Work from this week...

Self explanatory really this is just to explain where my head is 99% of the time.

 

I had never worked with wire before and wanted to see how i could work with it.  I was happy with how my lettering turned out, pretty much on the button to what i wanted.

 

Made this out of wire and then used my broken stamps left over from my previous post to intangle themselves in with the wire words

 

So far this week

I decided on Tuesday that the board i had painted white was not white enough so i wasn't happy about it my successful solution was to go off and get white spray paint instead, it worked nicely. Although it has slowed me down with regard to development of my piece i think it was a good move to make. I am marking out on paper this time where my letters are going to be and il then pierce through the paper to mark the board for the pins and from then on it should be a quick enough process.

On another note i made a lil' movie just trying out movie maker for the first time... It was quite fun! So i tried it out with my try out of my print piece "where work overtakes all"

Hope you enjoy... but remember this was a piece that literally took 5-10 minutes to put together so its definatly nothing amazing but i still like it!

 

All Work and No Play Makes Tara a Dull Girl... haha

Today I started working on my piece taking a bit of influence from Susan Murphy.

 

I started by painting my piece of board white today and arranging my pins into...

"ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES TARA A DULL GIRL"

I thought it was a good description and also funny J

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgMdz2fe0CY 

 

I want to express dramatically my state of mind sometimes when i have alot of work on by using a quote from Stephen Spielberg's movie "The Shining".  This was a quote that kept saying in my head (not in a freaky way, in a jokey way) when i was overtired and over worked. Just for a bit of humour as im often up alone, working into the early hours of the moment... the mind does tend to wander.

Its stamp making time!

Today i made some stamps and had a bit of fun with them.  Now im going off to make my planned piece for today.

Typography

Since the tutorial i had with Patricia and books i got from the library on Typography i have now become fairly excited to take my project in that direction.

I discovered that the type that i use for the manuals (Futura) was developed by Paul Renner and i did a little research about him.  http://www.linotype.com/762/paulrenner.html

 

But i didnt really find what i was looking for so, i went in search of Typographical Designers, didnt have much luck but i did speak to Des today who helped me out with a few links that might help.

Quick trip back to the start of October (1)

Ok so after a tutorial with Kieran, it came to light that i needed to fix my line of thought and stop thinking about a finished piece and explore and have fun with my project by looking at what i was trying to express in terms of "the sense of my space".

The main idea of the brain was very literal in that i thought of how the brain is the origin of all our senses and to me my own personal space for all my thoughts, and feelings towards the different spaces/environments of which i inhabit.

I had thought of drawing the brain and manipulating it into different rooms to express the three most significant spaces in my life and the ways i have to adjust myself in order to occupy those spaces in the way i am supposed to (i.e: Home - i am a mother/carer to my son and girlfriend to my partner, College - i am a student and have to think creatively and in terms of my project direction, Work - this consums all and interrupts all of my environments and tends to throw me off, i have to adjust myself here with alot of responsibility as my job title is the head of design and i have to work on deadlines which i have to meet and always meet. Also the stress of being the only one in the office that works with the design of the manuals i create and nobody else caring to understand the steps it takes to create same.  But enough about that.

Kieran advised me to play as i usually try to race to get to the finished product and that is not the right idea for my project or with the college. I need to show my explorations and my journey.

This is what i intend to do moving forward and i dont think the brain is the way to go with this.

So i started drawing tree's

 



The only problem with these is they are from my imagination and a small of bit of influence from the artwork of Alex Pardee.

 

 

Quick trip back to September (2)

WEEK TWO!

The weekend coming into week two i got fixated on the idea of creating a 3D brain.  I had planned a rounded out literal shape of the brain.  So i commenced working on my idea, i decided to use sylicone as it was clean clear and because of the texture and gloop of the material.  I borrowed a sylicone gun and bought some sylicone and got to work.  I had to cut the spout(?) in a way that the sylicone would be the right size and shape for my brain.

Upon doing this i had one worry.  I was afraid the material would stick to every surface so i used clear clingfilm (stretched to reveal no bumps) just incase it stuck. I was quite proud of myself as nobody could tell me what sylicone did not stick to... and so i discovered, sylicone does not stick to clingfilm... happy days!

I decided to make a second brain and when they both dried i was happy i made them on a flat surface because when i flipped them around to the flat side, there was a beautiful pattern revealed.  This was a suprise and very happy it happened as it gave me an idea to try out some pattern work using some of my very enjoyable mark making.

 

Brain from both sides above 

 

Pattern mark-making 

Quick trip back to September (1)

WEEK ONE!

I didn't get what i was supposed to show on my blog until now so im going to take you back a little bit and show just some of the work i did up to now.

 

This is just a little play with things on my desk.  With my original idea of the brain in mind i wanted to play around with the colour and shape of the jellybeans and thought of how it could be used for markmaking like if i had dipped them into water and placed them on the page. The hope was the dye from the sweets would make the picture. 

 

 

I can't believe i went further with this but i did i put them into the glove to see how much space they took up... then i took a look inside to see how Claustrophobic  it would make me feel.

Space closing in...

 

 

But then decided the Jellybeans were best used for their purpose....

.... so i ate them J

 

I also went off and drew the brain and also did some research into the styles of one of my favorite artists - Alex Pardee.  I wanted to tie his style in with my own and create a colour drawing of a beautifully grotesque brain! I drew it out a couple of different ways and planned a bigger pencil drawing.

 

That was a quick recap on week one!

New Idea's

Got some books out on Typography on Thurday last and read some of them over the weekend.  I think it would be a good course to take if i tried to gear my project towards Typography.  I also bought a new contexual notebook to start afresh and try and gear myself to a new direction that i suprisingly have not tried before.  I came up with some ideas which i will post as soon as a finish them...

Another Week...

Another week started and i am still stressing out over where my project is going and what to do with it etc. which would all be teezed out if i had time to do it at home also.

That problem should be gone from next week on as i have ended my job as it is in the way of my focus on college work (and since im not going to be exploited anymore).  So happy! and cant wait to get stuck in properly next week.

For now i have opened up a new path of experiementation and i am going to ask my 6 year son what he thinks of certain words and what they mean and look like to him... He has such an amazing way of thinking and i would like to incorporate some of his innocent way of thinking into my work.  My lil' boy is my inspiration and i am happy to explore and try out a whole new way of thinking... The result i am hoping for is getting my mind off the 'straight to the point' way of thinking and getting onto the 'broad' way of thinking and exploring and creating as much as i can and maybe then i can pull it all together.

I made a sylicone brain on my first week and have done some pattern work since then... but i spent alot of time drawing tree's lately. The result of which i like, but completely from my imagination, which i shouldn't really be doing... definatly thought it was good to spend time on them to clear my head though!