Construction

So, what do I say, as I type with a sliced open finger resulting from one of my pieces falling off the wall yesterday - that I need some major improvement as far as my professional practice goes! It's true, but trying to square up 13 pieces into one large piece is easier said than done. This time our project was headlined, "Around the block". So me being me, I was inspired by the dirtier parts of Edinburgh. For some reason, the space under scaffolding intrigued me - goodness knows what people thought as I huddled underneath the scaffolding, hoodie on drawing madly. The first week I did a large painting of the scaffolding, but to be honest, I didn’t have enough information and it just didn't work. While I learnt a lot from it, I thought next time around it would be better to do smaller pieces to make up a large piece. I went out again the next week, felt the need to draw some people, so asked a couple of construction guys if they were okay if I sketched them and the scaffolding for a couple of hours. They were fine with it, I think, but I am sure they felt a bit uncomfortable after a while. Who doesn't, when you're trying to work and someone is looking intently at you! :) 

Inspired by Jenny Martin, a local Edinburgh artist, who had a print exhibition at Leith School of Art recently and who likes using fluorescent colour in her work, I painted the ground of the boards in fluorescent yellow and orange (representative of the bright yellow of the construction workers jackets and the orange of the traffic cones). I think this especially freaked out my tutors who thought, I am sure, "Kirralee, not again!" as I have a tendency to pitch my work at the very bright end of the spectrum. I was told by a fellow student yesterday that the colours (when it was purely 13 bright fluorescent boards) were painful to look at, but after all, I am from Australia and the sun is very bright out there, so I honestly think it has influenced my tonal views! :) Anyway, here are a few images, from sketchbook to my final piece, which is currently showing at our first year exhibition at Edinburgh College of Art. 

Headland

So the photography project - disaster. Getting together 6 photos that worked together with similar lighting and a similar subject somehow ended up getting out of hand. But that's okay. I now have my trusty sister on board and hopefully one day soon we can get together and try to remedy the mess that I made. The sculpture project I had the following week made me a lot happier. Using plaster, chicken wire, paint and then a surform to mould and scratch into the plaster surface made me a very happy camper to say the least. I think I much prefer something I can physically get my hands on and change. The brief was about headland - about me, my head or someone else's and the stuff therein. I was inspired by the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the thought of trying to erase someone from my mind. When I was setting up the half-formed face and fragments in a separate room in order to throw some shadows, it dawned on me that my mind is like a workshop where I have stored certain memories in a corner to block them out and to chip away at them over time. Whether that's healthy or not I don't know, but my dad once said to me that it's okay to put things in a corner of your mind until you're ready to deal with them. 

Swept up

Got the headphones on and listening to reggae. Focus seems to be out of my reach today. I have been taking photos of the city and nature in order to create a flowing cohesive body of work. At the time I thought 6 images was not a lot of work to do but now I have to sort through about 400 photos to choose the images that will work together. While I have discovered tungsten light and how to overexpose things so I get very faint outlines of the subjects I am interested in, I really don't know how I am going to fit these together with everything else. Hence using my blog as a procrastination or should I say space to think? :) Well last week we had an intermedia project which was about drawing in the way we live our life, like footprints in the snow, mist on the window. The difference between art for art's sake and the art of everyday life. So because I like cleaning so much (ha ha only other people's houses or the studio!) I thought about the action of drawing with a broom. Sweeping up layers and layers of dust and the throw away paper and trodden on charcoal of my fellow students. And then I thought about the noise that a broom with stiff bristles makes and I wanted to record that. I had never done any video editing before either so I took the chance to use a broom cam (thank you God for masking tape and my pal Alice!) and edited it to very old school film format so that the viewer would focus on the sound of the sweeping, as the colour of the film somehow made focusing on the sound more difficult. So plug in your headphones....

Museum animals

As usual my blog has not been updated in months. After going to amazing galleries in places such as Italy and Spain and even seeing the work of fellow students, I am generally a bit hesitate to put what I've been doing online. I am nowhere near to where I would like to be at, but I've been thinking the past few weeks that a baby has to learn to roll over before it can crawl and generally crawl before it can walk, and then the running comes. I think I am still in the rolling over or crawl stage! :)

I have been at Edinburgh College of Art for a few weeks now and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Our first project was on the theme of a collection (menagerie) and so we started our research at the newly opened animal section of the National Museum of Scotland. I think that the new section is very good; however, I think the idea that we stuff animals and then put them behind glass cages is a little strange. Do we feel safer viewing them when they are dead so they can't hurt us? Or is it just easier for children to view and learn about wild animals that way because otherwise they would have to travel to another country? Anyway, what struck me was the jumble of animals they had grouped together. For example a cat facing me with a rabbit in its mouth, but directly behind the cat the backside of a rhinoceros. Or an otter hanging on the wall facing a proud eagle. Perhaps not entirely deep or creative, but this idea of the jumble and the strangeness was what I based my paintings on. In truth, I haven't done many paintings, although I want to do many more. I chose to do the paintings for my first project in acrylic paint. I was interested in the idea of distorting the animals in order to give strangeness to them, but this didn't work for me, particularly in the case of the deer. Anyway, I will share the good with the bad as it is still my journey (cliché I know). I can only learn from my mistakes and also my successes! :)


Drawing of the Quagga and friends



Piece No. 1

Piece No. 2

St Ives





St Ives. What can I say, except that the week I have just spent there in the sun, overlooking Porthmeor beach, eating Cornish pasties, fish and chips and hanging about sketching, was one of the best weeks I have ever had. I was very pleased with myself and got an art pass and went to the galleries and museums in St Ives and also to a few in Penzance. I recommend all, but I particularly loved Leach Pottery in St Ives, with its film made in the 50s showing how the standard ware was made and the shots of Bernard Leach painting the individual pieces with his Asian influenced designs. I was also lucky enough to be there to see an exhibition of Bill Marshall, the first apprentice taken on at the Leach Pottery. In Penzance, there was a Walter Langley and Birmingham Boys exhibition at Penlee House. I initially thought it would not be my kind of thing, but the way Walter Langley had painted the fisher folk in Newlyn, particularly the women, really got to me. Connected with me. He managed to convey the hearts of these women, the sadness and grief when their men did not come back from sea, the support they gave each other, the memories of their lives in their faces. I can't describe it, except to say, the he painted women like he understood them. And poverty too. That there can be dignity in hard working poverty. Before I left for St Ives, one of my friends got me onto using an A6 sketchbook and I found it really easy to use, as it was much easier to carry around and easier to complete a sketch quickly. The first sketch is overlooking the sea at Porthmeor Beach, the green colour of the sea was incredible. The second is of some things in the place I was staying. And the third is of a house/building sitting directly on one of the beaches there.

Trad Chinese Woodblock Printing

Where do I start? Traditional Chinese Woodblock Printing is not easy. It is a mixture of cutting out the black and colour woodblocks (in my case pine), followed by hand painting the ink (for the black block) and watercolour or oils (for the colour block) onto the blocks and then using the back of a spoon or a similar instrument to ease the ink/paint onto the Xuan paper (in this case processed). I definitely learnt that a sharp engraving tool is essential and cutting as deep into the wood as you can before you start gouging out prevents a lot of slippage accidents (had quite a few - but not too noticeable!). Also, preferable not to have a nose that's running when you're chiseling away bending over because that will just drive you mad!! Well, it drove me mad, woe is me, yes I know. But the results some artists can achieve with woodblock printing are absolutely amazing. The woodblock prints below are from contemporary Chinese artists, with the exception of the fourth one, which is of course mine - can you tell - ha ha. Oh well, it was a first attempt and I have SO MUCH to learn, but I am, as always, up for the challenge :). Oh, and the course I went to was fun, hard work and really informative. It was by Suzanne Chong (www.suzannechongart.com) at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh - highly recommend it.

Chen Qi - Lotus No. 5

Chen Qi - Lotus No. 9

Prof Xiang Silou - Mother of Liangshan



Three friends



The Pine Tree



The Bamboo

Three friends of winter. Three pieces of fruit. Three people. Three is one of my favourite numbers, together with seven. I think that two is good, but for some reason, if there are three things, or something happens three times, it seems more concrete. This weekend, I attended a course led by Suzanne Chong on Chinese Brush Painting. It was completely amazing - I really enjoyed it. I never knew bamboo leaves could be so hard to paint or that getting the 5 petals of a plum tree blossom to look good and even is just as difficult. Apparently, the saying is that a plum blossom takes a year to perfect, but bamboo leaves a whole lifetime. The three friends of winter are the pine tree, bamboo and the plum blossom. These plants are a symbol of getting through the hard times; even flourishing and putting forth fruit in the dead of winter. The trees are depicted as old, with tree holes, as this symbolises longevity, strength and power. I definitely learnt that Chinese Brush Painting can look easy, but as soon as I tried it, I realised that it requires a tremendous amount of patience and practise! I also learnt that Xuan paper (raw) absorbs the ink much more readily and gives such a different result to say, standard A4 photocopy paper, that it is sometimes hard to control where the ink bleeds and to get the wash right. Similar to water colours I think - priority - must perfect the consistency of the wash! Here are some of my humble efforts from the weekend.

The Plum Blossom

I also tried oil pastels this week, together with a household candle as a resist for a water colour still life of fruit. I definitely need to do it again, as I messed up the highlights wholeheartedly (didn't have my head screwed on at all this week by any means) and probably went to heavy on the orange (probably because I love orange so much)!  I promise to try again and do a better job of the highlights and resists :).

The Oranges

Masking

So, I think as I mentioned in my last post I've started working through a book I bought called Painting with Watercolours, Oils, Acrylics and Gouache by Wendy Jelbert and Ian Sidaway. I'm still very much into the early stages of the watercolours section. My most exciting purchases to date have been a mop brush and masking fluid. The mop brush cost a bit but makes me happy so it's worth it. The painting above was a quick exercise I did that they have in the book, using the photo of the vase they've published and masking fluid for the pattern. Sometimes I feel that I am painting a bit like paint by numbers but I know me well enough to know that I tend to learn best by example so it's good for me. I like that the top left hand of the picture captures a bit of Tague's 3D buildings, a kid that drew in my sketch book, together with his sister, one day when I was sketching at the Crags.

 

There was another exercise about painting a turnip and a pear. So, knowing my luck that day at the supermarket, they didn't have a whole turnip but only half. I actually ended up appreciating the half better, because it stood as some kind of sentinel over the pear. I am also finding it pretty interesting watching how quickly it shrivels in comparison to the pear. A strong timeless turnip becomes a withered crinkly one. The shadows and washes are not the best. I'm still finding it quite difficult to mix the right volume of the wash first up, and get the water to pigment consistency right. Next up are resists and oranges - I love the colour orange! 

Travels

Brunelleschi's Dome - fresco designed by Vasari & Zucchari

Head of Medusa - Caravaggio

Lino cut - Fire extinguisher print

Harden, NSW - Bridge sketch

So as I stand here listening to Higher State of Consciousness by Josh Wink (Winx), an old track but one I'm still in awe of, as if I just heard it yesterday, I'm reflecting on the past few months since I last posted. Or I have been reflecting. I've decided it is time to stop thinking and just do what I need to do. Get on with it. To be honest, I have barely "done" much art lately.

In Italy, I saw some of the most amazing frescoes (particularly Brunelleschi's Dome in Florence - designed by Vasari and Zucchari), paintings, had a conversation with an Italian artist in Italy, Verdirosi, when all I could speak was 5 words of Italian and somehow I understood his theme, what his work was about. I also saw some of the most amazing scenery and things so old, that I am astounded with the care and love of craftsmanship that these buildings and monuments are still standing. I have gained a new love of Caravaggio's work. His Head of Medusa (above), which was on exhibition on the Uffizi gallery in Florence of course blew me away. Some of the facial expressions he has in his paintings are completely unexpected; take Boy Bitten for a Lizard for example. I bought a number of art books I have to read.

And yes, I am finally getting my act together and going to work through a painting book to improve my technical skills. Which I will post as I go. When I got back from my travels I did a weekend course on lino printing (I like colour so chose the red fire extinguishers). I also did a few hours quick sketching in Harden, in New South Wales (I liked the bridge). I've got some art courses coming up early this year which I am very much looking forward to. Apologies for the long ramble of this post, but something in me wanted to speak so speak I must!