Thursday 30.9.10

Catch up: History drawing – reflective, natural & manmade object – just many different drawings

(I've been ill this week!)

Wednesday 29.9.10

Lecture – What is a Line?

With observational drawings, lines can represent many things, edges, patterns, outlines, texture, contours etc.

Why do we see the world in line?

Whilst there aren’t outlines in the real world, we interpret the point where two lines meet as a line.

Practical considerations:

Pencils & brushes move in any direction

Nib pens are better in one direction

Pencils, pens and brushes can vary in thickness, but fineliners can’t.

Take all these into consideration when drawing, depending on how you want to portray the subject.

Graphite pencils have only been around for about 500 years, before that metalpoint drawings were made using various metal wires as drawing implements. The most versatile was silver wire and the drawings are referred to as silverpoint. With these, small deposits of silver are left on a prepared sheet. Charcoal and chalk were used before graphite to make fine, detailed line drawing.

Line quality refers to the visual variations and graphic idiosyncrasies a line possesses.

‘Taking a line for a walk’ – Paul Klee. Very unhurried… Lines are traces of an activity.

‘Locking my hand to my eye’ – Turner describing the act of drawing.

Some lines need to be accurate, for plans and designs, architecture and product/industrial design plans need to be read accurately.

Speculative lines are done without rubbing out and form part of the drawing.

Dark or heavy lines look nearer, whereas light or thin lines look further away. Lines can be used to create tone as cross-hatching.

Research: Steven Braund, John Raynes, Lewis Campbell, George Stubbs, Raymond Sheppard, John Farleigh, Lucy Kemp-Welch, Honore Daumier, Ronald Searle, Dave McKean, Jacob Kenier, Henry Moore, John Sloane, Shelby Shackleford, Peggy Bacon, Martin Ramirez, Mauria Lendak, James E Allen, Angela Barrett, Hugh Cowling, Tim Ingold, Richard Long, Yuko Nishimuro, Raymond Briggs, Andy Goldsworthy, Sophia Vlazaki.

Tuesday 28.9.10

Catch up: Paper sculptures from previous drawing

Monday 27.9.10

I found this morning’s lecture on Animation really interesting. Andy Wyatt is the programme leader of the Digital Animation course at Falmouth, and has been working in the industry for 20 years, doing stuff for the BBC and as a writer.

Animation is basically an optical illusion, the illusion of movement created by the frame by frame movement of an image, caused by a phenomenon called persistence of vision.

2D drawn animation – Frames drawn by hand and photographed, this is liberating as it is pure movement, and doesn’t have to have characters or tell a story

2D cel animation – The background stays the same and things in the foreground move around

Cut-out animation – Paper is cut out and moved for each frame

Stop-motion animation – uses 3D objects and photographs them for each frame

Pixilation – real-life situations photographed frame-by-frame, it’s named after a Victorian photographer who pretended he could film pixies

3D CGI – Computer-generated frames

Other – Sand on a glass plate, paint on glass, scratching onto film negatives, time lapse, mixed mediums.

We then started our own animation, with a self portrait morphing in any way we wanted to an object of our choice, into the next person’s self portrait, drawing around 40 frames to make a 5-second animation, so that the all link in together.

Research: the Phenakistoscope (1872), the Zoetrope (1867), Erica Russell (Feet of Song), Jan Svankmajer, Blu (graffiti artist, Muto), Smith & Faulkes

Week 2 Review

Friday 24.9.10

Lecture notes:
The first guest lecturer was Alex Schady, a ‘fine artist’ who works in various media, including film. His work really didn’t inspire me at all, it seemed a little gimmicky and clichéd, however his advice was useful. He said it’s good to mess around with different techniques, things that aren’t necessarily perceived as art but become interesting to him and then progress; that showing your work in a gallery or elsewhere is also part of the creative process, so should be done in exactly the way you want, depending on how you want your piece shown; That most artists have to have a series of crappy jobs that supply the money needed to create their art. He had set up a studio space called Five Years (he said it was useful to know how to build walls, to set up the studio!) and does collaborative work by sending instructions to create a piece to a person in another country, and receive instructions from them, and that way they can interpret it in their own way, and brings chance into your work, things that you might not have thought of.

Oliver West gave me a new way of thinking and working, by telling us to fold an A4 sheet into credit card sized boxes, and then use each one for a small drawing, to record ideas. This breaks down a big, scary sheet of paper into little, easy-to-manage pieces, which is really working for me as I find it difficult to sketch my ideas. He also used this technique to help young offenders and children with severe learning difficulties, which I thought was lovely and very worthwhile.

Thursday 23.9.10

We went to Gwithian beach for the day to make sand sculptures, which was pretty fun to be honest…  The brief was to take a famous piece of art and transfer it onto the beach so it could be seen in proportion from the cliffs… Not an easy task as we discovered.

My group chose the intimidating print of the wrestler Andre the Giant with the word OBEY below, by street-artist Shepard Fairey.

The weather was pretty bad at the start of the day, and it was my job (since I had my camera) to stand on top of the cliff and relay instructions to my group below (lucky my phone is on contract) which was surprisingly difficult. Not only did it take a long time to get the proportions right, taking into account foreshortening, but it was pretty wet and miserable with the wind! I found I had to describe the picture in how many steps they needed to take, and once again the measured drawing of this week helped me to work out dimensions and proportions and transfer them onto the sandy canvas.

Well as soon as we’d spent too long drawing out the outlines, we had to rake all the sand inside them, which took quite a long time, with people taking breaks to go for a swim occasionally, as the weather got better and better into the afternoon.

I found this project really enjoyable, and it reinforced in me a desire to explore collaborative work, as everyone in my group seemed to slot into their natural roles, as leaders or otherwise. I’d love to work large-scale with a group again, as everyone brings something of themselves to the piece. I also found I really enjoyed working in and with the natural environment, and it was a bittersweet moment when we watched the tide come in and wash away our day’s work.

Some more of the day:

Wednesday 22.9.10

This morning's lecture was about drawing.

‘To draw’ can mean many, many things, including ‘to pull or cause to move towards’ and ‘to attract something’.

The word ‘drawing’ as a noun means ‘Making marks on a surface that express or represent an idea’. This could also mean writing I guess, but drawing is the only universal language. Even very young children can pick it up.

The lecture made me see how and why many adults draw hesitantly and without confidence, and why few of us draw outside of education or a specific profession, because when we grow up, drawing becomes less about expressing an inner world, and more about recording the outside world accurately, which then becomes competitive, so many people stop drawing rather than ‘fail’ at it.

I also thought more about photography, how it developed from drawing as we wanted faster and easier ways to record the world around us, and that in a pre-photographic world, drawing was much more important.

‘I spent my entire life trying to draw like a child’ - Picasso

Artists to research: Paul Noble, Julie Merehtu, Sara Simlett, Paul Nash, Christopher Nerinson, Giorgio Morandi, Richard Rogers, Frank Gehry, Muirhead Bone, Nicola Hicks

In the afternoon I had my first life drawing session, which actually went really well. I’ve done a little life drawing before in a drawing course I took, and really enjoyed it. It’s the only drawing I’ve ever really enjoyed and been able to get into. We had a female model that I found really interesting to draw, and the measured drawing of the past few days really helped me to get the proportions of her body correct. I’m looking forward to the next session.

Tuesday 21.9.10

More measured drawing, this time a 5-hour wide-angle drawing of everything from eye-level down to our feet.

Distortion creeps into the drawing naturally as you look at things from a different angle. The eye-level line went at the top of the page, and we established a pre-existing vertical line in the room to extend all the way down to our feet. Obviously, as the thing you are drawing gets closer to you, it gets measured and therefore drawn bigger.

I had some trouble with the concept; it was hard for a lot of us to get our heads around, but eventually I understood enough to get measurements right and get something down on the paper. I think I’ll finish this drawing at some point, because it’s a new technique I would never have thought of trying, and even if it doesn’t go well, It’s still a different way of looking at the world, and could be refreshing.

Again, I also found it hard to concentrate and keep myself motivated on such a long drawing. I had to take frequent breaks and come back to the drawing, trying to look at it differently. The proportional work will be useful for me as I move into technical design drawings.

Monday 20.9.10

Monday was the start of measured drawing, where a unit of measurement is used to find the right proportions for the rest of the drawing, usually using a pencil held at arms length to measure (with one eye shut). We also used frames made from cardboard to help see the area we were drawing.

I found this pretty horrible but persevered with it and definitely saw improvements in my awareness of proportion and space, and the measuring improved my drawing. I talked with one of the tutors about my concerns with my drawing skills, and that put my mind at ease, he didn’t think my drawings were so bad, and added that it didn’t matter anyway, that I would obviously achieve more in my areas of expertise and enjoyment.

The afternoon was a long (2-3 hour) measured drawing of an area of the studio – or outside of it – that I found interesting. I didn’t really get far in it, I tend to lose concentration on drawings after about 10-20 minutes, and I’d also foolishly chosen a pretty difficult outside area to draw.
I found the frame useful as it helped to pick out the exact area of a drawing and therefore visualize a grid inside the frame to work from. I expect I’ll use both techniques again to improve my drawings.

Week 1 Review

This week is a bit of a strange one. On one hand there isn’t a lot to ‘sum up’ since I haven’t produced a lot of work, or done very much studying, but on the other hand I’ve been introduced to some new ways of thinking and been immersed in a new world of art and design, as well as met a whole new group of people and moved away from my home to an entirely different way of life…

One big thing I’ve learned this week is that it actually doesn’t matter at all that I don’t think I can draw. I think it’ll come with time as I discover new techniques and find out what type of drawing interests me, or maybe not. Things like gestalt took the stress out of drawing and made it kind of fun again, which is a good step for me. I also learned that for a drawing to be considered ‘good’ it doesn’t have to be a perfect representation of what is in front of you, like all of art, it’s subjective and personal. Of course, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had setbacks, I still lack confidence when drawing and often second-guess myself and put my work down.

I find I’ve settled in well in Falmouth itself, I feel happy and prepared to work hard and explore my creativity in such a beautiful and inspirational place. I finally feel motivated and like my life is going in the direction I’ve always wanted it to.

Friday 17.9.10

So I enjoyed the first of the series of Friday lectures today. On Friday mornings the university brings in two artists and designers (usually Falmouth alumni) to give us hour-long lectures on various topics (mostly their work and how they got there, to give us inspiration, I guess)

Alison Sharkey talked about her life as a 'fine artist' and what that entailed. She morphed from a painter to an installation artist to working collaboratively with other artists, and gave advice about sending work into competitions and requesting grants, and about how to make money on the side to support working in a studio (artists rarely make enough money from selling work to support themselves)

The talk was interesting, it helped that she gave advice about finding studio space, but ultimately of little use to me as I don't think I'll ever want to refer to myself as a fine artist in a career sense, but I do enjoy collaborative work and got some good advice on how to go about finding people to collaborate with!

I'll research Artquest competitions and AXIS (THE online resource for contemporary art, apparently!)

Thursday 16.9.10

We had to make small sculptures to prepare for today, made from different textural objects stuck together, and were told not to show them to anyone.

I teamed up with Theo and we had to make a series of drawings of one another's objects, firstly drawing only from his description of the sculpture:

And then from feeling it behind my back, then by looking at only the object and drawing without looking at the paper:

Lastly an observational drawing attempting to get the correct proportions:

In the afternoon we drew our own sculptures in different ways including continuous line drawing, using symbols to replace line quality and tonal surface drawing. I really enjoyed the description drawing and the drawing from feeling, it made me much more aware of how language and senses affect out perception of something. I also liked the blind drawing, I've done a lot of that before and it's definitely a good way to boost my confidence with drawing, which I often lack. I'll use it again and also use variations on the idea, like drawing subjects upside-down etc.

The afternoon didn't go so well for me, I wasn't sure about drawing my own object, which was pretty difficult, and as my confidence dipped again I felt a little disillusioned. I need to practice drawing a lot more to learn all the techniques - it can be learnt after all. I understand that it's a relevant exercise, learning all the different parts of drawing separately so that eventually they can be applied together, but drawing really doesn't interest or excite me so I find it hard to motivate myself. I liked the symbol work, I think it could inform some interesting illustration or graphics work, I'll research Chuck Close, who does massive portraits using symbols. I'm very interested in portraiture.

Wednesday 15.9.10

The first of our lecture days. I’m glad we're studying modernism but I’m really not so pleased with postmodernism. I love the way the modernists work, especially in the context of architecture and design, I love the simplicity and the accessibility and social values of it, the simple and edgy way the architecture and especially furniture design is considered. I can’t wait to look into cubism and futurism more, I think if I eventually made a career of product design, I’d definitely work with modernist principles, the aesthetic and ergonomics of it interest me. Post-modernism not so much...

Tuesday 14.9.10

The first day of the course, we tried gestalt drawing, which means a feeling or spirit or persona. The basic idea of the day was to throw us out of our comfort zone and become less precious about our work. We started mark making on A0 paper, and then moved to other people’s work and turned it upside down, either randomly mark-making or trying to see and add to things we could pick out on the paper.

Here’s how mine went (badly)…

I’ve done this sort of drawing before so it wasn’t a shock to me to just go a little crazy and ‘ruin’ other people’s work, in fact it probably suits me more as I find it pretty difficult to sit down with a still life and reproduce it accurately, whereas expressive mark-making is enjoyable, and you can really get into it and let your subconscious take over.

Art & Design Foundation Journal - Monday 13.9.10

Falmouth, the most beautiful and inspirational place to study I can think of…

As I start the course I need to write a journal with a short entry every day to record thoughts, feelings and ideas about the work I do this year. 

As for strengths and weaknesses, I definitely think I’m bad at drawing, but I also believe that it can be learned, I just don’t enjoy drawing and painting as much as I do other areas of art and design. Maybe that will change during the course of this year, as I am able to try new things in my own time and pace.

I guess my strengths would be more photography and design, I really love the design process of solving a problem that you’re given by a client, following a brief and producing designs and prototypes from it, and the feedback you get from working with people. Photography interests me as different ways of seeing, I love photographing people and getting to see the different sides of them that a camera can bring out, and showing the secret and hidden sides of things that people normally take for granted. I also have good technical knowledge of working with film in a darkroom and experimental developing and printing techniques, including mixed media pieces with film and paint.

I definitely want to try lots of different areas of art and design that I haven’t taken much interest in before, like different paint and drawing techniques, textile work and more experimental photography, as well as getting more experience in the design process as I plan to go into product design eventually…