Y1: T3 Artist Research & Sketchbook ideas

 A good way to start the last and short term of the first year, making obstructions to challenge me. I invited people in the same year group to be my partners; we exchanged obstructions. This blog is my digital sketchbook to record ideas, and how I develop them from initial plannings. 

They played three roles, my evil boss, my friend, my crazy fan. As an evil boss, the person would give me challenging missions, such as I cannot use any technology or art materials to recreate my collection last term, a really tough task.  A role of my friend, I got some nice advice. Instead of drawing patterns on objects, I can think about making them on a picture of a landscape, maybe a human portrait. A crazy fan like me to make my piece again and again until I feel sick of it. Then I come to the idea of block printing. A rubber lino block might allow me to make repeated patterns. (All these ideas will show in bullet points in the mind map)

In the first week, I made a simple plan:

How will I use the time of the unit? What do I plan to do each week?

Easter: Research file: To decide a clear direction and look for artists who give inspirations for developed ideas, and add them to the research file.

Week 1: Initial sketch and develop ideas: using a sketchbook to record ideas, make a mind map. (I have ambitions this term, however, considering it is a short term, I decided to make a mind map. I will focus on two things, one practical drawing and one digital video. I want to change the texture of my drawing. It was a solid bottle, I want to make it liquid-like. I will try to use digital tool and technology to change its material. I am thinking to make an animation, then the object can move.)

Week 2: Initial paintings: Experiment with different materials and techniques to see if they offer the effects I wanted, then make some reflections, find ways to cover and solve the problems.

Week 3: techniques: Drawing method experiments, go back to physical drawing, if not satisfied, try a way to combine ideas like the most. Then continue to the final piece design.

Week 4: Summary: final piece finish and presentation preparation. Create a PowerPoint, think about layout and structure. Make it clear and direct. Consider if the slides fit in time, delete something less important.

Week 5: Practice, practice and practice. Make sure to present in 10 minutes, the last edit.

The major element of my work is patterns. I tried to relate them with art theory, historical matters and giving them meanings. Therefore, I will look into Kusama Yayoi who has a big influence on me. I decided to see how she creates her unique world of pattern. A link to a Tate page: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/yayoi-kusama-8094/obsessed-polka-dots. Polka dots and mirrors are the reconfigures of her work. The dot is the most significant element, which was the hallucinations she suffered when she was a child. This is the main point that makes her works so special and lets her to creates a unique style. I have not met situations like her, the things that make me special are my dream. Therefore, I planned to record my memories in paints and make them into patterns. The idea is to link back what I have done over the past few terms; I used different forms of art, for example, photography, videos, paintings, drawings and sculptures to record my life. To relate to Kusama's inspirations, I would like to use the way how she draws and her drawing style. She repeats simple and flat patterns. The 3D visual effects created by Kusama show an infinite world, just like drawing us into depth. The picture shows below is Kusama's Infinity Mirror Room, provided by Tate web. This ethereal environment gives a chance to the audiences to walk into her mental world. 

I would like to try a new technique, making stop motion. Then took pictures of the process of how I fold a piece of paper, to make it more like a video, I used a tripod to fix my phone and set up a light (a desk lamp) from the top. I think the result looks fine. To make the video more fluent, I might need to take more images. More subtle changes I capture, the stop motion video might look better. Apart from the desk lamp I set up, there is daylight from the window. To make the image more steady, I might block the natural light or shot photos in a studio. Here are two contact sheet of the image, I combined them using PR afterwards. The video will be included in the PPT.

In addition, I made a timelapse for the working process to create confusion about the time. I set up a scene, a clock and a candle. It is not a final piece, just a practice of a new technique I learnt. Here is a screenshot of the editing process. Again, the finished version will be in the PowerPoint.

The picture below is Karen Kilimnik's work, Installation view: 303 Gallery, New York, 2019. Photo: John Berens. Kilimnik has a similar colour palette to my work, I decided to use the idea of different sizes of canvas and layer them together to create my final piece. Also, I can play with opacity. Kilimnik gives an idea to me how to illustrate work, not to be too boring. Instead of using the same size of canvas, I can make changes in the size and shape.

Alexa Meade, who uses human bodies as her canvas. I shared a similar idea, want to drag my patterns out from the canvas and make it to somewhere else. The most inspiring point of this artist is the way she paints. She does not draw realistic oil painting, that makes the three-dimensional figure back to 2D. She confuses the audiences and let them can not classify 2D and 3D. Meade creates a strong visual effect, the people just like 'walking character', come to alive.

Dreams and Nightmares, Laurence Burt (1925–2015)

 During the 18th century and the early 20th century, artists started to look at art in a new way. Symbolism and expression appeared. Artist like Burt draws about dreams, to concrete dreams from mind to actual drawings. I like the visual effect in this painting. He used achromatic colour, only black, white and grey. Even though only three simple colours, it shows a strong 3D effect on the crack in the foreground. I would like to use this drawing method in my drawing. Using colours to separate and give object volume. Colours can fake people's eyes, I want to create different perspectives and dimensional in one image, to make it more suitable to my theme. Because everything in dreams does not make sense.

Another artist is Agnes Martin, which I also mentioned. This time, the point that inspired me is Martin's drawing method. I think the way he used opaque coating white acrylic to cover the blue and the peach colours is very successful. It creates a feeling of unclear, blurry, and sparseness. This visual effect is what I was looking for. Dreams are normally unclear, just like having a grey or white filter. The brightness Martin created inspired me, I was struggling with how to express the view of the dream. Then, I decided to add a white colour to the physical drawing and changing opacity to digital versions.

Here are two pages of my sketchbook. 

Other final pieces are on the Wix website and PowerPoint. The image below is the final outcome. I combined all ideas, including layering, changing opacity, digital and physical drawings. This is a test I have done for myself. A person normally gets used to one thing need 21-30 days. So I forced myself only to draw digitally in a situation I was not familiar with the technology. Then I come back to physical in term 3 and see how it goes. The fact is, I found it is more difficult to find accurate colours after the experiment. However, I love both drawing techniques and used them in the final version.

In the end, I want to reference a book that helps me to think more academically and I came up with more questions. 'Virtual Memory: Time-Based Art and the Dream of Digitality' written by Homay King in 2015, raised matters of dreams, art, memory. I record things from my memory, one of them is dreams. Then I made them into patterns. I record them because I like the ability that I can make my virtual world to reality and share it with others. King stated a quotation of Gilles Deleuze, 'Virtual is not opposed to real; what is opposed to the real is the possible.' It makes me think over many times to understand what it means. In my opinion, I think it relates to something I like, for instance, animation. I have heard many times from parents, they tell the children, (ACG) animations, comics, and games are not real, you can believe them, they are toxic, they compose the real. But, really? I think it is real, but not composed to the real. A little bit complicated. What I mean is, animations created by human, so they do exist; however, they are not possible, the least non of them come to the true life, non of any famous characters like spider-man be alive. They are still characters and in a two-dimensional space that we can not touch or live with. I think this is the meaning of King's text:

'It is not impossible, but it is also not pos- sible, technically speaking. It is virtual.'

Because it is virtual, so that world and this world has a boundary. But this boundary is unclear and blurry. I think dreams are something between them, in the grey zone in between the real and unreal world, 

 that is the reason why it is so interesting to me. Regarding the definition stated by Adler (2021), they are vivid and lifelike, and they are from experiences or imaginations.

Reference List:

1. TATE (2021) TALKING POINT Why I Love Yayoi Kusama's The Passing Winter Hear our staff talk about their favourite artworks. [Online] Available from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kusama-the-passing-winter-t12821/yayoi-kusamas-passing-winter. [accessed 19/03/21]

2. KILIMNIK, K. (2019) Installation view: Karen Kilimnik, 303 Gallery, New York, 2019. Photo: John Berens. [Online] Available from: karen-kilimnik. [accessed 25/04/21]

3. MEADE, A. (2021) Alexa Meade Art. [Online] Available from: https://www.alexameade.com

http://solcalero.com/. [accessed 20/04/21]

4. ARTUK(2021) Laurence Burt (1925–2015). [online] Available from: https://artuk.org/discover/topics/dreams-and-nightmares#. [accessed by 11/05/21]

5. ADLER, L. (2021) Dreams: What They Are and Why They Happen. [online image] Available from: https://www.sleep.org/dreams/. [accessed by 12/05/21]