The Word Becomes Art

My feedback for this assignment was good. My tutor liked my experimental approaches, which makes me happy because I enjoyed doing those and am keen to experiment more. In this project I changed my approach, still aiming to fulfil the requirements of the exercises, but holding the instructions a bit more lightly and following the directions in which my processes were leading me rather than doing exactly what the instructions said and no more or less. This greatly enhanced my enjoyment of my work, and I was much less stressed as a result.  My tutor liked my photo collages and shape book. She commented that I would need to simplify in future work in order to meet the requirements of a brief, but things can be more complex in my experiments. I’m slightly worried about the need to keep simplifying. I can see the value of it when wanting to create immediate impact and communication. However, I have never been drawn to minimalism and I do like working with patterns and decorative elements...

This is my finished poster for this assignment. Following the sketches I recorded last time, I had a bit of a practice drawing blackbirds.  It was a challenging shape to describe, but once I’d had a few goes I was ready to start my drawing.Here is the finished drawing, based on my years of observing blackbirds and my study of blackbird photos such as those on my moodboard.  It was helpful to have identified the key colours before beginning the drawing. While I layered up many more colours of coloured pencil, my aim was to combine them in such a way as to convey the initial colour palette. For example, there was no deep blue or ultramarine in my colour selection, but both feature on the base layer of the blackbird and just peep through the grey, brown and black layered over them. Next I took the drawing into Photoshop to make the rest of the poster. As planned, I tried both black and dark green, but neither of them looked right with the drawing. The colours below were the most ...

The next day, as I was on my morning walk, I was thinking more about visual hierarchies. I concluded that I had become too anxious about trees, when they have only a supporting role to play. I resolved to go back to my dawn chorus idea and stop worrying about trees. The birds are what it’s all about! I decided that I would choose the blackbird as my central image. For one thing, it’s my favourite bird. Perhaps more relevantly, it’s a bird that most people would recognise so it’s an easy way into the idea of going on a walk and being told about the song of other birds. Also, the blackbird is usually the one to begin the dawn chorus each morning, often when it’s still dark. Lastly, Mr Blackbird likes to fly right to the top of the tree to sing his song - so not much need to draw trees! I decided that this would be a drawing. I don’t have any of my own photos of blackbirds in a tree, so I couldn’t use a photo. I considered a collage, but felt that this demographic (largely 50+ members of ...

This assignment is to use what we have learned about line, tone, shape and colour to create a poster for a musical event. It’s our choice as to what genre or style of music/event we use, but we need to bear in mind who the poster is for, and style it accordingly. The assignment notes also talk about visual hierarchies, which I found really helpful. I think that, in my previous posters, I didn’t simplify enough and it wasn’t very clear what the focus of each poster was. I’ve mulled over my feedback from that assignment and I want to create something much more simple and using the idea of visual hierarchies to determine which part of an image is most important, and which parts less so. We are also to consider the relationship between musical style and image.  I began, as I so often do, with the dictionary and thesaurus. First I looked at the dictionary. www.dictionary.com I highlighted the definitions that interested me most. I then went on to wander around in the thesaurus. First I ...

 I’m writing this for the second time because, when I published the post on my Critical Review, the first version of this entirely disappeared! For this exercise the theme is shape. We’re asked to work with a list of 20 synonyms for ‘shape’ and create a few sketches for each word. This made me happy because the thesaurus is one of my favourite research tools. I can get lost in there for ages, looking up synonyms, then following up synonyms of synonyms. It gives me a fuller sense of the key words that I’m trying to communicate visually. I also like the antonyms because it’s good to know what something is not. Sometimes looking at the words that mean the opposite of my key words can throw in things I need to be aware to avoid, or sometimes, things that I want to incorporate as a sort of shadow side of a concept. However, my spirits were lowered when I typed all the words into a note on my phone and then started adding things to draw based on each word. There were 20 words so I should...

During the unit we need to work on and submit a Critical Review. It can be in the form either of a 1000 word essay, or an 8 minute presentation such as a PowerPoint presentation. As I access Zoom via my iPad I can’t screen share, therefore I will write an essay.  I didn’t have much idea about the subject matter, except that it needs to be small, given that 1000 words is barely any words at all. I had thought that I might do something around Art Nouveau, seeing as I’ve been pursuing my interest in this genre as I’ve been working on this unit. Then, two days ago, I was asked to reflect on an image created by Hildegard of Bingen, and, as well as many other thoughts, I was struck by the similarities that exist between Hildegard’s work and that of Mucha eight centuries later, particularly in the form of decorative borders and forms within their images. I’m curious about what unites them in their creative processes, and what factors in their personalities or culture might lead them to th...

It’s taken me a bit of time to get to recording my reflections on my tutor’s feedback because I was already working in Assignment 4 before I had my Assignment 3 tutorial and I needed to document all that I’ve been doing. I also wanted a bit of a clearer mind for my reflections, having been unwell the last month or so. I really liked my feedback this time. My tutor took on board what I said about wanting more constructive criticism and thoughts on how I can improve my work. One of the things she said was that she’d like to see more mixed media experimentation. In my mind this roughly translates as ‘why did you stay in and work during play time? Make sure you go out and play next time!’ As my previous post shows, I have embraced that piece of feedback wholeheartedly. An interesting idea was to join up different ideas on my mind maps by making connections between different ‘legs’ of the spider. This could yield some unique and crazy ideas to take forward and develop. It reminds me of conv...

I really like the images I’d created by photographing my still life of black and white things. Having edited and presented 20 of them, I wanted to do more. This isn’t part of the exercise as written by OCA, I just wanted to do it.  I found lots of patterns and shapes in my photos. As well as creating some interesting tonal images, I got a bit obsessed with the white dots on the black tray. I wanted to see what the effect would be if I printed some of the photos onto pre-printed backgrounds. The white areas would print as blank, so parts of the underlying image would be obscured and others revealed. While the passages of the photos including the spots were often atonal, whatever I printed onto would show through and create new areas of tone. Here are my prints. These two are printed on hand-painted papers which I photographed and printed before printing the image on top. Here I made two versions of an image, one with high exposure and contrast and the other with darker tones. I prin...