FASHION: Life Drawing

Having little to no experience in artistic drawing, I wasn't sure what to expect from a day set out purely for life drawing. The aspect of having a model to sketch made for an interesting addition to my already sceptical mindset on drawing as I now had to sketch something in front of me instead of "doodling" from imagination or designing graphics which is where most of my experience is from. 

Due to the lack of experience in drawing, I didn't quite know where to start as I had quite a perfectionist ideology in my other work and knew that I would not be able to achieve that here. Following that, I was lucky enough to be in a very open environment with my class and therefore let go of any expectation and opened my mind up to just have a flowing attitude to the sketching.

These excercise above and below helped with this even more as they had such challenging guidelines, there was no other choice but to throw yourself out there and draw to the best that I could as an individual. Starting with a sequence of 4 simple line drawings that overlapped, I found quite quickly that although they weren't conventionally good drawings, the idea of simple shapes can even be considered artistic. Below are drawings that challenged both in timescale and technique. The idea that we had to now sketch two poses using charcoal taped to a meter long stick seemed somewhat ridiculous but it actually challenged my idea of drawing to such a level that I enjoyed the outcome a lot more due to this handicap.

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After the warmup of basic, short line drawings, we experimented with shading which I quickly got a relatively good handle on when considering my experience in this medium. The above picture was a simple shape drawn out from a simple pose which I then shaded with a 2B pencil, a graphite shader and a rubber. I was very happy with what I produced here as the gradients I was able to produce had quite a realistic feel and look to them, even if the shape I had drawn didn't.

We were then taught about proportion before having to attempt three poses using the technique taught to us. Although a very time consuming method, due to not really knowing how to draw proportions accurately, I got a nice result out of it in my opinion. The third image in particular I believe really grasped the proportion of the model well, something a lot of students (and me in particular) struggled with beforehand.

Being already very envious and admiring of Henri Matisse, his life drawings seemed perfect to look at following this workshop. Reason being is the very constructive way in which he creates his pieces, almost as though they are made up various parts that fluidly come together. Above is one of my favourite pieces by Matisse, and not just part of his life drawings but his overall work because its full of depth and radiates the energy of the model.

LENS BASED: Narrative in pictures

From the previous study session where we looked at the origins of lens based media, it was time to look at expressing and portraying a narrative through both still and moving images.

Looking into the power of photography when it comes to conveying the emotion as well as the general visual presentation of an event, we looked at the idea of photojournalism.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, often thought of as the "Godfather" of photojournalism and a master of candid photography was world renowned for his use of snapshot style photography, where he was able to rapidly capture the world in a stationary moment whilst still capturing the movement of actions in his images and therefore portraying the narrative of everyday life.

"I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant" - Henri Cartier-Bresson

We then were asked to mix what we had learnt about both lens based media and the idea of narrative and were asked to storyboard a short 1 minute film.

The plot could be anything we want but we had to make sure that it not only made sense but also didn't consist of solely exposition. To handicap us into really thinking about how we could portray this narrative, the task in hand had to be filmed on a tape recorder shot by shot (which meant any scene changes had to be "editted" on camera) and had to contain no dialogue. This meant that the storyline we were to design had to be fairly precise in its storyboard planning and had to be accurately executed within the hour we were given.

Overall analysis storyboard

Specific scene storyboard

Above are the two images of the storyboards we completed. The one on the left is an overall summarising board whilst the one on the right was a specific scene that was drawn out by another member in our team of 8. This tactic of separating each scene into individual storyboards meant all 8 of us created one and therefore each one would not lack in detail due to rushing.

Our film was completed on time and to a good standard with some slight alterations from the original storyboard but overall was an interesting and informative experiment which I believe we carried out well and without a hitch.


Now working individually on our own project, we were tasked with creating a series of 6 images that told a narrative. Using what we learnt through the making of the 1 minute short film and transferring it to a sequence of still images proved fairly easy and also inspired more ideas that were on a larger scale that would've proved difficult to do through the medium of film.

The narrative we created had to be about an item that meant a lot to us and so I chose a Zippo lighter which I have had for years. It proved quite difficult for me to imagine a narrative about this item but I finally settled on one that is inspired by a particular scene in a Harry Potter film. I plotted the sequence out by sketching a little thumbnail storyboard so that when I set out to capture the images, I knew what I was looking for.

I also chose a little toy bus that I have had since I was a young child. Due to the fact it is a toy bus, in particular a miniature toy replica of the infamous Magical Mystery Tour bus, I felt it only right that the narrative I created around this item was a journey of sorts, or even a "tour". 

I ended up going with the toy bus's narrative and set out to produce the images.

The storyboard I created for this narrative basically outlined my journey from home to Ravensbourne and so I allotted some extra time during my journey to allow for some experiments with photographing. I wanted to play around with perspective and composition to achieve an abstract look that played on the mind of the viewer. To do this, I tried to balance the aperture and shutter speed on my camera to allow for a shallow depth of field and mixing that with the composition of my images to create the illusion of the toy bus being larger than it is.

I feel that this piece turned out quite well considering time factors against me and the obvious embarassment of lying down in the middle of the street. All in all, the idea of perspective didn't work out too well but I feel I tried my best and the effect I achieved through playing around with the depth of field I feel has added a really nice feel to the images.

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES: Tate and The White Cube

Tate Modern, Southwark

'Making Traces', 'Poetry and Dream'  and 'Energy and Process'

For the Contextual Studies unit of our Foundation, we were asked to visit the Tate Modern in Southwark. Given a list of 9 rooms, we walked around for a while to get a general feeling before settling on 6 of the ones I particularily enjoyed and I felt had potential due to either the layout of the exhibition or just the work being displayed.

 

With looking at so many pieces, I was able to produce a decent amount of primary research and valuable notes on the overall feeling of the exhibition. Above are four of my favourite images (clockwise from top left

- To Unroll One's Skin (1970) - Giuseppe Penone

- Big Blue (1996) - George Condo

- From 'Beach Portraits' collection (1992) - Rineke Dijkstra

- From 'Adam's Apple' collection (1983) - Paz Errazuriz



White Cube, Bermondsey

Robert Irwin; Cerith Wyn Evans

A drastically different environment to the Tate, the White Cube Gallery felt like one massive installment. The tranquil atmosphere complimented the pieces of Robert Irwin and Cerith Wyn Evans very well. 

The notes I managed to take from this gallery extended my idea on difference in galleries and I feel it was not just a excellent exhibition but also a very good collection to compare and contrast to what I saw at the Tate, both in method of artistic expression and exhibition. One large part of this is due to the artists both being heavy influences on the set up of the exhibition at the White Cube where as in Tate, the artists would have very little to do with it.

Below are my favourite parts of the White Cube's space from both artists.

Robert Irwin

Cerith Wyn Evans

Cerith Wyn Evans

LENS BASED: Origins of the lens

Looking back at the origins of technology connected to photography and other lens based tools, it is easy to see how the concept of purely lens based medias are such a popular and successful medium. The ability to capture photographic images, either still or moving has not only revolutionised media in entertainment industries but also have helped form the building blocks of modern civilisation. The use of lenses and how light travels through them has long been a large part of the development of human knowledge and has helped prove the most groundbreaking theories such as Galileo's theory that the earth was not the centre of the universe, something proven with Galileo's use of lenses in his handmade telescope way back in the 17th century.

We continued our look at the development of lenses and their impact on society through the invention of Camera Obscura/pinhole cameras which further innovated the use of lenses and allowed society to capture images through a product which resembled the workings of an actual human eye and the capturing of light through the iris which gives us vision as living creatures and which could now be projected onto film and printed.

With the new ability to capture a still image as it would be seen in the moment (bare in mind the closest one came to an image of a previous time was through drawings and paintings) people of that time were given a great tool to visually present narratives.

This is where photography directly had an impact on the medium of art and idea of art photography came into play. The fact that one could capture any particular moment in time in almost an instant innovated the way we saw the world and gave society a way to teach and project moments in time to those who might not have been present, whereas it would have been impossible before to fully give a visual representation of a narrative beforehand.

The advancement then into moving pictures in photography was innovated by two French brothers, the Lumiere Brothers, who invented a machine which could capture multiple photographic images rapidly which then when put into a projector and played in a slideshow around the same speed would display movement in the images it projected. This creation held quite possibly the largest impact on the world of technology both back then and arguably to present day. The ability to bring photography into the 4th dimension when portraying any type of narrative meant it was now even easier to tell stories and portray events to the truest it could be.

LENS BASED: DSLRs and Studio Lighting

To start the Lens Based Media Rotation week, we were introduced to the basics of studio photography equipment. Despite having learnt most of the technical aspects of using a DSLR in various settings (namely natural and studio), it was good to refresh my memory and also learn the technical vocabulary and jargon for the course.

We started off with looking at the settings a DSLR has, such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO. 

The aperture setting is to do with how much the shutter opens and therefore determines how much light is revealed to the image sensor (or film in analogue photography). The modes of this setting are measured in f-stops and these go as seen above where the number increases as the hole restricts.

One of the main benefits of playing with the aperture is the ability to alter the depth of field in a photograph. At the highest f-stop, the depth of field (DOF) is at the greatest and therefore as the f-stop decreases, the DOF becomes more and more shallow. 

Due to the technology of aperture, if one is attempting to capture an image with a shallow DOF, this means the shutter is wide open and lets in a large amount of light. This means, with no other settings being changed, the image will often be overexposed and so the shutter speed will often be altered to compensate for the exposure. 

Moving onto looking at lighting, we were introduced to the school's studio equipment. This consisted of two of the more common lights, being tungsten lamps and a compound flash.

We were then shown the effects of these two lights and how they are used both in technical terms and the difference in aesthetic results.

These are the images I then took with this information fresh in my head to test the outcomes:

GRAPHICS: Poetry in Migration

For the first day of our Graphics Rotation, we were asked to bring in a poem that we liked and felt had strong value to it. I chose two poems by artist Robert Montgomery.

The reason I picked these poems is due to it's negative view on current capitalist society. Robert Montgomery describes himself as a Situationist, a philosophy which is almost anarchic in its views as it disagrees with any kind of hierarchy but tends to view individuals as masters of one's own life instead of part of a driven society. Their view on society is that one should not be controlled, condoned or coached into any view and that life is for exploration and fulfillment, meaning success is achievable rather than desirable. Although this strays somewhat from our theme of migration, I feel it does actually branch out into the idea of migration in the terms of identity and how one's identity is produced and developed.

We then attempted to create a poem in groups, where we each thought of our own individual imaginary journeys that we then had to piece together. This is the result of that experiment:

Carrying on from the look at poetry and its impact on the world, we connected the idea of that strong message you can create through poetry and mottos and how it is regularily used in graphic design to create a positive effect on the viewer.

Through this, we were tasked with creating our own poster on the topic of migration.

I wanted to look at the moral that the Israel Loves Iran campaign portrayed with the idea of international relationships and how one country can offer help to another country in need simply for the sake of humanity. I created a group of rough sketched thumbnails I felt conveyed the benefits of Asylum seekers which are shown here:

I then digitalised two of the options I believed would work the best starting with this one:

 

And then this one, which ended up being the final outcome I chose for full size printing:

 

The quote used is a famous quote from freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, a person who I wanted to incorporate into this image due to the fact the purpose of this poster was to show the effects of neglect of third world countries and the lack of media attention and that very much fits what Mandela stood for.

With this project drawing the Graphics Rotation to a close, I am pleased with the outcome of my final project although, drawing from the constructive criticism I received during the exhibition of our pieces, I feel the piece would be improved if I used my own images in the overall graphic due to possible issues with copyright. 

Overall, this rotation has allowed me to experience the Graphics course and has also both refreshed my memory of graphic software from GCSE and has helped me expand into other programs I previously had no experience with such as Adobe InDesign.

GRAPHICS: Adobe Workshop

During the Graphics rotation, we had a workshop aimed at educating us on Adobe software commonly used in graphics. This workshop focussed on three main programs, those being: Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Starting with Photoshop, we were shown some basic photo manipulation tools, namely the vector mask tool. This tool allows the user to cut a custom part of an image out and make the consequential negative space transparent. Below is a step by step process of how I used this tool to create a final manipulated image.

Similarily, we then used the same kind of tool in illustrator, this time to create vectors and shapes. The pentool can be used to create "anchors" which when dotted around, create a "path" which is a shape. Using the pentool I took to creating a logo.

This was a simple idea which I took from a font on the computer and created a wallpaper pattern to add to my logo. This piece excercised my basic knowledge of Illustrator and the pentool and I was happy to therefore have practice in this program once again.

The next task was then more illustration based but using the same kind of technique in the pentool. We were asked to take a picture of a shoe from the internet, and create a vector illustration of that shoe. Here is my rendition of that.

This is a simple yet effective technique for illustration and was fun to do and I believe I executed it to the best of my abilities. 

Overall the workshop proved very useful in getting re-accustomed to graphic software and also learning new tricks for the upcoming projects I would face in the Foundation year.