integrated project things and stuff...BLOCK 2

As i have spoken a bit about my other projects and classes i am currently working on, i will now take you through some of my integrated project.  I am working on a project which started off as a possible 3D sculpture but has taken a dramatic turn into a stop motion film instead!

I had to work it out in my sketch book...

I realised that i'm not the best at sculpting and i also enjoy creating stop motion films much more than sculpting...i also felt that the video option fitted my concept far better than a sculpture would.

I was left with this cut out from the paper birds i had made...

My research has led me to looking at birds, in flocks, and more specifically now starlings...i've also been experimenting with various ways of animating images on screen.

ink on photocopies of hand drawn starlings...

            splattered pink ink on a hand drawn young starling...

I was also lucky enough to meet the camera less filmmaker Steven Woloshen at an exhibition and workshop celebrating the Scottish stop motion filmmaker Norman McLaren, and managed to acquire some blank 35mm film...which i have used some to paint and draw with inks onto...

petals...pink ink on 35mm film

scrubbed...black sharpie on 35mm film

washing...watery ink painted onto 35mm film, left to dry and scored into with a fine needle point.

blogging my heart out...TEXTILES...workshop1...papermaking...BLOCK 2

Here we go again...this time i'm gonna be talking mainly about my activities in textiles class.  We have been doing some pretty cool workshops of late and i thought i could share some of these with you too...

Let me see...to start with we got to try making some paper.  I was particularly interested in this as i'd only ever seen it done on a massive scale before and that was just on the telly, so...

I blended some old random scraps of paper that had already been used and rejected for other purposes, this old paper was mixed with lots of water and then poured into a big bucket, it was not the most appealing of mixtures...it just looked like a big bucket of spew to be honest...I then had to reach into it with a wooden framed fine mesh then turn them out, like a cake from a baking tray, onto absorbent cloths, usually used for cleaning up worktops and such, and then...from this ugly mix i was able to make some lovely paper.

Instead of reusing old paper you can also make paper from just about anything that you can blend, for example fibrous fruits and vegetables and plants or flowers...you can put things into the mix to make it more interesting like whole seeds, stalks, grasses, leafs and pretty petals...

and here is the product of my labour...a layered piece of paper made using lots of small frames and blended paper in 2 colours, then let to dry on top of each other so they fused...

                                                           Not bad for a first attempt?!

new project...PRINTMAKING...BLOCK 2

Ok...so...here is some stuff I've been working on for the past month or so.
After a bit of a turbulent start to the year again, I'm trying to become a little more focused in my efforts to blog about my work...something I've never felt i was really any good at, but maybe through pictures of things i can show you what I've been up to and how i'm progressing with my BA...

Let us start with some printmaking then...

I've been working on creating a protest piece.  The subject I've chosen is women on bank notes.
It's something that astounds me.  When i found out the fact that british bank notes only have one woman at a time on them, if any at all.  Whats going on there?! was my thought...Why not have more than one woman on our bank notes at a time, this country has produced hundreds and hundreds of brilliant, successful, groundbreaking women...oh and I'm not counting the queen here all you smarty pants! What would happen if Emmeline Pankhusrt and Viviane Westwood were on UK bank notes at the same time...would the world implode?! I think not.

So with that in mind here are a few first attempts at screen printing after a long break from it...it truly is an enjoyable thing, going through the process of printing things, like a Japanese tea ceremony the joy is in the ritualistic processes of printing, the things leading up to the final movement...

A wee picture of the acetates used to expose my screen, a clean line drawing and a darker watercolour from a life drawing class.  

First attempt at printing my pictures...an uneven outcome but not without its charms!

Another go at it, this time with a colour change to white for the fine line drawing and a slight change in its position...i'm quite pleased with the outcome this time though.