16.04.13 - new dawn new day.

Well today's been a day of revelations.
I feel like I've conquered more in this one day the in the whole 3 or so weeks that's been of this project.
I'm on a new routine of 3 ibroprofen every 4 hours which is working almost as we'll as the codeine but doesn't make me sleepy. So work is moving on better it seems.
I sat down in the morning to start my work as normal, making my list of the things I'd like t achieve today, and I was struck with how overwhelming and vast this whole project subjects been.
I feel like I change my mind on what I want t look into further each day. And it was getting tiresome.
I know I want to do something that feels right, something that makes me get excited and I find complicated but interesting. I knew when I started to be level headed and decide that I didn't want to draw nice happy things because I didn't feel nice and happy was the start of that interesting phase I could look into. I decided today to go into that more.
To look into more about maybe looking at pain and distress in a symbolic way. And still keeping the feeling of warmth and comfort I feel when I arrive home.
I started to think how could I show pain in a symbol, as an object, as an actual thing you could draw and look at and associate with.
I searched online (which I'll go into further detail) about myths and symbols associated with death. This lead to a whole world of different things j found fascinating and could see my project relating to.
So basically, I've not changed my whole subject idea as such, but its definitely progressing down a completely different path I hadn't expected, a lot darker, more narrative rather then authorial as such.
Really exciting and really interesting, trust me on this one I think it's going to get better.
Update very soon!

pattern development.

Quick pattern development from today's workshop.
Love these colours together.

15.04.13 - workshop with Anna Bhushan

After the lecture in the afternoon we had a workshop looking into colour and using it with specific words.

We made a list of things to use and then what our specific thing we wanted to look at
Mine was:
Palace you love - home
Palace you dislike- doctors
A smell - garden
A person you know very well - mother
A famous person - Klimt
A taste - tea
A time of day - early morning
An early memory - blank
A month of the year - August.
A day of the week. - Monday.

We first played with colours and mixing, then started to use colours to describe our words, then we swapped with other students and tried to guess the words and then finally develop one word in a abstract way using the colour.

It was such a calm, but interesting workshop, really enjoyable workshop, I saw my opportunity to enjoy myself with patterns and grabbed at it. In the end I think I'm going to actually go back and develop more of the words and look at the patterns because it actually ended up that mot of the words I picked have some relation to my project so why not ey?

Not to brg but I'm actually really liking the semi circle pattern with peach and blue, I might have a play around with that on the tablet now,

Will update soon!

15.04.13 - guest lecture - Anna Bhushan

Today we had a great lecture from Anna Bhushan, it was a fantastic and intriguing lecture, right from the start when she spoke about her relationship with colour and how the role of it is used in her pieces it was like hearing the way I had wanted to explain my own work but said so much more articulating and understanding to others but had never been able to say!
It was like a clog had just fell into place, and was also really struck by how the work I was making yesterday in a bad mood could relate to it all so much.

Here are my notes:

15.04.13 - anna busham lecture
Authorial practice.
Workshop on colour later.
Looks at feeling and mood and uses colour as a vehicle to communicate that.
Likes far harrowing subject matter.
Laura carlin - google.
Book on relationships on two levels working with Laura
Uses Colours to communicate feeling through shape and feelings and patterns.
Symbolic and abstract way of working along with a narrative and visual language.
Colour -
loved using colour, think about using it consciously,
Create a focal point, by using contrast by light and dark or colour.
Used colour to create a sense of scene.
Composition - sketch out something that feel right with the shapes and then develops from that.
Uses symbols to describe complex narrative.
Colours help you paint smells feelings thoughts
Miniature Indian painting - bright and harmonious colours.
Romance and nostalgia and sentimentality
Idealised world
Avoid what the norms are. - nature is not that clearly made.
Don't make the colours literal - think about seasons and times of day.
Editorial work -
does not make figurative work for controversial subject.
Works with lots of different roughs and then this organically turns into a final piece.
If the subject is boring work with colour and mark making.
Narrative approach - analogy of you can't work with the subject then make a story for it to work for you - let colour play an important role.
Authorial work -
Indian mythology
Cells that are happening. Your body as a visual thing.
Abstract pieces with little parts of narratives
Colours used to symbolises certain forces of nature - black static dead - red active dynamic - white - still pure

I know it might seem all jibberish but it really did make sense to me ha.

Library workshop - Sally Faulkner + Sophie Calle.

These two very different books actually have some sort of comparison I noticed when up in the library earlier today.
Sally Faulkner's zine featuring an insight into the grub that we English eats depicts naive colourful paintings of all different types of things we eat.
Whereas Sophie Calle's very large, meaty book depicts one letter sent to herself from an old lover telling her that they can no longer be together. Throughout the book she analyses the text to an obsessive level, looking at every tiny details letting the natural path of curiosity be explored.

Both book and zine have analysed something pretty insignificant to many but when further looking into have become fascinating. I loved both pieces in very different ways!

(I would of really loved to of take the Sophie Calle book out buy my god! That book is about 3 bibles long and very heavy!)

Library workshop - unknown zine artist.

Unfortunately this person hadn't put their name anywhere on the book so was unable to find out the name.
I'm guessing because of this that it must be an old student at the university that has handed their work through.
These mono prints of their family members have a strange, awkward feel to them, which might not be what I'm exactly going for on this project but I couldn't help but be drawn to the idea of drawing old family photographs and how posed and plastic they can come across sometimes. Very interesting work, makes me want to go play around with mono prints again.

15.04.13 - library workshop - margaret kilgallen

Today I had a nice and early 9:30 library meeting to go through a collection of books/ zine that could help our project.
On the table was a book all to do Margaret Kilgallen.
"Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (October 28, 1967 – June 26, 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement."
That pretty much sums her up, I had heard of her with her work with Barry Magee a few years ago,so was aware of her but had never really looked into her more.
I found a lovely quote from her that goes;
"I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is."

I loved the way her work was block colour a d quite graphic but yet still kept her drawing style and feeling through it, such a hard mix to combine together.
Definitely her pattern work in her sketchbooks (last two photographs) made me really excited with shape, tone and colour.