Elective Two - Print

I went into this elective kind of scared (not really having done any prints before, other than the few woodblocks I did in the first semester) I was relatively new to the whole thing.  But to be honest it turned out to be a completely valuable experience, one that I really enjoyed.  It's funny how preconceived ideas about something can fool you; where I assumed limitations there were unlimited possibilities, where I assumed constraints there was almost complete freedom, and where I thought there would be a kind of measured havoc with over thirty people in the print workshop sharing things...well, that'd be a pretty good way to put it.

Spending the first couple of days in the studio, planning and researching, I quickly realised that the only way I was going to learn anything was by doing.  So on the Thursday of the the first week I went down to the workshop with a vague idea in my head about what I was trying to achieve.  I knew that I wanted to somehow explore the figure in space following on from the theme of' 'Corporeality' in the last elective; and focus more on the composition, colour and creation of depth.
 

Pages from my sketchbook:

I found that I preferred the fluidity and the quality of line that resulted from these quick mono prints and dry points.  Somehow the fact that I didn't try to draw the exact resemblance of the person, reminded me of artwork by the likes of Alberto Giacometti and Frank Auerbach, who each in their own way strive to capture a sort of essence of being.



Standing Nude, 1946 by Alberto Giacometti



Workspace and assessment

(My studiospace for the assessment)

******

I got my results back a while ago and I did really, really well! I'm very happy, I just hope I do as well in my next two electives.

Darkroom Photography

Developing film into negatives, negatives to a contact sheet, and then into photographs.  There is definitely a sort of magic in taking all these steps and watching an image appear before your eyes.
I also experimented with damaging negatives and developing the results.

(section of a negative that I have tampered with/drawn on)

Test contact sheet - showing the varying exposure times

Sample contact sheet


And the final photos: 

Video work

Here are some of the other videos I shot whilst exploring the process of cracking:

Sculpture Week Two: Growth; Development

Week Two, for me, was definitely more about taking what I had learned in the first week and going one step further with it; to get out of my comfort zone and work on a larger scale.
Taking inspiration from some of Goldsworthy's work (i.e. his Clay-covered rocks), I decided to make my own interpretation/variation centering around the same idea.

Here is how I made the work:

I took a large sheet of brown paper and scrunched it up...

I then began to cover the piece in clay...

slowly working my way around...

until the entire piece was covered.



Because these two weeks were so short, I needed to find a way to make the clay dry quickly and crack just as easily.  Immediately I thought of using some sort of blow-torch, but first I needed to dry out the wet clay - so I put it into a drying cupboard in the college to leave overnight.

(I also tried using an industrial hand dryer on the ball, but I found that this process was too slow and the cracks that formed were far smaller than I had originally intended ) 

The next day I took the ball home, and used a blow-torch to damage the piece further...and also my dad helped...just a little.