MMU Paint with ANYTHING (part 2)

An interesting display of ye olde painters' raw materials

 So, a part 2 of this painting with anything tutorial. It's getting to me that we should open our minds to other more interesting forms of materials when we make our art, a break down of our presumption of what should be "art" - y'know: paints, paint brushes, sketching pencils, charcoal, paper, 2D stuffs, water colours, really old fashioned uncultured knowledge of this so called "fine art" (of course I'm making an exaggerated point, I'm sure not everyone was thinking that at all).

We were shown examples of previous students' work, one of which included a project they did during the course that involved the making of images associated with the materials. The example shows how important it is to consider the connection between the object/subject matter with the materials and manner in which it was made: so for example, the Ben & Jerry's ice cream logos made with Ben & Jerry's ice cream (although my deductions tell me that perhaps the student artist did not use actual B&J ice cream to make pictures with, as that would be far too expensive for someone in education to use up that much ice cream).

*sniff* :'( all that delcious ice cream...

We were asked to bring in items of everyday occurance and to then prepare it in a way that would make it useful to use in a drawing/painting.

Here's my kit list: 

• Tea
• Apple
• Tomato
• Coca-Cola
• Soy Sauce
• Shampoo
• Burnt toast
• (out of date) chocolate
• Green Tea
• Custard Powder
• Ginger

... *sigh*

Unfortunately, my materials didn't offer up such a great range of colours:

That's a lotta brown.

I am, however, rather happy I at least contributed to someone else's colour sheet ^_^ At one point in the tutorial, we were asked to swap around the room and find a colour that the owner of the colour sheet had not yet put on:

If you squint, my contribution is on the top right hand corner. That raspberry and paprika mix.

A thank you to Sarah Jane for letting me add to her work :)

MMU Paint with ANYTHING

The assignment involved sticking anything onto then end of a bit of willow to form an "unconventional painter's tool". An exercise to just open ourselves into looking at everyday things in a different light and learning to experiment with new ways to achieve and artistic, creative response.

So, here come the "unconventional painter's tool"s:

Using each of these "menu of marks", we were then left to experiment the utilisation of each tool in drawing one of our tools:

Messy desk.

Now we move onto longer brush strokes (oh ho getting advanced, are we?):

I chose to use the paper towel and teabag, as the two seemed to hold up well after a lot of use that morning.

... the teabag exploded after this piece though.

Paper towel and wide piece of ginger.

Donna from class had a plethora of items to use. Quite amazing really, there was a funny shaped carrot involved.

So, after struggling with tools made of unconventional items (which I'm sure they're "unconventional" for a VERY good reason, but none the less interesting and fun to use), the whole tutorial culminated in some nice ink paintings:

bustlin' and beautiful.

 

 8 of the 13 brushes still survive... barely. I'll spare you the "gore".

MMU Learning the way of The Line

The day started with a lecture of slides showing various artists who are known for their interpretation of drawing. The drawing I refer to is that of a linear nature, which includes artists such as Tim Knowles and Hannah Barton.

Trees Drawing - Tim Knowles

Cassette Tapes - Hannah Barton

 The lectures broke us in, and after a break and another short slideshow we were introduced to what's known as "drawing with our bodies"... which I get, I just don't quite find - what's the word - as substantial in terms of instant appreciation? Well, to be honest, I'm split on this one. There's a part of me that is yelling "PRETENTIOUS" down one of my ears and another part of me that's got his hand perused on his chin, nodding as he's taking it all in.

Suffice to say, the techniques worked, and I was feeling rather open and calm today. Even if I was rather "oh, really? C'mon, really?" but, letting it soak in, I see the effects and I appreciate the philosophy and the thought process in the exercises.
Said exercises go like this:

1. Close your eyes
2. Imagine yourself in bed on the edge of sleep last night

Or perhaps like this:

1. Close your eyes
2. Drink a cup of water veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooooooooooooooooowly
3. (or do some everyday task veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooooooooooooooooowly)

Then there's this:

1. Close your eyes
2. Have a partner stand in front of you
3. Now air molest them - I mean trace their outline and stuff... you know, for art purposes. Feel that line, that's right, feeeeel iiiiiiitttt.

 Like I said, these activities did at first appear pointless (much to the reactions I got from people in the same room afterwards) but they do have a psychological effect that helps alter the mood to help with creative thinking. It is possible to find joy in simply drawing lines over and over, much like the clerk who copied letters all day long in Gogol's "The Overcoat".

The idea of scrawling my signature over and over on a piece of paper has been done before in one of my sketchbooks, but looking at it from a larger piece of paper, with more attention to the type of line making I used with charcol puts a different light on it.

Squiggle Squiggle!

Amongst the things we tried was also zen like drawing of lines, one after the other, again and again and again and again... You kinda get into it and start to enjoy the joy of just drawing a line - a bit like racers who enjoy getting a corner turn just right. It's an exercise inspired by the likes of... an artist I would try to name if I had been quicker taking notes in the lecture *sigh* [As a note to any teachers, would it be a possiblity of getting a copy of the slide shows you all make? I'm finding a couple of artists don't seem to have an online presence, if anyone could let me know of a possibility before I come find you about it sometime this week it would be greatly appreciated :) ].

Line... line... line... line... line... LINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINE line... line... line...

  We even tried a technique of never looking at the drawing. As in, the entire time our eyes focused on the object that we were drawing, so we would have to draw an image blind, but based on the movements of our eyes, a so called "record of the journey of our eyes". Again, I'm split on this. On the one hand I respect and appreciate the concept; it's a nice idea to linking your eyes and hands in a different manner and really makes you focus on key elements of drawing rather than bogging yourself down on if the drawing is alike to the object. However, on the other, all I see is a very lateral take on drawing, but if all I end up with are very indistinct squiggles that don't really appeal to the/my eye then forget about it.

Yes. They are shoes.

Thankfully, we got a wonderful finale that involved just letting us draw the shoe (from own feet I might add). It was all to incorporate all that we had learnt during the day, the zoning techniques, the zen line drawings, the squiggling of signature over and over and the 100% focus on object drawings. All were amalgamated into this still life of one of our shoes. The results are rather satisfying:

SHOES!

MMU Homepage on Location: Behind the scenes

There were some giggles to be had whilst on location.

MMU Homepage on Location

The brief this time required that I take a photo in the style of selected film genres, on location with my summer project.

So, out of the choices given I selected three genres with films to correspond:
SCI-FI: "Moon" (2009)
X-RATED: "A Clockwork Orange" (1971)
GOTHIC/SUPERNATURAL HORROR: "Jacob's Ladder" (1990)

Yes, "A Clockwork Orange" is/was an X-rated film due to the violence and sex portrayed in the film. It was also surrounded by controversy due to acts of extreme violence that was apparantly cited by scenes in "A Clockwork Orange". After receiving death threats, Stanley Kubrick, the director, pulled all copies of the film from being shown in the UK. It was rereleased in the UK under cult-film status.

I picked the film "Moon" due to the interest with GERTY. I wanted to use the scenes that featured GERTY substitued wtih my computer from the summer project. The thought of attaining fishing wire to suspend my piece in mid air or something similar to the way GERTY is suspended came to mind, but I was unable to find where I could purchase items that would help suspend my computer, nor are there any really suitable locations around Manchester or locally to me that seemed sci-fi enough. There was a possibility of creating a set myself in the garage, but considering the time restraints, it didn't feel realistic to attempt.

GERTY vs. my Computer... no similarities whatsoeveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer...

"Jacob's Ladder" had an interesting aesthetic in parts of the films, especially during the protagonist's hallucinations. The film was chosen due to what I knew about it from a video game series that was heavily inspired by it, the Silent Hill series. However, the stills I chose were more simple to achieve, unlike some of the shots from the more disturbing imagery; which is a shame, but the decision was more achievable.

I picked my stills from each film:

Luckily AV and TK made some free time to come aid me in the project, so we met up on the saturday (02/10/2010). But but but, I asked them to come in later and earlier in the day I scouted locations throughout Manchester. I tried to keep the locales within the town centre in order to make things convenient and practical for everyone, it was especially interesting that I ended up keeping the areas within the northern quarter mostly (an excellent place for urbanscape).

I finished up with these locations as possibilities:

Sci-fi:

• Krispy Kremes (on Mosley Street)
• Arndale Centre (13th floor)

X-rated:

• Noise Lab (Market Street)
• Nexu Art Café (Northern Quarter - next door to the "Travelling Man")

 Horror:

• Small side streets throughout the Northern Quarter
• Alley ways in China Town
• Side streets in Deansgate
• A tram
• A train

After making a decision, my models arrived and we got to work:

 A big BIG thanks to AV and TK for coming out in their free time, as well as special thanks to the people at Nexus for allowing us to photograph in their café, seriously people should check that place out, it's great.

Some Music

I was thrilled to find Bytejacker up and running their online series again since taking a break to reform it. During the comeback episode they played music with bit chip tunes, an overall nice electronic sound (to my ears at least).

George & Jonathan, a duo which I'd like to compare to the likes of Justice and Daftpunk, guys who found each other during their education years and stuck together making music.

So yeah, hit the link to enjoy some bit-chip tunage :D