Evaluation

Communication Technology has been a learning journey for me which is what the brief was designed to do. I have realised that I do actually have somewhat of a key focus, although it may not be immediately recognisable from looking at my blog. In this evaluation I hope to explain my understanding of what happened thoroughly and clearly in a way that I can read back in future and refer to.

First I need to talk about my crisis around the interim crit. At that point I thought I didn’t understand what was needed of me and that I was failing the module by not documenting enough. Through the summer I thought I would start the year by learning technical drawing, but what I learnt from doing some life drawing, perspective drawing and figure drawing was that providing I keep doing it, I will learn to draw well over time. This suits my learning style, which is through repetition, whether it’s hand rendering or learning a new computer based design program. While sitting and drawing for a while most days I’d become involved with the Students Union, I had been contributing to Active Arts too and it had also come that a few students were wanting to start a life drawing society. I was trying to be involved in all these things. I sought help from tutors and friends after the crit and two things were said that helped me. One idea was to blog everything I was doing and how I was learning from it, so I began to do that although I kept it to things where I was learning new, practical skills. The second thing I was told was that I was spreading myself too thin and that I needed to gain a sort of focus in order to intensify my learning experience.

By looking back over my blog, I realise collaboration is a key concept for me and in this brief I have been observing and researching how disparate technologies are used to help people in different socio-economic groups reach self-actualization.

I came to this conclusion by analysing my initial approach. While I enjoy sitting and drawing on my own, I could not motivated enough to produce a huge body of work simply for my own individual drawing practice. When it came to working with other people however, I had all the time in the world. After realising that, I began to tell people that I enjoy drawing, painting, making and collaborative projects. I rang several people asking for volunteer work and they got back to me saying that they had projects I could work on with them. Networking then, is a key skill that I must tap into in order to grow.

It might seem like I was approaching projects in a curious and opportunistic way and maybe I was, but I have learnt the value of that approach. By disallowing myself any sort of editorial role until later on in the brief, I made sure my own prejudices and expectations weren’t able to interfere with the collaborative focus of my approach.

A good way to explain my learning process would be to go through my blog explaining the process I went through as I see it.

Perspective drawing was hard but I got to grips with the basics in the end through reading about the theory and having several discussions with tutors and friends. Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Google Sketch Up, colour work, costume drawing and figure drawing as well will all develop gradually through necessity and / or repetition and through applying the theory behind it. This back and forth process of academic and practical study has been useful to me and certainly speeds up my development and helps to prevent my practice becoming stale.

The days I spent at Inkwell Arts and Blaize Community arts were a start in realising what I really value in terms of collaborative arts. I enjoyed learning with a group at Blaize’ animation workshops and came away having taught a group and bettered my own understanding on stop-frame animation. I helped empower a group of Asian kids to use art and communication technology to express their views on bullying, which was their agenda not mine. Inkwell was different in that I was networking with established artists about their own creative practice and possible volunteering oppertunities, but in an environment related to mental health and my old job in a psychiatric ward. Going back to that environment from a creative standpoint and really trying to help was something that drove me to apply to university.

The ideas of networking, collaboration and developing my own personal practice came together when I did a two day job with Clockwork Eye Productions. I learnt camera, lighting and set design skills and had the opportunity to employ and improve my own image composition skills through the direction I was given.

Working with Active Arts has been a good learning experience too. What was particularly good for own practice was using InDesign to create a proposal in PDF format to sell our group to the Leeds Love Arts Festival. It worked too. We completed the two days workshops in the middle of Leeds indoor market and we drew attention from the local community. However, I don’t feel like Active Arts is a group I can devote too much time to anymore as I need to spend my time focusing on my own practice. By that, I mean I need to start taking control and focusing on collaborating with people who have skills I am really interested in.

The only time I have taken an editorial role is during an on-going process setting up a life drawing society with the Students Union. It has been testing my organisational skills in a way that a passive role wouldn’t and it has pushed me into networking with the college Human Resources department. The creative- bureaucratic collaboration has been interesting. Firstly, I approached it from an aggressive angle. I got other students involved and we put together a proposal which explained why this would be beneficial to us all and it didn’t work. They presented me with their own problems with the set-up of the society and I set out to solve them. Now, as a creative group, we are trying to solve the problems they present us with until there aren’t any left.

In conclusion I will repeat that By looking back over my blog, I realise collaboration is a key concept for me and in this brief I have been observing and researching how disparate technologies are used to help people in different socio-economic groups reach self-actualisation.

My plan now is to join onto a project with a set designer for a week, who is building back drops for a Shakespeare production in County Durham. I have also been asked to come with a way of making a room in an old factory look damp and mouldy. These two projects relate to set design and are definitely collaborative projects. In the project in County Durham I will be learning some new skills in set making and in the second project I will be using those skills to aid a film maker. 

I believe that collaborative learning is a strength of mine and that it is a valuable process when done well, not only for myself but for all the individuals involved.

LIfe Drawing Society Meeting 1 - 02/11/2011

Today we had a meeting for The Leeds College of Art Life Drawing Society.
We are trying to meet Human Resources requirements of a demonstration that we can be responsible adults and represent the college to FE students and life drawing models with minimum risk of anything going wrong.

Through the Facebook group weve had a few good ideas for additions to the proposal to HR which have been added to the proposal. To me this means the facebook group is working and a collaboration of ideas managed by a small group is going well.

The meeting minutes were posted to everyone in the groups email accounds to keep them up to date.

 We also discovered that Lester has an interest in politics and diplomacy so he has drafted up a proposal for how the group will elect people for positions and keep running by electing members from FE and those just starting in HE.


As requested by HR I read through the college Health and Safety policy and refined to a form thats more easily readable, excluding parts that arent immediately applicable to the environment of a life drawing society

I am learning a lot of different skills here, I've arranged a meeting, read college policy, spoken to college authorities, responded to their requests and kept a dialogue with them going, I've collaborated with other students and still continue to do so. Although these are mainly social and beurocratic skills, the aim result is to provide an oppertunity for myself and the whole college to improve on their drawing skills.

Leeds Love Arts / Active Arts - Indoor Market Workshops

 

 

So the stall was set up in the indoor market and people came to take part in crafts.  There was limited attention but overall it went well. There was a few people who came back to see us a couple of times and several people who stayed for over an hour. The banner with "What makes you happy?" tags on it went down well as it was something people could do in 30 seconds. We had a good team making felt animals which seemed to draw attention along with several folk who made posters. I'm apprehensive about Active Arts carrying on when Lana goes to Peru but I will do my best to get in contact with people who are already running large scale projects across Leeds and pushing for a space for Active Arts to run similar workshops. This seemed to work well, adapting Active Arts to fit along with the values of Leeds Love Arts.

Leeds Love Arts - Active Arts Proposal

I realise I didnt write about this at the time but its worth noting I learnt a bit about writing a proposal for an arts project and put it together on InDesign. This is the result.

The proposal contains our aims as a group, why we do what we do, how we do what we do and what we plan to do for the already existing Leeds Love Arts mental health festival.

This was taken from an online guide on how to write a creative proposal. I worked quite hard on making the 2 pages look right using layout techniques I learnt at level 4. I think it all lines up and looks neat as a composition. This was sent off to TestSpace and they reacted well to it but ended up asking us how intended to create revenue from it after telling us they were a not for profit organisation so we went else where.

Leeds Love Arts helped us out by putting us in contact with a man at the market place who gave us a free space to run our workshops.

We pick up the keys on monday the 31st and run the workshops on the 1st and 2nd of November.

Lana Johnson has put together the schedule and organised the people who will be supervising the workshops.

Anne Marie Hurst and the Skeletal Family shoot - Clockwork Eye Productions

My freind Danny asked if I could help with 2 days of shooting for a band called the Skeletal Family in a warehouse in Keighley. I figured I would learn some new skills in set design, lightning and camera work so I said yes.

We filmed 13 music videos all in the same room but the aim was to get every music video looking different using a mix of camera technique, lighting, a smoke machine and set design.


We overcame this problem by using quite a lot of close ups for a start. We redesigned the room several times. For one shoot we covered the floor with candles and shot with one camera from the floor up and one from above waist height forward.


For one video we shot from the ceiling down with close ups of the band behind. For one we backlit the band with powerfull floor standing lights called redheads and filled the room with smoke and so forth...

I learnt how to use a hand held HD camera and about white balancing.
White balancing is where you film a white piece of paper in the lighting you are going to be working under and press the white balance button on the camera, this tells the camera that under this light, this is white.

Smokey room, red lighting + candles

Hanging lights from the ceiling, using a crossbar and climbing hooks.

The powerful Redheads backlighting

Danny between the two red heads.

Mental Health day at Inkwell, Chapel Allerton

I went to Inkwell in Chapel Allerton which is a community arts space. I went there to volounteer for Leeds Love Art Mental Health festival. I met a bloke there called Steve Willingham who is a Leeds Based artist who produces these paintings. He works in a similar medium to me in that he uses fine liners, paint markers and inks. Ive posted this as something to aim towards in line work and symmetry which I struggle with.

I also spoke to the folk who run the venue with the idea of volounterring for them, which they said was definitely ok. I would be working in place with some fairly great resources. They have a kiln and produce some great models. They also have a lot of painters who go there. The venue is for people with mental health problems to go and create art in a community.

The only problem was that the days for volounterring fall on thursday and friday when I am busy with college. I'm going to contact them again after christmas.

Blaize Community Arts - Stop frame animation

Did an animation workshop at glusburn institute. I was working but spent most of the time doing my own animation which ill post up soon. I worked with plastecine, a stock background using iStopmotion and final cut pro. It was good fun but the point was to teach people to be creative with stop motion animation... I'm not an expert but with Blaize's kit its dead easy. Look at the pictures!

I learnt to use Istopmotion which is a very basic bit of software. Its very effective though. We were working with HD cameras mounted and point vertically or horizontally at a piece of blue paper. We then used chroma key to put backgrounds behind what we animated.

I also worked with a group of 15/16 year old helping them to make theirs.

This is the one I made

This workshop was a good experience for me as I may be taking this project on in the future as Blaize community arts have been asked by the arts council to start training up young people to manage their projects.

Blaize have become well established and successful by paying attention to what the Arts Council want to see in community arts and playing to those needs. This is an important thing to learn if I want to be a community artists.

Hand coloured prints

#1 - This is pretty much the first time Ive used watercolours. They have never appealed to me before. I am starting the understand how they work, they layer up and smudge when you apply water to them. Sounds really simple but its hard to put into words.

#2 The shadows are better in this one as Ive used a blue tinge I think. and the different coloured stone work has a good effect. Ive tried to have the colours be more intense in the foreground.

#3 I put a gray wash on this first and it just looked murky. I didnt like it so I didn't spend long on it. I started messing about with bleeding as the paper was damp.



#4 - A freind suggested I try a different colour scheme entirely so Ive used bright colours on the building and neutral colours on the characters and some detail so they stand out. I like how the bright colours look against all the gray and white.


#5 - Started with a yellow wash then built up the colours on top of that.

I plan to have 18 of these done (thats how many prints I have...) in the next 2 days.

Update:

Ok so what with going and doing some filming and lighting I'm behind on these... I'll aim to have them done over the weekend.


#6 - This is a continuation of the colour pallette developing in numbers 1 and 2. I like how its coming along especially in the stone walls.


#7 - This was trying out a new pallette. No comments here really.
#8 This is a continuation of number 5. I liked the yellow wash so I decided to do it again but better.

Print-making

I went to the print-room with the idea that I would take the line drawing of the street and replicate it onto good paper in order to colour them 20 different ways.

As directed by staff in the print room, I took the drawing, photocopied it making it as dark as possible, cleaned a screen using the chemicals available (b-strip and i forget the other one,) painted the screen in light sensitive emulsion, exposed the image onto the screen in the exposure unit, cleaned off the unhardened emulsion, let it dry and then began to print.



First off you register where you want your paper to be and mark it off with masking tape. This is only really necessary if you are going to print more than one colour which I wasn't but I did it anyway to show the process. You then print your image onto the plastic sheet which sits over your paper initially, this is so you can line up for a second colour. Its not shown in the image above unfortunately...

This is an image of my screen attached to the printing table. This wasn't a difficult process, you just have to clamp and make sure its fixed in place.



The first mistake I made was to use a screen made for fabric printing, this means the mesh is slightly wider. The above print is a result of using a fabric screen on paper and not turning the suction on on the table to hold the paper down. The lines are too think and its double printed.


This image is a result of not being fast enough in printing more, the mesh became clogged and the printing here is faint and broken, I think that might be a higher risk with fabric screens too. But when I got it right with the paper printing screen I made as many copies as I had the paper for as fast as I could and this didn't happen.


This is the final result and a satisfactory print.

Interim Crit and Pushing Forward.

After a truly terrible interim crit I've had to have a rethink. There was no where near enough work on my blog and the truth is I really hadn't done nearly enough work. I was distracted by other projects and probably being slightly lazy...

So in order to improve for the remainder of CommTech I have looked on other peoples blogs first off.

I noticed that people have been putting down anything that inspires them so Ive started doing that.

I also noticed that people were really just giving anything a shot. I think I've had tunnell vision slightly, Ive felt studious with my book on perspective and technical drawing but I'm really not yielding enough work.

My plan for today, is to get the line drawing of the street replicated in the print room (I prepared a screen yesterday) and begin to experiment with different methods of colouring. Especially water colour. I will document my progress through photographs and writing.

Other processes to try:

printmaking with multiple colours

using perspective now to create something large and organic looking. IE a city scape or similar.

possibly try large model making as this relates to character design and public art.


In regards to what I want to be moving towards I'm considering animation, illustration and making as these things are skills I can use in the foreseeable future working with blaize community arts and on the festival circuit.

Paul Kidby - A method of working

I found this when looking for information on how Paul Kidby goes about his paintings. Theyve always really appealed to me ever since I read Terry Pratchett books in school and this style of painting is something I would love to be able to do.
Not just like Kidby obviously, but the ability to portray my own fantasy characers in situe with such bold colours and a strong pallette is something I envy.

My p lan is to start on some prints of the line drawing of the street I did in water colour, maintain a colour pallete and do about 10 of them experimenting with each one.

Paul Kidbys breakdown of an illustration

The above link shows how he goes from pencil sketch to finished article.

Inspiration for perspective drawing

I stumbled across this mans work looking through other students blogs.

I find this work really impressive, the perspective is right although it still looks natural and organic instead of cold and clinical which is how the drawings in the book look.

I also find myself appreciating the fact its screen printed which is happening more and more. I've started started to experiment in the print room, so I think while experimenting with colour, print maybe something to do after reading week.


Josh Cochran

Watercolour

I'm going to use some of the clean line drawings I've done, make prints and experiment with colouring them.

On reading a chapter in a book Ive realised some of the possibilities.

First off, watercolour needs to be built up in layers, its transparent, so you apply alot of the darker areas first. The paper, where standard sketchbook paper is fine, is important as absorbancy plays a part in the finished image. I could also press my own.

Dry brush techniques and soaking paper for wet brush on wet paper technique sound interesting, you can also lift wet paint off with a dry brush and scratch paint off when the image is dry exposing bright white paper underneath.

French writer Victor Hugo mixed coffee, burnt toast, soot, dust and blood in with his.

There is a process called Limning where you mix it with egg white to get a shiny finish.

Anish Kapoor mixed earth in with gouache.

This image by Peter de Wint includes the processes I was talking about where you lift off paint with a dry brush, the hat of the woman washing in the river is done by scratching or cutting a layer of paper off and the reeds are scratchings too apparently. Interesting stuff.


This is the process of Limning, where you mix egg white into the paint. Its by Issac Oliver and it was painted on "velum" which is prepared animal skin. They prepared it by pasting it onto a playing card or similar, then burnishing it to make the surface smoothe. I think burnishing means to polish.

Life Drawing at LUU

So I went to a Life Drawing class at LUU which I will contine to do every wednesday. I've always struggled with it.

Today I produced around 9 images in 2 hours, some in 10 minutes, some in 20 minute stints. I surprised myself. They are nothing special but still they are better results than Ive ever had drawing from a live model. This highlights the fact I should be drawing constantly, and drawing people and scenery around me rather than wierd doodles that come out of my head.


This is one of three I selected to post up. The picture is poor, I should probably invest in a decent enough digital camera. I've photographed it then used photoshop to mess with the levels, I quite like the contrast and you can still see the line quality and sketchyness of it all. The above image I struggled with the length of the leg but using a pencil held at arms length, you can work out the distances quite fast.

I started using the principles I learnt from the figure drawing book as well. Now I look back I notice the far shoulder is protruding too much, Ive exxagerated the height of it by accident becuase I know if the weight is rested on one shoulder the other will be higher.


The above pose was difficult to draw. I started the use straight lines to sketch out the position. For example, by looking at the model from where I was stood I knew the bottom of the foot was in line with the shoulder. There is also a line going from the centre of the head to the left thigh and from the breast to the right knee. These seemed to help greatly, its something Ive never done before but came to me from the perspective drawing Ive been doing.

Lines, Grids and Marks are key for quick life drawing I figure.


Theres something about this last one I like. I think its becuase I sketched it lightly and then used solid black line to cover all the important parts to make it look like the figure it should do and it worked. I know its not perfect, the abdomen is too long, the hands and fingers are too small, everything is slightly out of whack but its working for me as a drawing.

I'll keep this up, doing small sketches while out and about.

Life Drawing - Society at LCAD

As part of the Students Union, Ive been trying to push to start a Life Drawing class, this also gives me the oppertunity to head a collaborative project. 

I feel as though Ive been warned against it slightly. The issues they came up with were that it must be open to HE and FE. That means that people who are technically children (aged 16 and up) must be allowed to go as part of the SU equal oppertunities policy.

The issues here are with having a naked adult in the room.

I suggested that the model need not be naked, underwear and curtain draped round them would provide an equally rewarding drawing experience.

Also we would need a "college rep" present. This doesn't necessarily mean a tutor, it could be me. But then I would have to be responsible for the goings on in the class and I would have to make absolutely sure all the risk assessments and precautions for the safety and privacy of the model were taken care of.
 
I am not uploading the documents we have written here, rather than talked about the activities I've undertaken and things I've learnt as I'm aware that 

 

Key Things Learnt:

- Policy dictates what you can and can't do within a union or organisation

- Before starting on a campaign you must understand the limitations, these are imposed by policy, budget and time.

Possible Solutions:

- Use fabric to cover the models and provide a different drawing experience

- Have several key committee members to spread the responsibility and ensure the society contines for years to come

Update: 28/10/11

So after the meeting with HR I told Mike Winnard what they had asked from us in order to feel ok with supporting a life drawing class. We needed a proposal that would make HR feel safe in the knowledge that we would be looking out for the reputation of the college and that we would take all measures to make sure their relationship with their life drawing models was maintained.

We have also started a facebook group to recruit a core group for the life drawing society that are willing to take responsibility for running the classes and keeping the society active after we leave college. 

Illustrator and Live Paint

I attended the Illustrator begginers workshop which went well. I can honestly say using the pen tool is not difficult at all, however the variable width tool has proven more difficult.


Issues with variable width and Pen Tool:

I'm not sure how to make the ends of lines fat so they meet up at a chunkier section of line, if a group of three meet they seem to want to meet at a single point. I need to address this.

Where a group of 3 or more lines meet, I'm not sure how to keep this neat so the variable width can do its job properly.

I scanned in a coloured drawing I did of this character and traced him on Illustrator using the pen. I also began to mess around with his facial expression, since his face is a mask it must remain static but I developed a design that can be rotated to give a 'freindly' expression and a 'spooky' expression. I use these words becuase they are the ones that came up when I asked people what emotion or feeling the expression conveyed.


So thats how it goes!


I then used the live paint tool to colour the character, again no particular issues really, although I'm sure if i understood the pen tool more I could learn how to add variable tone into the colours, like how the belt buckle looks but without the lines inbeteen.



I begun to add tone to the hands using the same outlining-in-black technique as before. However I would like to add shading in the clothes and things without using black outlines all the time. I gave that a go, and ran into problems.


I'm not sure it's clear on that image, but I began to draw lines in with a darker shade of the same colour with the intent of filling them in with that same colour.

All went well until it started refusing to make those new shapes for Live Paint. I tried altering them using Live Paint > Gap and changing the size of the gaps it allows but this didn't work.

Another issue is, where the shade line joins the black outline, there is a over lap that looks rough.



Ive tried Select > Same > Fill Colour with Black as the fill colour with the intention of moving everything black (the outline) to the front using the Bring To Front tool.

But that didnt seem to select anything. These are issues to take up with Simon.

Working with colour...

This is an image I drew a little while ago without using any sort of perspective planning. I was just working by eye. I'm posting this and the example of it coloured very basically as a point from which I can get criticism and improve on my skills.

The perspective doesnt look bad to me, although they are some very obvious mistakes.

Here is the coloured version.


This is not finished, although I'm tired of trying to get it right, I realise there isnt nearly enough shadow and texture but the more I work into in the worse it looks.

Points that I notice:

Not enough texture.

Bad lighting.

Poor colour pallette.

Perspective - Theory and Practice

Ive done some reasearch into perspective. I find it massively hard and to be honest Ive gained a very limited understanding of it.

Diminuation is a reduction in the size of objects.

The vanishing point is the point in the distance where stuff thats in perspective meets the horizon, or into a tunnel... or something.

Fore-shortening is the space between objects as they dissapear into the distance towards the vanishing point.

Convergence is the appearance of tapering as stuff dissapears from the point of observation.


Here are some rules:

1. Parallel lines appear to converge as they recede from the spectator

2. Equal distances appear to become fore-shortened as they recede from the edge.

3. Objects of similar size appear to diminish as they recede.

4. Tone and colour become grayer and more neutral as they fade into the background.

5. Diminuation of textue and pattern with distance.

I will have to apply some of those when I colour these pictures, but this is some rough practice using a classic telephone pole line as example.



A STATION POINT is the point from which you are looking in the image. Generally it is about 5ft above ground level. This has to be level with the vanishing point or it looks as if the the floor curves... this isnt a hard and fast rule but it worked for the street image below.



I'm getting through the book Perspective now.


I'm working in an A3 book so apologies for the images, I'm having to take photographs at home as I dont have an A3 Scanner. The above is an example of 2 point perspecting. The main issue Ive had so far is confusing myself with too many lines but providing I keep working big, it seems to be going ok.


The above is an example of single point perspective, this is easy but getting the two methods correct is important so that I can combine them properly.




The above is an image of 2 point and one point perspective combined.

1 Point perspective is used when the front plane of the object is parallel to the picture plane. The picture plane is the first line you draw (the bottom one of the three) and is at 90 degrees to the observation point. How far away it is is determined by the Cone of Vision, which is generally between 30 and 70 degrees depending and how wide the image is. The wider the cone, the further away the Picture Plane is.

The second 2 lines (the two down from the top) are the Horizon Line (on top) and this is where youre Vanishing points are, The vanishing points are where the Cone of Vision meets the Horizon Line. The second down is the Ground Line and this is where your objects begin to sit. The first planes are drawn on top of, or joining onto the Ground Line and are determined by lines that come from your Vanishing Points.

In one point perspective you have a single Vanishing Point which is tends to be somewhere in the middle of the image.

In 2 point perspective you have 2 vanishing points and these generally sit way off the edges of the image, this is why its important to use a canvas bigger than the image is intended to be.