Final Major Project Ideas and Development

I am quite stuck on this project but I also have loads of ideas. I’m stuck in an sense that I’m not quite sure which direction I’m going and what materials to use.

I have experimented with new things, to try get me out of a box where I always do the same thing. I have experimented with digital drawing on my phone, over the assessment week. I didn’t have a sketchbook on me so I made some drawings on my Snapchat app, and quite liked the outcome. I have also experimented with clay, although initially I wanted to use plasticine because I like the texture of it and I’d like to use it for the vibrant colours it comes in. The result with the clay worked well, although its quite small. I was hoping to make larger pieces to be hung on a wall.

EMILIO VILALBA

Emilio Vilalba is an artist I discovered on Instagram, which to be honest is where I discover most artists. I am inspired mainly from his collection ‘Symbols of Death, Signs of Life’ and his collection ‘Dialogues’.

PROJECTIONS

As a part of our photography workshop we projected our best images on a wall or on an object, to help us think more about how photography can be inside of fine art and change the way an object of a setting is/feels. I had my photography projected on a plain wall and had Charlie (who was the person in the image) stand next to it. Then another picture projected of me standing next to it. I had this intention because I wanted to create layers. A flat image, underneath a 3D thing or person. I needed more layers though, so I had these taken as photographs, with my intention to draw digitally over them for more effect.

This, in a way is a 3D collage.

LINO PRINT

I think we can all agree I love printmaking, although lino being one I have always battled with. I love the effect lino has but I can never quite get it right, and being the perfectionist I am, i have to get it right. So I made a small lino piece with the intention to practice my skills and perhaps develop it further.

Recently colour has been a new thing for me. Through out level 3 I was more of a pencil and charcoal and printmaking artist, my end of year exhibition being quite..simply put it, bland. And even before Level 3 I only ever used pencil. Now, I am enjoying exploring colour, and I think it’s an essential part of my artwork now, if it’s too black and white it looks a bit uninteresting, unless you do it correctly. I love red, and orange and yellow. And also deep blue and lime green. I think it’s funny that sometimes artists look like their art, and yet i wear colours the exact opposite of my art. Very light, grey and black.

THE CLAY SCULPTURE

I quite liked working with clay, it was therapeutic. The one thing I dislike about clay is how it looks after put in the kiln, I think it runs the texture of it, I like how it looks when its soft. So I left it over night, so it was hard but still kept its soft looking texture. Then I painted it.

I got inspired to work with clay from this Harry Styles poster. Being a fan of his, I am always inspired by his colour schemes, fashion choices and ideas. I think since the beginning of foundation I always revelled at the idea of working with the idea of psychedelic artwork but didnt know how to go about it in a modern way. The the colours and the sculptures in this image is what made me want to create something strange and surreal.

SKETCHBOOK PAGES

PRINTMAKING

My first attempt at printmaking at home. I’ve mainly been working in my sketchbook for the past week so I thought I should make some prints. I soaked my paper in the bath. And used the inks I borrowed from college as well as oil paints. I think it was successful. It was difficult to make it print well onto the paper, without a printing press. I had to use a big book and bag of clay.

A sketchbook page, which I think is my favourite. I drew what I saw outside my window, and decided to change it to night. I think its about bad dreams.

MY BEDROOM IS A STUDIO AND I HATE IT. If you’d ask anyone about me, they’d tell you I hate mess and clutter and I need things to be proper and tidy, because its relaxing. I have enough clutter in my head so I need my outside space nice. So my bedroom is a studio and I hate it.

CLAY

Here is the maquette slightly more refined and smooth. What I didnt do the first is use water to smoothen the clay. It started to crack and crumble, so I got rid of the tail, arms, horns and running water and started again with those bits. Using water actually helped a lot (I forgot about water and clay, duh, dumb moment).

A time lapse of me refining the clay.

This in a way, is artist research. I was inspired by an american artist Kyle Harmon who makes paintings, prints and collages. His work is quite freaky and creepy which excites me for some reason. I feel if art has some horror or creepiness i find it more relatable than artwork that is gentle. I like art that has rudeness and crudeness in it, everyone seems to look at art like that and laugh and think ‘oh yeah’. We all swear, we all do weird things, we have dirty secrets, we all have demons. Which is why I am inspired by this artist.

POLLY NOR

Polly Nor is a contemporary surrealist artist who focuses on ‘women and their demons’ and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. I discovered her artwork from a music video, which she animated, called Halfway to Nowhere by Chelou (I reccomend). I really liked her style and how she drew the woman in it in a real way. I like her use of the devil in her work, which is where I got my inspiration to include the devil in mine. To me it says that women are not perfect, not angels, we can be evil and do bad things. I think the meaning behind her work is something I relate to and try to include in my own work, but in a more personal way. I think I’m an artist who’s quite autobiographical, so putting something like this in my own way, would be something I’d like to work with.

Trying find a narrative in my work is quite difficult. I usually work without thinking about what it is or what it means. People look at my work and ask ‘what’s the story?’ And I reply ‘I’m not too sure’, then they get uninterested. And having a narrative means I have to continue that narrative through my sketchbook work and prints and sculpture etc. Working autobiographical makes it harder as well as I usually just do what I like, what I see, what I feel. I like the idea of evil and creepiness and how not everyone is perfect, I also like the idea of what I’m like every day, and my thoughts and how I feel. I think I can somehow bring all that together to represent what it’s like to be a teenager. The two sides of it perhaps.

MONO PRINTS

Like always, when I’m stuck I make some prints inspired by past work and artists. This hasn’t quite helped my situation with what I want to follow.

I decided my jigsaw mono print was boring and uninteresting, so I thought I’d jumble them up, with thought, to help generate ideas for me. I think it looks better than the previous one.

This is quite simple and is actually something I relate to a lot. A grumpy teenager feeling dead and thinking about bed.

At first, I had no idea what this sketchbook page meant, I was just putting down my inspiration from Emilio Vilalba. Now I can see what it means. The darkness in a teenager’s room, the tap (that’s running over the girl) has an angry face over it, when means hate. The tap is making the girl hate herself whilst looking in the mirror

BECAUSE THIS IS MY DIARY(ISH) IM WRITING MY FRUSTRATIONS DOWN.

I am so frustrated with my art at the moment, I want to cry. I have no idea what I’m doing, nothing I make makes any sense or is related at all. I feel like giving up with my work, its just so difficult to find inspiration when you cant see anyone or anything. I find it so difficult to come up with ideas when I’m given a theme because I can be so literal and boring, and the coming up with a theme myself is frustrating. For some reason I get a lot of praise for my work, but people dont quite understand how sad I get it when I show someone something and they ask what it means and you reply with ‘I have no idea, I just did it out of boredom’ and then all the spark and excitement goes because it’s just a thing that means nothing. Which is basically all of my work. So then they’re not quite interested or think you’re not that good of an artist. Or if I draw in one way it’s amazing, but if I draw in a different kind of way its ‘jess you can do so much better’. I feel so much pressure to be the best I can because it’s what everyone expects from me. At the moment I dont feel like I’m being my best.

STUDIO

My mum manages air B&Bs at this massive Victorian house, it has four massive apartments. Two of them are B&Bs, one of them someone is renting out and recently an old man has moved out of the other one, so its is completely empty. Her boss has allowed me to use one of the empty rooms as a studio over the summer. (With the exception I cover EVERYTHING with sheets). I feel much better working in this space as I felt staying in my bedroom couldn’t allow me to work as big and expressive as I’d like.

Finally started painting today. I dont really have a lot of painting materials at the moment, so I had to make do with what I had. I just got two A1s and painted some things in my sketchbook and from my digital drawings. It felt nice to delve back into bigger scale because I’ve missed the freedom to be more messy and expressive. This digital drawing is of a chair in my room. For some reason I cant stop drawings chairs and beds.

Once I was finished painting I felt something was missing. It didnt look quite finished. So I got oil pastels out and go to work. The girl in red oil pastel, it was supposed to be just her head, but I thought sod it, I’ll put her whole body in, which I think looks decent.

DAVID HOCKNEY

David Hockney has always been an inspiration of mine. Especially his etchings of ‘A Rakes Progress’, I started to get into David Hockney when I saw a few of the etchings in Manchester Art Gallery, back when I was in Level 3. I think his drawing skills and his ability to dive into different mediums is something I can take from him, it inspires me to create more, and in different ways. His digital drawings is something I’ve discovered a few months ago, his use of bright colours and textures.

PRINTS

I made some mono types to help me get some inspiration, mainly of simple things around me I can try make look more interesting.

Then I made some mono prints based from my sketchbook to help generate some ideas.

A STRANGE DREAM I HAD.

I had a dream that random people were put in pairs, as a printing challenge. I was paired with Dyfan. The first challenge was to find this particular ink which was hidden in an old library, inside a book. The with that ink and various others, we had to make a specific colour called ‘honey’. Which was difficult for some reason. And once you make the ink, you have to make a mono print with it and hand it in. Everyone was doing very simple drawings of honey pots and hair and eyes. Me and dyfan thought we’d do something else. I drew in my sketchbook what the print looked like (a vague memory of it).

For some reason this made better sense in my dream. The car was supposed to represent Dyfans love for sculpture (it was better drawn in my dream) and the giant person sitting on the car was supposed to be me in a weird way, as I like making self portraits. I’ve forgotten what happens after that. However I am inspired by what I created in my dream.

A painting I dont quite like, its about having bad dreams becuase I’ve been having a lot of bad dreams for weeks.

I started making this last night at around 8:30. I did nothing all day, I didnt feel inspired and I was so tired. Then I appeared in the studio, which i don’t remember doing. All of a sudden I was there, so I thought well I’m here so I might as well do something. I wanted to make something square so I got three A1s, cut one of them in half and attach them to the other two. The only paint I have is wall paint, wood paint, emulsion and one or two acrylics. All primary colours. Which is annoying because I can’t make the colours I want with what I have. Which is bright purple and pink, and lime green and really electric colours like David Hockney, so it doesn’t look like I’m repeating myself. I felt inspired by my dream so I drew a car. Which I’m not very good at. And naturally I drew a bed, but with long legs. I thought that the car looked our of place a bit, compositionally and context wise, so I drew my bedroom window over it. And now it makes more sense and looks right.

Some digital drawings, one about the car in my dream, one based on isolation and the other is just me watering my plants.

An A1 of my peace lily and some skulls. Orgianally I didnt have that man there in mind. I just wanted to fill the space somehow. Now realising that he should not be there, it looks rather out of place, compositionally. I think if he wasnt there the painting would look fine as it is.

ANOTHER PAINTING BECAUSE I DONT KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO.

Not too sure, I think it’s about being trapped knowing theres a way, but not being capable of doing so.

MY STUDIO

I’m still in the ideas and development stage. I’m still quite unsure what to do with my project, but I’m just going with it and putting things down that comes up in my head.

A PROGRESS

I wanted to try something different. I haven’t painted in a realistic way for a long time. And I thought it would make an interesting contrast in my work, compared to the more simple illustrations i do. The body is inspired by my own, I tried to paint my face this way. It didnt look right and it was way out of proportion, there was many attempts. And once I finished it, it still didn’t look right. So I painted over it and did a skull. Now it looks more like my own work. I’m not too sure what I’m going to do next on this but I have been inspired by my garden.

MY GARDEN

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden, and I’ve been looking after the garden as well. This house I’m staying isnt ours, my mothers boss is kind enough to let us stay in the air bnb my mum takes care of, for free. So now we are the care takers and repainting, and refurbishing the place. Now that there are no bookings, I have time to help my mum clean up the place. I’ve mainly been working on the garden, watering the plants every day, and watering the garden with a bucket back and forth (it takes hours). I even bought some outdoor plants that were really cheap, and planted them in the garden and in some pots. So at the moment I’m feeling really inspired by nature and flowers and plants and water. My main inspirations are things around me, how I feel, what I get up to, so incorporating my ‘work’ in my artwork is something I’m considering.

SKETCHBOOK PAGES

LINO PRINTS

PREPPING MY PAPER

DEVELOPING MY FINAL PIECES.

For my final project I want to incorporate all of the mediums i’ve been delving into. Digital, painting and printing. And i’ve decided to make more than one piece, instead of creating one big piece. I feel after creating digital drawings simple singular pieces look quite effective to me. The way I’ll be making my pieces will be different to what I’ve done before. I’ll be making a3 paintings, photograph it, then edit it using saturation, brightness, exposure etc, then digitally draw on top. I will also be adding ‘digital stickers’ to the piece too which will be my colourful lino prints and other pieces and photographs.

DEVELOPING PIECE 1

I edited the painting this way to make it look brighter and more fluorescent and less flat.

The painting is my peace lily, which i have painted previously on a separate piece and I really liked the effect of it so i wanted to re paint it. The digital flowers are inspired by the Flamingo flowers i have in my room, the flowering of both plants are quite similar so I wanted them both in this piece and show the contrast between digital drawing and painting.

DEVELOPMENT OF PIECE 2

I have been looking more at Meirion Ginsberg and how he paints/draws people and how distorts their composition slightly but in a well thought out way. I am also an admirer of Modigliani and I like how he give the people in his portraits long necks and I enjoy incorporating that into my work. I decided to change my piece because I thought it looked compositionally out of place and just wrong. I feel the updated version looks better and I thought I’d add in table and chairs and cups to bring back the old me, in a way. I still like to draw cups of tea, I just haven’t in a while.

DEVELOPMENT OF PIECE 3

This piece is inspired by my bedroom window at the moment. As I’ve mentioned before I have been surrounded by nature and flowers and plants a lot, so incorporating that into my work seems natural for me. And adding ‘stickers’ i thought it would be interesting as the flowers are naturally very bright I thought the contrast between their brightness and the digital brightness would be an interesting comparison, I didn’t know whether it would work or not but it does, which I’m happy about it. And as for the skulls, I edited them from previous piece I did and made them into ‘stickers’.

COLLAGE PIECES

I made this from from a photograph my sister took of me in the garden and I think its the only picture I accept of me. I though I’d just do some collages and drawings with it to see what I come up with.

These are a some other collages I made, inspired by the flowers in my garden and the current situation.

PIECE 4

I decided to step away a little from nature inspired pieces and plants, and be inspired by what else I get up to, which is shopping online way too much because I am bored and I like nice things. I realised this is definitely retail therapy.

PIECE 5

This piece is more inspired by the current situation and how people have reacted to it. The only time i leave my general area is when I go to the shops, I originally wanted to make a piece of how I feel, the anxiety and stress when I’m shopping, and I think I achieved that through colour. I made ‘stickers’ of toilet roll and hand sanitiser by painting them in my sketchbook then editing the paintings on my phone.

PIECE 5

I felt inspired by the film BeetleJuice, although I haven’t watched the film in a long time, it is a childhood favourite of mine and I find the props and artwork within the film to be quite inspiring and quirky and creepy. As i’ve mentioned before I find creepy, crude, psychedelic artwork to feel more real.

This is a piece also inspired by what I get up to and this is how I envision myself in my room. I also used some oil pastel and crayons. I am the type of person who likes to relax a lot at home, in my underwear because who likes to wear trousers in the comfort of their own home? Not me. This is typically how I look watching shows on Netflix, and my sister likes to randomly go into my room without warning or knocking all the time, and she always seems to be surprised and shocked to see me in my underwear and yet she still likes to go into my room to annoy me and comment on how lanky I am. I looked back at the artists I’ve been looking at and I looked at Polly Nor again, and how she depicts women in their room and their ‘demons’.

PIECE 6

This piece is inspired by the concept of womanhood and what Polly Nor and Kiki Smith explore into their work. Since being in lockdown everything seems to feel a lot worse than usual, my dreams, my body, my mental health. All those things cause anxiety and stress which can ultimately make menstruation worse and a lot more painful, and it makes me want to curl up into a ball. I painted the hips separately in my sketchbook so I can edit it and make it into a sticker. I wanted to make them look like they’re breaking, because my hips and lower back do feel like that when its that time of the month. I think this is the most personal piece I’ve ever done.

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