Vis Com Week 1

I'd been looking forward to vis com and I really enjoyed this week. On Monday we had a one day project which was ideas based. We were given a word (mine was skirt) and we had to do as many sketches as we could to communicate all associations with that word. I found it quite hard to come up with any thing other than kilts and mini skirts at first, but then I started to think about things like skirting boards and the idea of skirting around things. Then we had to join up with a parter and put our words together. Me and my partner ended up with skirt and mirror.
They were quite difficult words to combine, but our final idea worked out quite well. We did 'A Day in the Life of a Changing Room'. So we thought about the view point of a changing room mirror and all the different outfits tried on in front of it. Here are some pics..

I wasn't that keen on my final piece on the first day becuase I felt a bit out of my comfort zone with it. But I guess that was what the tutors wanted. I tried to make it look quite cheesy and cheeky, so as to reflect some of the sketches I had done in my sketchbook.

The second project lasted for 2 days and it was based on images. We used found images, prints, sketches and illustrations to communicate a narritive sequence. It was great to collect some found images, I hoard everything so it was quite easy to find things to use. On the brief were some titles we could base our sequences on. I chose 'an unwanted intruder' becuase I felt alot of the subjects in my images contrasted with the landscapes and 'backgrounds' I had. I had elephants (from chang beer bottles) flamingoes, jugglers and unicyclists so I started thinking about the circus and putting it in the context of everyday surroundings. I loved working in the sketchbook over the study day. Here are yet more photos.

Final animation

For my final animation I wanted it to be more abstract. I wanted the viewer to focus more on the layering and the buildup of information on the screen.
I used these photos of the cardboard stucture I'd made on the first week of the rotation.

I was really pleased with this try because I felt I had got the hang of animation a bit more and I was confident in being more adventurous. I wanted to inject elements of the type of areas I'm interested in (like architecture, 3D design and installation) so I tried to incorporate the sense of construction and structures. I've been considering adding sound aswell, I thought the sound of folding and ripping paper or maybe sounds from a building site, hammering, sawing and drilling)

Also, halfway through the film the triangles which I kept on re-introducing started to feel like characters- maybe pac man or little shoals of fish- so at the end I thought I would add a bit of narrative. I'm not sure if this works though, because it feels a bit out of sync with the rest of the film.

Developing animation

I started to really get into animation in the second week of the fine art rotation. I really liked looking at William Kentridge's video's on youtube. It showed me how there are different styles of animation that I had never explored before. I wanted to try out some more animation in Kentridge's style, but the idea of doing something so intricate was very different from my usual style. I normally enjoy sketching quickly because I like drawings to be dynamic and full of energy and I feel that if I spend too long on one sketch it starts to look quite static.
I also wanted to incorporate tracing paper in my animations in some way. On the study day I had done some sketches on tracing paper that I layered up to make a complete 'scene' and I really liked the effect- the layering had left traces of beginning sketches.

That was part one of my first attempt, here is the second bit.

I was quite happy with these first attempts, but I thought it was a bit too long and the sketches were a bit figurative. The tutors helped me think to develop these ideas and suggested incorporating some of the photos I had taken earlier in the week.

I later edited this second attempt by putting garden sounds like birds tweeting and then everyday sounds like buses over the top. I liked it but it was also slightly distracting.

Thursday week 5: Fine art animation

I really enjoyed expermenting with animation and I really didn't expect to try it out during fine art.

Here is my first experiment, which I did by taking pictures of each of my acetate drawings while my camera was on a makeshift tripod i.e. a box. 

Week 5: First part of Fine Art

At the start of this rotation I had some reservations. After exploring 3D/spatial then fashion/textiles for a month I had got into a more design mindset- I was enjoying exploring the connections between form and function and generating quick ideas that come into play in everyday life eg. what we wear, use, store things in or sit on. In sixth from I did do fine art, but it was balanced with elements of structural design. We started with a day of painting and drawing around big multimedia sculptures in different parts of the studio. In the morning I felt slightly frustrated because it felt a bit limiting not being able to use a range of different mediums. However in the afternoon I felt like I was getting to grips with the tasks being set.
I started to use, ink, wax, pen and charcoal in my studies. (Also I'm pretty sure the water pot I used to mix my brushes in had oil or petrol in it- all my inks were changing colours and i was scared it would burn through the paper.

The next day was our study day where we were asked to do loads of different things. First we were told to go out and observe the 'carnival of the streets'. This isn't an actual carnival, we were just meant to sketch and take pictures at a busy junction in our area and record the procession of people and things that passed by us. I went up to Muswell Hill and sat on a bench outside the Odean (I chose muswell hill instead of Crouch End, which is closer to me, because I thought I would get less people giving me shifty looks and asking what I was doing.) I found it really hard to sketch things that passed by, especially cars and buses, but I was quite pleased with the end results which involved alot of tracing paper and photocopies (I'll try to put a pic up at some point).

We then had to go to a more natural place so I walked along to Alexandra Palace and did some drawings and took photos.

There's this guy in my area who paints on bits of chewing gum that have been squashed on the pavement.
I think if you pay him he personalizes your own piece of old gum. Its quite funny to walk around and spot all these bright mini paintings.

Photos

Issey Miyake

Development of my work



Fashion and Textiles

The fashion and textiles rotation was based around the idea of compress and expand. I really enjoyed these two weeks and they changed my perceptions of what studying fashion would be like. I felt the project had lots in common with the 3D and spatial design unit- it was alot more abstract and we could be really experimental with our ideas. I also really liked the way we were led from 2D into 3D. In everybody's work it seemed like there was a clear progression of ideas- shapes were picked out of earlier drawings and played about with.

While we were developing our ideas Michelle told us to think about works like, slice, displace, deface, fold and repeat. I thought initially that I would concentrate more on the textiles side of the project because I enjoy thinking about texture and repetition, but by the 2nd week i found myself thinking about different ways to fit my pieces around the body. My mum showed me some work by Issey Miyake and I liked the way his designs are very geometric, but still fit the curves of the body- alot felt quite fluid.

(i tried to put a picture up of one of Miyake's designs, but it failed)

Looking through my work, I saw alot of examples of things like pinching and folding so I decide to develop this using geometric, pointed shapes.

But I wanted the pieces to hang well on the body so I bent and twisted them to give them an organic feel.

I was really pleased with my outcomes from these two weeks, but if I had more time I would have enlarged the scale and probably used more intesting materials and fabrics.

(I'll try to upload some pics later, my computers getting angry at the moment)

Week 1 and 2: 3D & Spatial design

In group B we started with 3D design which I really enjoyed. At first we concentrated on visually mapping each of our routes to Chelsea using string. It was an intresting way to use the room and it also meant we could find out a bit more about the others in our group. In my group of 6 quite a few of us were from England, but there was a few international students (which made our 'map' seem a bit better)- Yasmin was from Cairo and there was somebody else from South Korea. I liked the way that many of the groups maps started to merge- for example the eurostar ran through a couple of the structures.



I felt like I started to get more involved in the course when we could sketch the way the string criss-crossed through the studio. We then could choose a location to go and sketch some buildings. I chose the soouthbank because I really love buildings like the southbank centre and the hayward gallery behind it. I was thinking last year about going on to study architecture, so starting the foundation with things like this was great. On thursday and friday we started making mall paper models based on ourA1 drawings. My first two I didn't like too much, so I tried to make the models more simple. My favourite was a really simple zig-zag of folded paper.

In the 2nd week we were given the task of designing 3 things for friday's crit. 1) something to support the human body but not a chair 2) a structure to walk through thats not a building and 3) something to containa small object thats not a box. Our ideas were supposed to be built on the idea of modular shapes.
At this point I felt like I was getting used to the idea of starting and finishing a project in 2 weeks and ideas seemed to come quite easily.
Working in the studio was great because you could look around at other peoples work and talk to them about what they were doing. In my A level art class there was only 2 other people so I had forgotten how helpful it is to look at others work and find out more about different peoples ways of working.

(sorry I dont know how to rotate things on this blog)

My final outcomes:

 (I really don't understand why they're rotating themselves)