Project Seven: Yes....No...The possibilities are endless!

For this project we weren't given a theme. We had the choice of either working on a previous project brief or creating something entirely new.
I went with a new theme one I felt best suited me at that current time.
Sleep......or more sleeping problems. Something I've suffered from for years and have brief nights of freedom.
So I did more research into Sleep.

• What is it?
• Why do we need it?
• Sleeping problems?
• What are harmful effects of sleep deprivations?

The amount of information I came away with seemed endless. The best website I found to have in depth explanations and information was How Sleep Works

Thinking about if the other student's had sleeping problems too - I was going to set up a survey and record their problems to but then after advice from the lecturer. I came to realize that, that would be even more work for me, giving me less time to do development and finish the final piece.
So I turned to my own experience. I've had quite a few, spine tingling night-terrors through the years. It got so bad at one point that I would have them five nights a few. This caused problems, not just for me but my partner who witness these fits of frights.
I got help and they calmed down, after a few weeks they stopped. From time to time I have the occasional terror but not as horrifying as my previous ones.

So I focused on what my night terrors were. The ghastly form they took,well for one, they were usually phobia's - big creepy crawlers, spiders, daddy long legs and wasps oh and the one time with the maggots and flies, crawling from my eyes. I can still feel them as I think about it!

Thinking on it - how would I best represent it? I came up with the plan of a bed sheet and how these creatures invade this place when we are most vulnerable.

I started to search out images of creepers and made stencils. Above is a photo of the final silhouette - with it being completely blacked and out tracing paper wings. I thought this would add a nice effect to the final. The idea of these creatures seeping through the sheet.

I then started on a white, felt square. Using felt pen I transfer the stencil and colored it in - giving it the appearance of a silhouette.

I bought two single bed sheets. One for the final and the other for experiments. Once I was happy with the ink and stitch effect, I started on my final.

I took me a week days to just transfer the stencils and then paint the ink - I even had to take it home so that I could finish it on time.

Working on the sheet in blocks helped as I didn't have a lot of space. I started on the bottom, left sheet corner, then used newspaper to stop the sheet from touching - when I folded to do the next block.

By the time I was at the bottom right corner, I could start at the beginning dry and with no worry of the wet ink messing up other parts of the clean sheet.

I used water-soluble ink to give many shades of black and then once dry, I used Indian ink - not realizing that it wouldn't bleed like the other.

After all of it was dry and ready, I moved onto the next stage. I sewed around a few of the insects, to draw them out a bit more from the sheet.

There was these two flies that I had to build the rest of there bodies - I did this to give them a bit more life and that the bed sheet doesn't hold them, well not fully.

 From a distance, the use of stitch and ink complements each other as I thought it would in my experiments.

Once I had finished sewing, I got on with the wings. With there being 60 pairs needing transferred, cut and glued - this took me a further day because of the various sizes.

So on the last day, with a big tube of glue - I started gluing them on at home and then took it into the studio to finish.

Finally when all the wings were glued on, I nailed it to the wall. hanging one, dirty, discolored and disheveled pillow to the top - so that it wouldn't go unnoticed.

 I like very much how this has turned out - it's like these little creatures are trying to crawl up the sheet and anyone sleeping there will be at their mercy.

I think I'd like to do this theme again but spend longer on it. In my mind, it would look very interesting if the insects aren't at the bottom but more in the shape of a sleeping person or persons.

Project Six : Abstract

I'll admit now, that I was never keen on abstract, nor have I ever dabbled in it. So it was interesting to have a go at producing my own piece.

I first focused on my surroundings - after all I live in a historical building that was built in 1809 and sticks out like a sore thumb with being red bricked and all.
But I thought that wouldn't be enough to just produce a peace from. I wanted to give it a deeper meaning. So I thought to myself, I haven't always lived here. I went back to my original home, which has been used as a source of inspiration on many projects.

Built on an estate in the countryside. There was once a castle but it became decapitated and was blown up. Part's of it can be found all around the place. The only thing left standing is the foundations.

Ever since I was a child, I loved these windows, there beautifully crafted, honeycomb windows.

In this photo, you can't really see the door. It's a grand old looking thing - the key to it is an antique and the only key to the house.

There was one time we almost lost it, down the crack of the pavement to it but thankfully we fished it out or things could have gone sour fast!

So now that I'm looking to my past and my current flat, I thought I would break it down. For my new home, I focused on the roof which was rich in textures and colors.

Being such an old building, now the tenancy have to battle the conditions of the eroding building. You can see in the photo above the original squares and on the right, the protective layer, that is now need to stop the moisture from seeping through.

Behind this wall is a room and once you could peak through the window but now someone has covered it. When I saw in it last, it gave me the chills - the walls were painted a light blue and a child's drawings were scribbled across the wall. I know for a fact there are no children living in this building now but it's creepy to think a child used that room as a play house or could it have possibly been a room?

Who knows. This building has a lot of untold secrets but it has a lot of atmosphere.

I set to using a canvas and applied Gesso to prepare the surface.

I liked the idea of using mixed media, like so many other artists. So I started working on sewing the years of a tree. I got to the number eight, realizing that this was the number of years, I had been with my partner. Which is also another big change in my life, as last year we got engaged.

Once I had finished sewing, I cut around it and sewed a final circle to stop any fraying of the materials edges.

I then glued it to the canvas and glued strips of denim on the bottom, painting it with more Gesso.

After that I glued one final piece of material before starting to paint.

Using ink, I let it run down the canvas in all directions and then left to dry.

From this photograph, I know I've missed crucial documentation. Only from memory I remember how I added the brickwork and pipe.

The brickwork was built up using modeling paste and the pipe was a mix of glue and shredded pieces of paper.

Above is a photo of the final finished piece up on the studio wall.

I also walked around the studio and took photo's of the other student's work (but sadly no one, not even myself had put our names next to our work).

From the outside, this looks like a box, screen and tent but when you crawl in side - it's so much more!

From the inside this contraption, mirrors the image of student's walking by the lens and then it is transferred to the screen as you can see in the photo above.

There were so many other pieces but I forgot to photograph them all.

Project Five : Collaboration

Unlike the previous projects - when I was working on my own, this one I had to have a partner and in all it's entirety it was an interesting experience.
Her current work can be seen on her Instagram -ibobbet
To work out our theme, we listed our similarities. Witt-ling it down to our childhoods and how not very great they were.
We then figured out the mediums we would be using. I, being a painter and her a photographer, we finally decided to use a few photo's. Current ones as well as our childhood photo's.

The theme of our project is - The little white lies our parent's told us.
After much research on the harmful effects that these 'lies' have had on us as children, we came up with a layout.

Christmas Project: Self Portrait

So many possibilities to be had but again I thought I would focus on a part of me, well my mother again. The thought of flowers but I couldn't just randomly place them on my face, so I went to see if each one had a meaning and they did.

After having a few flowers to choose from, I set about drawing a rough self portrait on paper.

Christmas being a time of giving, I'd ended up with to many canvases and decided to use one for this project.

I then painted it with Gesso, putting an extra gloopy layer to give it texture.

Once that was dry, I drippled black, watered acrylic on it. Letter it stream down and gather in any crevices.

I then traced my portrait outline over the top, which can be seen barely in this photo above.

Using a watered down acrylic, I started to paint in my face and hair. Giving it an almost translucent look.

Already I start to notice mistakes, how my eyes are not level  and my forehead huge.

But I persevered, thinking that the flowers would cover most, if not all mistakes.

Having used masking tape in so many of my previous paintings, I thought it would help to highlight the flowers pouring from my eyes and mouth.

The masking tape worked well, it definitely highlighted the flowers - Giving the haunting affect I was after.

When I was finished I was happy with the overall affect. A few weeks later and with the other student's, my painting was hung up in the canteen. I was given comments on how eerie it was.

New Project Three: Page

After failing this project badly and being advised to start from scratch again, I was donated two books from two lovely people.
These books were Flowers of the World by Frances Perry and Fruit & Vegetable Gardening by Michael Pollock.

I decided from here to base the theme on my mother. As her profession is a gardener, there is a rich amount of inspiration I could get from this.

Taking a look at her garden, rich and vibrant but forever changing. I pulled together a few ideas for experimenting.

Although at this time of year, there isn't much color to play around with. Above is a photo of the back garden - the vegetable patch in the very back and the wall, hiding the main road.

In this photo there is a chicken pen in the background, another vegetable patch. An old wooden sculpture, that once had legs but in the end rot got to it. So now it sits in the center, watching over the garden. 

From here I started to work with the pages of the Fruit & Vegetable Gardening book and made some onions.

Using some old newspapers, I rolled them into balls and applied masking tape to hold them in place. Getting some white cord, I attached the balls with more masking tape, holding them in place for the next stage.

I thought using paper wouldn't represent them good enough so I went and peeled off some onion skins. (Luckily there is an abundance hanging in the kitchen)

I then lathered on wall paper paste, in the hope that it would preserve the skin and stop any molding.

After that I used more cord and stripped it down into thinner layers, then painted in brown and gray.

Once that was dry, I snipped them down to less than an inch and glued them to the bottom.

Now they look more like onions, which made me happy.

On to the next experiment. Taking a look around the house, I noticed many pairs of disheveled wellies. Some my mothers and the rest her partner - who is a woodsman and carpenter.

Later in this blog I will post some of his work, that hangs in the living room waiting to be taken to galleries all over fife.

Getting back to the wellies. I first decided to make a miniature version of a pair but some lost all hope as they looked like a mangled pair of socks.

So some sense came to me, after all there are enough pairs to borrow for a few days.

I set to with my paper mache paste, over the next three days I added a good few layers to the wellies.

With the luck of there being a wood burning stove, I was able to dry them between layers and once ready I cut them free. Adding once final layer to strengthen them.

It was such a lovely, sunny day that I took my project outside. Tim gave me a tin of shiny green gloss pain, which only needed one layer on the paper and dried within a few hours. while it dried I moved onto my next experiment. - Brussel Sprouts.

Grabbing a cane from the green house, I applied some paper mache and some knobbly pieces. While that dried, I moved onto the leaves.

Taking some pages from the same book, I traced a template from the plant outside and created these leaves in the photo above.

I then cut them out, soaked them in water and scrunched them up. leaving them to hang dry, once dry I applied a watered down green acrylic paint and left to dry once again.

After gluing two leaves to the cane, I realized that soaking had weakened the strength of the paper and so I had to re-enforce them with rolled up pieces of paper.

I then attached them to the cane and have now realized, I haven't taken a final photo of it completed.

Once that was finished I moved onto to the next - a nice big strawberry plant.

First I started with the base, which of course was another cane. During this time I was recovering from a cold and had many left over lucazade bottles. Using the bottle cap, I glued the center to the tip of the cane and got started on the roots of the plant. Using more of the cord, I painted them black, grey and brown,

Left them to dry, while I worked on the leaves. After having to re-enforce the brussel sprout leaves, I came to realize that the rolled paper would be best as the stalks.

Having a look at my mothers strawberry patch, I picked a few leaves and traced a template. Transferring it onto a page, I then cut them out, with a scalpel, hurting my fingers in the process. Moved onto a pair of scissors, which were so much better and made so many leaves in half the amount of time.

Once the roots had dried, I glued them onto the top of the lid and started to place the strawberry stalks on to. I tied cord around the center of the stalks to strengthen the plant.

Once dried, I repeated the process of leaves and stalks until I had enough to resemble the original plant.

The glue on the cap didn't stick well so I finished the leaves, before attempting to do it again and trying a different type of super glue.

Once ready, I moved onto the process of making strawberries. Much like the way I made the onions - newspaper and masking tape. I attached cord and then made the stalks but this time I used green wire so that I could move the strawberries into the right position. I then used paper mache on the strawberries and stalks but made sure to leave the cord, with enough space so that they could wobbly.

Once dry I painted the stalks and the strawberries and then cut out the leaf at the top.

when that was done, I painted the seeds on them and then attached them to the base of the plant.

I had made some daffodils but also forgot to take photo's. On the bonfire heap, I clump of dried out hydrangeas lay there, looking sorry for themselves. I clipped a few heads and painted them, using blue ink and watered down purple acrylics.

On to the next, a robins nest. I borrowed a round gourd from the living room, wrapped in cling film and covered in paper mache. Hanging it above the stove to dry.

After having all these experiments lying in a bundles, I set to in my sketchbook - drawing out a layout plan.

I came to the conclusion of using the wellies like a vase. The plants would be in a state of chaotic beauty just as someone had stated my mothers garden looked like.

I figured out then, that I could use the other book as the stand to my sculpture and spent the day, sticking the pages together.

When that was dry, I rolled up pages from the other book and made a mound for my wellies.

Using masking tape, I taped the balls down and paper mache'd torn up pages over the top.

Once that was dry, I glued the wellies on to it.

I thought to myself, if these wellies are used, don't they need to be dirty?

Instead of using actual dirt or smooth watered acrylics. I went and scooped up some of the stoves ash and then added a little water to make a paste. Using a paint brush, I smeared the wellies and then the surface of the book.

Once that was dry, I went back over the surface with a mix of acrylic and ash. Also painting the bottom of the wellies.

The upside of taking this project into the green house, was that it was almost like an oven. Quickly drying out my sculpture.

Once I had finished dirtying up my sculpture, I set to adding the other pieces.

First I glued the bunch of onions to the side of the wellies and the remaining two, to the surface. I then placed the strawberry plant in the wellie and secured it with glue. After that I arranged the hydrangea's and moved onto finishing the nest.

After spending a week at my mum's, I went home and finished the rest in my living room.

From the front view, you can see quite a bit but from the back you can see the rest.

Please excuse the state of my living room.

I also took photo's from above.

To sum up this project. I thoroughly enjoyed making all the pieces and then placing it together. Although at times, I thought I wouldn't have completed this project before the deadline.