ARTWORK (drawing) Working from creative text ( Rumi poetry Year Book ) Artist's Book

1. How does your drawing project address SETS AND SERIES?

Project outline

The task was to produce a set, a series, a collection , a related group, an arangement, a sequence or suite of drawing that investigate drawing materials and processes via a narrative. The set or series you develop can relate to each other via imagery, colour, texture, size, materials and techniques. The narrative , the story, the description used to drive your suite of drawings is to be a responsive depiction using poetic devices as opposed to an illustrative explanation.

The options were to

1. Drawing inspiration from either:
   Working from creative text ( Rumi poetry Year Book )
   or
   A book about Death
2. You will develop a suite of works that will either result in a unique
   Artist's Book
   or a
   Set of drawings

my concept

For this project I chose to Work from creative text and create an artists book Artist's Book.

To get the line of poetry from “the worlds contracted thus edited by J.A and J K McKenzie”

“i looked out of my window in the dark” was my line of poetry.

contemporary society became the focus for this project , steming from the phrase “in the dark”. Personally I cant think of a darker, more souless place. Where everyone MUST be equal , we are identified by numbers , credit cards , customer reference number , drivers licence , phone number, login ids. A faceless expendible mass.

my execution

To get the line of poetry we placed our date of birth down on the board , and converted that into page and line number . Mine being 278/1 became page 278 line 1 .

The poem was the Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor , the line being “i looked out my window in the dark”.

The next stage was to do word brain storming after breaking the poem down into three sections , “i looked” , “out of my window”, “in the dark” , followed by visual brainstorming of color , texture and poetic visual devices.

This aided in direction of the final image development.

My choices were :

“i looked” = turning my head to look

“out my window” = through my eyes from within my own head , eyes being the window of the soul

“in the dark” = contemporary society , I have always seen this as a dark place.

NB : both the Book of Death and Artist's book were completed

See journal for Book of Death works

2. What research did you engage with ? Artist contemporary or traditional

visual inspiration for the cutout of the book came from:

Chanelle Collier’s intricate book sculpture La Chasse au Météore ,

Chanelle is a self-taught artist who has been working primarily with books as a medium since 2009. Her interest in past technologies and nostalgia has developed through her work with old books, which are fast becoming an old technology themselves.

chanellecollier.wordpress.com

Another contemporary artist I looked at was

Denis Peterson an American hyperrealist painter who uses Figurative images in compressed space and incorporeal landscapes of social decadence are visual commentaries on the aftermath of genocides, diasporas, and cultural divides

I also looked at Francisco Goya's print set , Los Caprichos when looking into how I would best portray “the darkness”

text inspiration

“the exquisit corpse”

3. Discuss the planning of your project , including experimentation , technique selection, overcoming technical problems and determining limitations and constraints ( Refer to your journal)

experimentation

a story board and paper mockup was created before I had made choices into materials of the book and technical selection

my painting experimentation – in bridging 2D and 3D played a major roll as did experimentation with pastels . Purchase of an Art Spectrum white pastel ( I had previous issues with white pastel fading greatly ) led to experimentation of pastels on Mdf boards and snowden paper

technique selection , why ?

Timber cutout – use of a scroll saw

the choice of timber is an extention from my painting project and experimentation. I found that the surface was faster and after preparing it with a charcoal ground which was then sealed I could control the amount of tooth. Additionally the timber allowed me the luxury of experimenting with shapes and not having to worry about the final form being compromised.

use of carbon paper

I experimented with various transfers that I had used in the past , pastel , charcoal , eukaluptus etc to get the text onto the bare timber . the use of carbon paper and writing on the timber was laborus but worked well in the end.

pastels on wood

I have been experimenting a lot with pastels and find that they lend themselves well to my working methodology . That being refinement of form , from an inition blocking in I can work layers to create my final image.

Fabric on the spine of book

I wanted to make sure that the spine of the book was strong , so I used black fabric ribbon. I had difficulty in purchasing this as it seemed that most ribbon is now either mesh or patterned. I had to be consious when glueing the ribbon that I did not use to much or it would bleed through to the visible side

technical problems

pastels – quality

Art spectrum white and black .. mont marte grey

tonally dropped when sealing with spray

had trouble sourcing the ribbon

getting good registration of heads

potentially smudging of the pastels was going to be an issue , after all the book was going to be handled. My method of sealing the pastels once they had been “fixed” was to use a aerosole plastic spray. This successfully sealed the pastels to prevent smudging

limitations and constraints

quality of pastels

unfortunately it wasnt until the project was finished that I solved the biggest issue of the project . An that was with my grey tones dropping out . It turned out that the pigment in a mont marte grey pastel would diminsh greatly when fixative was applied , but the art spectrum white pastel I was using remained strong. After further tests with the AS pastels I have found that the pigment/tonal drop out from them is minimal.

4. What aesthetic decisions did you make? Eg working with particular equipment to achieve particular effects, establishing a key , determining a palette and deciding upon a format and a scale

display

The upright freestanding display choice was made to retain the 2D wallmounted origins of drawing and to enable me to splay the pages so you could also view them simultaineously.

aesthetics

realism

I have been working with realism this year and intended to extend this visual throughout my projects , Denis Peterson was inspirational in using the close field of view for my faces. The final image which was blurred is a play on hyperrealism , in that they make use of digital anomylies , ie camera blurs when objects are out of the focal depth

regular book shape

Inspiration for the timber cutout was Channel Collier's book La Chasse au Meteore which was part of the Steampunk antopedian exhibition.

previous experiments with cutouts in painting

the aesthetic of being able to see all the images simultainiously was appealing and worked well after the marquette had been created. This was influenced by my painting experiments and by Channel Collier's book

filling both sides of the image

Since both sides of the images were to be filled and that these works were going to be cutout forms I chose to experiment with using the entire poem . The cutout nature meant that an “exquisite corpse” was created

pastels

my choice of pastels is a continuation of my experiments with the medium this year , I enjoy smooth creamy texture and flexibility of the medium , in contrast to Ink which is less forgiving

5. How has your experimentation and development of selected techniques informed the project ?

Through my experimentation over the first semester I had learnt a lot about the nature of pastels and the value of image preperation , in particular in the invented artist project.

pastels

portraiture

high contrast

digital image compilation before doing anything with traditional mediums

precise drawings on surfaces before working of layers

working all images of a series up simultainiously to maintain consistancy

6. How could you further develop your techniques in relation to you professional practice ? How might you build upon your ideas towards future work ?

This project has opened up many posibilities for the future which I hadnt considered.

Knowing that the timber surface holds the pastels and that I can seal it properly

I am interested to explore drawings which are not displayed on the wall but instead on objects themselves

the materiality of the surface and the surfaces form can be used to enhance the concept .

I also intend to extend this project , I am greatly interested in the Trompe loeil technique , I feel that it has great potential , I cant wait to begin researching and experimenting.

Allan Kaprow's essays on experimental and total art have also influenced my mindset for future

experiments into:

-the viewer and the 2d surface

-the 2d surface as a 3d object and its relationship with the gallery space (since a painting is a physical object therefore a 3d object even tho it is regarded as 2D )

-the display of a painting as a 3D object in a space

-the spacial relationship between paintings , in particular at what point does a series become a single image and or a sculptural form

-at what point does a painting become a sculpture