Paintings and presentation.

Painting

At first we learned about gridding up photographs, so that we were able to scale them up proportionally to paint. After this I went back to painting on the canvases I made. The majority of my time  I spent working on a painting  of a fly. 

I've also started to work on my presentation, I would have probably started it earlier if I had realised that it was next Friday, but it is a "practise" presentation  and the graded presentation will be next week. 

I'm doing my presentation and probably my essay on if Hitler hated modern art and his exhibition on "degenerate art". I found that writing out drafts of what I'm going to say first and then seeing what I say in twenty seconds (as its in pecha kucha form) and then plan the presentation from there, was the easiest way to do this.

See you next time - Róisín 

Bonus Post

Week 27 - Monday

PDP

So I finally did the presentation that was meant to be done two weeks ago, and since it was two weeks ago, I had completely forgotten everything about it (including its existence until that morning). I still think it went well though, I mostly just explained everything that I put on the screen, but still talking in front of people is still kind of difficult, as when I stand up, I immediately over think everything and become self conscious. Maybe one day I will be completely confident and comfortable in front of people, but I don't think it's happening any time soon. 

Pathways

So for pathways I began doing my initial research into bookmaking, I feel that right now this is where my ideas are quite lacking. I have a few after I looked at the "Rebound", which had some bookmaking examples in it. There was a photo album type book I was thinking of looking at further, I also had an idea of doing a map type book.

I liked some of this artists work that i found whilst researching in the library:

http://lynettewilloughby.com/

Using excell, I also made up a time plan, that I have promised myself that I am going to stick to, before every hand in I am always rushing but I swear I won't let it happen again.

To make sure I'm not rushing, I made the time plan for two weeks in advanced, just in case there are any hiccups along the way.

Look at me, I'm getting better at this blogging thing, I actually remembered to do it hurray!!

Until next time -

Róisín -x

A New Journey

Week 26

Pathways

So this week was our hand in so there was a bit of last minute rush once again to try and make sure everything was annotate and clear. I printed off some fonts to use them for a typography drawing, which was a drawing of a hand holding a pen, which initials written in it in different handwriting. I then made this into a tile to form a pattern so that the image was repeated 60 times as my concept was that there were 57 initials in the hand, to represent the 57 sales a second Bic has of pens every second, this meant that the image repeated 60 time formed a minute.

 I also flipped some of the tiles for a second image to make it more interesting.

After the hand in, we were given a quick introduction to our new brief. Our new brief is to make a book, following the theme of 'Journey'. I came up with an idea for this almost immediately for the theme of journey, which is following the journeys my Grandad made when he immigrated form Ireland to Scotland. I say journeys because I don't want to focus on the physical journey he made, but also the other journeys he made, like learning how to read and write when he made it to Scotland, meeting my Grandma and starting a family, moving from a place where you had to be mostly self sufficient, to an industrial area, and also growing up without his mum, who died when he was three.

Transformation

We did some painting this week on the canvases we made last week, the images were to be more abstract representations to experiment with using different brushes and different canvases.

i did two paintings, one form part of an image of an eye, I experimented with using a pallet knife, which is something I never really used before, and was surprised to find that I quite enjoyed it, as I usually work with more intricate work (not too intricate, but i usually try to make it quite detailed and realistic looking.) I think the reason I enjoyed it so much, was that I found it to be quite textured and expressive. 

The other one that I did was on the textured board, I used greens and yellows and after I found it to look like mould, and so since my theme is decay, I went with it and then painted an orange-brown line based on plasmodium slime mould (mould that rots wood and trees)

For our Friday lesson, we were to do some work on our own on the computer, so I worked on adding colour to my illustration of the car. This now takes ages to save, which is because my image has so many layers, so I think that the next chance I get I will merge some of the layers.

Contextual Studies

We have a presentation coming up in a couple of weeks, so we had a presentation from our lecturer on Pecha Kucha, a Japanese form of presentation, which is what we were recommended to do. This format is 20 slides, that each last 20 seconds, I'm still not 100% confident with presentations, but I am slightly looking forward to getting to use this format which I have never used before.

See you next week - Róisín -x

My Musical Logo

Week 25

On Monday morning I woke up with a headache and was quite dizzy, so I decided to give college a miss, and then if I felt better I could work on some stuff at home. I missed doing the presentations in PDP but I found out later that other people didn't get a chance to do them, so we will be doing them next week.
At home I  did some stuff for the ballpoint pen, since that was the other class I missed that day.

Pathways Project

For my textile idea, I was thinking of making a book that illustrated the story of the ballpoint pen, starting with Biro being inspired by newspaper ink and then continuing on to the creator of Bic.
I also used pens to create some contemporary art pieces. I used the outside of the pen and broke it into pieces by wrapping some in a towel and smashing them with a hammer, I then drew out a portrait of Laszlo Biro, which highlighted the shadows, and glued in the pieces into the places where the shadows were. PVA glue wasn't strong enough to hold the pen pieces onto the sketchbook paper, so I had to use contact adhesive.
I also had worked on a digital version of the portrait of Biro, which accented the shadows, I then added colour to this version. Using the skills I had learnt from my Friday class in Photoshop, I duplicated the image onto two layers, and then changed the mode of the top layer to get different effects.

Transformation

On Tuesday we learnt different ways to make canvases. We were taught how to make traditional canvases from scratch and were given the opportunity to make them for ourselves. We were also given use of different ways to prime the canvas, using: gesso, size, canvas primer, glue and glue with sand and sugar for texture. I used some wooden boards and stretched canvas over them and used different primers. I also had two boards with more texture, so I used gesso on one, and glue to let some of the colour shine through on the other. On another wooden board I had I put sugar and sand on for some texture and covered this in glue to prime it.
For our Friday lesson we were doing more stuff with illustrator. In this we were learning how to make different shapes using the shape and shape builder tools and how to align them on the screen. We started off by making a magnifying glass, we first made the guides visible so that they crossed over in the middle. We then used this cross to make two circles for the brim. Using the rounded rectangle tool, we drew in the handle and joined all these shapes using the shape builder tool, so that they formed one shape. By over lapping two circle, so a crescent moon shape was made and then holding the alt key and using the shape builder tool, so that it is on erase rather than merge, erasing the circles so that the moon shape was left. This was to be where the light was hitting the magnifying glass to make it look more realistic. We were then taught how to make patterns using this image.

For the pattern I drew some hexagons and used the shape builder tool so that they formed one shape.

We were then left to make our own logo using the skills we had just been taught.

I made the music note and then made a pattern using it, I made it into the shape of a music stave and used the shape builder tool so that it formed one shape. I then built up multiple music notes and made some of them overlap by changing what order they appeared on the screen. I then made a pattern using these and used the same process as the magnifying glass, only I changed the border to make it more interesting.

Contextual Studies

This week we got feedback for our critical review. In my review I was not critical enough and wrote more like I should in an essay rather than in a critical review. I was also spoke too much of my opinions for a critical review. I wasn't really surprised by my feedback, and was just glad I passed. I feel more confident about writing my essay, as in this I will be able to express my opinions more.

See you next week Róisín -x

Egon Schiele Illustrated

Week 24

Pathways  

I did some annotation for some of the artists that I had in my sketchbook. When it comes to annotation, I'm usually terrible at  it, and so, I always leave it to the last minute, which usually makes it worse. However as the year has progressed, I feel that my annotation is getting better, and I am not leaving it to the last minute as much. 

I was thinking of using post-it notes in some way for this project, so I wrote out some examples and filled an entire page with them. I also thought of doing some drawings on post-it notes and started a portrait of Laszlo Biro.

Transformation  

This week we used the calligraphs we made form last week to make prints. I used the one that I made with the leave, but after multiple prints it started to disintegrate slightly because I had to keep on washing it.

We were also introduced to illustrator this week, and we were to  use a self portrait of Egon Schiele, and then using the rectangle tool, make the shapes of the portrait and change their colour.

PDP  

We went over the time plans we made over the last week and discussed materials and their cost. We then had a presentation about analysis of information, and then we had to make our own presentation. Our presentation was for us to analyse a photograph taken of the college in three different methods.

See you next week-
Róisín -x