Inspiration of the Week - Frank To

Frank To is a Scottish artist who normally works in painting.

However one of his projects in 2011 was looking at the plague doctors and part of his work was him dressed as a plague docotor heading from Glasgow to Edinburgh to his own exhibition.

This work highlighted a very important part in Scottish and worldwide history and also focuses on one of the most visually interesting and almost scary parts of medieval times.

 The reason that I am looking at this work today is that for y next project I am looking for some sort of purpose of going on site with my work, and I think Frank To's purpose here is very interesting. The plague doctors have almost become a forgotten part of out history even though they played a big part and do have interesting lores surrounding them.

 And so how better to remind the public of them than to go out dressed as a plague doctor.

I think that this is a very innovative way to both increase notoriety for his exhibition, and also highlight the importance of his work and that piece of Scottish history.

NB - all photographs here have been taken from these sites in which the artist is featured:

http://www.franktofineart.com/
http://www.franktofineart.com/index.php?id=17 (Press section)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27215020@N04/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12934050

I do not own any of the pictures on this post. Full credit given to the artist.

See you next time :)
byyyyeeeeeeee
Róisín -x

Internal Ephemeral

So this is an update on the stuff I did for my latest project over the Christmas break as I didn't have much time to blog during this time. 

After talking with one of my lecturers what I decided to do for my final piece was to make a set of swatch cards that are found when choosing colours from DIY Stores. These cards would depict my emotions over the course of 15 days through the colour of the card, and also feature a photograph of me with the colour projected onto my face. 

Photography Test 1

How I was going to project the colours onto my face was through using coloured pieces of acetate and an over head projector that was in the shed. 

This projected the colour well enough onto my face however I would need to make the blocks of colour bigger as in these photographs you can see the adjacent colour in the background. 

However what I discovered that was that the lines that the marker left on the sheet of acetate gave the photographs more texture and interest, rather than it just be one full plain block of colour. 

Photography Test 2

These photographs were done using the same process except this time I made the blocks of colour bigger so they took up more space when projected and I also deliberately made the lines of the marker more visible so that there was more texture in them. 

I also decided to wear a white t-shirt in the photos so that the colour would be reflected better below my neck.

I also tried adding some imagery to the photographs as one of the points I was making in this prject is that it is these emotions that make us who we are, and it makes us human. 

One of the things I tried was adding another layer of acetate on the projection screen with images drawn in black. These were sort of obscured but I still think they had a nice effect.

These ones were done by removing some of the pen ink using hand sanitiser and cotton buds to draw the designs. 

I really like the effect these gave as even though you might not necessarily be able to tell what they are, especially if I cropped the photo to fit on a card, the point and the design is still there, and there is more depth to the photo. 

Making prototypes

So my dad's shed is almost like a cave of wonders where you can can a lot of random and sometimes helpful stuff in there, an example of this is a small glass tank. My idea was to fill this tank with a bit of water and then splash ink in it to create almost the same effect as the acetate, but with a bit more movement.

I think this process worked extremely well as the effect was better than I could have imagined as it also gave the impression of mood more than the acetate did.

Making these prototypes also helped me to iron out any mistakes that I could make in the final steps for instance, I knew what inks would take more and look more intense.

Making the photos in this process also allowed me to colour the card as well to make the colour swatches, which I think adds to the process as it creates a gradient emotion and the exact colours in the photos were used in the card. The more colour I used in the projection, the stronger that emotion and therefore the more colour that would be on the card.

Final photos

So here are a few of the photos that I took to put on the cards.

Although some of them were a bit blurry purely because of how they had to be taken, I still think that they turned out really well, and were what I was hoping them to be. 

Card Examples

So my original plan was to take the photographs and then have the printed onto card almost like they would if they were real colour swatches from  real store, however I decided to go along with the ink idea as I felt that this added more to the project.

The Final 15

I image transferred the photos onto the card that i dyed after I took the photo with the in I used. I do like how these turned out as they are slightly fragile looking and imperfect which I feel also adds to it as they are meant to be a representation of me and to bring home the fact that I am huan and it is these things tat make me human.

So any way that's all I have for you just now. I am planning on doing a lot more Inspiration of the week posts to help me research for my upcoming brief which I have still to write D: so you can look forward to many of those with some updates on my work scattered in between :P

Until then

byyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeee

Róisín -x

Inspriation of the Week - Maya Lin

Maya Lin's work mainly focuses on ideas surrounding the landscape and the environment. I found this artist by looking into artists who look into identity and happened to come across Lin's work.

The reason that I decided to look more into her was because I am thinking about looking into my local environment and thinking about how to interact with it, and also I found her work really interesting. The way she chooses to display her work is the most appealing to me because some of them are quite simplistic to look at, but then reveal something more complicated.

I feel that her work will have more of an influence in terms of display rather than concept however her installations certainly generate a lot of interest in me and will make me think on how to take my work one step further.

NB - all photographs here have been taken from the artists website site:
http://www.mayalin.com/

I do not own any of the pictures on this post.


So this is just a short one as this artist was someone that was interesting to me, although she may not have a direct influence on my final work or concepts I feel that looking at a wide range of artists helps to come up with ideas, not just within concept, but in design, aesthetics and display.

So that's all for now

byyyeeeeee
Róisín -x