Seán Moran Ronayne

Before we the new semester began I was searching for interesting examples of movement. This is a video I took while at my grand mother's during a blackout where she lives. We had lit a few candles in an attempt to have some light, while looking at the candle I noticed tiny pieces of wick moving in the fresh pool of wax that just formed beneath the lit wik.

It's not but much it'll do!

I have a small space in the corner of my midly cluttered spare room in my home in Dunmore east.

Most of my tools at my disposal are unfortunately are in my accommodation in Limerick, so the theme of this month is "Do what you can with what you have".

So I have gathered what little materials and tools I have and will work to expand this list as time goes on.

I currently have:

A pencil wrap (containing: x10 pencils of various sizes, fine liner set, thick 9B graphite pencil, green and red markers, black and green biros)

A craft blade

A multi-head screwdriver pen

A small sewing set with various needles

A roll of gun strip

A steel ruler

x3 pocket sketchbooks

x5 A4 sketchbooks

A small watercolour paint set

My laptop

I began by looking at the Symbolic nature of Biophilia, this lead me to consider the Crow found in Irish and Norse mythology, through the processes of drawing and sculpture.

Then I looked at the artefacts associated with that time, through the making of wearable sculptures comprised of cardboard.

In my first image I selectively desaturated the color of the helm, to give off the a further impression of a life lost long ago, in the second image I altered the tone of the now desaturated helm with cold blue hue and then increased the vibrancy of the stick on which it is impaled.

The final couple of images are my experiments with over saturating the colors to bring out the grayed out artefact and some playful color inversion out of curiosity.

Introduction to digital camera work and lighting in a studio setting:

In this workshop I learned the basics of using a digital camera and setting up studio lighting, as well as utilising the random assortment of objects to compose a more interesting photograph,

In relation to Biophilia, I played around with the imagery of the Norse god Odin. For the photo with one eye obscured with flower, and the image of holding one's removed eye, I reference odins depictions of having sacrificed one of his eyes for knowledge.

Whenever I get lost in my process, I go back to drawing something in large scale, it helps me gain a new perspective on the topic at hand.

These are 2 large scale drawings of combined sun symbols, taken from Ancient Ireland and prehistoric norse stone art, the bottom images are some land drawing I have done in both dunmore east beach in waterford and nf Clare Street campus in limerick.

'HrafnsGrímir' (Ravenmask)

While working on sketchbook I got the idea to make a cardboard version of my stylized raven. From there I researched a helmet called a 'barbute' (meaning bearded, as the fighters beard would the only feature visable from the helmet) from the Wallace collection, a museum collection or armor and weapons.

The two ravens being the facade of the helm, are to represent the Norse god Odin's ravens, Hugin and Munin, (Thought and Memory) I wanted to add an avian motif into a helmet this time around. Eventually the helmet looked to be more of a crown at the end of the process.

Inside the faced I Inscribed a verse from Grímnismál, a peotic edda of Odin's own wisdom and advice. The poem is Inscribed in an viking age script known as Younger Futhark, of which I have a great interest,

The poem reads:

'Huginn and Munnin,

Fly everyday the whole world over,

I fear that Hugin may not return,

But fear more for Munin.'

I interpret this as an old man fearing the loss of his mind, his memories most of all,

Mask Project Mark III

From my first two mask attempts I realised if wanted to make a wearable maks I would need to emulate how the face is made, through various facial plates.

The nose would obviously get in the way to begin there with measuring my own and constricting a cardboard piece.

From there I created a crossblike structure building up towards to the forehead and around it the skull, adding further braces to outline the length of my jaw, it started to look like a hurling helmet of sorts.

Returning to my viking age fascination, I found an image of one the only intake viking age helms, found 1943 in eastern Norway.

After my drawing of Odin, I decided to bring him into my fascination with masks, so I got a peice of cardboard and measured it to my face with a pencil, drew some guidelines to aid in its cutting then removed one of the eyes, and attached some string to make it wearable. The odin pendent, (ribe, jylland, Denmark) artefact ij particular was of interest to me in the design of Odin face.

While in studio, I was listening to Heilung's song Alfadhirhaiti (a song surrounding the theme of the Norse god Odin, his various names, artefacts and ravens are chanted throughout the song) I wanted to begin exploring the Character of Odin, so I went outside and drew a quick sketch of his face, and his two ravens as a way of getting the creative motor running.

The star of my latest piece!

Wanting to continue my tape and spray Crow art, I chose a photo of a Crow I had taken at the park by Arthur's Quay shopping centre, photographing crows with a mobile phone camera unfortunately doesn't catch much of their detail, also they tend to not hold still, so this got me thinking of focusing of the silhouette quality the photo had.

I drew a proto type, then moved onto a halving an A2 poster card and proceeded to tape the image. The triskele (triple spiral) makes another appearance in the image, giving further reference to The Mórrigan of Irish mythology.

After making a much needed cup of tea, I noticed one of the bags had torn, so I went and collected the contents of 9 of them, I came up with idea of drawing with pritt stick and pouring the tea onto it. Now Iove the first attempt as it has a strong silhouette quality to it (which I will incorporate to the "Phantom Queen" in irish myth), the feather tea drawing gave me the idea of using it has a textures back ground, I may use ground dried leaves for a more autumnal feeling to the my future work.

After getting some much needed guidance from Slyvia, I was took out a book of Mathew Monahan in order to explore my newest idea of creating a mask, (posts coming soon 😉)

I admire the simplicity of Monahan's work, a detailed portrait is dawn then scrunch and crumpled up into a shape vaguely human, Spacecrash mask in particular opened me up more simple and enjoyable approaches, I folded and cut some paper into the shadow of Crow. I had real fun with this 😁