Life Drawing//Year 1 reflection and analysis

Since starting on the BA drawing course I have found that my confidence has improved and I am now able to use my own sense of line to communicate an idea of the body and form of the figure in front of me. Whereas before I was very nervous in approaching what was in front of me, this showed in my first assessment where it was pointed out that my line was distinguishable between life drawing and my other practice. It was noted that my line was more cautious and this took away from what I was drawing. I tended to go full on straight away with documenting what was in front of me. The marks were chaotic and confused and I often found myself losing faith with what I was drawing.

Confidence has played a huge part in the progression of my life drawing in the second semester. I have found a way of working with line that I think gets across what I want to with drawing. The fundamentals of drawing for me is shape, line and mark making and I have found a minimal way of capturing this in one stroke which differs hugely from my work on foundation.

When working with my sense of line it is always important that I have been able to translate a sense of gesture with what I am doing. I have this habit of working very quickly as I want to translate what is in my head to paper as quickly as possible. This is something I want to work on next year and become more considered with what I am drawing. I am able to work quickly which is something I have improved on and I think this is a fundamental skill to have because of how it is important to use drawing to capture the world around us rather than just photographing or writing notes.

I think through doing quick warm up poses straight away it has made me think less about what I am drawing and thinking more about the figure in front of me and considering the line and curves of the form and how this is built up.

Printmaking analysis//relfection

Since starting on the BA Drawing course and the printmaking facilities being moved up to Woodlane I have been integrated into meeting other students and this has helped with my confidence and learning more about other processes and having the confidence to ask questions is something that I have never have had the confidence to do but this year is different because I am with more likeminded people and there are more print making facilities for me to throw myself into. Working bigger is still something that I am being encouraged to do but also I still don't have the confidence and patience to do so. I worked on an A2 piece of metal and incorporated some of my manipulations on the photocopier on it which was another way to push my process and ideas onto a new platform and scale.

The important thing about this course is that there is a structure which is suggested and set and then w can take it in any direction we want to. This is great as we all have the same starting point and when it comes to crits etc and it great to see where people take it. I now have the confidence to take it to another level with my practice rather than concentrating on how other people push it and feeling like I have to follow the same path as them I am able to trust my own judgement more. This is something that I have been struggling with since foundation but I think its safe to say that this year things have finally started to come together and having this confidence is having me in good stead and has stopped me thinking as much. This is always an issue with the way I work and this is why print-making grounds me so much. I am able to lose myself in a process and refine my work as I go because this is very much part of my practice in how I work and do things.

I have been working on more representational images for projects like the narrative outcome and this has been great because it's pushing my sense of mark making into a new direction and making it's audience wider. My mark making is very self indulgent and since having a conversation with Dane I have thought more about how I can use the signs and symbols project as a way to communicate my ideas in a different way. I am struggling with this currently and I think it is something I need to continue to work on after hand in. This is the beauty of the way I work, the ideas are very conceptual and fine art related and I want to put them more into a different kind of context. Whether this be illustration or something more design based.

17022016

The day started out in the print room. I am trying to really experiment with the idea of space within a composition and how this can be created with dark space and shape. My morning in the print room was nor very successful as the first print I made resembled more of a ghost print. The background was not dark enough and the features of the pattern did not stand out. There was no differentiation between the subjects of the piece and the background. 

After speaking to Bianca I learnt that this has not been successful because the ink on the background had not been rolled out thickly enough onto the plate. I re-inked the plate and this time was more successful in what I wanted to achieve. However this time the collage elements were not as successful. When I do these prints again I need to take more consideration with how I am inking up each section. I also want to try and play around with composition more and print these mono-types on larger pieces of paper. 

In the afternoon I met with Millie who is a first year on the photography degree. Her work is an influence in my own practice at the moment because of how she uses colour and lighting. This collage piece was the result of a spontaneous collaboration in the Library where I worked into her image with salvaged paper.

Falmouth School of art lectures: Graham Gussin. Graham's work is beautiful in how he plays on the idea of space. His video and drawing pieces were really inspiring. How he pushes the boundaries of drawing and writing has sparked an interest and something I want to research further.

16022016

This morning I met up with Illustration Lecturer Nick Mott. I have met some lovely people on the illustration course at Falmouth and when we've spoken about our ways of working they said that Nick would be very interested in my work. Since seeing the work of Falmouth graduate Sophie Eliza Chadwick I have been doing collage more and more. I am now pushing this into print by combining found imagery with spontaneous mark making and exploring this idea of narrative through collage.

Talking to Nick I was really influenced by his way of keeping sketchbooks and the idea that keeping them is a way to document collage. There was something very clear and organised about his way of working which has motivated me to try and organise my collage this way. On my foundation I kept artists books and it was good because the work was always in one place. However now I am more disorganised so I think keeping work like this might be a good thing for me. 

Over the last few days I have been finding old plates which I want to introduce into new work and give new meaning to. The idea of spotntaneous mark making is still very relevant in my practice however I want to experiment more with found imagery and geometric shape. 

 These were some of the outcomes from being in the print room today. They were not very successful because the spacing between the imagery and the plate is too fragmented and the image does not sit right. I was pleased at how some of the colours worked together. I just need to think about the placement of the imagery and how this reads to the viewer. I was also pushing this work in a new direction by printing on large sheets of white Fabriano paper. I did this because space is a very interesting thing to consider within work and what this can mean and add to the piece.

I dug out some old photographic plates which had been etched and are exploring the idea of fragmentation and distortion of image. Photographic etching is something I want to try and progress my collage ideas into as I think it will mean I can work on a larger scale but also push the idea of fragmentation further.

15022016

Isolde showed us her work today and it was really motivating to see how we could use her working process to create some interesting drawings. It was great to gain an insight into the way my tutor works and what I could learn from this to apply to my own practice. How she worked with just one medium in such an expressive way was great because she used the media to its fullest potential varying mark and tone to create a dramatic piece of work. 

The idea behind her work focusses on the idea of process and finding shapes within the composition to create a narrative. She has made of 400 of these drawings and over the last couple of years has made them late at night. I pointed out that this actually reflected in how the work looked as it has dreamlike qualities and also with how the imagery is created it is working with the subconscious and how imagery is stored. 

She said the process of creating this work is obsessive and I relate to that with the way I make work. In her work unreal spaces emerge from a tangled surface, it is this which draws the viewer in and makes them question the narrative and use of mark. 

Today I created an A1 drawing which was daunting to begin with because I tend to work small because I like my work to have an intimate quality. However it is always good to challenge yourself and I still managed to keep my quality of line and idea of expression despite working on a larger scale. I decided to do this drawing as a line drawing to capture the essence of the subjects of I was looking at. Being inspired by Isolde's use of shape and quality of line I am thinking about making a larger series of drawings focussing on how I use the medium and minimal use of colour. 

The finished drawing and video which shows the process from start to finish//