idea of “self”… storing some of yourself, or leaving some of yourself behind perhaps? Then it was back to the print room for an afternoon shift of monoprinting. I used the resists that I’d laser cut and I was quite pleased with the results. I didn’t clean the plate at all during the afternnon and this gave some nice layering. I used cadmium yellow and process cyan (my super favourites). This is because the self-storage place signs are blue and yellow, and also I wanted to get to a green that was reminiscent of the old City of Mabgate pub’s sage green exterior tiles. The colours mixed up to a nice leaf green – not exactly the colour of the tiles, but a nice Spring-like colour for the time of year.

 

self discovery

Using text in the monoprint was probably something that I’d resisted for a long time but I liked the result. I thought it gave a bit more interest to the prints. There were three that will be suitable for use at the MMU PGR conference although the registration could have been better! I think these prints represent a little development step compared to the work I did last Summer and I really want to work with more laser-cut shapes.

 

It was a bit of a downer that the print room was booked for a class on Friday as I’d got my print groove on and would have liked to continue where I left off on Thursday. However, there was a silent crit in class so I joined in with that. I worked with two first-year students, whom I’d not previously met, Diane and Hattie. Their comments were mighty useful. I showed two of the monoprints and two prints of the gentrifying office block. They felt that the colourful prints were reminiscent of nature and the organic, whereas the office block prints were hard and represented the physical. This was insightful for me as I am grappling with how to present the two types of prints together, and this could provide an entry point; the static and the chaotic, perhaps? They also recognised that the monoprints were based on map shapes, which was great! When I explained that the prints were based on the Mabgate area and why I’d used the colours, Hattie immediately mentioned the green tiles of the former pub, which was really encouraging. The only thing they didn’t “get” was the text. Perhaps it needs a bit more thought as to exactly how I deploy it.

 

Crit time: working with Hattie and Diane, enjoying looking at each others' work

It’s been good to be so productive after rather a fallow time. I promised myself February would be fruitful, and so far, so good.

 

 

 

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 30 - Ready for the end of year exhibition

Reflection on the past two weeks – 7^th June 2016

Ready for the end of year exhibition!

I can’t believe it is already two weeks plus since I last posted a blog. Most of the time has been devoted to working up the four acrylic boards from the pylon monoprint, ready for the end of year show. They are definite works in progress, which is what we are being invited to exhibit, and I can see lots of improvements I can make. But they’re hung on the wall, and that’s the main thing. 

I picked up working on them on 26^th May. I’d already done a second acrylic sketch for the black and the red pieces and I started them on the MDF board (each 20x20cm). The black sketch had got too busy and I sought to simplify it. I also decided to reduce the amount of masking and layering in the red piece.

The red piece worked OK, perhaps not as good as the sketch, but better than the original. The masking and marking didn’t come off quite as well as I’d hoped. I think using this technique for a resolved piece would need quite a lot of painting onto transparencies to understand how the layering would look when you take off the masking tape.  My classmate Mel had suggested that the black piece looked like lights emanating outwards, and I took up this idea in the final version of this. It’s much neater and cleaner than the sketch and I think it works quite well.



Sketching in progress

Over the weekend I worked on the sketches for the two blue pieces and started the boards based on these. Things didn’t go too well when I peeled off the masking tape for the diamond image and it (the tape) had stretched and curved, meaning I had to start again – but such is life. Throughout doing the boards, I experimented quite a lot on a test board with modelling paste and with adding depth by using layers of transparent colour. In the end I decided against the modelling paste as it’s white, and was adding too much white to the colours, weakening them and altering them too much. However, I made some nice marks with them, and I will pick up that mark making again as I think it needs further investigation.

Of the four, the blue diamond worked up best after the initial nuisance. Some of the textures from the painted lines are a little too textured (uneven or imbalanced), but it has some nice layers in it (as suggested in the crit) and plenty of ideas for future work.  The other blue and yellow piece didn’t work up as well as the sketch. I think I chose the wrong content and positioning for the little “mini-paintings” that sit within the overall painting. But, as I said, it’s a work in progress.

 

Pylons I - IV

In all of these I found that I need to improve my brush control, and I need to find out more about how I stop the brush losing its point and having little hairs split away (it might be that I am handling them too roughly when I wash them). Some of the energetic lines worked better than the others, and sometimes it depended on how tired I was. Some of the sketches and the final pieces engaged me more than others, just as various works always do.



Only took one and a half hours to hang...

After much messing about trying to pack out the fixings so that the boards would hang as well as possible, I got the pieces hung last Saturday. Here I have to acknowledge the help of my partner, Nick, who produced endless amounts of different packer materials from goodness knows where, and who levelled the four pieces on the wall. Bring on Friday!

 

MA Week 28 - Pylon Abstracts and Salford Symposium

Reflection on the past week – 23rd May 2016

 

Some interesting experiences and work this week. I haven’t been back into the print room, unfortunately, because I was ill on my afternoon off. Shame as I had written a list of things to try out. However, I have been making some progress with some little acrylic pieces. 

I pursued the idea of working up the repurposed pylon monoprint from my Week 26 post into four pieces. As time is of the essence, I decided to work straight into acrylics rather than work with pastels or cut paper as I might normally do when planning and developing  a piece. I wanted to see how the colours and paint would work.

 

Pylon 1 : spot the constructivist influence

This is one of the results at the first sketch stage. There are two or three layers of paint and I’ve used some masking tape too. It’s fairly faithful to the original monoprint but it’s clear that there is too much going on at the top left and not so much at the bottom right. I’m therefore working on a second sketch which is looking much more balanced and which I hope will be OK to reproduce on board for the End of Year show.  

It’s interesting how the marks translate, or not. The “grubby” marks of the monoprint, which give a nice industrial feel, don’t work so well in the acrylic. The inclusion of marks of different thicknesses in the acrylic version gives the work energy and movement. Not that they lack in the original; I have just had to think differently about how to represent them and how to rework the lines of the original to get the piece more balanced.

 

Crit in transit

The original four sketches were the subject of a three-phase crit at the end of last week! I put a couple of them onto whatsapp and there were suggestions they would work up as linocuts – I’m not overly experienced in linocutting but I might give that a go later on in the year. Then I had a crit with two classmates on our way to Salford (of which more later), now known as the “crit in transit”. This revealed some ideas of day and night, of lights beaming out of the darkness, and a very challenging question of whether this represents what’s going on in my head (who knows?). Later, when I finally got to Salford, another two classmates kindly had a look. There were further suggestions of taking the pieces back into print, perhaps by monoprinting from or into them, of further layering, and also the question of trying to get them up off the page more. They do look 2D, but perhaps that’s how they’re supposed to look. I’m not going to be able to try all these things before the end of year show, but I am definitely up for trying a bit more layering and I’ll do that when I go back to working on them tomorrow. 

The Salford jaunt was interesting. We met with MA students from Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford in a place called Atelier Artworks, an old light bulb factory. It was a strange space; industrial, dirty, under-used, disused almost, yet alive with the studios of a number of artists. Because of being ill I hadn’t really had much chance to prepare, so my responses were very much that – immediate.

 

Salford Piece 1

 

 

I concentrated on shapes and colour and produced two compressed charcoal and pastel pieces. On both the bottom layer was a rubbing of the metal stairs. There was a lot of improvement that I could immediately see; if I’d thought a bit more about it beforehand, I would have positioned my various images on piece 1 differently. As it was they overlapped too much. A lesson to learn. Don’t get overwhelmed by the situation and jump straight in. On piece 2 I think the red is a bit too intense. I liked the colour of the two doors, bright red and bright emerald green (these were their colours in real life), but I wish I’d left it as a black pencil drawing on the red rubbing.

Salford Piece 2

On the other hand, producing these as immediate responses means there is a lot to develop – there are no filtered or refined ideas in there. The shapes and colours can be used in different ways in future pieces. I really wish I’d taken more photographs and made more rubbings of the stairs to use now I’ve got back. Another lesson to learn. Part of the immediate response also means that these pieces bear the imprint of the site; not only the stair-rubbings, but the fact that I sat on the uneven, cracked concrete floor to do them. This means the lines are not straight because the floor was so uneven; something that I couldn’t filter out as I actually did the work.  I am beginning to understand, and to like, a little bit more about responding to place through these experiences (the Armley walk, the pylon photos, the Salford Symposium). 

We had a crit in groups of three and one of the comments on piece 2 was that it was like looking through a window when there was a dangerous chemical incident going on. It made me see the piece in a different way and I liked it a bit more then. I think the first stage in developing something from this would be to take the stair pattern from piece 1 and work with it; this was the first thing that captured my attention as walked up to the space where we’d be working. 

There wasn’t nearly as much time as I would have liked to interact with the students from other institutions. I think most of the others probably felt the same as I did – slightly nervous, happier to stick with our own classmates. It would have been nice to have had an ice-breaker to get to know people and perhaps more time to view each other’s work. Having had the experience, I wish I could go back and do it again and get more out of it.

MA Week 19 - Reflection on the week

A slightly better week, although still feeling very much under the weather.

 

Work in Progress presentation

Friday’s session in college was a series of work in progress presentations. I found the whole day dragged and it over-ran to the point where I was practically asleep (not least due to recovering from this bug), which wasn’t very polite to fellow students. We seem to have had a spate of crits, work in progress, etc, and sometimes you just have to do the work. Anyway… I talked about the application of the “heritage” critical perspective, the laser cut images of my face, the solar printing, drypoint etching, the generative wandering and the acrylic pieces on paper. I got mixed feedback. One fellow student felt I needed more structure in my work, like restricting it to one theme e.g. the gasometers of Leeds, or one type of practice, e.g. printmaking. Another fellow student felt the breadth of techniques added interest to the themes. I guess there is always a tension between “freedom” and “system”. It’s true I’ve sometimes felt a bit off down a blind alley this term but I have repeatedly tried to take stock and pull myself back to a narrative that I can explain. Perhaps I need to think about that and learn to explain it better!  

I talked a bit about decay arising from the charred MDF laser cut and another fellow student suggested this could be a theme moving into the “decay of my heritage”. I guess that theme is already there, but not overtly, so that is to think about for the next module. When I talked about the generative wandering I mentioned the people doing their thing in the present as I looked for the past (jogging, baby-walking, Diamond White drinking) and that was reflected back to me in the idea of temporality – another them to explore! From the tutor and fellow students I got some names to look into: Karel Martins (designer), Daniel Eatock (creates responses to something particular), Leeds Surrealist Group, Psychogeography hub on Tate website, Paul Ricoeur, Zygmunt Baumann. So a few to read up on over Easter.

Reading

Speaking of reading: I had a skim over the first couple of chapters of “The Craftsman” by Richard Sennett (2009), which had been recommended by my tutor. It didn’t grab me – clearly not every book will do that. I felt his premise of Pandora’s casket (sic) being equivalent to a culture of man-made things risking continual self-harm (p2) needed more exploration and explanation to convince me. But perhaps that’s because I’m an old programmer, not a Greek scholar. In fact Sennett talks about programmers and business process improvement in chapter 1. I’ve lived through what I need to know about both programming and process improvement. So I’ve paused reading that book. 

Much more relevant to what I’m currently doing, but less snappily titled, is “Exploring Learning, Identity & Power through Life History & Narrative Research”. Again, I’ve only had time to skim the first one and a half chapters, but lots of interesting ideas. Within the first few pages we have the idea of “life histories” – one’s life story in the context of the social and historical conditions prevailing (p2), problems around construction of identities which matter because identities shape people’s practices (p3), and the idea of the tension between the politics of the state and the possibility for social change through the small everyday acts of individuals (p5). In Chapter 2, the ethics of narrative enquiry are explored, including the fact that the researcher will always have a stake in the formation of the written identities of the participants because she or he too is a human being. I have only got to about page 16 and I think there is plenty in here for me to explore and reflect upon. The idea of “life history” is appealing as I think it relates to my idea of “lived experience”; the individual’s experience at that particular point in the space-time continuum. Also, even using myself and my own life history as a source, I am reconstructing my own identity and experience – more clearly? Less clearly? Tilting it to whatever I want to say now? I am hoping I can get time to have a closer read of this book as it seems to complement some of the ideas in Harrison’s book in terms of my own critical perspectives. I think this will also have to be over Easter, the way things are going.

Making

In and amongst all the reading and presenting, I have managed to etch a new plate based on my generative wandering to Armley. I have only done two test prints so I will need to work on it further next week. However, it is taking shape and looking promising.

 

First proof

After the work in progress presentations, I nipped onto the laser cutter and engraved the image of my face into two pieces of corrugated cardboard. I wanted to work on these with mixed media, again based on my Armley wandering. I’ve done a couple of coats of acrylic with a 1-inch house brush. I’m just working freely and intuively with these. They are test/experimental pieces but on a bigger scale than I’d normally do such work – they are about 52 x 39cm each. The colours are based on the colours I saw during the wandering, with the blue layer also possibly representing the sky.

Armley 1 : Corrugated Cardboard Work in Progress

 

MA Week 18 - Reflection on the past 10 days

A mixed bag of fortunes recently.

 

Week commencing 9^th February was really productive, with the breakthrough reading about heritage as a critical perspective and with the generative wandering. I then went on to finish off the acrylic piece I’d been doing the week before (see this Week 16 post), and also started another acrylic piece on paper which was a visual response to the generative wandering. 

 

Armley, WIP, February 2012

 

I had also managed to get some advice from IT about how to prepare images for the laser cutter (as mentioned in this post under “Laser cutting”) and I had made a different template of my face. I tested this and decided to simplify it even further. The IT guys and the laser technician both thought that I was probably aiming at something too ornate with all the detail in the hair and eyes. 

Then week commencing 15^th February was a disaster. I had Monday afternoon off and used it to prepare the simplified image mentioned above. Then I came home to do some blogging and found my poor partner down with flu. So arty time lost on Monday and Tuesday as I packed him off to get some rest and tried to look after him. On Tuesday I then cut the simplified image from 9mm MDF and it burnt. This wasn’t entirely unexpected but it was still a blow as I’d hoped to build up a stack of these cut images as part of an ongoing idea of being able to “look down” into the image and see what’s inside. I’ll ask further advice, but I think I might be at the point where I have to pause the laser investigations. I’m not getting the results I’d hoped and there are deadlines looming! I have learnt lots about laser cutting notwithstanding.  

Charred remains of grand designs

 

Then even bigger disaster as I went down with the flu myself on Wednesday. So I’ve done next to nothing for a week - I didn't even get to college on Friday. Even my finely honed project management skills (!) can’t pull a week back over three weeks. So I will need a bit of prioritisation and juggling as I move towards the deadline. It’s such a shame after such a breakthrough the previous week, but that’s art, that’s life.

MA Week 16 - reflection on the week

A bit of progress over the past 10 days or so. 

I put out in the rain a couple of the gasometer linocuts that I did. I ended up leaving them out for longer than expected and the result was a mix of colours in each one. The three-colour one gave some really vibrant colours, particularly a raised patch of bright rust-orange and some lovely mossy green. However, the colours faded as they dried and the pigment went very chalky in texture and started falling off the paper, presumably because the binder had washed away. But this did gave me the idea of decomposing your composition, and of the decay in industry (society?) in general. They have continued to decay, particularly the three colour one, which is interesting; I have no plans to stop them decaying, just like I couldn’t stop our industry decaying. 

 

Layering in progress

 

I also started piece on paper where I am experimenting with building up layers of different thicknesses using acrylic paint and collaged-in pieces of my printmaking. It is a developmental piece but it is generating ideas. It is also a chance to get to know the Liquitex acrylic paints a bit more. They give much more opaque coverage than the System 3 paints I’d used before so I am having to think more about how the colours appear when layered. I enjoyed doing the work and will finish it next weekend. 

I read some of a book called “Heritage : Critical Approaches” and this finally gave me (one of?) my critical perspectives. This was a good feeling and the academic validation of my approach has given me renewed confidence in my creative outputs. My definition of practice – my message – is becoming clearer through the theory of the “heritage” critical lens. It is emerging from my own lived experience but all of it also forms some part of the lived experience of another person or group of people.  More about this is in this post.

I took all this and more into my tutorial to try to work it through and to understand how I’m progressing. The message reflected back was to use this progress to allow me to select (and to justify the selection of) what tells my story. What images, visuals? What scale? Detail or overview? What kind of marks? What density. So I need to focus a bit more on exactly what I want to produce before Easter and I’ve re-planned for the rest of the term to try to give a time framework and allow prioritisation. 

What media will I use to tell my story? Within my initial proposal, and again emphasised within the work I did in Professional Context 1, I stated I would like to learn more about printmaking. I’ve experimented with this and am particularly interested in the marks I can make using etching. As part of my objectives for this module, I identified laser cutting as another technique of interest and have effectively used this to “draw” lines by cutting them. This idea of the “line” occurs frequently in my work and I need to think about how to develop etching and laser cutting techniques further to depict this. Acrylic is a medium I like and with which I am relatively comfortable from my previous course. By the submission deadline I would hope to have used the laser and etching in some way (separately or combined) to produce something coherent related to the heritage and identity themes.