Photoshop + Me = ERROR.

We were introduced to the magical world of Photoshop this week I can honestly say I was by no means enthused by the prospect of doing another week of it. The truth of it is this – I have been doing Photoshop for years. I only use it for posters and I have never considered using it for artwork. I am just not excited by it at all, which it really bad for me to say because I feel like I’m wasting my lecturer’s time. I will keep at it for the next few weeks and see if it leads to anything, but for now on can only hope.  

Cut Me a Collage

A recent workshop that we took part in was collage pieces inspired by the works of Matisse. Matisse’s large, vivid pieces were created during the latter part of his life due to his decreasing health, having been diagnosed with cancer. Wheelchair bound he raced to generate the final flurries of his artistic mind. The collages that he produced in these years are considered to be his greatest works. Taking the freedom of shape and colour as my own inspiration I tried to make my own collage works relating to the brief. I would say like most things I do, it does require some fine tuning.

Scale II - The Finals

 The piece above was inspired by the Black Death, I have used a map typical of the 1300's for the basic shape, and rimmed it with gold/yellow embroidery thread. Using acrylic to create the textured surface resembling the bulbous symptoms of the plague, then adding knotted red thread for scabs and salt for a festering appearance.

Titled 'Black Wave', this piece is acrylic on linen - hand painted. A resonating image for me was the black wave of water that followed the tsunami in Japan, I thought of the loss of life that was caused by this singular event and developed this design.

Raindrops and Rooftops - Hurricane Katrina overhead view of the houses affected by the flood

Glass Fusing - An art yet to be mastered

My flimsy attempt at glass fusing

As part of our Transformation brief we were given a class on glass fusing, that proved to be less than succesful in my case. The prinicpals of glass are simple or so it seemed. The cutting tool has a small blade sometimes with a oil cartridge included, topped off with a rounded metal sphere on the end. To cut the glass you must hold the blade completely vertical above the glass and move in continuous straight line. Then using the ball, tap the underside of the glass, your cut acts as a breaking point and as you are tapping underneath the glass will start to shard. Once you arrange your glass in the way you like it is ready to go into the kiln. Just a general warning - DO NOT try this at home in your oven, I don't speak from experience, but I speak as a person who has the common sense not to try. The reason I say this is because glass can explode if cooled too quickly.

It seemed that in my first attempt at glass fusing I was just not able to tell the glass what to do. I think it may have had something to do with my abundant lack of straight lines. My advice, use a ruler.

Scale

Following on from the fruit brief, we went on to our next topic - scale. It could be any sort of scale from the scales of justice to reptile scales, even to the Richter scale. I must admit that when I first heard the word scale, it brought a huge wave of panic, my first thought was of strong swear word.This however, was soon replaced by my second more rational thought 'How on Earth I am going to make something out of this!?' Yet, as it was explained to me, the ideas that arose from the panicked state of my mind started to put me at ease. There was the opportunity to create sculptures, spatial designs, costume design from the right topic. It was choosing said topic that was the problem. 

I am not in the habit of picking the most obvious choice - sometimes it's unintentional other times it's deliberate - so it was very difficult for me to find a subject matter that not only interested me, but inspired me. I do apologise for sounding like a broken record but I am a designer, namely a costume designer, trying to find a subject to match my expertise was impossible. Therefore, I settled with the next best thing, textiles - now only the topic remained. What was complex enough for me to look at and easy enough to understand in the restricted time? 

It struck me after watching a documentary of the Japanese Tohoku tsunami in 2011, and the word which had been plaguing my mind for days was attached to the event. The scale of disaster. For a time it was staring me in the face, we are often faced with these images from a day to day basis, but without ever really paying attention to them. So I endeavoured to create a variety of textile pieces based on the events that have caused the most cataclysmic effect on the world. 

Below are a list of the cheery topics:

• The Black Death (1348- 1350) - 1/3 of the world's population was wiped out by this plague
•  Hurricane Katrina (2005) -  One of the most expensive and deadliest hurricanes to hit the coast of America costing more than $81 billion.
• The Indian Floods (2013) - The heaviest monsoon experienced in over 80 years.
• Tohoku Tsunami Japan (2011) - The most powerful known earthquake to hit Japan

My time was limited so consequently my topics had to be too. 

BRAIN

Many layers of brain! As part of my transformation brief I decided to look into the structure of the brain as that is where all dreams are concotted from - shocker. These were made using the clay wall effect with plaster.

Negative and Postive Finals

 

 

Here are some of my final pieces from the Negative/Positive Space Brief, each piece was made using monochrome pastels on cartridge paper. I was told to select areas from each preliminary sketch and incorporate them in a more abstract composition. Being entirely unnatural for me to create abstract drawings, I found the progressions of these works to be quite liberating. Who knew?