Disperse

Phew, so this is the last update for my Four Words projects : "Disperse" . I appologise for the quality of the photos - I really struggled with decent light as we haven't had a sunny day when I've been able to take photos (only sunny days when I've not!).

I'd initially wanted to do something to do with bird shaped kites. Ideally a set of them showing the different stages in 'wing flapping'. I did a lot of research into bird flight and was struggling with how I was going to make the kites. I started experimenting anyways, and one of my experimental paper birds I made out of an old envelope. The tutors liked that and suggested I go along that route. At Christmas I found this book on Sunshine's sister's bookshelf and borrowed it. I made a paper bird based on the instructions and loved how it came out, so started making more with my collection of envelopes, which after some decorating, evolved into the birds you see above. Each bird represents one of the countries that I have lived in. Each bird too is addressed “To Mithila Shafiq” in the language of that country (thank you mum and Tiu for the help!).

The British one : ‘Bristol, United Kingdom’ – as that’s where I live now and where this will be posted from.
The Malaysian one : ‘Johor, Malaysia’ – in ‘Jawi’ script. Johor is the state in Malaysia that I was brought up in.
The Bangladeshi one : ‘Dhaka, Bangladesh’ – in Bangla script. Dhaka is where I was born.

I linked my own feeling of dispersal (living in three different countries) with the idea of birds, flight and airmail; and decided this would be quite appropriate for the Mailmeart exhibition. One of my New Year's Art resolutions was to get my work 'out-there'; exhibited, sold, etc, and so I'd been looking at things I could submit my work for. The Mailmeart submission deadline is tomorrow so I thought this would be a great way to 'disperse' my work into the world! I made a mobile from the three birds and made an envelope/box for them to go inside. I also cut out a lino stamp that says "DISPERCE JAN 08" (yes, I've just realised that its spelt wrong! - damn! and I managed to cut my fingers twice while making it as well .... oh well ...).

CRIT: Tutors were mostly happy with this. When I handed it in though, the inside of the box was not decorated, and they said that it would be better if I'd put as much effort into the inside as the outside - so what you see in the bottom two pictures is where I have done a collage inside to show my 'migration routes'. Also they suggested it would have been better if I did the 'windows' with that funny plastic that they actually DO use on envelope windows (rather than the acetate sheets that I used). I would have loved to have if I could source a sheet that was big enough to cover the holes I had (and I personally think my acetate is a bit sturdier). The other thing one of the tutors said was "if you were a real genius, you would have designed your own stamps..." . Hmmm... that's true, I COULD have designed my own stamps, but I actually LIKE sourcing ephemera and I probably spent as much time trying to find just the right stamps (you'll notice they are all relevant to the theme but not necessarily birds), as I would have designing my own. It's a shame I had to resort to printing some of them as my trip to the local philatelic shop wasn't very fruitful.

Since the assessments, I've only just had a little time to finish off the inside of the box, try and take a few more pictures, work out a way to strap the mobile to the inside of the box so that it doesn't get too bashed about in the post, and then this afternoon, I finally sent it off! Y0u should have seen the look on the postoffice-girl's face ;) I hope it arrives safely and gets chosen for the exhibition and book of the exhibition.

Balance

The third of the four words updates - "Balance". This is the one that I was the most clueless about ... "birds and balance?" ... couldn't quite come up with a decent idea. Then my tutors saw this (see the bottom of the post) and said to go with it ... so you get birds 'balanced' on things (I'd prefer to call this piece "Perched"!).

Anyways, whilst I was thinking and planning out silhouettes I could do, I realised that a lot of them fell kind of into one of three categories - urban, industrial, and natural, and that's roughly how the three panels work. I still can quite feel my right index finger from holding my scalpel for so long. But I'm pleased with how they came out.

CRIT: Tutors were very happy with this - they said to go from our last review to this was brilliant. They said the frame could do with a bit of work (draws your attention too much at the moment) and I completely agree, and we talked about how I could improve it by painting and distressing it to be closer in colour to the silhouettes. But thats it! :)

I'm off to hand in my essay today, and then to a funeral tomorrow and a wedding the day after so the last update will have to wait a bit (also because thats the piece I had the most trouble taking pictures of!)

Enclose

Number two of the four words updates. This was my interpretation of the word "Enclose". I think its quite obvious the link from birds to eggs to show "enclose". I also wanted to do the life cycle of birds which is also an enclosed cycle, so I ended up making up each egg as a part the story of the life of a pair of birds. They are done with goose eggs (which were a nightmare to source - but got there in the end!) and I had Sunshine's little Dremmel drill and mini drill bits to help me cut and shape. Theres also a little bit of Sculpey clay for the eggs and a few other bits and bobs. Straw from the pet store!

From the top:
Migration - Note there are two birds heading north for the breeding season.
Territory marking - Birds sing and display to mark their nesting territory and attract a mate. Note the sun which signifies both sunrise, and alludes to the yolk in the egg.
Courtship and Mating - pretty obvious, yes? With a bright red heart and all!
Nest building and egg laying - The eggs I've painted to show another circle of life within the circle of bird life. They are based on these drawings (see bottom of entry) that the tutors loved.
Feeding - then little baby birdies need a LOT of food to be able to grow strong ... decided to do just the gaping mouths - as that all you can really see of a baby bird, isn't it?
Fledgling - Then the babies have to learn from the parents how to catch their own worms.

... and back to Migration - thats why there are three birds flying south for the winter.

The bottom two photos show how the eggs were presented, in a basket of straw.

CRIT : The tutors liked the concept and execution and all the little details. Minor crits were the red on the 3rd egg was too bright - and I agree ... I don't have a daylight-bulb and hadn't quite realised how bright the red looked in relation to the other colours. Need to re-paint in a toned down red. The musical note in a speech bubble too would have been better made from a piece of egg shell, rather than some sculpey - but I had no more bits of egg shell left! Also they said the basket let it down and I could have got away with just a nest. And I agree there too. I just couldn't source the perfect thing to display them in, and ended up with this basket. I think I'll keep looking for something better, or try and make up a sturdy nest that they can all go in.

Support

Here we go with the next update (can you see how I'm avoiding writing my essay???) ... First of the Four Words briefs on my selected theme of 'Birds' - "Support".

After many permutations, my take on 'support' had become 'to support a cause', and the obvious one being the RSPB - who I'm a big fan of. I wanted to design a poster or something similar, that which you could then buy copies of to 'support' the RSPB. When talking this over with the tutors, this somehow morphed into making some kind of signage (the kind you get in zoos) - so there could still eventually be a version of the sign in poster form that you could buy, but you also got a sign, with 'supporting' info about the birds... etc ...

I eventually ended up with what you see above. The actual painting minus the info key on the right is about A2 size. I concentrated on my local area - the Avon Gorge - as its two minutes walk from where we live, and I had started to get to recognize the bird life there. Its done with acrylic on primed plywood. I had a sheet big enough to paint the main bit on, and realised that I had enough left over to do the birds on too (rather than paint the birds onto the main section). I spent a day at the woodwork studios breathing in saw dust whilst cutting all the little birdies out! Some of the birds are propped up on bits of doweling to give them a bit of height, and add interest. The numbers are also bits of doweling cut to size. The background is a kind of simplified version of the gorge with the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the background.

CRIT: Interestingly, this is the one piece that the tutors picked on to show my one big weakness - and its quite an interesting observation. They were happy with my execution of the work, but what they say that this piece lacked, which they saw a bit more on the other ones, was my influence on it. At first I didn't quite understand what they meant. I had chosen to do the gorge because its personal to me ... isn't that what they meant? But then one of them gave the example that if I'd taken the 'info key' bit, and rather than do a straight 'info-graphics' presentation, the way I had, I had instead done a story about the birds, or described a walk along the gorge or something - ie my take on an info-graphics poster/sign - rather than an actual info-graphics sign, they would have been much happier ...

And this is quite true of a lot of my art work - I don't 'play' enough with it ... They basically WANT me to be a bit playful and obscure and make connections that other people wouldn't have. Whilst I'm still at college and not doing actual commissions for the RSPB, there was nothing stopping me doing that, and the tutors WANT me to explore that side of myself.

Hmmm ... you're asking the ex-scientist to let loose here ... might be a little difficult .... but then again I have never had any problems 'letting-loose' when I was dancing. Well that's because dancing was never 'work' - it was fun and outside the realm of work. Illustration is now 'work', so everything has to be neat and tidy and perfect, and unfortunately, a bit 'obvious' too .... well not anymore! I've had my poke, and now I'm going to work on being more free and playful :)

What a great thing to be told at a crit - "You need to play more!" ... oh yes indeedy!

Note: I have three more words to blog about, but I've realised that the photos are not very good, so updates might have to wait till I get some better photos ... sorry ...

Etching introductory workshop

Yesterday we had our introduction to the etching studios. We were given copper plates that we learnt how to clean, put a thin layer of wax on, and treat with a taper to give a black sooty layer (not many photos as the process was quite involved and I just couldn't do it and take photos at the same time!).

We then carefully etched on our image using a sharp tool. I decided to do the lyrics to the Beatles song 'Blackbird' - this meant writing the whole thing back-to-front ...

After acid treatment for an hour and washing off the wax, we inked up the plate and made some initial test prints of just the line work. This is what the plate looked like just before printing. I haven't got a picture of the print as it's still in college, drying.

The plates are inked up over the whole surface, and then the bulk of the ink wiped off leaving only ink that's gotten into the cut grooves in the metal. How much you wipe off can also make a difference to the print. Here I've selectively wiped the moon more than the background; which in turn is more wiped than the blackbird.

Today we did aquatinting, which involved fusing a layer of fine powdered pine resin to the plate, then selectively blocking bits out and acid treating (giving gradual tones to the image). The image at the top is one of the final prints I did today, and just above is a closeup.

I must say that I was less pleased with the aquatinting than just wiping away selectively. The wiping left a streaky texture on the print that I really liked. Also the tinting can be quite hit-and-miss - like my non-tinted moon and lightest tint just outside the moon. They were much too close in tone to my liking and so I still had to manipulate how much ink I wiped away to get a decent tonal range. Still, enjoyed the whole learning process and can see myself trying more in the future. I'll hopefully add a few more pictures when I get my dried prints back and you can see what I mean by some of the things I've mentioned in this entry.

Today was, sadly, our last print workshop. Fortunately though, this means we're now 'induced' ('inducted'?) and can sign up to use the print workshops ANYTIME we want ... HOORAY!

Screenprinting introductory workshop

Note: photo taken under bad light - will retake in better (daytime) light and update the blog entry tomorrow.

The last two days we've had screenprinting workshops and above is my final print. I'm quite pleased at how it turned out - and plan to tweak it a bit (change the lettering!) and re-print more, hopefully for sale :)

Anyways, the process started yesterday with us drawing onto something called "Mark Resist" (it looks like tracing paper with a bit of texture on the surface). The tutor showed us the kinds of marks we could make using graphite sticks, chinagraph pencils, litho crayons, TG1 ink (with methanol as a diluent or Lipsol as a retarder) and process black acrylic paint. Apart from dip-pens and brushes, you could also get lines and textures by scraping into ink-painted areas with sharp implements or even sandpaper. I had my bird sketches on me so decided to make a design based on that; trying out the various techniques on the different birds. Below is what it looked like in the end.

Today we learnt how to coat the screen with emulsion; how to expose the screen using our drawings from yesterday; how to mix up the paints; and finally how to print. Now that we've had our introduction, we've basically passed the health and safety requirements they need us to have for insurance purposes - so now I can go and used the screenprinting studios anytime! Yippee!!!

Next week - lithography ...

Quick bird drawings

All based on photos on our Flickr site.

More bird studies

Sure do love those red breasted cardinals! This one based on this photo taken at the London Zoo this summer.

Looking at other bird-related things, like their life-cycles.

Birdies-R-Us

Last week I decided that I was going to do my 'four words' brief on the theme of birds. Basically we have the whole term to come up with 4 pieces of work representing the words 'support', 'enclose', 'balance' and 'disperse'. We were also told to try and think of a theme rather than have 4 disparate things for the 4 words. Somehow I had initially ended up working on dance and movement as my theme - but I'm already doing a lot of that with my pastiche project; and so doing more of it was feeling like a drag. Last week I decided to change to birds - and MAN have I been much happier since then! I love them little sweeties!

So I've been doing bird-research in my sketchbook (which you see above), but my favourite thing is below. There's two layers cut (one with just the plants, and one with the magpie). Then there's a piece of tracing paper at the back. The whole thing looks very different depending on what colour paper is at the back. The scanned image has a pale gray sheet behind. It's based on this photo I took in January of a magpie at dusk.



It's pretty obvious from our flickr account how much I like birds - see the 'Birdiecam' and zoo photos :D