I find that using the university library really helpful because you can find what you are looking for and other artists similar to the one you are studying a lot quicker than if you were to find them online.

For this task the book I decided to study was Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982). It includes lyrics by the rock and roll band, Pink Floyd, combined with stunning images by David Appleby and illustrations by Gerald Scarfe.

What I liked most about the book is how you can read the lyrics while listening to the album and really engage with the lyrics and the music. You can also see how much time and effort went in to creating the album, film and book. The unseen images really give the reader a look into the making of the whole process. As for the tone of the book, most of the photos are in black and white or have elements quite dark colours or low exposure and high contrast. The photos combined with the lyrics give the book an eerie feel which complements the war theme.

Recently I have found myself more interested in books that have a combination of media so this book was perfect for me.

The Human Figure

“The human figure” I was given this title for a project, after exploring many aspects of this there was one which seemed to stick, looking into human features and how each and every one of us have inherited our features and characteristics from another person.

After seeing the work of a photographer called Larry Sultan I was immediately inspired to take pictures of my family and the way they are on a day to day basis. I then chose to concentrate on the facial features of my family members. the ones which you could clearly see had been passed down the family line. I later noticed when taking these pictures in such a relaxed way, whilst talking to the models I was capturing their facial expressions at the same time. I started drawing from these photographs trying to express the emotions which you could see on their faces, within the expressive lines and textures of the portrait study. Using the colours and shapes of expressive lines to portray the expressions, I then thought how the models face could appear emotionless yet the model could be feeling something very strongly. Considering this idea, I decided to change the way I was creating these portrait pieces. To draw my portraits with the absence of emotion on their faces but the surroundings of the portrait would be expressing everything.

For this entry, I will be reflecting upon the task we were given for the induction week which was to create a passport. I decided to take it fairly literally and actually create something on the more realistic side. I wanted to do it in my own style and went about it in a fairly relaxed way. The main things I did were layering of various coloured paper. One of the things which sticks out to me is the layered paper rose I did for the front cover. I was unsure what to put on the front as I wanted it to have some sort of focal point. I decided to go with a rose since it was a fairly easy thing for me to do and I often paint and draw a lot of roses/flowers in my art. Without realizing it at the time I made the outside of the passport quite regal with the rose and the colours. I think I did this partly because I tend to gravitate towards rich colours for my work. Also looking back, I was perhaps influenced by the overly flowery “shojo” style anime/manga used in the late 20^th century as I had watched a show very recently called “Revolutionary Girl Utena” which uses an excessive number of roses throughout the show as is actually a plot point. I attended an exhibition last year in London at the House of Illustration called the “Shojo Manga: The World of Japanese Comics” which displayed the art style which I am describing. It’s very flowery and romantic. I would like to maybe in the future dwell upon these themes more in future projects or work. I also wish to try out layering paper more as I really enjoyed the process.

In the inside of the passport I used very messy squiggly lines and rough crayon colouring to mimic how passports tend to have pastel maps or other imagery in the background. I felt this was very effective as I tend to be quite meticulous and this relaxed technique was refreshing for me. I have been by a few people that I am in the borderline between illustration and fine art and I feel learning to be more relaxed and use messy techniques will help me get away from the illustration side of things.

I do not think I would try making a passport again but it encouraged me to try something new and got me to reflect on my style especially when seeing my peers’ passports too and how many people thought outside of the box. I need to challenge myself to think more outside the box too so I can grow as an artist!

I created an installation earlier this year exploring the insignificant. This concept became more refined when I began documenting journeys. I did this when I realised how overlooked journeys from A to B are. Olafur Eliasson significantly impacted this project. He used the movement of a train to determine the trajectory of a ball covered in ink; it was a form of direct documentation of a journey. I explored this through my own journey recordings, and began to explore energy transfer and how I could remove my own subconscious control so that the marks made were more authentic.

My interests expanded to the potential ways I could document journeys. I looked into Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests, and the way in which they utilised a natural force. The process of the journey is what became important to me through the development of my ideas, which is why I ended up including a video of the process of a journey that some contraptions that I had made undertook. These contraptions were inspired by the work of Fischli and Weiss: no longer was I relying on a pen to record journeys, but instead, contraptions made from insignificant objects. A video became the main focal point, to celebrate these otherwise insignificant processes and journeys.

The book I chose to study was ‘Man with a Blue Scarf’ by Martin Gayford (2014). It is single narrative and autobiographical, following Gayford through his experience ‘Sitting for a Portrait by Lucien Frued’. The author, Gayford, is an art critic and novelist; currently working for Spectator magazine but has worked for many more publications. This book’s purpose is to give a personal insight into the working practises of Lucien Freud.

What I found most interesting about this book is the intimate detail of Freud’s process while painting, his movements of everyday life and the closeness of relationship between the sitter and painter. For example when moving around his studio he is described to be simple ‘standing’ but ‘constantly dancing around’. (2014, p.49). This is amazing to me as one, over the years I have come to love Freud’s work and hearing more about his process of working gives me a further understanding of his paintings and two, it’s inspiring that for his age he was able to move so freely and create such work. From that information you can really tell where the energy from his work comes from.

Another aspect I enjoy is insight into other artist’s opinions. In an conversation with Damien Hirst he compares a great painting as something you could ‘eat’, like an ‘ice-cream’. This is because of the physicality of paint, the ‘layers’ (2014, p.96) This comparison to me demonstrates the appealing nature of a good painting, food is appealing to the eyes just like a piece of work can be.

Bibliography

Gayford, M., 2014. Man with a blue scarf. London: Thames and Hudson.

Anon, 2017. Martin Gayford Art Critic. [online] Martingayford.co.uk. Available at: <http://martingayford.co.uk/> [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].

When given the task of creating my own version of a passport I considered a few ideas. One being to use acetate to create a transparent document, representing my willingness to be open and transparent about myself to a new group of people. However I decided to concentrate on one element of my passport, my passport photo. By creating a series of artworks based on my own appearance, something I believe to be vulnerable and open in itself, I was able to demonstrate my working process by experimenting and finding creative ways of attempting to capture my own likeness. I also liked this idea as I saw this project as a way of warming up and getting acquainted with our new shared studio.

My first, and probably favourite piece, was a self portrait made of masking tape. I really enjoyed this material as I was able to layer it up, creating depth and texture. This then led me onto my next idea, creating a 3D model of my hand out of the paper available to us. To make it I wrapped paper around my fingers and hand to create a mould and hastily fixed the pieces together with masking tape. The outcome of this was rough and arguably a piece of naive art, however I think that further represents me as my work is often unpolished and more focused on process than finesse. I also completed a series of continuous line drawings, probably the least successful of my experiments.

Susan Neiman’s book ‘Why Grow Up?’ explores the concept of maturity, at both an individual, psychological level, as well as societally, from the wider lens of an anthropological as well as a political perspective. Through examining our fascination with youth and the way in which we tend to idealise and glorify what it is to be young, Neiman evaluates and questions the pre-existing notions we hold of ‘youth’, ‘adulthood’ and ‘growing up’.

Neiman argues that we are a society obsessed with youth – and bombarded with such rhetoric, from the Evian ‘live young’ campaign/slogan to the fairy-tale stories of Peter Pan, a boy who is forever young, in a stage of perpetual childhood. She critiques the way in which the modern day ‘adult’ is a figure of stilted growth/development and our inability to discern this. Instead, unquestioningly, we feed into the images and messages perpetuated by the media and society. It is after all easier to let others make our decisions for us.

The author considers this abdication of responsibility and individual onus as a sign of immaturity and whilst in youth we are keen to be active agents of control in our own lives, when faced with difficult and challenging decisions, it is likely that we mentally retreat to the comfort of ignorance or lack of expertise.

This touches on the political aspect of the book – how we are manipulated or beguiled by the decision makers in society, lulled into a false sense of security whereby we believe that we are free and the decisions we make our entirely our own rather than spoon-fed to us

Neiman draws chiefly from the works of philosophers Kant and Rousseau in order to support her premise and references a range of others. The arguments and ideas she tackles are extremely engaging, such as the conflicting ideas of life as a downhill trajectory and idealistic notions of maturity. In essence, the crux of the argument is of one generation always longing to be in the others’ position – our lack of satisfaction with the present and discontent preventing us from appreciating that the grass is not always greener.

‘Coming-of-age’, youth, maturity, old age each with their own advantages and pitfalls, we should not idealise what it is we do not have. The way in which we perceive these ideas is naïve and over-simplified – we cannot have it all. Adulthood is not in fact to have independence, freedom etc, but to ‘trad[e] possibility for experience’.

Details within the human body is something I’m interested in and was the starting point for this self directed project. As it went on I focused more on hands and their details, such as wrinkles and veins. I took several close up photographs of hands to capture this detail and to use for references when I try to recreate it in a painting. As I’m someone who tends to work small scale i.e A4/A5, I wanted to challenge myself and create something a little bit larger. I wanted to make sure I could capture and emphasise on the details of the hands that I love so much. I also like the idea of framing artwork so I used masking tape to create a simple frame around the edge of the canvas. I began with the base colours in acrylic before then working over the top with my chosen medium of oil paints. I chose a monochromatic palette of blues, greys and blacks to create a more tonal painting, rather than copying the photograph directly and using realistic colours. I wanted to add my own style to the painting and make the painting add something different that a photograph could not. I used quick, short brushstrokes to layer the paint and build the tones and texture. Again to overcome the scale issues, my technique was to focus on a section of the piece and get the level of detail to a standard I was happy with before moving on to the rest of the painting, this way I wouldn’t lose any of the detail, which was my main aim for this piece.

After producing a still life drawing of objects I found in my room -a nail polish bottle, perfume and a packet of tic tacs-, I was instructed to use one of those objects in a painting. I explored different artists, looking for inspiration of how I could incorporate one of those objects in my painting. I first considered Michael Craig Martin’s artwork, whose paintings depicted clusters of everyday objects. Martin tended to enlarge some of his objects to unnatural proportions, for example a light bulb was the same size as a ladder, in one of his paintings. I found that this theme of unnatural proportionality and scale was echoed in Magritte’s Surrealist painting ‘Personal Values’ where he presented a room filled with familiar things, but he gave abnormal proportions to these objects, making the viewer disorientated.

Deciding to stick to Surrealism, I came up with the idea of a nail polish bottle tipped over; where the nail polish spilling out of it gradually transitioned into the sea, where a sunset was taking place. Next to the sea, the nail polish container looked abnormally huge and even though everything looked realistic, it was set in a universe where absolutely anything could happen. The colours of the painting were kept naturalistic, in order to emphasise the ‘realness’ of the scene in the painting, which contrasted to the absurdity of what was actually happening in it.

We were given the task of creating a passport, it didn’t have to be something like an actual passport but something that represented us and our journey’s throughout our life. I wanted to incorporate my family and my upbringing. Showing a representation of how my history and journey to now has made me the person who I am today.

I started by creating a booklet using colours from both my flags on my dads side and my mums I then used acetate between each colour as a method of combining both parts of me. I then added words or drawings to them to tell a story of places I’ve travelled and my life before coming to university. I done quick sketches of landmarks in places I’ve visited, I dedicates a couple of pages to show my experience of moving from London to Winchester sketching the differences between each place. The cover of my passport has a drawing of flowers and crystals which represent my love for nature and but I also done it in a way that reminded me of a traditional passports layout. I tried to keep some of the look of a traditional passport but also showing who I am through the pages.