This week I have found it difficult to have much motivation because I am used to exploring subject matter like people and figures and I have been working on the more gestural side. I do enjoy exploring how an artwork can be impacted by the use of materials and so I feel as though I need to focus more on that while also staying within the guidelines of the brief. Because of this, I have decided to focus on one verb from the inspiration of my sketches and explore how material, colour, and size differences can affect it visually.
I have also decided to do some artist model research which I will hopefully be able to complete this afternoon and next week following.
I managed to choose one painting that I had made this week to work further on and that is my scratch painting. I chose to focus more on my scratch painting because I find it interesting how the image can be impacted by erasing paint as opposed to deliberately painting it so that it looks the same. I enjoy the technique of scratching and exploring how I can achieve it in different ways.
My scratch painting was inspired by the rocks from one of my sketches about Dantes Inferno. I was interested in the formation/gridding of the rocks and also the stark contrast of colour through the light and shadow. I thought that the cracks and lines throughout the rocks would look very interesting if I were to recreate them by scratching them in those lines.
This work was my most successful work of the week so I decided to continue extending my ideas off of it.
In one of my works I zoomed in on an aspect of the scratches and made the lines really big and gestural. In another of my works, I did purely the grid work that the rock formation made. In another of my works, I didn’t do the scratching but rather did some finger painting in the grid sequence of the rocks and then went over in a white fine line pen to show the contrast between erasing and adding. My final artwork of the day was on an A3 piece of paper using a big stick to scratch out the lines. I wanted to explore my artmaking on a wider scale as a whole aka, bigger paper, more paint, bigger art tool. This exploration today gave me a lot more motivation for my work than the previous two days of work.
I am annoyed because I forgot to photograph my work but I will photograph and update once I take a photo on Monday next week when I come in. 🙂
The brief for this week is to combine the drawing and painting exercises. We do this by choosing sketches that we would like to expand on and exploring how we can recreate the visual aspects of the sketches by using our verb techniques.
This morning I started off with removing the sketches from my work that I didn’t resonate with. I did have trouble removing many of my works because I really liked them but the point of this exercise was to stem exploration off of just a few works.
I started off attempting many different verbs such as dropping, dripping, scraping, etc. But I found it difficult to extend my exploration past that point because I had still had too many sketches. So for the remainder of the lesson, I forced myself to take down more sketches for preparation for tomorrow.
One of my favorite activities that I attempted was pouring paint onto my fabric. I enjoyed doing this because there isn’t an assured outcome. The outcome that I was hoping for which is that the fabric pools the paint in the same way that the fabric sits, meaning that it will look like fabric when dried. This was the outcome for some of my work which was exciting but it also produced some random works as well. But that’s the exciting thing about experimentation!
Today I went over my sketches and with some comments from *insert teacher name* I decided to spend this class time taking down some of my sketches and trying out more mediums. Moving past paper and charcoal was kind of saddening because I was really interested in how you can use charcoal.
My movement away from charcoal allowed me to explore the colours that were in the artworks. Through using pastels, pens, and coloured pencils I loosely drew the shapes and forms in the images. This took me away from particular forms in the images and allowed for a broader exploration of the colours in each image and the shapes they drew without detail.
Today we brought in some images to draw from. We were instructed to bring; one photo with people in it, one photo without people, one image that was taken before the 1900s, a snapshot from a film, a piece of trash, and some material with a print on them. Using each of the photos for reference we had to complete five different drawings based on each individual image. The drawings could be very experimental, they could be a drawing of the image from memory, drawing without lifting your pen, replicating shapes, etc.
I had a lot of fun with this exercise today because it helped me to explore the impact that small facets can have when isolated from an image. I enjoy exploring the visual elements of an image or an artwork and breaking it down to general shapes, colours, etc.
I managed to complete 5/6 of the image tasks today and I felt quite happy with the outcome. Although the visual appeal of the sketches aren’t the most important, I quite like the aesthetic of form drawings. The description of forms is very telling of the moods in artworks. I especially enjoyed sketching aspects of Dantes Inferno, which was my image that was taken before the 1900’s.
Wednesday
Today we continued with our sketches from our images. I was able to complete the last image that I had on the list as well as some additional sketches that I decided to put a little more time into. It was fairly uneventful today and so I began looking at my sketches and assessing which ones I could continue to explore. One sketch that I was especially interested in was the human forms that I sketched for Dantes Inferno. I naturally enjoy exploring anatomical correctness in bodies but I haven’t quite approached the idea of emotion communicated through bodylanguage in my art. In Dantes Inferno there is a lot of anguish shown in each of the figures – this is evidently because it is a hellscape. Because the figures are so small, the anguish had to be communicated through their bodylanguage. And so, I sketched a few of the bodies I could see and took a further experimentation to attempt to draw the figures from memory. I was specifically focusing on their backs because strength/power is often communicated through posutre and their postures were writhing.
I know that we’re not technically supposed to think this much into the image but it is something hat interests me :).
Last night I looked for some material to play with for class today but I didn’t manage to find any apart from some leftover calico :(. This morning, however, I ventured up to the textiles lab with Emily and Jesse and we looked around for some fabric in the scraps bin. We did manage to find lots of different fabrics including some more calico, some fabric stuffing, and also a piece of thin silk. Walking back into the class we also came across a pile of scrap fabric on the table free for use so I managed to find some textured material as well!.
I must admit that for the first half of the week I wasn’t very motivated in my painting exploration but I think something clicked for me this morning and I have become very excited about what I can learn through this exploration.
My first attempt was the splattering technique which I did on calico. I wanted to explore this technique on more of a large scale because I felt as though it would have more of a visual impact – which it did. I then on the same piece of calico started my first attempt to ‘mold’ the paint. I managed to do this by using the old tester pots of paint that my parents had given me. In nearly all of them there were some pieces of dried paint that I could peel off of the lid of underneath the paint inside it and the sheer amount that I managed to retrieve made for a really awesome look. I would love to attempt this but on a much larger scale than I did today but it would be much too expensive to do currently, maybe I could explore different ways of achieving the same look?
An idea that I have just had while writing up this blog is to go to the print lab and ask if there are any dried-out oil pots that are no longer in use… It could make for a real interesting stamp or a bigger version of my paint mold.
I also attempted to pour watered-down paint onto the piece of silk and see what it was able to seep through the fabric. I also attempted this using my stuffing fabric from the textiles department with the same pouring technique but it didn’t really work because the water basically poured through. The first attempt with the silk however actually came out quite well! the paint looked a bit like a big leaf which I did not expect.
Another technique I attempted to extend from just a piece of paper is the scraping exercise. On paper, scraping can make for an awesome textured background as well as an artwork in itself, but I wanted to see what would happen if I were to use this technique on a patterned material. A piece of material that I found on the table was perfect for this exploration. It had sewn into it, a big floral pattern that allowed for a very textured piece of material. When scraping paint onto the material using a ruler, I found that the paint captured the pattern in the material in a really interesting way. In some areas, the scraping would have the same visual look as it did on a piece of paper, but in other areas, the paint managed to fill in the gaps where the fabric hadn’t been sewn. This exposed the pattern in an inverted way that looked almost like an illusion?. The stitching was white – the same colour as the fabric and so in a glance you couldn’t see it, what you could see was the consistent stroke of the ruler with paint on it except there was a pattern as well!.
Today was a very successful day and it has me excited for next week when I can continue to explore the use of my body in making art. I really enjoy experimenting with different materials and I think that with more experimentation like this, I could start to create a wide variety of works that I could use for inspiration in any artwork I make from then.
This week we started our new painting brief. This week aims to explore different ways to paint using paintbrushes and other resources that can be used to transfer paint onto a surface. Our applications are directed by the use of verbs – doing words. Using verbs to guide us through our exploration of painting techniques allows us to naturally employ our bodies as a whole – not only our hands and arms.
Yesterday I attempted to go through the list of verbs given to us in our brief on a small scale. This made for one A2 being filled with lots of different painting techniques, it wasn’t exactly an appealing artwork per se but we were instructed not to worry about how the artwork but to explore the art-making itself.
Today I have attempted my list of verbs on a bigger scale. I have attempted rolling, throwing, splattering and it has been quite fun! Tomorrow I would like to bring in some different materials into class and see how the techniques have different visual impacts. Example – Dripping, how would the dripping technique look in terms of pigment/absorption/force, etc.
I am becoming increasingly excited about this portion of the brief because it has allowed me to extend my understanding of the practices of art-making. It has also made me consider how utilising and exploring different methods to paint and materials can impact an artwork visually from a painter’s and a viewer’s perspective. I am excited to see how tomorrow goes for me, I am really keen to throw myself into the assignment and see where it can get me!.
This week has surrounded refining our ideas and collecting the materials for our final exhibition!. Yesterday (Wednesday) we trialed our idea for the snap game and although it was fun and very entertaining, we found that the rules of when and where to add paint would be more of an inconvenience than enjoyment and so we have effectively ruled it out.
Practise Run Snap!
On Monday we began setting up for our exhibition. Together, Jesse and I managed to put up the calico fabric and stick the pins into the fabric in three circles. We thought about putting some pins on the bottom of the sheet but we wanted to maintain the splash effect that happens when the paint is able to flow down the fabric. We also allowed for a splash zone which we followed up with taping and pinning pieces of paper on the walls and floor to protect the studio. We spent the rest of the day making sure that we were up to date with our blogs and our bookwork. It was a quiet day as we had planned so extensively that towards the end of our work we didn’t have much to do.
Today we set up our knucklebone exhibition and tested it out again just in case the carbon paper we used was worn and had little pigment left. We found that it worked quite successfully and so we were ready for the presentation!
Sadly I couldn’t attend the exhibition as I had my minor during it however, I was allowed to throw the first balloon and also play a game of knucklebones which was awesome :). When I came back after my class I discovered that the exhibition had been a huge success! The paint balloon exhibit was covered in paint and it had so many textures and colors that mixed together really nicely. The knucklebone game was a constellation of blue dots which looked really pretty.
To conclude with this brief, I am really happy with how Abbey, Jesse, and I went and I think that it was an awesome exploration into the different objects and mediums you can use to create art. I am impressed with how well we all worked collaboratively and split the jobs in our plans. The brief overall was an awesome educational experience which I believed opened our creative minds to explore the limitless potential of art-making. I definitely would never have attempted to create art in this type of practice and I am excited to see where these possibilities can take me with my personal art as well as my university art.
Before…After!Look at all those Colours!A River of Green A Knucklebone Constellation
Yesterday (Wednesday) we continued to develop our plans for our art machinery and we came to a bit of a halt on our brainstorming. After attempting to refine our plans for the catapult, we found ourselves gaining a loss of motivation. This called for a look back at our brainstorm map to see what other ideas we could combine with our current one to further extend our machine.
Our ideas came together quite quickly with the help of Ziggy. Our new and improved plan is to create a series of games for people to play together which results in a series of artworks. We are employing the ‘rules’ of classic games such as cards, darts, and knucklebones and implementing artistic practices into the games. The darts game, for example, will instead of a dartboard have multiple water balloons filled with paint pinned onto a big sheet of cloth. By throwing a dart into the paint, the balloon will explode on the fabric and splatter the fabric with a paint pattern.
The knucklebones will require the same basic rules to play but instead of playing them on the ground, we will be playing them on a piece of paper that will have carbon paper underneath so that the impacts of the knucklebones falling onto the paper will create a constellation-like artwork.
By using the cards, we will be playing snap!. The idea of this activity will be to play the game accordingly but every time you win a round of snap, the players have to pour a puddle of paint onto the fabric on which they will play on. This will mean that when the players place the cards on top of the paint when a double comes and the players slap their hands onto the cards, the paint underneath splatters and move with the force.
Through attempting three different art machines, we are able to explore how we can utilize both our bodies and seemingly normal objects to create artworks. This idea reminds me of the example we were shown during our introduction. The example we were shown was of Tim Knowles’ Tree drawing 2014. The wind the influences the tree to move the pens and make marks can also be the rules in our games that inform people of what to do. The participants in our games are like the trees where they do what the rules/wind tells them to do.
Today, Jesse and I attended the ‘A Brush is a Brush’ class that Amanda ran. It was fun exploring the different types of ways you could create a paintbrush. The explorative element of this class inspired us to alter our plans for the dartboard to allow for the water balloons to become the paintbrush. Instead of using darts to pop the balloons, we came up with the idea to stick pins through the fabric so that if we were to throw the balloons instead of the darts, the paint splatter will vary more with different usage of force on impact. This, alongside the fact that it would also be better for health and safety, seemed like a really fun and exciting activity. Not only would it extend the use of the water balloons, but it would also be an interesting experience as every balloon would pop in a different manner.
After improving our idea, we began to fill the water balloons with paint and water. Our first few attempts had about a 10% success rate, with one of the balloons popping onto my face. Through this experimentation on filling the balloons with watered-down paint, Jesse managed to come up with the idea to pour water and paint into a water bottle. Doing this would allow the water balloons to fit over the cap of the bottle, which is a huge improvement to the balloons forever breaking on the water tap. Through using this idea we were able to quickly make our paint balloons to be ready for experimentation.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we began experimenting on our paint balloon and knucklebone ideas. To begin our experimentation we pinned up a piece of calico onto the studio wall and stuck pins through it so that the balloons could pop on impact with the pins. This idea was successful once we managed to hit the pins. We hadn’t considered how many pins and how large the target shot should be so it proved a challenge to throw the balloons in the right area. Through much trial and error, we managed to hit the target with our balloons and the outcome was awesome! Throwing the balloons was really fun and I am happy with the outcome. I am excited to be able to do it on a much larger scale when we present our project in a week’s time.
Through our experimentation we found that a) we need to make sure that the targets are large enough for people to hit, b) we need a large cloth in order to catch all of the paint, and c) we need to make sure that we protect the walls and floors when we present our machines as it did get quite messy.
Balloon Paint Explosion Knucklebone Experimentation Paint Balloon Target Practise A Brush is a Brush – Stick Rag Paint Brush A Brush is a B
Today was the first day of semester 2 core studio and the beginning of our two-week brief – Art Machine. This morning’s first hour was the introduction of this brief which presented lots of different artist models and possible inspiration for ideas to make a machine that creates art. I am very excited about this brief because not only is it very creative but it is also a collaborative brief! Getting into groups of 3-5 I sorted myself into a group of three with Jesse and Abbey.
Once the introduction was finished we brainstormed different ideas and inspirations. To make it easier to construct a plan, we focused first on what type of art we wanted to explore and what types of skills we had as a group. Through doing this, we found that all three of us enjoyed working with paint and liked doing things hands-on. This called for a project (or beginning of a project) that allowed the use of our bodies and paint. We came up with a few ideas such as painting a deck of cards and playing a game like spoons or scum. Another idea was to pour paint on the top of drums and play them with a piece of paper underneath us. We also had the idea to use a speaker and allow the vibrations of the bass to move objects like sand around on a piece of paper and see what patterns the vibrations make.
All of these were really cool ideas that if we have time to pursue we will! but for now, we are working with an idea that we collaboratively made :). We plan to retrieve a long piece of material and stick pins through it so that the sharp ends come out the other side. We are planning on hanging the fabric on a wall and throwing water balloons filled with paint onto the fabric so that when the pins pierce the balloons, they pop and create a splash of colour onto the fabric. If possible, we would like to create an electric catapult that spins around, picks up the balloons, and throws them. We think that the best way to learn how to make one is through James’ tutorial on repurposing home technologies.
Today we have already successfully retrieved all of the materials we will need to make the plan work – except for the catapult which will be implemented into our project once we have completed our research.
I am very much excited to see where our ideas take us and whether we will successfully achieve what we are visualizing. If possible, I would love to explore our other ideas to see what avenues they could take us down. I am looking forward to these next couple of weeks :).
Coming into class this morning, I had the intention of only having my landscape photo in my exhibition. Upon conversation with Dieneke she believed that I would need an addition to this piece to make my work more successful. During this conversation she mentioned Gavin Hipkins “The Homely II” and his presentation of photographs. This was an exhibition that I had already approached and previously considered using for my final work. I however hadn’t remembered that I had this option and I am glad the Dieneke suggested I do a work similar.
After the conversation I set off to work collecting and going through photos I had taken to build up a selection of photos to use in my final work. I managed to choose around 30-40 photographs that I liked and that I felt showed the work and exploration I had put in. Deciding where to exhibit these works proved as a problem however. I had decided that I should challenge the strong horizontal line running through my landscape through attatching the photos togetehr vertically.
I had considered sticking my landscape on a wall as opposed to the window to see the different impacts. However, I felt as though the window complemented my work. Over the past few weeks I had been using the concrete beam beside the window to glue-tack my works to and I found that if I were to use my Hipkins inspired piece, it would accentuate my exploration of architecture very well!.
I am really excited by this presentation because I feel as though the placement of my work is really well thought out and adds character to my images. I decided to add my shoes that I had worn on majority of my walks to figuratively and literally put people in my shoes. It also allows the audience to have a natural hierarchy in the way they see my work. The shoes are heavy and eyecatching, but the way they point towards the photos/intertwine with the photos allows for a natural move away from them and towards the photographs. The vertical alignment which is assisted by the vertical beam brings your eyes up and around to the final landscape photo I have made. I want people to see my experience walking through the city and the placement of them allows people to have that same sense of exploration. Through using these photos, I have walked people through my experience of Auckland. The individual photos express my sense of curiosity and expose my findings. The Landscape can be considered as a conclusion to this exploration.
I allowed my Hipkins inspired work to haphazardly fold on the ground to draw on peoples curiosity. Similarly with the landscape, this allows the audience to question, what photos has the artist taken that I cant see? What beautiful parts of Auckland haven’t been discovered?
