Old Friends New Friends

I've just had the best weekend ... Spent hanging round Bristol with the lovely Xtina Lamb (seen above taking photos of Bristol, and who gave me a copy of her beautiful Gocco printed book "Swept Away" as a present) whom I met on the internets whilst looking for people to teach me how to use my Gocco kit; and then this evening meeting David and Jodie of Peskimo at their housewarming (they live down the road from us) who we were put in touch with via the gorgeous Milla - someone else I met via the interfishyweb; we also met Ben and Gianfranco from Here at Jodie and David's.

What a smashing weekend... and what wonderful people :) I love Bristol ...

Flickr links: Xtina, Peskimo, Milla, Here Gallery.

I'm also spending this weekend putting the final touches on on my Stitch'n'Bitch Image and Obs module project work. Hand in is on Monday and there should be lots of updates after ... so watch this space!

Abbu

Spent the weekend in London visiting my dad who was in the country ... I showed him the portrait and he said, "it doesn't look anything like me!"...

I beg to differ ... Mum, I know you read this ... what do YOU think? ;)

Tying it all up

Today was the last of our life painting classes and a chance to amalgamate everything we had learnt in the last few weeks. I was mostly just playing with colours still and getting to grips with working tonally. I did move up a gear and worked at a larger scale - apart from the bottom portrait, everything else is A3 size - and the paintings you've seen up to now have been A4.

The end has come round much too soon :(

Knit Green Purl Red

Just playing from some of my stitch'n'bitch refernce photos ...

Postbox

Full set of 24 images plus original pencil drawings here.

These last two days we've been doing another location drawing workshop based around the theme of an object. We were given a list (that included door, window, gate, tree, traffic light, boat, and a bunch of others I can't quite remember) from which I chose "postbox" (or "pillar box" - although there was some post-themed deviation). We went about town drawing our item of choice, in A6 landscape format (at least 24pieces). Most of the exercise was about looking at a mundane object, and seeing how you can draw it in different sizes (zoomed in, whole thing, far away), contexts (whats around it, is anyone or anything interacting with it? Negative space, composition) and not get bored! Also, A6 being quite small, and having to make at least 24 pieces, it was about practicing speed and gestural drawing, over too much detail (oh man did I have difficulty with that!).

Although mine are still quite detailed, I started to get much looser towards the end, especially as I moved on from a B to a 4B pencil. I then photocopied all my pieces (makes it all look uniform), and coloured in the photocopies with coloured pencils. Full set of pictures here. If anyone has advice on how to scan/photograph pencil drawings, can they please give me a shout, as I'm having no joy ...

Really enjoyed this and am enthused about doing more observational location drawing. Heres' what the drawings (originals on top, coloured photocopies on the bottom) looked like arranged in a group:

Embrace the colour ...

I think I'm finally beginning to get to grips with painting and colour ... well at least I've begun to see what combinations I actually like to work with. This has been such a steep learning curve.

Still stitchin' ...

Are you bored of them yet? Sorry for the quality - the pencil drawings don't scan very well - And I seem to have lots of spots (scanner artifacts)... Have also started thinking about what I might actually DO with all these drawings ... but it's still in planning/testing phase ...

A View In Your Mirror

Earlier this week a Belgian artist, Jan Verhulst approached me on my flickr account to ask me to be part of a blog he's set up celebrating the self portrait, and there I am ...

Don't forget to look through the rest of the blog, there's some cool stuff people are doing out there.

Painting in colour

Here's a double whammy update on our painting classes from last Thursday and today. They actually work together as you can see the progression from this to adding more colour; working in low-key colour; and eventually moving to high-key colour.

Last week:

There was a warm spotlight on him, hence the warm yellow in the middle.

This week:




Phew ... I'm not sure about this high-key stuff - very not me (although when Hockney does it it looks fab). I had to really let go of any inhibitions, especially on the last one. Its all about learning though, isn't it?

Without Within

We officially started our 'Image and observation' module last week, and I've already mentioned that I'm probably doing something based on the local 'stitch'n'bitch. This week though, to prepare us for the longer project, we did two short one-day versions. On Monday we had turned up for a workshop at which we talked about working on/from a location and then creating our response to it. We talked about collecting information about the place/event (or even the journey to/from it) by drawing, sketching, photography, collecting ephemera at/from the scene, doing background research, taping sounds, making videos, smelling (!), talking to people there, setting up interviews, listening in on conversations, getting involved in (ie doing) whatever is happening at the place, etc etc. The point being there's more to a place than just your drawings of what it looks like - its a full sensory experience, and then what is your response to that experience? We also talked about all the different ways we could do the work as a 'collaboration'.

We were split into groups of three/four (I teamed up with Charlie and Sara), and threw a dart on a map of central Bristol that the tutor put up on the wall. We ended up at the St Michael Archangel on the Mount Without, on St Michael's Hill. It's a disused church and it was all locked up and surrounded by overgrown ivy. It was a very overcast day and we all felt a bit spooked by it. We wondered what was within?

Each of us happened to be inspired by some piece of the architecture; me the stained glass windows, Charlie the windows on the other side of the church and Sara by the numerous doors all around the church. It started raining to we headed to a cafe and talked through our sketches and photographs and decided what we wanted to do as a group - and spent the rest of the day finishing off the pieces. At the top is the finished hanging sculpture/mobile/thing, and below is a closeup my response:

LOTS more photos (from every angle possible) here.

I had the top of the tower. While I was taking photos of it I noticed how it was full of plants and wildlife; especially this squirrel that kept watching me and making loud rasping noises. I felt really uncomfortable and kept imagining that it was rabid and was going to jump off the tree and bite me! ... so anyways, my take was that within, it was taken over by nature. So that's what I did - birds, squirrel and plants behind the stained glass window (all the creature photos were taken at the church).


Charlie had the middle window, and she did the all encompassing ivy (again photos taken at the location which she printed out and collaged). Her window is shut because she thought what was within was scary and should be kept locked up! Lots more photos here.


Sara noticed the inordinate amount (7!) of doors around the bottom of the church (including a really small almost child sized one). So she did several layers of doors within doors within doors. More pictures of her layers here.

Then we strung the whole thing together with the word 'WITHOUT' running through it ... its called 'Without' because when it was build, it was not within, but outside the Bristol city walls ... So there you have it ... "What Is Within Is Without"

Tuesday we swapped location with another random group (the aim being then we could see how different groups responded to the same location). Unfortunately now we only had till 3 pm that day to finish everything and present it. We ended up on a bit of tarmac by the Bristol harbourside, which was quite uninspiring really. But what we thought was that although there was nothing of interest at the location; if you stood there, there was a lot to be seen FROM the location. So we three stood back-to-back in a triangle, and drew our impression of what we saw. Again we assembled it as a hanging sculpture:


The top photo is all of us looking at the spot we stood on; the bottom photo is of our feet pointing to this spot; the three photos on the third layer are of each of us looking out to our individual views, and the drawings on the second layer are our actual drawings.


This is my version of my view. I'm not happy with how it came out as we had so little time and I found it very hard to work in the studio with so much noise (I need my time and quiet space) but I'm pleased with the concept we came up with together, and also the concept I had for my picture which was to do a layered collage of drawings and photographs (its just not excecuted very well) ...

So there you have it - two days of location work .... now we can get back to our longer project ... and don't forget to look at the photos here.

Happy Birthday Sunshine

A birthday present for Sunshine .... "Us"

The SS Great Big Blue

Phew, I've finally managed to get my act together and take those photos I've been meaning to. So here you go, an expanded version of the book project (otherwise known as the "narrative and sequence" module).


Book-ship? Ship-book? How does that work? Well, right at the start of the module our tutor, who is a bookmaker by trade, brought us lots of artists books to look at. A lot of them didn't look like 'books' in the traditional sense. The concept of 'book' that we were asked to explore was a collection of' 'spaces' (pages; in my case the sails), within a 'context' (the cover; in my case the ship). So you see now how my book-ship-book works ...


I was going to do something based on wood and bark, but that didn't really come together. Then, hugely influenced by Ann Wood's ships, I decided to go down that road. I took her basic premise, and made it my own.

Some details - this is what the ship looks like 'naked':

I used hooks-loops to make the sails easily attachable, detachable and swappable.

I made up three sets of sails, each giving a very different feeling to the book. Each set of sails also had its own main flag (very proud of my paper mache crow's nest!) ...

... and own set of little bunting flags on a string. I wrapped the string round the top hooks to keep all the masts and the ship under tension.

The first set of sails is based on the a children's nursery rhyme to help them learn to count.

The lyrics are done by machine embroidery and read:

When I was one, I had just begun, the day I went to sea
I climbed aboard a pirate ship, and the captain said to me
We're going this way, that way, forwards, backwards,
Over the deep blue sea
A bottle of rum to warm my tum
thats the life for me!

The flags on this set of sails had numbers on as the verses then repeat with "When I was two" etc, with the child doing something rhyming with that number.

Next was a set of sails of an Irish sea shanty called "Haul Away Joe" (for which I must thank this man for bringing it to my attention!). Colours and fabrics obviously a bit more adult.

The lyrics (of which there are many verses) are quite funny - but I had to select a few choice ones to include on my sails. The original idea had been to stick on some fabric laser cut letters, but that plan failed badly, and so I ended up with plan B of the lyrics printed onto sticky-backed acetate. I'm not entirely happy with how this looks so if any of you have any ideas, give me a shout ... I'm still up for tweaking this.

Last but not least, SS Midnight Blue, which is based on the shipping forecast, that those of you who stay up late at night and listen to BBC radio 4 will instantly recognise.

It was Sunshine's brilliant idea actually, and the tutors loved it ... can you not just hear the sweet tunes of 'Sailing By' in the background? I had to do some funky CAD-based machine embroidery with this one.

The flags were of the shipping region names.

And the sails all had some of those really strange forecasts in their strange formats.

So there you have it... Lots more photos including work-in-progress ones, are in the flickr set for it.

At the presentation I had the SS Midnight Blue rigged up. Once I'd explained my book concept I asked for some audience participation - would they prefer the nursery rhyme, or the sea shanty? Unanimous vote for the sea shanty. So while I changed the sails, I taught everyone the chorus of "We'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe". Then I read my book to them (ie sang the verses) while the whole class (tutors included) sang the choruses ... it was WONDERFUL! Just after I finished, the fire alarm went off, and as we all walked down the stairs and out of the building, I could still here a bunch of my class mates singing away ;)