Research blog

I wanted to provide a final word on the Authorial project (and it’s incomplete nature). It was a highly enjoyable project for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the freedom I was given as it allowed me to undertake a far more personal route, in terms of the fact I was genuinely really interested in the topic. I think this was part of the reason everything eventually took longer and eventually I got behind.

It was actually very hard to write the brief for myself even though I knew exactly what I wanted to look at and within what parameters. Getting it to sound right and trying to put key terms in place without repeating myself over and over proved difficult, but I definitely see the value in it as it helps to have a clear idea as to our aims in any project. I need more practice writing these and I plan on looking back at some of the past briefs again to see what made them successful and easy to respond to, as I don’t think I wrote this brief as well as it could’ve been done.

I really like Becca Collins’ paintings and the fact that they are pieced together on different sheets of paper.

The Monday evaluation/ talk crit thing with Martin/ Josh and my classmates was really good and Martin suggested that I look at the prints by Koshiro Onchi. I need to find a way of combining emotive colour with my prints and I’ve realised that printing needs to be planned sometimes, I’ve mostly been just going for it and seeing what happens. In order to create more emotive prints I need to really look at my colour choices and work out composition etc.

Memory drawing of the heather path

First path (in a shady spot) (it was cold)

As for the last two... jeeeeeeeez I found what I was seeing hard to translate

As for myself, I really enjoyed using chalk pastels and thinking about colour with nature. I found myself really trying to find the colour in things and how I could put across that experience of colour in what I was drawing on the page. This was the same shrub (which was green and well lit) drawn multiple ways as I investigated how to put across the colours I saw. Although one of the flatter images, 4 was probably most faithful to how I saw the shrub and the glowing trees behind it. Image wise, I really love 2 as I think it really captures the sun shining on the leaves creating dark shadows within the shrub. Number 5 is a memory drawing and was fun to do, but I am unsure whether it captures my feelings (I really loved the golden glow) towards the glowing trees this time.

I’m really enjoying playing around with frames, I think that’s something I’ve really taken away from the National Gallery visit with Charlotte and Ollie as they both said to me ‘these drawings are nice and everything - but they really need a frame to work compositionally’ and they’re really right.

I couldn’t get this right, but I tried! Might have to return to this again

All from references taken in Eira’s lovely lovely house in Wales, taken with print Wednesday’s in mind as it was such a wonderful location with such good company

Honestly, I have no idea about what I’m doing currently, but I like this small square monoprint a lot and I can’t wait to have my print Wednesday back even if I’m not doing anything very new, experimental or spectacular as I feel it’s teaching me a lot about tone variation and as long as I like doing it, I’m going to keep at it.

I decided that my memory drawing (something Martin likes to do) would be of this one. It isn’t the best but I guess it’s an interesting act.

Continued National Gallery drawings