Since I last posted, I applied to four fine art courses and 1 fine art photography course at universities from glasgow to london and everywhere in between. It took me ages to decide what I actually want to do in the future because since I was about 8 I always told people I wanted to be 'an artist' which is so non-descript. I don't want to me a freelancer who doesn't know where their next pay check is coming from, I don't want to be famous. Despite the fact that this in itself is a hard thing to achieve it's never really what I wanted to be- but maybe it was the only thing I knew when I was 8. Maybe it was my ambition at one stage but from at least GCSE level I wanted to do more than that.
I considered studying fine art, photography or illustration at degree level and I now realise that I will have more creative freedom and a broader range of skills and opportunities by the time I leave to do what I want. I still don't know exactly what I want. I know I love illustrative drawing (watercolour, painting etc) and also photography in any form.


At the moment I have two online portfolios to prepare for late January and as usual I'm starting to doubt my ability again. I'm sick of all that stuff getting the better of me so I started a drawing of my Grandma tonight and I'm going to try out new stuff with it... maybe even put it in my portfolio. I want my work to have more emotional resonance. I can talk about my work so much easier that way. I'm pushing my personal art so much recently and developing a new (and more unique) style which I'll bring into my coursework for art foundation. Everything has to reflect who I am and what I want to achieve, what I care about. This is why for my new project I'm looking at street/documentary photography, city life with an abstract and painterly quality much like Saul Leiter. I'm hoping to bring in some illustration and fine art techniques at a later stage to really reflect what I want out of my work.
All I can do is try my hardest and have the passion and enthusiasm that I know is really in me- to project that into my work.

Merry Christmas!

Three photos from Manchester and Liverpool for my pathway project (unedited at the moment, just wanted to show some examples of my ideas)

I have been watching a lot of films lately. In the past few months I've probably doubled the amount of films I've watched and trebled the quality. I'm always drawn in by a fantasticly tragic and interesting script. I'm not too thrilled with happy endings. I like cliffhangers, stories with ambiguous meanings and films that are quite thought provoking. Above all I love the cinematography. Here are a few films that I've seen this year which stood out to me (in terms of the cinematography and editing.)



House of Flying Daggers, 2004. Directed by Yimou Zhang.
All of Zhang's films are visually stunning but this was the first of his films that I saw. Each scene tends to be themed around a colour (in costume and settings) and reflect the mood of the scene... the traditional chinese clothing is probably the most impressive thing but every detail in all aspects of this film has had so much attention.

Manhattan, 1979. Directed by Woody Allen.
The second Woody Allen film I saw. It was shot in black and white with an amazing montage of the Manhattan skyline at the beginning. The rest of the film features Manhattan heavily and contains the iconic bridge shot (above) filmed at 5am.

 

Lost in Translation, 2003. Directed by Sofia Coppola.

Filmed in Tokyo, lots night life and narrow depth of field to show off the lights and bokeh. It's so beautiful.

 

Taxi Driver, 1976. Directed by Martin Scorsese.

I don't know why I like like Taxi Driver so much visually... there are wonderful shots of De Niro driving his taxi through NY at night, but I think more than anything it offers a very different view of the city. A much darker and dangerous side which is very contrasting to Manhattan, for example. 

   

Deconstructing Harry, 1997. Directed by Woody Allen.

I have to include another Woody Allen film because I watched this very recently and I really liked the editing. Allen plays a writer and the film really consists of flashbacks and scenes from his stories as they overlap with his life; his characters start interacting with him.  There is a surreal scene where he comes out of a lift (pictured) into hell. In the film when his life is going well the scene plays out, but when he has arguments or sees his analyst, the scene is full of jump cuts. At the beginning of the film, a scene is heavily edited with jump cuts and repeated numerous times. It's a really stand out film compared to some of Allen's other films.

 

Natural Born Killers, 1994. Directed by Oliver Stone.

Honestly the weirdest film I've ever seen. There is so much editing and so many methods used. I read that the film took 56 days to shoot while editing took 11 months. There are almost 3000 cuts in the film while the average film apparently has about 600-700. It's frenzied... it's filmed in black and white, colour (unusual colour schemes), animation is used, as well as a range of camera angles, special effects and filters. Despite it's controversies, there's no denying it is a very interesting and creative film.

The Beautiful: Illustrations for Fashion and Style

There are very few things that I see that I instantly fall in love with and become so jealous about but I found the beautiful lying around in college and it's just the most stunning book I have ever seen. I need to buy it: I have quite a few photography books because I am so much more inspired by photographers than painters or designers. This is the first non photography related book I have seen that I'm really enthusiastic about.

 

There are so many styles in this book but all absolutely stunning. I've tried to start drawing more illustrative over the last few months and I would be so happy if I could just draw like this for the rest of my life. It's just a style of drawing that really appeals to me and it can be applied to almost anything.

I had my third life drawing class today and I think I produced some of my best work (despite the fact that the poses were the hardest I've ever had to draw). I love drawing portraits but I never tried life drawing until I started art foundation. It's really challenging since you just get thrown into it but I have noticed an improvement every week, and my proportions and nowhere near as bad as I thought they'd be. It's such a rewarding experience

 

Soft pastels (30 minutes)

 

Oil pastels (15 minutes)

Well worth watching this video from start to finish. Watch how this painting comes to life, it's beautiful and a little bit mind blowing.

It's days like this when I realise how much I love photography. I went to visit my grandma in Bradford today and it was so foggy, I just went for a walk round the streets and up to the woods nearby to take some photos. Quite spectacular. We don't really get fog that lasts this long round here.

(all photos are unedited because i'm lazy and they are taken on ISO 800 or 1600 because it was so dark but i like the grain)

Gossip Girl by dollychops

I have never been interested or really connected with painting because I always seemed to view it the way I view how I draw; in realism and literal representation, quite graphic. I've never learnt how to properly use paints in that way although I'm making some progress in oils... Last week, the final project in the diagnostic stage, I had to use the studio space around me to create a painting using acrylic and varnish.

 

I used parts of the cardboard box that I hadn't used for my conceptual art piece and I used an unconvential dimension. None of this was painted with a brush, all applied and mixed with strips of cardboard, dragging the paint and making single prints with the edge. I based my painting off the doors into the studios, the angular edges and the mesh in the windows. All my lines were horizontal or vertical and  I used masking tape in the last layers to create geometric shapes representing the sections in the window. I'd painting in mostly white and purple (adding yellow to compliment the purple) and I decided to mix a layer of green just to see what would happen and break a few conventions of what is 'harmonious' and 'complimentary'.

I have a backlog of work to put on this blog! I've just finished the last two weeks of the diagnostic stage of my course, the projects being paper and painting. I've enjoyed them about 10 times more than I thought I would.
The paper project has opened so many doors to me that I didn't know existed. Last week, I was inspired by Su Blackwell to create a set coming out of a book, based on the book itself.  I used The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe and created a snowy Narnia scene.

Photography played a very important part for this project to make the scene look more authentic and to distort the scale. I love the intricacy and patience involved with creating something like this. I'd love to create something bigger and better using more dramatic lighting when choosing my extension task.

I used to spend a lot of time doing my own personal art and I really enjoy it so when I get the time I'll do as much as possible. While finishing off my paper project and sorting out UCAS forms I've found the time to do some of my own art. I actually started this this morning.

Portrait of the model Mona Johannesson taken by Mikael Schulz. Very rich yellows, pinks and purples really made me want to draw this. Over the last few years I've tried to draw my portraits in realism, sometimes being sucessful but I think more than anything it has taught me a bit about observation and proportion. Lately I've been really into like drawing so I'm going for outlined features in this particual drawing.






I also bought an A6 brown notebook from Paperchase about a year ago and never did anything with it, but over the last few months I've started to fill it with portraits, doodles and writing that is a totally different style, quite quick, graphic line drawings, sharp lines. Below are a selection of some of the most recent (past week) drawings I still need to finish.

I might be able to keep up this brown-book doodling but big pieces are almost out of the question in term time :(

I spent an hour last friday sitting in a box all in the name of conceptual art. I've been interested in the concept of time and the psychology of how out brain processes time, how everybodies perception of time is different and how mad we would go if we had no incling of how time was passing.
So I sat in a box, using the walls to draw on, write my thoughts, quotes, how much time I think had passed, while on the outside real time was passing.
I found that by the end (a full hour had passed) I thought 45 minutes had passed. Time is a lot slower in the box and I felt a strange sense of anxiety not quite knowing what was going on on the outside or what time it was. Time really seemed to blur into one.

Before I post anything about my abysmal efforts at conceptual art, I have to post about an artist I just found who works with paper. He's idea to research for my paper project next week as he work is exactly what I envision trying to create.
Peter Callesen makes large and small scale paper cuts (the examples I have chosen are all make from A4 paper). The idea to use standard A4 printing paper is wonderful, really, because it is one of the most used media for holding information... I personally have never really noticed how beautiful or crisply white the paper is and had no idea that it could be used to create such wonderful and delicate art. Callesen has such skill and patience, I can only hope to achieve something as beautiful next week.

Tim Knowles' tree drawings (top) and my attempt (bottom). I left my drawing out in the rain for a while so the water has made the black felt tip bleed into the paper, an effect which I quite like. After trying this tree drawing I realised that it's harder than it looks, hanging the pens at just the right height is important because if it's too high, it won't draw on the paper and if it's too low, it will just drag and get stuck.

 

The first of my own art on this blog. In Gary's drawing class we had to use alternative drawing materials and one of the things I used was (sunflower) oil. I wanted the drawing to represent light because the oil turns the page greasy and translusent, I had the idea to shine a light behind it to bring out the drawing. I represented light through rays (from the top left) and fireworks/catherine wheels. I kept the drawing loose by holding the brush at the far end while drawing and also flicking oil.

ArtByDoc

 

Portrait's are my favourite thing in the world and I'm constantly finding more artists (particually on sites like deviantART and flickr) whose art is based around portraits and the human figure. When I draw portraits, I always used pencil, recently branching out and trying watercolour which I love, but this artist, Danny O'Connor has created some really beautiful work using mixed media on plywood. So inspiring for me to try and be not so rigid and realistic all the time when trying to draw portraits. This is wonderfully creative.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artbydoc/

http://www.docart.bigcartel.com/

John Stezaker
‘Stezaker’s work re-examines the various relationships to the photographic image: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture. In his collages, Stezaker appropriates images found in books, magazines, and postcards and uses them as ‘readymades’. Through his elegant juxtapositions, Stezaker adopts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own witty and poignant meanings. 
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