just prior to Christmas

The first lovely surprise of the day was that the builders had been in, halved the studio and pulled all our stuff down. I promptly spent most of today moving and putting my stuff up like so.

I also tried digital printing. I am thinking I might put the image on photoshop and make it perfect this next time.

Hats all from today. Merry Christmas!

Printing. Again.

I made a printing plate to print with and these are the results. The actual plate has disappeared off God knows where.

I think that the top one, in which I used the press was the most effective. The design was based on maps. I think it would have been better if I had matched it up to potentially be a repeat pattern.

Thats it.

Over and over again

Looking at repetition could be accurately described as driving me loopy. I have rarely felt as brain dead as I do doing the same thing over and over again.

So I started with those repeat patterns that build each other up. I still cant find a soul who knows what these are called, so if you do think you know I would be much obliged if you commented. Here they are.

These are apparently birds. I think they look more playboy bunny.

I then developed my own based on leaves.

Not entirely successful. Don't really resemble leaves.

Moving swiftly on,I then experimented by tracing a square of  map and seeing if it still looked like a map if I treat it as a repeat pattern.

The short answer to that is no. But I think the results look sufficiently obsessive and repetitive. If I could have stood it I should have covered the page in the same repeat pattern.

And thats it really.

Mapping along

Today I was thinking a little more about obsession. I started thinking about repetition, walking the same route to the bus stop and back every day, and maps. I traced this onto a map.

Then thinking about leaves and their mapping inside shapes I put roads inside them.

I think this works well as it relates the repetitive pattern of nature to the patterns of the man made world.

I worked the other way round to see what it would look like.

I found this enjoyable, and a nice effect. I started thinking about repeat patterns and getting trapped in these. I think I could turn this into a half drop repeat print.

With that thrilling news I will sign off.

Printing

I do have a valid excuse as to why I didn't put this up before. I only got the fruit of my labours just now as they took a while to dry.

Firstly we did monoprinting. I tried just drawing.

This worked best with less ink. I then tried pressing the leaf into the ink to get a print.

It worked OK, but it was m

ost effectiveon the thinnest material as the print was the most delicate. The silk wa ghostly.

Next we made a print and put it through the press. I was not too impressed with this, but my image was hurried. If I spent more time on it it could have been beautiful. Here is the board then the print.

I think the repetitive motion of printing ties well into my project. We will see. I need to develop this.

Steel work

I have just gotten round to photographing what I made in metalwork. I have no good excuse of why I did not do it on the day. Anyway, here are the pictures.

Creating textures was very enjoyable. The fragile foil created through running the metal through the presser until it gave up makes a nice effect.

However my favorite effect by far was melting. Its just a fun thing to do and looks impressive. The results remind me of fabric.

Acid etching was good, though trying to colour it was a mistake as I was too eager with the fire.

Leaf interpretations

Today we had to do observations of an object. These are my results.

I like the more 3D paper things and stitch over the drawings, I think they are more interesting to look at. We were not supposed to use much colour today, only black white and grey, henchman the limited pallet.

On a slightly different note, I can see why I was laughed at when I said I was thinking of moving away from leaves.

Obsession

Today I looked at repeated actions. I was thinking about OCD and a story my aunt had, that a man with OCD had to restart a walk every time something happened he didn't expect. 

I did this based on it.

Every time I heard someones voice over the sewing machine I went back to the beginning. This was the result.

I think could have aimed for a straighter line, but apart from that its OK.
I then unpacked each line of stitch on some plastic. This looks good, but the choice of red is quite irrelevant.

Thats all, I did more stuff, but that is all of note.

Quantifying leaves

Today started out with  bit of colour pallet work. After looking at my leaves I created some browns with various mediums. I think that brush o ink looked the nicest, but my first samples were too red.

I then finished off boxing up some leaves into groups of 5, until the amount of flys jumping out at me stressed me out too much, so I threw them away after boxing a few. I has 735 leaves and I wouldn't have managed to box them all by Christmas anyway.

I them had fun with leafy inks and folding, working onto of my orange neon. I then tried it on silk, which was pretty.

Finally I experimented with chalk and tea drawings of leaves. Thinking about quantifying has got me wondering about obsession. I will get back to you on that.

Leaves

Today I collected 735 leaves. It corresponds with the amount of steps I took between college and the crooked spire. It took a while and when I came back inside my hands hurt like anyone's business. Anyway this waste result.

Whether it was worth it, well,have not a clue. Either way I am now seperating them into groups of 5. To make them seem more manageable. The result of this will be reveled at a later date, or not if it fails miserably, but lets hope otherwise. This may take a little while.

Document

New project in Fine Art 3d. That is DOCUMENT! Today we were sent on a walk to document what we found.

I went on a 7 minute 53 second walk with 735 steps between the college and the crooked spire.

First I took photos of all things red, then all green (just to annoy the colour bLind) then drew a rough map, counted steps, timed myself and picked up all the different types of leaves I could find. This was the result in my sketchbook.

Not too impressed with the map page, a look at the signage is messy. Boats on my walk are nearly illegible even to me, but it was so cold I couldn't hold my crayon, so I have an excuse.

I did some work based on that. This is it.

The leaves are dipped in wax to preserve them. My favorite thing is the wire leaf skeleton, as it looks so sketchy. I am thinking I may look into leaf skeletons more.

This is me, finishing my document on documenting (hehehe)