Assignment 8: Reflections on feedback

When I first read my feedback for this assignment I felt quite discouraged. Having reread it I find the critique more helpful, but in order to do the extra work suggested I would need to be a full time student.

The main problem I have with the coursework is this blog. It takes me around 2 hours to photograph everything, edit the photos and write the blog, dealing with the vagaries of how the software wants to change the layout, and so on. At times it seems that I spend more time blogging than actually getting the work done. That isn’t so, but I tend to do about 7 posts per project, which is around 15 hours’ work. 

I tried to save time by doing my sketches digitally, to cut out the photographing and image editing tasks; however if I then need to do more with different thicknesses, pressure, colour and type of line, it will take even longer. I will go back to paper and pencils. Similarly, when I said that I ‘chose’ as opposed to ‘used’ the American Typewriter font, I thought it would be clear that I tried many fonts in different sizes and colours before settling on the one I used. I spent about half an hour doing just that. If I screenshot each change I’d have to upload hundreds of photos. I realise that my tutor can’t see inside my head or view my screen from afar, but I really can’t account for every detail of my process. I trialled every font in the list. I resized and repositioned by fractions of an inch. I tried perhaps 15 colours, and variations on them, for each image text. I ended up with what I presented. I will try to share a but more of these processes but I don’t think any of us would appreciate that many photos!

I was pleased with the feedback on my collages as I’ve particularly enjoyed doing more with collage during this course and I have plans to develop this further once I’ve finished the unit. In progress photos are a good idea. Again I would be unable to show every detail as I select, cut or tear, position and reposition and glue down every element. Perhaps if we were only asked to make one thing there would be time to process all the steps, but even so it could be 100 ish steps/photos per collage. That is probably an underestimation. 

I realise that I’m being encouraged to rough out more ideas and then refine some of them, adding colour, texture, mark making and exploring different media etc. I have found it useful to do thumbnails for composition. My concern is that if I do too much planning and practicing, by the time I make my final images they will have lost any sense of aliveness. In the second year of my HND I remember doing a particular project in which I did a lot more sketchbook work than normal before selecting particular approaches and then working them up into quite detailed preliminary drawings. The sketchbook looked good, but the final pieces I went on to produce all looked stilted and dead. It was particularly sad to see them because the subjects of the drawings were lizards, and they are so darting and free. I had killed them with too much planning. Since then, while I’ve thought through numerous approaches as I walk, and done rough sketches or thumbnails, I’ve been wary of developing designs too much in my sketchbooks and killing my work. I think a way forward might be to do compositional thumbnails with colour swatches/scribbles next to them, perhaps in a series of squares that go along the edge of the thumbnail, as is done for interior design. That way I could show more evidence of my planning without overworking the images. I will try that with Assignment 9.