max the art machine

Leaf study, one using black and white ink, the other using masking tape to build form and texture of a leaf, and layering up with graphite to build tone. While i found using ink very difficult, i love how the first leaf turned out (which i think looks better unfinished!)

[A very small] snippet of a comic i’m working on.

I loved manipulating the ink on the paper, and how quickly it dried, too, making it easy to overlap in tone. It had a very graphic outcome which i loved, and will definitely be doing again! However, i didn’t like it so much when i using the ink with a brush, as it was too controlled and felt less powerful compared to the unpredictable organic shapes spilling and manipulating it made. While i wasn’t too keen on how it turned out, i’ve definitely found a technique i love!

I was fascinated by the reflections in the water, and wasn’t sure where to take it, so started off with experimenting with red ink and drew from a photo of the reflection that I’d taken. The reflection in the ink pot i was using made me think about recreating a reflection of a drawing of the plants. So, i did a test run, using tracing paper and a pallet filled with diluted red paint water, which worked out. I then did a collages drawing of different pictures i’d taken from kew using oil pastels for texture, and hung up the drawing against a window and took a picture of the reflection. I feel as though it didn’t work how i wanted to, and would need to work on a larger scale for it to maybe work better, as well as a different paint water colour (other than red). Rippling the water was fun though, as it was a natural way to distort an image without using computers.

Both primary and secondary recordings from Kew

Pictures I took to record specific things I found interesting, like the decaying mushroom, to the bark on different trees in the greenhouse, to shadows and reflections.

I was fascinated by the texture, line and shape of the tree trunk and branches of these particular photos.

My lovely classmates finished off our project while I was off sick, and I had to share :)

We started off by looking for interesting found objects, which eventually inspired us into making something inspired by human anatomy. from there, we developed our ideas into re-working the objects to resemble different organs and body parts.

Collaborative piece of the building :)

Some artists I really liked in this movement were James Turrell and Peter Alexander. I wanted to recreate the same use of coloured lights and transparency, as well as the sharp edges of oddly placed shapes within the architecture of these spaces.

Taking inspiration from me previous fabric work, the part that i loved most about that was the deconstructed zip. Making it out of clay was a challenge since it kept breaking, but i’m happy with how it turned out. I did prefer making the 5 minute pieces, however, as there was less pressure and was more freeing, as well as working with all the clay, in a larger scale. I loved the concept of destroying the clay to make something new after making one piece, which is an idea to carry through into further art pieces.

With this, I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to randomly cut up and break the clothes I used for this apart, and see where it took me. I ended up experimenting with the striped fabric by seeing if I could stuff it with left over bits from it, and started creating these bubbles on top of the denim. The deconstructed zip I then used to intertwine through the bubbles, which gave a really nice effect I thought, but it would’ve been fun to continue it with several zips.

I decided to go down the path on neglect and disconnection. As i was drawing, it started to go down the route of the two terms combined into a theme around dissociation, and memory. I played with perspective a bit, so it is like watching from above, yet also still in first person. I also went back and tried pressing a simple drawing onto the first picture to resemble a window, resembling feelings of being left out, forgotten, and dissociated from ones self and reality. A window is very symbolic of that, but i wanted to make it feel distorted and fragmented, so there’s a sense of urgency and crisis, rather than “calm”.