#aplaceinquestion

TIME MANAGEMENT

Time management was a bit of a problem for me with this project. I found it hard to fully understand the brief at the beginning and I didn’t fully understand how much more was expected of us now that we’re in our second year. Due to this I was very slack on keeping up with the workload. We were given a planning sheet with class work and homeworks set out, though, which I found helped me considerably. I found inspiration for my final piece very late on in the project which also meant I was under tight time constraints to finish it. In the next project I will make sure I’m keeping up with the work that’s set and set myself regular tasks to ensure I don’t fall behind again.

  RESEARCH

I found that this project I did more artist research than I did last year. I found Matisse, Klee and Denny fundamental in the development of my ideas as, although I chose not to mirror any of their styles to closely, I think they all contributed to my development and overall outcome. I conducted my contextual study on Klee. I found this study quite hard, as I had never had to research an artist quite so in depth before. Also I don’t think I actually included enough relevant context to explain his works. Hopefully I will improve contextual studies as time goes on.

  DEVELOPMENT

I did a lot of development in this project as I has finding it hard to lead it in an effective direction. After all my initial research I thought of 6 initial ideas. Of these 6 I narrowed it down to 3. I made development pages for these 3 discussing what materials, scales etc. I would use for them. I also made a prototype for each idea. However despite all of this I couldn’t develop any of the individual ideas any further as they all seemed too plain and uninspiring. After taking a long time to think about it I decided to try combining 2 of my ideas for my final piece. This resulted in the idea of a 2 ½D painting. I made a prototype then decided to use the idea as my final piece.

FINAL OUTCOMES

My final piece is an A1 board with MDF pieces painted in emulsion paint. I’m happy with my final piece as I feel it describes the layers and textures quite effectively. It has, overall, quite a graphic feel to it – lots of clean lines and block colour. Due to this, all the small errors I made show up quite significantly (wonky lines and paint specks) In hindsight I should’ve been far more careful considering how clearly small mistakes show up.

I also made a promotional poster for RIBA’s fake exhibition ‘Constructions’. I modeled this on previous advertisements I had seen for the Academy but tried to make the theme colours tie in with my piece.

I believe I have answered my brief to a certain extent as I was meant to create a piece that explores layers and textures – both of which I have experimented with. I was unable to showcase my picture in situ due to time and software constraints so unable to fully carry out my brief of ‘showing’ it being displayed in RIBA.

When working on a computer for a long time, care needs to be taken in health and safety:

- Take regular breaks, do not stare at the screen for hours at a time

- Sit up right in your chair

- Keep water away from the computers to avoid spills and electricals getting wet

When in the workshop remember to:

- Do not run around the workshop

- Keep hair tied back

- Make sure to wear goggles and an apron when printing or using the machines

- Make sure the room is well ventilated to avoid nasty fumes when using paint / solvents

- Take care when using hot equipment such as glue guns, hairdryers or spot welder - make sure to wear gloves when necessary

- Keep water away to avoid slipping and accidents

- Windows opened to avoid fumes and dust

- When using sharp machines, objects - scissors/ knives/ saws - take care do not mess around when holding them

- When using the plaster room take care when mixing to avoid a slipping floor with water

When working on Kilve Beach, there are some health and safety rules that need to be remembered:

- Be careful when walking over unsteady rocks - could fall and hurt yourself

  The brief was:

“What is this project about?

  We experience and remember locations using all of our senses. As very young children the memory is more tactile than visual, developing as we get older into a more ‘multi-layered’ experience through awareness of light, time, emotion, colour, space, form, sound, taste, texture etc. This project asks you to consider what this ‘sense of place’ means, and to explore the many different ways there are to analyse, capture and express this visually.

  You will be given a specific location/space in or around the college buildings to examine, explore, measure, describe and otherwise capture and interpret. This will be your ‘subject for the duration of the project. Part of the challenge will be to make detailed studies of it. For example you could record patterns of light, texture, movement around or through the space, detailed dimensions or study subtle changes in colouration.

  Once you have thoroughly explored the potential of the space in a wide range of work, you will produce a finished 2D piece using your findings and contextual research.

Brief – Explore, analyse and respond to a specific location using observation and recording. Create a large-scale 2D final outcome.

  Coverage -

1.   How to use an extensive range of drawing and recording techniques.

2.   How to use various ‘strategies’ to explore and record a subject, learned from the work of other artists and designers.

3.   How to develop complex outcomes from simple sources using experiments with drawing in 2 and 3D.

4.   A wide range of 2D and 3D media and techniques.

5.   How to develop effective ways of presenting and communicating your ideas via a portfolio.

6.   Contextual references”

  The area I got given was behind the canteen where it had this black metal staircase going downstairs. I did a simple line drawing of my location (the black metal staircase) and also had to measure the location specifically. I then did mini observational drawings from the staircase and used different materials and techniques, trying to replicate the texture and surface of the location. I also overlaid different materials such as string, newspapers over images that I took of my location and made it to suit my own design in my own way. My aim for that was to see how it would look and to see what affect it would give the original image underneath. I tried another image, A4 size and placed tracing paper on top of the image and worked into the picture with oil pastels. I looked into an artist called Kandinsky and miniature studies of his work, as his work is very tricky as its geometrical and very colourful. I then printed out my location (staircase) on to acetate and changed that into a Kandinsky style image. I did that by using watercolours and replicating some of the geometrical shapes and mark making he does over my own image.  I also looked into three artist called Kurt Schwitters, Pablo Picasso and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. What all three artists had in common is their use of collage in their work. Taking that on board, I created an A1 piece of my location, and did a collage behind the location. This was my response to the brief and the artists. I used colours such as green, black, browns and newspapers to create the collage background for my image. 

  Evaluation-The Cube

  The brief was:

“Using your ‘Place in Question’ work directly as the initial source, create a 250mm cube which expresses and develops the visual language you created in the previous work.

Project work outcomes:

Full record of developmental work.

Notes and samples of materials and processes experiments, with explanatory annotation.

Contextual investigations with thorough annotations explaining your thoughts and ideas.

Photographs of final outcomes

Evaluation.

Presentation  - Mounted photos of your final outcome”

  Carrying on the research I did from the ‘Place in question’ project, I started my initial designs for the cube. I had a few ideas, which varied from having metal rods to floating glass stairs. I also took Kandinsky’s research I did and placed that into another idea, which I then chose to do as my final piece. I used acrylic sheets and using sharpies, I recreated some of Kandinsky’s work on each piece of clear acrylic. I then painted a little sheet of acetate in white and recreated my location by making the stairs and making it look like it is floating.

Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky, born 16 December 1866 – and died 13 December 1944. He was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited for painting the first abstract work. At the age of 30, he started his paintings, life drawings and sketching.

In 1921, Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most famous art. Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity; it was a central aspect of his art. Kandinsky was interested in Monet’s work at the time an artist who's work has had a profound impact on many others.  Kandinsky was fascinated by the impressionist artist's style, as he had never before seen paintings, which did not perfectly imitate reality.  Kandinsky studied in Munich, under Anton Azbé, sketching, anatomy and life drawing.  He then studied under Franz von Stuck, then moved on to found and the avant-garde Phalanx exhibiting society, and wrote about art.  His “administrative” skills served him well as director of the Phalanx exhibiting society, while his writings about spirituality had prepared him for his works about color theory.

Kandinsky was a “synaesthete”, meaning that he could see sound as color, and vice versa.  His writings on color theory sometimes bordered on his own interpretations and visual impressions, which took on paranormal qualities.  In 1906, Kandinsky settled in Paris with his mistress, and Gabriele Münter, who was also a talented art student.  A year later, the two were separated, and Kandinsky suffered a nervous breakdown, and relocated to Bavaria, so he could lead a quiet life, and concentrate on his art.  Kandinsky experimented with color and minimal composition, blocking reality from his work.  Like music, his paintings reflected his emotional states, and so by looking at them, you can feel the emotion through his work. Kandinsky's work was shown in galleries across Europe, and people would find them shocking, as the abstract nature of his work would stir controversy. 

Kandinsky returned to Munich in 1908, and a year later, he founded the New Artists Association of Munich. He created many abstract glass paintings based on musical elements.  He also published another book on Spirituality that relates to art, and he wrote several plays and poems.  Along with New Artists Association, Kandinsky was also a member of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider), which he founded with an artist called Franz Marc, and was also a member of the Bauhaus movement with composer Arnold Schoenberg and Paul Klee.  Kandinsky was involved in many movements, learning and experimenting with words, music, and painting.

During the First World War, Kandinsky moved back to Russia, where he took an interest in the burgeoning constructivist movement, which was based on hard lines, dots and other geometric shapes.  While in Russia, he also married a young art student and he immersed himself behind the scenes as well as in the spotlight, becoming a key player in the administration of several educational, and government run art programs, helping to create the Institute of Artistic Culture and the Museum of Pictorial Culture in Moscow. A few clashing views with some of the other artists made him return to Germany, where he taught at the Bauhaus school, this time focusing on introductory art, and Murals.  There are very few remaining examples of the work Kandinsky produced in Russia, but many of the paintings he created in Germany have survived.  

  As years went by, Kandinsky participated in several solo and group showings around the world, which earned him the admiration and support of Solomon Guggenheim.  In 1933, Kandinsky was granted German citizenship, but the rise to power of the Nazi party would mean the closing of the Bauhaus school, forcing him to relocate once more. He then went to Paris where he settled down in a quiet suburb, where he continued to work on his new paintings.  Kandinsky was granted French citizenship, and he remained in France for the remaining years of his life.  Even in his last years, Kandinsky still managed to shock the art world.

His work ‘Cossacks’ in 1910-1911 is a oil painting on a canvas and very abstract. As it states at the Tate Modern “Kandinsky believed that abstract paintings could convey spiritual and emotional values simply through the arrangement of colours and lines. Cossacks was made during a transitional period, when he retained some representational elements, such as the two Russian cavalrymen in tall orange hats in the foreground of the painting. Kandinsky considered these as points at which the images could be registered, rather than the true content of the painting.”

Another piece of his work is ‘Swinging’ in 1925. It is another oil painting on a board and again this is what it states at the Tate modern about his work; “The title of Swinging conveys the painting’s sense of dynamic movement, suggestive of the rhythms of modernity. One of the pioneers of abstract painting, Kandinsky championed a mystical approach to art. His treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1911, argued for art that was purified from all references to the material world. He felt that colour in particular was essential for liberating art from naturalistic appearances.”  His work always seemed to show a message or a picture of what he has seen or has experienced and so he reflects in his own way by painting abstract. The colours he uses in both paintings are very colourful and have a vast variety of colours throughout his work.

'We experience and remember locations using all of our senses. As very young children the memory is more tactile than visual, developing as we get older into a more ‘multi-layered’ experience through awareness of light, time, emotion, colour, space, form, sound, taste, texture etc. This project asks you to consider what this ‘sense of place’ means, and to explore the many different ways there are to analyse, capture and express this visually. You will be given a specific location/space in or around the college buildings to examine, explore, measure, describe and otherwise capture and interpret. This will be your ‘subject for the duration of the project. Part of the challenge will be to make detailed studies of it. For example you could record patterns of light, texture, movement around or through the space, detailed dimensions or study subtle changes in coloration. Once you have thoroughly explored the potential of the space in a wide range of work, you will produce a finished 2D piece using your findings and contextual research. '

For the 'A Place In Question' project, I was first given my environment. My environment was the staircase at the end of the blue corridor in college. To start thinking about my area, I took a number of pictures, using different angles and views to capture the characteristics and ideas of my environment. I was particularly pleased that my area had stairs as being interested in surface and textile design, I knew that I would be able to create some interesting pattern based images from this area. I then did some brief sketches of my area, using pencil to make tonal drawings showing the contrast of light and dark. It was interesting to draw my area, as it gave me more idea of the shapes and space within it, and got me thinking about how ideas could be developed to create an interesting final outcome. As well as observational sketches, I also researched into the more architectural side of collecting information from an environment. I started looking at measured drawings, ending up creating a measured drawing of my own area... collecting all the measurements of the staircases, walls and windows to give an accurate and precise idea of the sizing and layout of my environment. As well as looking at precise measured drawings, I also researched into other ways architecture can be illustrated. I looked at line, colour, shape and traditional sketching to help inspire my ideas. It was particularly interesting looking into other ways that architecture can be illustrated, showing how diverse a sketch can be using different mediums as well as ideas. I experimented with pastels using bright colouring and bold line. This then led me to create a Google sketch-up of my area. At the beginning I was particularly skeptical about using sketch-up as a way of showing my environment as I haven't done much animation before. Although this was the case, it was exciting to use a new technique to present ideas and even though it was hard at first, after some practice I had got the hang of using the process and managed to create a short clip showing my stair area.

On the topic of stairs and shapes, this then led me to research into M.C. Escher and his use of distortion and 'never-ending' staircases. I was particularly interested in his work, particularly that he used tone as a big part of his drawings, making the shapes and design the main focus of all his images. I had a go at sketching some brief ideas inspired with Escher, then going onto create a collage inspired by his pattern ideas. I was particularly pleased with my collage outcome. I particularly liked the contrast of brown, black and white papers...as well as bold black lines showing the shapes and images of my area.