Research/ experimentation
Notes from working as a group to discuss how themes can be communicated through the 5 elements within the brief. We chose politics and came up with lots of different ideas. We had to think about what these elements communicate visually and linguistically and what our understanding of them is‌
I then thought about this in terms of my own theme, technology. I struggled to think of ideas for collage so this is something I need to spend some time on in the development of my visual ideas in my journal. It will be interesting to begin to communicate focusing on these elements.
‘The alchemy of the analogue is more unpredictable, and therefore more alluring’ Phil Taylor creativity AURA mystery ‘directly physical’ Kiera Rathbone ‘allow a place for accidents’ Renaud Perrin ‘Work bearing the hand of its maker’ Crow ‘Key to the way we talk about craft practice is this presence of the hand’ Crow ‘the hand’ unpredictable experiment and play craft and art are different things combine the digital and analogue
• Exploring using line to communicate my theme of ‘hands’ and the ‘hand of the maker’ • Chose to use a graphite stick to emphasise gestural marks
• Visualising a quote from one of my three texts • Literal response of the analogue versus digital through the hand and computer • Two medias used to highlight this contrast
• Using character to show the use of hands for a creative • Hands sparking ideas and creativeness exploding from the hands • Hands as a tool • Contrast between grey and bright colours • Expressive lines
• Abstract experimentation • Exploring through line and colour • Expressive
• Exploring my theme of analogue through the use of shape • Crude, hand drawn shape designs • Evident pencil marks and scratches • Began to recreate the same design in different medias • Neat lines • thought out fill of shapes • Interesting contrasts between direction of line and shapes
• Again repeating the shape design but adding textures/ mark making as a mean of changing the design and outcome • Exploring through singular line and shape • Manipulating the design to fit with the process
• Working with colour to explore and change the outcome • Working fast and messy to produce something completely different • Again adjusting and manipulating the design to fit the process and this time working across three pages to make use of the concertina journal
Feedback/ development
Successful practical research methodologies •repetition to explore lots of medias and processed •wet media (ink) •exhaustive approach to exploring
Relationships with theoretical research •begin to recreate the designs I did by hand but digitally to see how effective the processes are and which are most successful
Group feedback Explore using monotype as a printing method to enhance work and include more analogue processes. Allow mistakes to happen and let the process drive the outcome
Focus
The experimental work in my journal has been successful as it has very much been a process of trying something out and if it is successful, moving forward and experimenting and developing it further. I have worked with the quotes and theorists in mind and this has been a constant fuel to my practical work. Although there is no hard hitting message to my work and in that sense nothing being communicated I think this just highlights the process driven element to my work and how I am focussing on the hand and the digital. Using shapes to communicate this is working well so I am going to refine this further by focussing very heavily on shape to create an image.
Rationale
focus on • themes • what found out? • how explored? • strengths • weaknesses ideas to explore with • crayon for different textures • vinyl cutting machine to draw • type writer collages (could explore digitally too) • continuous pieces across several pages • analogue meets digital • cut paper designs vs digital patterns Weaknesses • more colour • more crafted media • start working towards things that feel like a definite image Strengths • clearly showing the hand of the maker • nice sensitivity to work
To look at • Josie Blue Maloy ◦ contrast between marks on page ◦ chunky solid shape and broken lines • Kate Gibb ◦ textures ◦ lines
Rationale My theme is the analogue and digital craft and illustration. I am exploring this visually through both analogue and digital processes. I am doing it this way to naturally explore how they work singly or when combined. I intend to use a variety of materials from pencils and pens to crayons and things such as china markers which create more texture. Kiera Rathbone, a typewriter artist, intrigues me and I want to explore using a typewriter myself. I want to focus directly on the differences and similarities between patterns and shapes created by hand and digitally so for example cut paper and adobe illustrator to build shapes and designs up. Finally, I want to develop work using marks made when making analogue work and develop it in a digital way also.
After the peer feedback I explored more using crayons to create textures and begin to overlap the colours. I also experimented with combining different medias in one piece so above shows where I have explored with gouache and crayons and began to layer those up to see the outcomes.Â
Positioning of work
As I have been doing work for my journal it has been very much about the process and in turn the process which has developed my ideas and outcomes. I knew I wanted to explore both analogue and digitally and also combine both... Key to the development of my work and the exploration has been creating something by hand straight in to my journal and then using this outcome to create a second piece of work digitally. Within contemporary illustration practice this is very relevant as many illustrators today will start of analogue and in the production and working towards a final image will use technology be it to recreate the piece or touch elements of it up. The process for me has posed a lot of questions of enquiry leading me to explore and play further with possibilities and try to think of new interesting ways of combining the analogue and digital.
Here are some of my most successful digital pieces that came as a development of an analogue piece of work...Â
Evaluation of synthesis
Methodologies The progression through my journal has been very organic and I have allowed one thing to lead on to the next. I have had a system where I would create an analogue piece and then work digitally to recreate it and adapt it in some way based on processes I can use on Photoshop and Illustrator. I feel this has allowed me to really explore my question in terms of my own practice and my response of creating more developed digital work shows how in the digital age it is easy and effective to use digital methods to enhance analogue work.
Successes • clear exploration between the differences and similarities of hand and digital through pattern and shape design outcomes and the repetition of creating a design using different processes • adding hand rendered textures and marks to my digital work I feel is the most successful work in the journal and this is something I intended to do and stated in the rationale so I’m pleased I followed through with it
Weaknesses • didn’t explore using as many materials as I had hoped to • I really struggled when using the typewriter as it just didn’t work as fast as I am used to on a computer keyboard and I struggled to line things up and it was a lengthy process which almost answers the topic in question of do we value the analogue and craft in the digital age as I clearly didn’t have the patience to produce work using the typewriter and turned to digital programmes to recreate something inspired by the outcomes of Kiera Rathbone.