Scrabbling about Sept-Nov 13

2D Deep Beetroot

Task:

The group generated one random sentence each:

  • Mouse catapult
  • Heavy metal rabbit











  • Old woman and dog fell
  • Massive bear eating beetroot - rabbit love
  • Unicorn ran across the lake
  • Munching teeth
  • Travel to outer space

Then they illustrated their sentence on a series of sheets of paper. The resulting pages each visually represented the sentences, but looked different. Dave then allocated each of us a different sheet and asked us to develop a story incorporating the characters.

Idea development

This is the sheet I was given to work from:


Reading the sentences... Heavy metal + beetroot = Deep Purple.

Listened to some of their tunes: 'Smoke on the water' of course, had no idea they originally did 'Hush' though. Looked them up on Wiki as I don't know much about the band. 

Looking at the images: The bears teeth looked perfect for munching. Want to show them close 












9 October 
annie cattrell

Exploring one element of your story in larger art work.

The theme of my story is excess. I want to look into that rather than the characters themselves. When I think about excess and vomiting, I think of booze :-) which naturally leads me to diseased livers. 

The next exhibition at The Point in Doncaster is called Art + Science= (open 14 October - 20 December 2013) http://www.thepoint.org.uk/the-point/exhibition. Work has been arriving at the gallery this week and I've got hold of a few images sent by the ten artists taking part. My favourite of these is work by Jac Scott who uses microscopic images in some of her work. I have just tried to read her statement of what influences her work, and barely understood a word... Why do some artists make their work so inaccessible through language? Gets my back up!

Anyway, her Alternative Perspectives collection 2013 (description below I do understand...):
"Digital photomontages harnessing the creative potential of the scanning electron microscope at the University of Central Lancashire to create highly magnified images of everyday objects, plants and creatures. The photographs form a foundation layer that is manipulated with the juxtaposing of additional imagery to make social commentary about the way we live and our relationship to the earth."




 Like this idea and is something I could play with. Goggled images of microscopic diseased liver on Google and found a few images:

These are interesting. It's like looking at the clouds moving across the sky - you can see what you want to see in the picture. That is an appealing idea to play with.

I also quite like that images of diseased livers are pretty gross, and that anyone who likes a few drinks could be incubating one of these right now. That all adds up to it being an uncomfortable subject matter. Making something visually pleasing from this could be fun.


3D Metamorphosis

Monday 7 October

Had metamorphosis on the mind today. Am grappling with it a lot. Transformation can mean so many things. From a slow meaningful change brought about by large amounts of effort focused on a specific goal to an involuntary change bought about by some kind of crisis.

A friend suggested I read some Franz Kafta, so I will hunt that down. Wiki gives me a basic plot outline but I'd like to read it this week.

More time tomorrow to do some artist research. But my ideas at this point without any of this input are:
  • Using mirrors so what you see depends on your viewpoint - a way to get across the idea that metamorphosis can sometimes depend on your own views. I could see a tremendous change in someone, but the next person may just see what they saw before. Maybe nothing's changed and I've been fooled, or maybe they just don't see it.
  • Showing actual metamorphosis in one piece inspired by the very moment Diana threw the water at Actaeon and he started to change into a stag. What would have looked like at that very moment?
  • Using a pelvis somehow in the sculpture. To me it is a symbolic gateway to the biggest change ever. Be good to use it in a warped/concealed way.
  • Contrasting detailed fine sculpture with something rough that is made out of found materials.
Sunday 13 October

Developed my ideas this week. Got hold of a copy of Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid. Read through it, and the story that stuck in my mind was the first I read about Tiresias.

Jupiter and Juno are discussing love between a man and a women and disagree about which derives the deeper pleasure from love. Jupiter suggests that Tiresias could settle the argument as he's lived as both a man and a woman. 

The story goes that Tiresias was walking in the woods one day when he came across two serpents copulating. He takes the opportunity to kill them, but does not strike them hard enough, and as punishment finds himself turned into a woman.

He lives as a woman for seven years before returning to the clearing where he finds the snakes at it again... He hits them again in the hope that this will turn him back into a man - and it works.

So Jupiter turns to Tiresias and asks: "In the act of love, who takes the greater pleasure, man or woman?" Tiresias replies: "Woman takes nine-tenths."


 Lets just say Juno doesn't take the news well. She strikes Tiresias and blinds him to the beauty of the world so he opens his inner eye.

Next stop - copulating snakes:




I think the brief is to use traditional and non-traditional stuff for this sculpture. I have always been inspired by reusing/upcycling so looking forward to this.


Looked at Bull's Head sculpture by Picasso. He created this work in 1942. During World War 2, Picasso was living in Nazi occupied Paris. Traditional materials were scarce so he started to work with found objects.turned to found objects to make this sculpture.



Earlier than Picasso, in 1910's Duchamp was creating readymades to challenge traditional views of what art is.



He later did Assisted readymades:









2D Dambusters

Task to create a piece of Dambusters themed art to display at an exhibition at the masonic hall in Workshop.

Want to try and get across the rush the pilots must have felt on the raids and show the scene from their point of view. I can only guess what they must have felt like. Words I think of: adrenalin, hurtling, speed, impact, fear, excitement.

Looked at some imagery and thought about the planes they were flying. In my brain the cockpits are reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon - kind of domed and in sections with rivets.



Decided to go with using the rivets in my first sketch:


Haven't used charcoal to draw for years. Really liked it and using my fingers on the paper. Dave encouraged me to break this down a bit more - more about feelings and less about realistic view. So I had a go...


Liked doing this and picking apart my original drawing. Next step to play about with composition. Try and make it more dynamic so I sketched some other ideas:

 Idea developed. I now prefer the impact to be at the edge of the picture with the foreground being fuzzy to give the feeling of hurtling through the air. The attempt below was drawn landscape, but portrait gives more of a disorientated feeling. which I like.

In my next sketch I'm going to try it out with the dam more curved and think a bit more about whether the blast impact is hidden as it is below. I think offset will be more interesting.



Not done any research into other artists' work on this project. Putting that on my to do list for tomorrow...



8 October 2013

Tried the curved thing, but it didn't work for me. Not fast enough - I want speed. Dave encouraged me to approach the canvas with attitude and use strong deliberate strokes. Couldn't help thinking of Brian in Spaced painting with his huge ...

Anyway - doing this. It looked ok and then I carried on and it all got a bit samey.













Really please with what i did today and enjoyed painting. Liked using charcoal and chalk over paint. The softness of the chalk added to the feeling of speed and adrenalin rush whooshing past the window feel I want to get across.

Showed my friend Guy my work and he gave me some great feedback to effect of : "You're telling me this is a painting of the Dambusters raid, but the foreground could be a road and the black bit shops or houses. Make me feel like I'm in the air' Good man. We talked about flak and machine guns. A good way to add some depth to work and layer on colour.

Looked for a few images that have done this:








Looked at a few artists:

List of artists working during WW2: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/














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