Project Four : On Ice

When I heard about this project title, I asked myself what could I do on the subject of on ice?
I'd rather not do something that is actually frozen, to melt away slowly in the studio and be gone. Only to be recorded by photo's and memory.
The one thing came to mind and was my father - a man of many stories and many near death experiences.

It was then I remembered a newspaper article that he had shown me. I'd love to post it on here, I will later but for now, it's glued in my sketchbook.
The articles title is The worst himalayan storm in fifteen years. The photo's on the front shows my father standing proud and him climbing out of the tent that was buried under three metres of snow.
The main reason that I chose this, was is he had died I wouldn't have been here today.

I was sad to find out that my father had no original photo's or even the newspaper document. All that he had was a typed version of his first hand account and a Christmas card from one of the men on the expedition.
So I went and searched on the internet with the name of the expedition 'Jade Venture' and low and behold, a vast amount of information popped up.

I found an interesting and informative journal that had plenty of photo's by Luke Hughes (one of the members on the expedition)
Journal

The expedition consisted of 18 people (8 were soldiers, 1 being my father). They left England on the 8th of September 1987 and were Due to be back 9th November. On the 19th September they walked into Tibet and on the 23rd Spetember, Base camp was established (In the meadow above a lake, beneath the face a Nyanang Ri).
On the 17th October and during the storm my brother was born in Kircaldy Hospital. My father was oblivious to this as he had no contact to the outside world.

After contacting the army mountaineering club secretary (I asked if they possibly had any further information on the Jade Venture and my father) I waited patiently and carried on developing in my sketchbook.

When I heard no reply after two weeks I decided to do my final piece using the black and white photo's in the alpine journal and the newspaper article.
Using an old flannel bed cover, I stitched the torn pieces into the shape of the mountain but large enough so that it would cover the wood board I was using.

I didn't realise just how time consuming hand sewing was. This took me two whole days and if I had more I probably would have added more detail.

 Once I was happy with what I had sewn, I used PVA glue round the sewn edges to stick it to the board.

Once that was done I painted the sky a pale grey and roughly drew my fathers photo on top. I then used a medium that had the texture of putty. I used this in the background, to resemble to snow and more to build of the shape of the drawing.

From there I quickly painted my father in acrylic and then painted Xixabangma (the name of the mountain) at the top. In the photo below I wrote on the blanket - The mountain almost devoured my father but in it's failure I was born.

Once that was done we had my painting put on the wall of the studio and my fathers first hand account papers suck on the blank of wood below.

I like how my final piece turned out but I forgot to add one thing to it and that was a piece of thread and a sewing needle because I liked the expression "Hanging on by a thread".

Project Four : The Place Of Painting

This project was to do with landscapes. So on the first day after our briefing, I headed to the library in the search of landscape artists. I came away with three very different ones.
The first I chose was for her use of texture - I liked her use of thick paint and thought that I would like to have lots of texture in my final painting.

Joan Eardley - some of her paintings and information can be seen on the web links below.
Winter Landscapes
Pastel Drawings
Various Works

There is also a few biography books that you can buy on Amazon.
Books

James Morrison, I like his use of colour and detail. You can almost see the brush strokes that make up each painting.
Some of his paintings and information can be seen on the web links below.
Old Montrose Winter
Various Works

Ken Bushe. I picked this artist for the softness of his paintings and the use of colour.
Further information and his works can be seen on the web link below.
Official Website

After seeing all these artists I set out to find a landscape of my own. Some weekends I travel back to fife to visit family.
On one visit, we ventured down to the coast of Crail and while my mother worked in one of her clients gardens I took some photos of the view from the bottom of the garden.

You can't really see at the bottom, where all the grass ends but there is a fence and after it - a coastal path that leads to the harbour. Sometimes you can see little heads bobbing past and voices carrying off into the distance but today it was quiet. We nipped out of the garden and down to the waterfront to get more photo's as the sun was beginning to set.

It is amazing the colours that the clouds and sun can produce when it's setting.

Looking through past photo's I had taken - I noticed some lovely ones when I was visiting a relative in Bonar Bridge.

I took this photo and like others, for the colour contrast and the reflection of the clouds in the water.

I then moved onto development in my sketchbook - playing around with different mediums I produced different paintings that helped me to come to the conclusion of my final paintings.

Below is acrylic paint and fine liner on torn pieces of masking tape. I liked how the paint would seep into the layers giving this painting a choppy look.

Below is a painting of crail. I used acrylic on top on a coarse medium. It took a lot of paint to get it to soak in making a blurry image but I liked the tonal effect on the rocks.

I then used a combination over two pages. One the left is masking tape - I wanted to see if it would be a good medium for the waves. I liked the look it gave. On the right side is some more coarse medium, I think it was very effective in masking the rocks stand out from the water. I decided from there that I was going to use these materials and the photo to produce my final piece of work.

Below is a rough outline drawing of Crail and some course medium (that I lavishly smothered on). Once dry I painted acrylic on top and then moved on to the next stage.

In the next stage, it's hardly visible but I had put down plenty of masking tape and started to paint the sea. I also painted in the grass and the fence too.

Once that was dry, I used a sponge and did the sky and background landscape,

I only got in finished in the nick of time as it was the last day of the project. Luckily it dried quickly and then it was hung up in the studio for everyone else to see. Again the studio was packed with the other students work. None alike and all so interesting.

I think over Christmas I'll sit down and tweak the painting as I think I need to do more with the grass.

Project Three : Page

The Aim of this project, stated in the brief is to design an innovative outcome inspired by and constructed from pages of a book.

The first day of this project we were told to go out and source some books (Any kinds of books, illustrated or non illustrated.) During the week we had to research and Develop our ideas.
I also went on Pinterest to look for further insperation and went to library for books.
You can check out my boards on the links below -
Page
Paper Sculptures

At home I had a pile of books I was going to get rid of, I picked up Boudica by Manda Scott. I bought the second and the third book out a charity shop and planned to buy the first but as they gathered dust I realised that, that was never going to happen.

So having not read the books, I based my idea from the movie - The Worrier Queen 2003.

I really struggled with this project due to personal reasons. I first just wanted to recreate a scene from the movie but later came to the conclusion after speaking to the tutor that I could approach this concept in multiple ways.

I then focused on the history of Boudicca -As a woman of her time she was lion hearted. Refusing to conform with the Romans she fought against them.

I then came up with a small scale idea of her in a moon lit scene and in her shadow a lion was roaring.

So I began making it.

I wanted to present it inside the book. So I cut out the pages and left an empty box like frame.

Being flimsy, I decided to glue pages together to later cut into strips and build walls, holding the book together and re-enforcing its structure.

This was both time consuming but also effective. Once the walls were finished and dry I then painted a piece of tracing paper, as I like the transparency that it held.

Due to falling ill with the flu and personal reasons I never finished this piece. 

Project Two: Poor Art

Like this project and others to follow - we were debriefed the first day of each new project and given the brief.

In our Brief, it explained that they wanted us to - "Explore the creative possibilities of creating something within the context of modern and contemporary sculpture practice : and ask you to consider meaning, function and history as implicit in objects and materials themselves"

I had never heard of Poor Art before and did a little bit of research on my own -
Poor Art or Arte Provera - A Modern Italian Art movement during 1960's to 1970's.
Artists of this movement would use a wide range of materials instead of the traditional ones.

Further detailed information on this subject can be found on the website below -
http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/arte-povera

The brief also had a little insight too - The term Arte Povera was introduced by the Italian art critic, writer and curator Germano Celant in 1967. He used it to identify a group of artists from Turin, Milan, Genoa and Rome who were working in radically new ways; entering new dialogues with trends elsewhere in Europe and America.

After this, I pondered for sometime. What could I make and what meaning could it have?
I didn't want to spend money on materials, there's plenty lying out there in the streets, pasted to the walls and growing on the stairs but I also had some very interesting objects at home.

I finally came up with the title that everyone could relate to and has been used so often in different ways - "Home is where the heart is".
The reason why I chose this is its very personal to me - After living with my mother for so long, I moved in with my partner. At first it was strange, being away from what you thought was 'home' then your thoughts and feelings change, your living at your new 'home'.

So I went home and gathered my materials - a birdcage candle holder, some of our cats hair and a bag of my partners hair, some white wool, copper thread. Later I went out for a walk and grabbed some moss.

With the hair - I pleated it and at each end wrapped the copper thread to stop it from unravelling. As you can see in the photo above, I used the bars of the birdcage to weave the hair in and out, creating a wall.
Using white wool and the skills I gathered from the Scoubidou trend, I wrapped the wool round the bars and made windows and a door frame. I did this so that I could sew the pleaded strands to the frames instead of wrapping them around. Making it neater and tidier and look more like a house.

Once the walls were finished I moved on to the next stage, the roof. Instead of sticking the sticks directly onto the frame, I used the last of the wool and wrapped it around the frame so that there was more surface for the sticks to hold onto. As shown below -

I don't have any good photo's of the last stage, when the roof is on but you can clearly see it in the last photo when all the pieces have come together.

So I moved on to the last little bit to be made. The heart - I liked the idea of it being on paper, almost like a card. During my college course, I experimented with something similar and liked the turn out. So using rice paper, I sewed red thread around the outlines of a heart drawing and then used watercolour to enhance the overall colour.

The last item, I had previously knitted a little rain cloud. I was inspired my a post on Pinterest of a rain cloud brooch. I thought it would look nicer as a wall piece. Later I realised that it had another purpose. When the radiators came on the rain drops would sway and wobble notifying me the heating was one.

Above is the last photo of it all together. I was originally going to put an LED candle instead, the house but realised that if the studio had been darker it would have been more affective but at the same time the heart and cloud would be less noticeable.

I took some photo's of other students work, none had name titles.

Hope you enjoyed seeing everyone else's work besides mine. It was amazing to see how one brief could produce work so different from everyone else's. 

Project One: Creative Drawing

The first project was creative drawing. We were told to pick three objects from a vast quantity provided (man made and natural). From there I did three pages of primary drawings and paintings. As shown below.

Using a HB pencil, I did a detailed drawing of the glove and then moved onto watercolour to show the colour, texture and shadows cast on the glove.

Using black, white and brown conte pencil – I wanted to recreate the velvety texture of the leaf (I found that the pencil did this well but had also considered using fine tip pen to show the softness of the contrast of the leaf).

Using a mixture of graphite pencil, watercolour and fine liner - I focused mainly on the detail and colour.

As I had missed my opportunity to draw a life model, I sat down and drew the set up in the studio. (Being the last day before the weekend and the beginning of a new project) I did this quick painting in acrylic of the installation in our room.

Happy with my work and the day ending, I walked home - day dreaming about our next project and recovering from my first week.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.

I will uncover the projects that I’m given – ramble on about my work, artists and the overall course.

So I will begin with a bit about myself – Finished The General Foundation Art and Design course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

Now I am at the end of the first semester in 2nd year Fine Arts. What a difference from first year but still very exciting!