Last night I had a bit of a brain wave about my project. One of the topics I was initially interested in exploring was the signs of emotion. I got thinking about signals on the body that communicate emotion. Every single body is different and some people show emotions in different ways, and imperfections on the body are one way emotions can be communicated. Some imperfections are universally known and linked to certain emotions, for example, puffy red face/eyes usually communicate that someone has been crying, and that can be linked to either sadness or sometimes happiness. Although certain imperfections sometimes only trigger attention from certain people. For example stress/nerves can trigger me to itch specific points on my body, and only someone who knows me can tell when I am particularly stressed or anxious by how much these patches have flared up. This has intrigued me to delve into finding out how other peoples body imperfections/ticks communicate certain emotions. I’d like to photograph these marks on peoples bodies and potentially make a photo book, or even create a video but I’m not sure what that would look like at the moment. I’d also like to look into scars and how they have stories and memories behind each one that some people know but others don’t.

Today I have fully hit a wall. Coming back from Easter break has hit me hard, my procrastination levels were horribly high and my motivation was close to none so I lost all drive when it comes to producing work. I’ve returned and I knew I had a lot to do, but it’s really hit me now, and my response to that stress is usually to just avoid my work by procrastinating some more. I’ve spent the most part of 2 hours looking for an article for my grid systems project, as I’ve lost motivation when it comes to my skate fashion article and just need to get it done as soon as possible really, so I can get feedback and make any changes needed.

The semiotics project has been a lot for me to take in. I’m just a bit overwhelmed by all the choices we have, and having all of these options on top of what feels like mountains of work to do is making this project another thing to put off. I think I just need to sit down and mind map all of my thoughts relating to the semiotics briefs and try and pluck some sort of idea of out it.

Today I visited my brother at uni. He is currently studying graphic communication at Cardiff metropolitan university. The purpose of my trip was to not only see my brother, but he had a group project of his in an exhibition. The exhibition consisted of work from graphic designers, illustrators and animators. They had all been doing field work, where they had researched a cause and made a campaign about that chosen cause. My brothers group did theirs on dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia. Their project was one of my favourites, I’m not just saying that because he’s my brother but they’d really thought about their subject, and got their point across clearly and professionally. To be brutally honest, I wasn’t impressed by a huge amount of the work. A lot of it was work I would have expected to see at the beginning of a project rather than a final outcome, and seeing as the groups had 6 weeks to produce something, I wasn’t blown away. But saying that some of the ideas and final outcomes were interesting and I could see them improving with more time given.

As a result of the vertical project, an end of project show was arranged. Everyone had the chance to exhibit their current final products and it was a bit of fun for the first and second years to mix a bit more. Me, Jonny and Holly were able to show a first draft of our embarrassing stories zines and I think they went down quite well, people seemed to pick them up and have a chuckle. I really enjoyed seeing how others had interpreted the brief, as it was quite broad. Some people had taken a childhood memory and represented that by recreating something or chasing something from that time. Others had chosen to portray serious, sad memories the stuck out to them, and some had portrayed some more light hearted, family memories.

Some of my favourite outcomes included:

-a period starter pack, that included some chocolate, a little info book, spare pants and more.
-a video review of different childhood chewing gum
-a recreation of a teenage bedroom

I think I liked all of these so much because they resinate with memories I also have.

In terms of the outcome I showed at the “exhibition”, i feel it is definitely not as good as it could be. I’d like to play around with backgrounds and fonts, print it a little bit bigger, and maybe Japanese stitch a little book.

Whilst in Barcelona we did a few impromptu drawing session. It was so nice to just sit down after a rushed metro or fast paced walk to a studio visit, and just draw. My favourite time was when we sat down, in the sun, outside the design museum on the last day and a few of us did collaborations, where each of us would start a drawing very simply, usually in black and white, and then we’d swap and add to each others drawings. I loved doing this as I have a tending to get really picky about what I draw, and usually hold back cause I never know when the line of being done and going to far with an image is. But what’s great about these drawing sessions is they have no purpose really, other than fun, so my pickiness shrinks and I tend to just draw whatever I’m feeling. And some of the drawings turned out really well!

Today I carried out the etching workshop. I had previously done etching during my art foundation but it was using cardboard rather than metal, but I was introduced to chine-colle and a lot of the steps were the same. The skills I picked up were to do with hard and soft ground, how to apply them and etch into them, and what different textures I can produce on each of the grounds. Also the process of prepping and putting the plate in acid and how to correctly clean off the acid to show the finished etch.

I decided to create 2 plates to tie in with my explain project. Firstly with hard ground I created a background for one of my pages. Secondly I used the soft ground to do an outline drawing of ice cube. I wasn’t mega happy about the outcomes, I feel I could have created something a lot nicer but it was interesting to learn from my mistakes. The soft ground is extremely easy to mark, so I ended up having a lot of weird marks that I hadn’t planned on my plate which ended up on my plate.

I really enjoyed the process of etching, the speed of it really appeals to me. Here is an image of one of my final plates.

On Monday we had a presentation from Esther Cox. I really enjoy her work and love the simple, textured pieces she produces. It was really helpful to learn how she works within industry and the difference between her “bread and butter” work and her more specific, personal work. It encouraged me to produce ‘stuff’ just for the sake of it, so that I can use it in future projects, and to experiment with things such as wax resist and adobe illustrator.

Esther then ran a little workshop which I signed up for, and it was based around drawing from memory. We began by having a look at a collection of items Esther collected and placed on a table, and were asked to memorise as many as we could. I surprisingly remembered more than I expected! We were then asked to draw one of the objects in a few different ways. First what it looks like, then what it feels like, and finally what it smells like. It was so interesting to explore drawing from different senses other than just sight, and how different marks can represent different feelings. Here is the sketchbook page I created from the short but sweet workshop.

Today I carried out the blue screen workshop. It was really fun to play around with the screen and just get something really simple created in the time frame of a day. I feel like if we had more time actually using the screen, we could have created something a bit more technical and seamless, but I kind of enjoy the haphazard, lo-fi end result that we ended up with. I ended up working in a group with 8 other students and we found it kind of difficult initially to think of an idea that we wanted to roll with. We were given the theme of fake memories but we didn’t really want to go down a political route or deep satire, we wanted to keep it kind of weird and jokey. We were inspired by a video made by the previous year in which they had gone and filmed aldi for their background, so this got us thinking about memories in which supermarkets were involved. We started talking about having our heads as floating objects on the screen, but decided to give them a slight purpose rather than just floating things, so we decided to plan a narrative in which these floating heads were actually fruit being purchased in a shop. After brainstorming a few ideas, including potentially having a bag of heads split and fall onto the ground, and having the heads rolling around the supermarket, we realised these ideas weren’t that realistic and would look kind of shitty so decided on just having someone buy the heads, eat them and then have a trippy experience due to the side effects of these weird head fruits. All in all the outcome is pretty random but it was really fun to play around and make something slightly off topic but kind of relevant…

I just finished my group tutorial with Kyle Bean, and it was a useful experience. I really like his work so was keen to get some feedback from him. We explained the ideas we have regarding the memory project and Kyle gave us some great feedback on our layering/chinese whispers type vision. He really enjoyed our concept but whilst explaining the final product Kyle pointed out that the way we wished to present our zine would not highlight the fact that we  had incorporated different layers. We spoke about ways around this including simply stating on the front cover who’s memory it was (anonymous), who interpreted the story in words, and who finally created their interpretation with a zine, or potentially having a video or voiceover to accompany the zine.

We also spoke briefly about our ideas around creating a film, but it emphasised the fact that we won’t be able to create it in the time we have. But I am definitely interested in continuing and exploring the theme of memory and creating different variations of film/stop animation involving both my illustrations and video interviews, after the initial crit on friday.

The steps we are going to take now will be to illustrate the stories that have been given to us after the process of video recording and then writing in story form by another individual.

Recently I’ve been getting bogged down by archives and projects and creative frustration, so I thought it was time to just sit down and do some research so that I can feel refreshed and re-inspired! I’ve put together a list of a few things I find interesting, provoking or just fun, so I can look back on them in the future and feel re-inspired all over again!

1.http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/group-partner-boob-pot-ceramics-091216

These pots created by Group Partner are really fun and I just love their simplicity. I think the fact that they are matte rather than glaze makes them even more appealing to me, it gives more of a raw, natural finish and look.

2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht66pDl36oo AND https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJXMUf3AICw

Recently I found Mr Bingo on instagram and I really loved his humour and fun, usually b+w illustrations. I was gutted to have missed the professional practice lecture he did recently

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmzDNdXIY3M

This is so simple, and reminded me to stop thinking so much. Im always so worked up about having to know all the latest trends within art and design, but Kate Moross reminded me that I should be inspired by what interests me rather than forcing myself to enjoy new shiny graphics.

4. http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/leopoldine-siaud-illustration-090117

I love that Léopoldine Siaud takes the annoying effect felt tips can have and uses it to his benefit. He’s strategically used line to create really fun and detailed yet simple illustrations.