Month: March 2019

I wanted to embrace the idea of how to apply an image to paper and even though it directly affects my final outcome. So, as I enjoyed printmaking so much in my Side Hustle and Act 3 projects, I wanted to learn more about these techniques. So, I signed up to more workshop inductions. So far, I have done a hardground etching induction, and induction on the flat bed lithography press, and stone Lithography. I also went and further experimenting with letterpress and not just printing text, but printing lino prints and creating my own designs with laser cut acrylic, relief printing, and screen printing. This was important because it helped when deciding how I was going to affectively use colour when creating my storyboard, because when printing as you must do each colour separately, so it makes you consider what is necessary when using colour.

It also helped me understand more about the method of creating an imagine and made me think more about the image being creating and made me more open to using other media than what I am used to. Before this course I considered myself a painter, I hardly used any media apart from watercolour and on occasion other paints such as acrylic and oil. It developed my style and ideas and embraced the idea of this unit. Which is using different methods and practises.

Nüshu was one of the first languages I came across in my research when I was trying to find unusual languages, and I found it incredibly interesting. The history behind it was incredible and amazing. It is a language only for women, created by women for women.

In China for centuries women were banned from learning how to read and write. Women rebelled and decided to create their own language. The took the characters used in Mandarin and Cantonese and made it their own with their own meaning. The letterforms are much slimmer and more delicate. They are extremely beautiful. I decided Nüshu was the language I had to use because I wasn’t just inspired by the beauty of the letterforms but the beautiful history behind it.

One quote I discovered was beautiful and truly inspiring and progressed my project where ideas started to solidify and come together. It was ‘musical notes flying along on the wind’ and was said by Tan Dun, it brought the idea of music and who creates music and that linking to location where my final piece would be situated.

The brief expected us to find an alphabet unfamiliar to us and use this as a basis for creating a 3D piece and locating it either in an urban space, a green space or a personal space.

My first response was to start researching, I wanted to find an alphabet which had an interesting history behind it so I had more to work with and to inspire me. This was more important to me than what the alphabet looked like.

I knew straight away I wanted it to be in a green space. Even though I live in London and come from a city, Brighton. I have always felt at piece in green areas or rural areas. I go travelling whenever I can and always try and go off the beaten track. Because I always more connected to these areas I knew I would be able to gather more inspiration and my work would fit with this area.

At first I thought I wasn’t familiar with 3D and I am not particularly, but I used to do a lot of pottery, but only hand-throwing on a wheel, but I knew that may help with spacial awareness, and I have made a lot of cakes and wedding cakes over the years, I can make flowers in my sleep, but I wanted to avoid them because then I wouldn’t be learning anything, and I didn’t want to try and make research fit what I knew how to make. I have done sugar sculpting during my pastry apprenticeship, and I knew I wouldn’t be a material which would work with the brief, but just knowing I have created even small things in 3D before gave me a bit more confidence that I could create something.

At first, I wanted to avoid using my fears as I felt too difficult so I decided to focus on the song to discover and decide on my narrative. I experimented with the idea of a puppeteer over your life, because with the song Samson I had a constant reminder and feeling about cancer controlling your life and even being in a relationship with someone who has cancer your life disappears. So, I experimented with that idea, that you are controlled by this puppeteer and I used the idea of split frames and using repetition to show the monotonous nature of this.

Eventually I decided not to use it, because the result with too monotonous, and I decided to use my personal experiences to make better work, and I went back to my character design and worked out how much I wanted to use and how to make it in to a concise narrative.

After creating my monster, I had a comment from a fellow student about my character looking like a mermaid and because of my fears and sometimes it can feel like I am drowning, I thought the metaphor of water could be interesting to use. So I started developing my character, and I looked at what I wanted to keep from my monster and what I did not. I used these basic sketches to decide on this. In the end, I decided to keep the darkness and use the other ideas I had to work on the storyboard and the narrative instead of being part of the character.

When working on my storyboard I started with very loose small thumbnail sketches this meant I could work through a lot quickly and it retains the fluidness of the sketches and it avoids my final images becoming stiff. As I scanned them and then worked on the digitally to create the final draft for my storyboard.

I then used my thumbnail sketches to create 5 frame storyboard which also outlined the style and the movement I was going for. I then printed these 5 out and experimented with markers on them. I decided to use markers on my final storyboard, because I could only use dry materials and I normally use paint, so I knew I could still get tonal values with the markers because I could use the colourless blender to pick up colour from the marker and create lighter tones and I could get an affect near watercolours, because I knew that was an affect I wanted because watercolours suit underwater scenes so well. I then broke up the first frame I did into 3 and then I and added two more in-between frames. I then I printed all 9 off at the correct size and transferred them onto my final storyboard using a lightbox. To make sure I didn’t make a mistake I did some warmup exercises so I was relaxed and not worried, and like working with watercolours I built up the layers and tone slowly so I didn’t make a mistake it would be easier to correct.

After the Juke-Box live workshop I originally wanted to use the song – The Swimming Song – as it was an obvious choice for my mermaid character. But I didn’t connect to the song. So I went through the playlist of songs again and the one which stood out was Samson by Regina Spektor. This wasn’t obvious for my character but the emotional side of the song connected with me and my fears. I knew the basic story, as it was a song I had heard before and I knew it was about cancer.

But I researched it further and found pretty much what I knew but more in depth. It was about the singer, Regina Spektor being in a relationship with a man who had cancer. The wonder-bread being the Chemo and the idea of cutting the hair because chemo makes your hair fall out. The cycle of life what cancer gives. You get you chemo, you cut your hair, and you to bed and repeat. And to me reading into lyrics more, it made me feel that idea of being trapped, the world getting smaller around you because of this trauma. But not just his trauma and how cancer changed his life, but how she felt trapped, the guilt and in the end,  she had to leave. And that heavily related to me. I wanted to illustrate the emotions of the song rather than the literal story, and just that single idea and the swirling emotions of being trapped.