Personal Interests >> Artistic Concerns

This is a mind map that links some of the things that I love in everyday life to my artistic concerns and interests through my love for new things and things which are weird/ wonderful (as well as clever). I could have expanded it more to include my music tastes etc. but I wanted to keep it simple/ understandable.

Doing this was useful to me because it allowed me to draw links between my practice and other interests (which I didn't do enough of in the last map). It also helped me to visualise these connections better.

I'm not sure how I got there but one of the bubbles says - 'clever, colourful, complex or just weird - organised matched mess'. This probably doesn't make any sense to anyone else but it sums me up well.

I am going to use this map as the stimulus for my illustrated self. I think that some of the slightly nonsensical ideas that have come out of it are interesting and sum me up as a person well. I think that these would be really interesting things to explore visually. Using collage could be an interesting means for doing this (and drawing?).

A Word Map of Myself

I think that I made my map quite broad, and covered lots of areas but I wasn't making connections between them when there were lots of connections to be made. However, it was also clear that there is no one direct point of view or interest (i.e. music etc.) that inspires my work but more just lots of different small things that have an effect on it.  

One thing that a lot of arrows lead to were cool people that I have met and the different conversations that I have had with people from all different walks of life (as well as the different places I have lived/ been). These have always been important to me and have inspired me. Even though it's how my best work gets done, I do really really struggle to spend a day alone working - this is an important factor to consider when thinking about which path of illustration to follow next year. I do not want a lonely studio job. This is probably because I've been boring since I was 13 so I am used to constantly living with and being surrounded by people. 

It also showed my lack of engagement with the world of illustration outside of the course (bar the odd zine that I have collected). I'm always going to painting and sculpture exhibitions and following the work of my favourite artists (which definitely massively feeds into my practice). But I need to start engaging more with my specialism - following illustrators/ going to print fairs etc. (I literally only know about 5 illustrators). Even just looking at the work of George Douglas for my Persons of Note brief made worlds of difference to my own outcomes. 

Having looked back over my map I did make a connection between my love for travel and my love for unusual pieces of fine art/ surreal collages. This probably sums up my personality better than anything. The reason I like travelling and meeting different people is because I love discovering new weird and wonderful things. I am obsessed with going to new unknown places and doing new activities. When I was travelling, my friends would want to sunbathe and go out but I would be constantly looking up the craziest, strangest local traditions and dragging them along to them. This is the same with collecting things (I love weird objects), my room is filled with tones of colourful, decorated mismatched objects/ strange gremlins etc. I love organised clutter. This love for the new/ unusual probably explains my love for unusual/ clever pieces of fine art and surreal collages (and research). 

-- This relates to the fact that I have zero interest in politics/ celebrity/ social media just because its everywhere/ I don't find it new or interesting. However, I do feel like this is really bad as an illustration student because I need an awareness of what is going on/ to share my own work, plus it's what everyone is always talking about. I do definitely find myself constantly trying to make myself interested in this  and I'm always making myself read the news and build up my social media.

My Strengths and Struggles

As a Student
Strengths:

• I think that overall I have been really good at keeping on top of my work this year. I have met all of my deadlines and completed work to a standard that I am happy with. I have definitely surprised myself with what I have achieved.

• I think that generally my attendance has also been good this year. I have always made an effort to attend all the mandatory sessions, no matter how terrible I'm feeling and I am generally quite committed.

• I think that my diet is generally really good. I always make an effort to eat three healthy meals a day. It is something that I didn't do last year and I was constantly ill - I definitely learned from this. 

• Getting up in the morning and getting on with work is also something I'm really good at. During the week I always make sure I get up on time even if I've been out the night before.

Struggles:

• Exercise is something which I have literally totally stopped doing because I don't want to pay for gym membership. I really want to start running again next year when I finally live near a park.

• I need to start doing more work during the week. I spend too much time at the weekend cramming in my work before Monday crits. I need this time to unwind/ reflect. 

• I would also love to try to bring more creativity into my life outside of college work. I think that at the moment I am keeping work and life too separate. I would like to start doing more drawing outside of the course and spending more time with creative friends going to galleries, fairs etc. At the moment I spend all of my time when I am not working hanging out with friends outside the art school and going out. Even though its fun I do wonder how much it is benefiting me. I think that maybe I need to cut back on this a bit in second year. 

• I also think that I need to start making more time for me to relax. I am constantly either working or out doing things. I think that time alone is really important and I definitely don't have enough of it.

• Outside of mandatory sessions I also don't spend enough time in the studio because I do all my work at home. This is because I find it really distracting having people working around me. I need absolute silence so that I can get in the zone and be with my work. I think that working at home is fine but I just need to make the effort to spend at least a couple of hours a week working in the studio so that I can see what others are doing and get feedback on what I'm doing. I think that this creative environment is really important and It's a shame that I distance myself from it. 

• I have a tendency to live in the extremes and I definitely need to try to bring more consistency into my life. I will either be super on it - write a checklist before I go to bed on how I am going to fill every hour of the day, I will get everything done, eat three healthy meals and my room will be immaculate or I'll be totally the opposite. My room will be a pig stye, I'll eat crap and I won't get anything done. I think that maybe if I make more of an effort not to slack off I won't feel the need to suddenly get like this.

In My Practice:
Strengths:

• Origionally, I was much more of a drafts person and I struggled massively with making my drawings into something much more refined and final. However, this has really turned around this year and I have become much more of an image maker. This has turned from being one of my biggest weaknesses to a strength.

• I am also really happy with the huge variety of media that I have experimented with this year and I have not restricted my self to a single one that I feel comfortable using. In cop I used image photoshop and mono print, persons of note: collage and drawing, book: thinners and ink, book cover: paper cut and photoshop, gifs: gouache and plasticine, sticker: illustrator etc.

• I think that my ability to research is also one of my major strengths and all of my concepts have had very strong roots in research. I was originally concerned by the fact that I struggle to invent and work from my imagination but I definitely think that I have filled this void well by making my work more research based.

• I am generally really pleased with how my blog writing has progressed and how this is affecting my practice. I have become much more self critical and self questioning. Blogging has become something thats fuels and works alongside my creative work as a posed to something I complete retrospectively to meet a criteria (what it was originally).

• My general drafting/ sketching skills have developed massively this year just because I've been doing so much of it. I really want to keep them strong by doing lots of drawing over summer. 

Struggles:

• I don't think that I invest enough time into drafting and this is definitely my greatest weakness. Because my work has been quite research driven, once I have done this and arrived at my concept I will realise it quite quickly visually, totally missing out the middle drafting stage. This is definitely something I need to work on.

• I also think that I get too obsessed with fixing small details (particularly when crafting a final image) and I sometimes forget to consider the whole picture. I need to try to step back more and stop being such a perfectionist.

• I think that sometimes I'm too hard on myself. I never like my own work and I am too good at picking out small insignificant details. I need to top picking it apart and start celebrating it. I think that something that would help me with this is if I started to share it so that it becomes something less personal. I would like to maybe start an art instagram in second year. 

• I think that on my blog I have got too stuck following a point system. It is really helpful because it encourages me to be more reflective (instead of descriptive) but now that I know what I'm writing I would like to start being more fluent. It also encourages me to pick out small details too much rather than seeing the whole picture. 

• I am quite a slow worker and I do spend a lot more time on things than other people do - it literally makes me forever to fill a sketchbook. I am not sure if this is because I spend quite a lot of time thinking (about concepts etc.) or because I am too precious when drafting. This is something I really need to work on. 

____ I feel like I have done lots of experimentation this year and every one of my outcomes has been very different with no set aesthetic. What I have done though is develop a way of working and processing briefs. Next year I would like to keeping pushing this way of working and interest in research and as a result hopefully generate more of a personal aesthetic.

Exhibition: The Elemental Sculpture Park, Cirencester (also study task 5)

This was definitely not your average sculpture park. The sculptures were dotted around a piece of wild land, not just amongst lakes and flowers but also dead trees, overgrown grass, small houses and plies of rocks. At first I was shocked by this and the fact that some of the sculptures were presented on top of badly piled breeze blocks. But after a while I actually got used to it as I began to see how it matched the spirit of the show. The show felt very light hearted and could be appreciated by almost anyone (important for a show visited mostly by locals) - not like your average serious prim and pristine sculpture park. The interplay between the sculptures and their surroundings was also really interesting and I liked that it was unclear what was and wasn't in the exhibition. This also worked well because all of the sculptures were for sale. Presenting them in this way showed the viewer how thy might be able to integrate them into their own garden.

My favourite thing was a series of maybe 70 odd sculptures constructed from old machinery, which were dotted about the land and the exhibition. They weren't part of the show and always live on the land. I loved the way in which they engaged with the land, as if they were a community of people living there, each doing a different activity. This creating of fictional characters and taking them out of constructed worlds/ seeing how they interact with the world around us is something which really interests me. I love its simple cleverness and I really admire illustrators like Jean Julien and Christoph Niemann who also do this in their work. I also think that the way in which the artist is able to create such a strong sense of character simply through the use of old machinery is what makes it so good. This is something that I have been starting to do within my own practice and would like to continue to explore. (my mountain man, my man in my 3D illustration, the men on the plant in editorial etc.)

However, there were a couple of sculptures that I was really unsure about, which looked to be quite conceptual. I think that presenting these amongst the other either comical pieces /bold sculptural forms was a little strange, especially within a space where it is unclear what is and isn't a part of the exhibition. They weren't really sculptures that would attract the same audience as the other garden sculptures and 90% of visitors would have walked straight past them. They would have been better off being exhibited in a gallery setting.

Exhibition Critique: Howard Hodgkin: Study Task 5

Exhibition Curation

I think that generally the exhibition was curated well there was an interesting mix of work from throughout Hodgkin's life, presented nicely in chronological order. It showed an interesting transition the figurative to pure abstraction and it was clear that the works in each room had been carefully considered. I liked that in the first room there were some of his figure sketches from art school. It was interesting to see how the themes from these related to his more developed practice (memory etc.). The panels next to the works were also informative and helpful. I was amazed by the amount of depth they went into, including quotes related to the specific pieces. There was also an artist book on one of the benches, which was useful in providing more information and putting the exhibition work in retrospect with his whole life.

However, I did feel that the panels next to the work where very repetitive as each re-outlined the same themes which ran through all of his work. They were too fluffy and didn't get to the point. It would have worked better to have a single text in each of the rooms outlining the key themes. I learned a lot but I did feel like the many panes were a bit of an information overload and the work wasn't given the space to speak for itself. I spent more time reading than looking. In the second part of the exhibition there were also a couple of rooms which came off a central one which weren't numbered. This did make it slightly confusing and the order of rooms was unclear unless you checked the dates on the specific pieces. There was also one wall in the exhibition, which was painted a bright mint green. It was clear that this was done for a reason because the placs next to the works were matching in colour. However, it wasn't clear to me why. I found it too garish and it made the works difficult to look at. It also didn't match the vibe of the rest of the exhibition.

The Work


I thought that it was interesting that this exhibition was in the National Portrait gallery, when the majority of the images presented were abstract. However, each was titled with the name of a person and was classified by Hodgkin himself as a 'portrait'. I thought that the focus on memory was also interesting and Hodgkin's ability to paint from pure memory was mind-blowing (particularly in his earlier work). In each image he appeared to have taken a snapshot from reality and distilled it using shape pattern and colour. The level of detail that he'd have to remember to do this is incredible. This is something that I personally admire because I could never do it myself. I have no ability to recall detail and all images in my minds eye are blurred. I think that maybe I need to make an effort to be more observant. I also think that his mushing together of two major influences - pop art and abstract expressionism in his earlier work was interesting and his work definitely showed an awareness of a wider context. This was interesting because these movements are pretty much the antithesis of one another but he just took what he wanted from each.

However, I did find some of his creative concerns quite disinteresting and far out. He has this obsession with the canvas being seen as a literal three dimensional object. He strived to make this clear by creating no illusion of space in his images. This is obvious in his late work where he uses no perspectival lines and he mixes colour on the canvas so that certain ones don't come forward or go back. He also wanted the frame to become a part of the image. He did this by painting in/ painting on a literal frame as a way of containing and protecting the emotion within the image. 'The more elaborate the frame the more evanescent emotion that needed to be protected'. I just felt that he had lots of concerns that didn't quite fit together and and all of which were very abstract and far out. None of them were made clear in the images themselves and I had to do a lot of reading to understand them. They are very far from my own artistic concerns, which is probably why they didn't excite me (is this because the focus isn't on image making?).

Although, I didn't agree with most of his concerns, I did love his earlier work. I thought that the way in which he abstracts an image by flattening the space and his use of pattern to do this was really interesting. It is a really great way of breaking down and distilling an image from life, something that I would like to try to bring more of into my observational drawing.

Interdisciplinary Practice: Study Task 6

Oil painting was something that I did a lot of at school, in foundation end still do in my free time when I am at home. My interest in oil painting is definitely something that has had a huge impact on my practise in many ways. This is on both my concerns and the themes that I am interested in as an illustrator and on the way that I like to make images.

 


In terms of image making, layering lots of thin washes and slowly building up an image/ blocking in tone is something which is really important in oil painting. This is layering definitely something which is apparent in most of the illustrations this year. I like to build up images in loose layers rather that starting in one place and expanding outward. This attributes for the fact that a lot of the images that I make are mixed media because using different media allows for this layering. I.e. thinners, ink, colouring pencils/ resist. Blocking in the lights and darks at the start of making an image is also something which is important in oil painting and is evident in the way that I make images today. One of the reasons that I have used resist so many times this year is because it allows me to do this. However, this love of layering and blocking in tone does mean that I have a tendency to often overcomplicate my images and I have found that recently I have started to digress away from it.

When I came to this course having only done painting before I also became obsessed by what separated painting from illustration and this was actually the focus of my final major project on Foundation. Looking at what the differences between the two are is definitely what formed my understanding of what the term illustration means. This distinction between the two and how it relates to how illustration is valued (in contrast to fine art) is a concern which has remained with me and became the focus of my COP project this year. This questioning of what an illustration can be and why a painting hanging on a wall can't be an illustration is something that I have continued to think about.

With oil painting conceptuality is also quite important and this very concept based approach to image making is something that has also remained with me. I do always spend a lot of time thinking over my concepts and they are often very layered. To me the concept is as important as the aesthetic values of an image.

 

Exhibition @ Leeds Uni

Gallery Notes:

Gyorgy Gordon - 'Self Portrait with Blue Ground' (1974)

 I like this image because I think that the devotion of such a large portion of the canvas to plain blue space is really interesting. It works well to communicate a serene mood by casting a quiet focus onto the man. It is also very daring and I find that I am often drawn to quite surprising or dating images. I definitely want to start thinking more about how I utilise blank space in my own work  - I have a definite tendency to over complicate and fill all available space. Here, what is left blank is almost more powerful than what is filled in. 

Trevor Bell - 'Image of Blues' (1960)

I LOVE the use of colour in this image. I think that the reason that they all work so well together is because they have all been slightly muted with the addition of white. The addition of a soft red and a camo green also helps to balance the many different bolder blues, which jump forward.  I do find that I am generally drawn to slightly muted pastel colours because I love their subtle interplay, which is much more beautiful than with garish ones. This taste definitely isn't something which is apparent in my own work because I am only really just starting to bring colour into it but it is definitely something to consider. I also think that the line quality is really interesting (something not really spoken abut with paint). I like where the edges of the forms go slightly fluffy (dry brush), revealing the colour beneath. 

This image also reminds me why I used to love to paint so much and it makes me miss it. The bold gestural marks, the freedom of the canvas, the slow building up of layers and watching your image evolve and being able to scrape out mistakes without ruining the image. Even though I don't really have the time or space to do big oil paintings, this love is still something which definitely feeds into my practice. - expression etc.

Lucretia - Unknown Artist (17th CE)

The use of such a dramatic light source in this image is really incredible (I like that there is only a single source of light). Doing this is a really interesting way of selecting detail - only the woman and a couple of key elements in the background have been illuminated. The way that the light falls on the different objects also helps to create a real sense of their texture - flesh, wood, silk, hair - giving the image a real tactility. When constructing my own compositions, light source is something that I try to avoid - because I struggle to comprehend how it might fall on imagined objects. Here, I can see just how powerful a component light source can be in a composition and something that I need to stop avoiding. I think that I definitely need to start being more aware of light source when drawing from life - this will really help me to get to grips with it. 

Exhibition Curation

Generally, I really enjoyed the exhibition and I will definitely go back to the Leeds University gallery. I was impressed by the variety of work presented in such a small space. The work went all the way from Renaissance Painting to 20th century painting, so there was something for everyone. It was also well organised in chronological order. However, I did think that there was slightly too many paintings packed into each room, which was slightly overwhelming and made it difficult to focus on just one. Some may fault the exhibition on the fact that there was no variety of media, but I personally find seeing solely painting quite refreshing and it made it cohesive a small exhibition. There were also placs next to each of the works describing their context as well as sketches etc. which were very informative. - I hate when there's no information next to the work  

I definitely thought that this exhibition was very relevant to what we are currently studying in visual language. It was useful to apply the different visual devices that we have learned to pieces of art. It was interesting to see how differently they can be applied to an abstract painting as a posed to a traditional Renaissance one. I also really enjoyed the experience of seeing images in the flesh as a posed to on a computer screen for the first time in a while. I love the immersive, mediative experience of walking around a gallery.