Charcoal
Project One – ‘Connecting Through Making and Thinking’
Hi everyone, this is the first official project of the year. I’m going to try and make Tuesdays my weekly catch up on the past week of my course. These posts will contain information like workshops, ideas, progress, evaluations, resolved work, etc. I will try to post up workshops on the day they’re done, but I can’t make any guarantee’s as the wifi in my accommodation likes to turn off sometimes.
So without talking too much, here’s last weeks project.
This project is named ‘Connecting Through Making and Thinking’. During this project, I will be using and learning a wide range of methods, from ones I know like drawing and painting, to ones I don’t know, like metal work, wood work, metal casting etc. The aim of this project is to gather ideas and find a path of art which I enjoy the most, and then develop that path/media into a professional practice. I for one already know I’m more focused towards Sculptural Installation, but this project will give me access to even more areas than the foundation could.
The duration of this project is fourteen weeks, not including winter vacation. The first week of the project mainly included drawing; the task was to make six A2 sized drawings, out of these six, two had to be figures, two had to be objects, and two had to be interior/exterior (landscapes). By the end of the week, I had drew eight drawings in total, where two where figures, one was a landscape, one was an object, and the other four were able to be classed within all three categories. The outcome for these drawings was to get information; to get true information from real life objects and people, for example, light and shadows, size and shape, perspective, etc. The aim of the current week of the project, is to take one drawing from each of the categories, and paint the chosen three into one image.
Also, during the past week I hand made, and stretched my own canvas during a couple of workshops. I had to make the frame/the stretcher for the canvas during the first workshop, and during the second I stretched to canvas over the frame.
So that’s what I’ve been doing over the past week. Sorry if I don’t make my target of posting these every Tuesday, the student life is very busy, especially since my timetable for every week is 9:00 am to 5:00 pm every day. I know I forgot to post last Fridays Instagram post, I will combine this weeks images with last so you get to see all my work and progress.
Enjoy.
Fashion
For the Fashion rotation, I decided to do a ‘protest’ and not do fashion and instead create something different. The topic that I was given was ‘Black is the New Black’, so I did start off with looking at a bit of Fashion, but nothing appealed to me. So I took a different approach and kind of took a step back into the Visual Communication rotation and decided to do another drawn based piece of Art.
At first I did struggle to find any artists to be inspired from, but after a small chat with the tutor, I came across Marina Abramovic. Abramovic is a performance artist who shows how far the human body can be pushed over it’s limits, and then some. A lot of her work is endurance based, where she doesn’t stop the performance until she psychically can’t do no more. The one piece of Abramovic’s work that influenced me was ‘Freeing the Body’, in her piece she stood naked with a scarf around her face and danced to the rhythm of an African drum beat; this piece continued for six hours until she collapsed on the floor from exhaustion.
I intend to do a similar piece of work (not nude), where I will wear a white box on my head and draw to the sounds I hear around the studio that echo inside the box. I will also still stick with the ‘Black is the New Black’ theme by wearing black clothes.
The images below are a time-lapse of the performance, the final image is the Final outcome.
Visual Communication
This is the Visual Communication rotation; to start off the week I was asked to respond to multiple pieces of music by drawing, painting, and cutting. After the workshop I was asked to focus on one of the pieces of music and use one or multiple methods to express the music. I chose a piece called ‘Window‘ by ‘The Album Leaf’, A piece of music that to me sounds calm, smooth, and peaceful. When I had a day to collect my thoughts in what direction I would take this piece, I had the idea to make a drawing with my own imaginative solar system; I chose this because the piece sounds ‘spacey’ and puts me in my own dream world, floating through space and seeing the planets as I pass by.
So when it came to doing the final piece, I decided to get together four A1 sheets of paper, tape them together and start drawing my imaginative space theme in response to the music. It felt strange to do this as I have never drawn to music before, but it felt peaceful, and relaxing compared to the manic haste of creating a sculpture. As most of the drawing is circular, it felt as though it was a form of ballet, the charcoal dancing across the paper creating a smooth, seamless piece that shows how music can be expressed through something you can see and not just hear.
Below are images of the artwork that I created during this week’s work. The last image is the Final piece.
Railston Artworks 