On a Tuesday we are now given a whole day of life drawing.We experimented with many different techniques.
I didn’t get the position of the torso quite right so was asked to correct it by the teaching for assessing.
I feel that the proportions aren’t too bad on this one either.
This picture looks better reflecting back on it.
Proportions aren’t quite right in this drawing
Quite like the proportions of this one
I had to re-draw the torso again altho i got the proportions wrong the second
I had an appointment half way through the class so i would of got more pictures done otherwise and it would of been nice to see how much more my work would of progressed given more time.
We were asked to not be afraid of making mistakes and to keep working over them which i think really helped me get the proportions right on some of the pictures.
Two of my favourite drawings were the quickest.The first one was using 2 pens and the other was continous line
For our FMP we were given a variety of themes that we could use but I decided to use my own theme.
Working between two ideas.The post stick notes feature stand out comments and questions from articles.
To start with I was stuck between two ideas.One was how female ageing is portrayed by the media and how women are treated in the tv/film industry due to age.
The second one was inspired by a video I watched where female celebrities were asked intrusive questions based on the fact that they are female and not focusing on there career. Some of these questions were:
‘Where you able to wear undergarments? (when the male presenter recieved a shocked response) ‘Is this inappropiate?!?’
‘If you could pick make-up or your phone which one would you pick?’
‘What are you looking for in a man now?’
Your gonna walk home with more then just a trophy tonight.I think lots of men!’
‘There is one subject we didn’t talk about…Your Breasts!’
‘Aren’t you worried that people will pick up on the sexual references and not care about your music?’
I decided to choose the first idea as it seemed to generate the most questions.I also found alot of interesting articles which had some stand out ‘pro ageing’ comments aswell ascomments which brought attention to certain issues
Some of these comments were:
Ageing is not a crime
Invisable women
Ageing has no cure
Ageing isn’t a disaese
Why is ageing treated like a problem to be solved?
‘Women cast as players in a doomed quest for eternal youth‘
I thought about writing these slogans onto suffragette style posters,and also sewing them onto orange skin and doccumenting the skin ageing and how the writing changes on it as it does.I felt that orange skin would be an interesting choice of material due to it’s skin like pores and texture and the fact that it ages.I also considered creating some kind of mask using the peel too.
I wanted the safety pins to represent a kind of patched together plastic surgery and the threads stitches
I think it will be interesting doccumenting the perishing process and to watch how the shape changes. At this stage I am wondering how this will work as a face mask and how can I make it work?
Image choosen as final image as i felt that this best represented the theme in terms of how PTSD effects ex war veterans due to the story a friend of mine told me from experience (see last post)
Some feedback I recieved from tutors/classmates was that the photo was
comical/yet sinister.
Do the eyes have to look like eyes or could I use something else in replacement of them?
Do the eyes have to be on a person?
Has a look of animie about it.
Difficult to corrolate meaning
Will i decide to let conceptual inform my future practice?
The artist in residence mentioned that prehaps i should look at an artist who’s name she can’t remember but whom uses parts of magazines on her face.
Artist in residence suggested using the app called ‘face tune’ which is the app that Cindy Sherman has been using within her current work.There is also filters on the Mac that can give you ‘long eyes’
Prehaps i should stick the eyes on and stand in different public places and film using a timelapse.Would be interesting to see the public’s response.Also having the eyes on whilst doing every day things about the house or maybe just lying in bed looking at the ceiling.
The tutor commented that the piece was very performative and had good future performative potential there was still more that could be tested and developed.She also mentioned that I should prehaps concentrate more on the idea which is serious and move away from the visual comical aspect.
Idea was taken from original face paint idea.I decided I wanted to make the idea clearer using paper and an animated eye
The most exsaggerated pupil I think may get the message across the best as it shows that person in a constant state of alert.
After my one to one with the tutor we looked at what worked and what didn’t work and at making my ideas clearer in order to help with the creative process.I took my two ideas and wrote them down and looked at which one could get my idea across most simply.I realised that my ideas weren’t clear enough and the tutor discussed with me how my idea was the most important thing more important then the visual aspect and to focus in on the most simple approach visually and not to over complicate things.
I decided to write both of the ideas I had been using in order to simplify things
Focusing on the idea that I had choosen and how i was going to convey it in the simpliest way I could.
One of my ideas had been about carrying weight physically due to weight being carried mentally and the connection between these two things.How does one effect the other?Altho I liked the idea the visual was too complex and I was concerned that the audience/viewer wouldn’t understand the meaning behind my work as i felt that it could relay many other meanings which wasn’t neccessarily what I wanted.
In contrast,my second idea had the opposite set of issues,the visual idea was simple,yet strong but my idea had become almost lost along the way. The idea had been one of wearing a mask to cope with deep seated issues inside,but it would make no sense as to why the mask was only covering the eyes.
So I decided to go back to the ‘drawing board’ so to speak.I looked at my last theme of PTSD as i felt that there was so much more to explore.I decided to look at how PTSD effects ex war veterans.A friend of mine was effected by this and I remember him saying that he would enter every room/situation with his ‘eyes wide open’ allways on edge,waiting at any minute for an explosion.And that someone once banging a packet of crisps in a canteen made him duck for cover under a table.He told me he was fed up and exsausted by living this way.It also made me think of homeless ex-veterans almost having to relieve the same experience all over again but on the streets,constantly on edge and wary of what could happen next.It is a trained mind-set within war but did they really think this is what it would end up being used for?
I decided to look at different ways i could develop this idea so I decided to use animated/exsagerated paper cartoon looking eyes using different sizes of pupils and paper.I did this as I wanted to emphasize the constant fear/lack of trust in the environment surrounding that person.By accident I realised that the tilt of my head and the fed up looking expression (that i had done without realising) Was effective in portraying how exsausting it can be.
Here are two video’s where i experimented with taking the eyes off to reveal different eyes with different pupils which reveal different levels of shock/awareness
I decided to look at weight bearing with bricks again.And how weight bearing on different parts of the body can not only be a physical thing which we can see such as a pregnancy etc but mental weight can effect different elements of the body also giving way to different conditions such as IBS.
In the following video’s i looked at balancing weight on different parts of my body and the unpredictability of it.I felt a slight anxiousness never knowing what would drop when.
In the second video i thought about how weight from our minds can travel to certain parts of the body.Without really thinking about it we are adding weight to our own backs as stress can cause related pain within our bodies.Studies have shown that increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol can cause related pain within our bodies.
Using face paint I decided to look at the mask people use every day to cover up the weight bearing on their mind. this can either be through make-up or facial expression.A mask to show how awake they are when there mind has shut down
I wanted to show how this mask can be washed away over time whether through use of water which is a very spiritually clensing material.I realised after filming the video that it looked like someone being blessed.Which i realised could be another way of clensing mental weight even if it wasn’t the end result that I was intending.
I patriculary like the unpredictable manner of which the paint travels in droves across my face.As unpredicatable as the action of someone with such a weight on their mind.
I find some comparisons between my work and the work of Bas Jan Arder especially with the way the facepaint has started to look like tears and the way my eyes look red from crying
Sebastian Preschoux is a 35 year old self taught french artist.His work represents the fast industrial rate at which today’s generation disposes of images and cease to ask themselves what the source of these images are.He believes that due to computers you can make everything face paced and flattering which encourages people to ‘fake it’ he has said in an interview ‘‘nothing personal,nothing unique’.He strives to make work that can’t easily be re-produced and is often temporary.His yarn installations come from his graphic works and are from his observations of the sunlight in nature.His recent graphic works are created using ink and based on spirographs and thread tensions which he also uses acrylic paint for.
He also enjoys working in nature as there is no one to disturb him and finds tree’s great to work with as they are a ‘very solid’ construction.His yarn installations work well in these environments as they have a ‘geometric climate’ in an environment which has absolutely nothing graphic about it to begin with.
Elsa Hildegard Baroness von Freytag-loringhoven
Elsa Hildegard Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven was born 12th July 1874 and died 15th Dec 1927 She was a German avant-garde,Dadaist artist and poet who worked for several years in Greenwich Village New York. photo Loringhoven was born in Germany, to Adolf Plötz, a mason, and Ida Marie Kleist. Her relationship with her father was temperamental—she emphasized how controlling he was in the family, as well as how cruel, yet big-hearted he was.In her art, she related the ways that political structures promote masculine authority in family settings, maintaining the state’s patriarchal societal order.Her discontent with her father’s masculine control may have fostered her anti-patriarchal activist approach to life. On the other hand, the relationship that she had with her mother was full of admiration—her mother’s craft involving the repurposing of found objects could have spawned Freytag-Loringhoven’s utilization of street debris/found objects in her own artworks Photo In New York, the Baroness also worked on assemblage, sculptures and paintings, creating art out of the rubbish and refuse she collected from the streets. The Baroness was known to construct elaborate costumes from found objects, creating a “kind of living collage” that merged the boundaries between life and art.
The Baroness’ elaborate costumes both criticized and challenged the notions of feminine beauty and economic worth.She adorned herself with objects such as spoons, tin cans, and curtain rings, as well as street debris that she came across.The Baroness’ use of her own body as medium was deliberate, to transform herself into a specific type of spectacle—one that women who complied to the constraints of femininity of the time would be humiliated to embody. By doing so, she controlled and established agency over the visual access to her own nudity, unhinged the presentational expectations of femininity by appearing androgynous, drew upon ideas of women’s selfhood and sexual politics, and provided emphasis on her anti-consumerism and anti-aestheticism outlooks.She included her body’s smells, perceived imperfections, and leakages in her body art, encompassing Irrational Modernism.The Baroness’ body art was not only a sculpture and living collage, but also a form of dadaist performance art and activism.
It is thought that ‘Fountain’ (1917) by Marcel Duchamp is also connected to the Baroness
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was born 28 April 1928 and died 6th June 1962 he was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau realisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art, as well as pop art.
Anthropometry of the Blue Period (ANT 82) (1960), Pure pigment and synthetic resin on paper laid down on canvas
Klein was born in Nice, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. His parents, Fred Klein and Marie Raymond were both painters. His father painted in a loose post impressionist style, while his mother was a leading figure in Art Informel, and held regular soirées with other leading practitioners of this Parisian abstract movement. Klein received no formal training in art, but his parents were both painters who exposed him to different styles. His father was a figurative style painter, while his mother had an interest in abstract expressionism. From 1942 to 1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues Orientales. At this time, he became friends with Arman (Armand Fernandez) and Claude Pascal and started to paint. Photo Unaware of the importance of the Nouveau Réalisme movement until the 1990s, New York critics of Klein’s time tried to classify him as neo-dada and other critics, such as Thomas McEvilley in an essay submitted to Artforum in 1982, classified Klein as an early, though enigmatic, postmodernist.
Bruce Nauman
Schaulager
Bruce Nauman was (born December 6, 1941 in Fort Wayne Indiana) and is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo,New Mexico.
Nauman studied mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and art with William T Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California.. In 1964 he gave up painting to dedicate himself to sculpture, performance and cinema collaborations with William Allan and Robert Nelson. He worked as an assistant to Wayne Thiebaud . Upon graduation, he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and at the University of California at Irvine.Confronted with “What to do?” in his studio soon after graduating, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.Nauman set up a studio in a former grocery shop and then in a sublet from his university tutor. These two locations provided the setting for a series of performed actions which he captured in real time, on a fixed camera, over the 10-minute duration of a 16mm film reel.Between 1966 and 1970 he made several videos, in which he used his body to explore the potentials of art and the role of the artist, and to investigate psychological states and behavioural codes.
Much of his work is characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself as visual puns
Much of his work is characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself as visual puns
We were asked to continue our ideas in a conceptual project,I decided to look at what worked and what didn’t work from the 3D project.Some things that were mentioned during the crits were to look more at weight.So I decided to focus on issues that can weigh on the mind and how it can effect the mind and body by continueing to use bricks.
I felt that it was important to document the making process as there was something interesting and therapeutic not only with the wrapping and binding process but to watch it too.
I decided that it was important to use somebody who wasn’t me as the model as I was worried that it would be hard to communicate my ideas esactly how I wanted them.
I also left the half circle of bricks around the model after I had created the headpiece.It looked aesthetically pleasing and yet it had some kind of ritualistic feel to it.I suppose a ritual is something that we do over and over again and carrying our mental weight is something most of us do day in day out before that ritual is broken with whatever helps or heals it.
I felt that this development was really sucessful and created some strong images.My favourite being the head piece.It didn’t turn out how I has imagined in my minds eye but better infact.I love the surreal quality to it and how the voile interweaves with each other.I think it has the feel of a painting about the image.
Another thing I would like to continue to develop is the facepaint.As I felt that it was sucessful but I didn’t take it any further.
(Forgot to get a photo of the piece with the projection)
I think the feeback was overall positive for my crit,I had spent almost half a day prior experimenting with the positioning of the projector.Initially I wanted the projection of my video to be above my sculpture.Whenever I tried to angle the projector in order to do this the projection ended up squint.I then wondered what the projection would look like projected onto the sculpture and around it.Altho I was unsure of this to start with this seemed to be a sucess at the crit and recieved positive feedback.At my pervious feeback it was mentioned to me prehaps projecting onto the headpiece.I tried many differents ways of trying to do this from projecting from the other end of the room to trying to bring the size down on the projector itself but this did not seem poisible.I also think (from partially seeing some of the projection on the headpiece) that even if i was able to bring the video down to the size of the headpiece it would be so distorted that I don’t think it would of been visable and it was important to me that the video was fully visable.
Feedback.
It was mentioned by tutors and peers that they prehaps would not of dipicted the meaning as being about PTSD.The teacher questioned if this was actually important that the meaning was known and that prehaps it should challenge peoples thinking into making up their own minds about it also that the video had a ‘hook’ which kept the viewer interested in it and as a stand alone piece.
Aesthetic experience was a success
I should explore the video aspect further prehaps looking into more sensory aspects such as sound.Also how else can I show the mental aspects of weight in a physical sense?
I should prehaps of doccumented the making of the headpiece especially the binding of the thread.
The tutor also commented that this was a breakthrough project.