Art Blog

My documented journey through UAL Foundation Art & Design

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Kelpie monoprint experimentation

I repeated the same process as I did with the other creature silhouettes with one of my kelpie character designs. I also decided to go back to basic monoprinting techniques and printed a sketch of some kelpie imagery that I have. The horse skull that I printed is connected to another character design I have for the kelpie.

I think all the prints I did for the kelpie were really successful, even the portrait one I did as I quite like how the ink has printed around the kelpie's mane. I think that the texture it creates emphasises the imagery of the kelpie having seaweed for hair.

I decided to paint up some more pages of A4 cartridge as I wanted to give this technique one last shot to see if I wanted to keep using it or just print on plain cartridge.

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New idea/approach discovered

I now know what to do with the parcel tape pieces that I have been printing on, the idea came to me when I was removing the layer of parcel tape from my kitchen table as I realised that the sunlight from the window was shining through the piece and illuminating the outline of the creatures that I have been printing. It looks almost like a reversed version of the silhouettes that I have been printing already with the stencils I made. I love the effect the light has since you can't see the outline until the light shines through which also helps to convey the mystery of the existence of these creatures.

Therefore I have decided to save these parcel tape pieces using the PVA glue technique I developed earlier in case I want to use them for my exhibition. I could hang them in front of a window maybe? Alongside my other printed silhouettes I made using the stencils.

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More monoprint experimentation

Sticking to printing the silhouettes of my creatures I made new stencils, one for the harpy, the selkie and the kelpie - however I didn't base the kelpie stencil on my character designs but instead I based the stencil on the breed of horse that the designs were based on, the Clydesdale. Since I wanted to consider if I would want to make prints of the modern day animals that my creatures were based on to help convey the modern world aspect of my theme.

I think the first set of silhouettes I made were great, however the ones on the painted surfaces weren't as successful. I couldn't seem to find the right concentration of ink to use to equally make a clean silhouette outline and still show the paint through the ink.

I'm starting to feel more drawn to the black and white prints than the coloured prints as a result. Since I think the harsh contrast between the ink and white cartridge makes the prints quite captivating, whereas the coloured prints are starting to feel bland to me.

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Monoprinting acrylic paint experimentation

Keeping with the idea of making prints of my mythical creatures silhouettes, I wanted to try monoprinting colour instead of black ink so I decided to use acrylic paint to do so. However the results were very unsuccessful as I didn't take into account how fast the paint would dry so when I tried to print it only a very little amount of paint transferred. Then on my second attempt the paint did transfer but almost ripped my stencil apart when I removed it. As a result, I will just stick to my old method of printing black ink on surfaces already painted.

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More monoprint experimentation

Sticking to the idea of making silhouettes, I made another stencil based on one of my kitsune character designs.

I love the results of these prints, I'm really pleased with how clear the monoprint on the painted surface came out.

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More monoprint experimentation

I decided to make a stencil of one of my kitsune imagery to experiment with isolating where the ink from the monoprinting went. Which resulted in the creation of various silhouettes on both plain cartridge and the painted ones I made.

For the first silhouette I used the cut out from the stencil to apply the ink which I found much more successful as the application was very clean cut. Whereas compared to using the stencil itself, the stencil blocked the ink from getting into the detailed sections of the outline e.g. the strands of fur. Thus those silhouettes weren't as distinct and were less successful as a result.

I am pleased to know that the paint can still shine after being monoprinted on, so I will continue to experiment with using paint to add background colour for my monoprints.

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Parcel tape base for monoprinting

My idea with the PVA glue worked! Now I can moved the parcel tape piece around without it sticking to everything, this will make it much easier to work with if I do end up including it in a collage

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I want to start to add some colour to my monoprints so I've decided to do that by painting various A4 pages of cartridge with differnt colours of acrylic, even mixed colours on some. I'm hoping that when I monoprint on top of these, the paint with still show through the ink.

Also I picked colours which where relevant to my chosen creatures, red/yellow for the kitsune, green/blue for the kelpie, blue for the selkie and brown/blue for the harpy.

As for the layer of parcel tape that I used for monoprinting, i think that I could use this for something in the future so I'm saving it just in case. Maybe for a collage? I realised that I would need to find some way to get rid of the stickiness of the tape to make it easier to move around. So I waited for the ink to dry and then I decided to cover the sticky side with a layer of watered down PVA glue, leaving it to dry for tomorrow. Hopefully this will work.

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Started to experiment with monoprinting

I didn't have a suitable surface to monoprint onto so I made one out of parcel tape. This ended up benefiting my monoprints as the lines from the layer of tape created unique markings on my monoprints which you can see in the photos.

Most of these monoprints aren't as successful as I hoped because I used too much ink and my hand kept putting pressure on the prints when I was tracing the character designs. Therefore making many of the prints messy and blurred the image.

However I think that the first three came out pretty successful considering, so I will keep them for later if I want to mount some of my monoprints.

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Bleach and ink studies mixed with paint

Using bleach, ink and white acrylic paint I wanted to illustrate the texture of each creatures fur, feathers, etc. So I selected a specific area on my character designs to scale up and illustrate. I decided to add the white paint to emphasise the highlight areas and it helped to balance out the bleach and ink.

However I'm not happy with the third experiment, which is suppose to illustrate the selkie's seal skin, because the bleach spread more than I wanted it to and as a result it made the bleach look like a blob in the centre. So I added some ink after the bleach had dried which helped a little but I'm still no happy with it.

As for the other three studies, I am really happy with their outcome and think that they were extremely successful as I achieved the look that wanted with them.

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Just by chance when I was putting my heat press prints away, I thought of the idea that I could overlapped the prints themselves since the fabrics I'm using are light enough that the prints show through when you fold it over.

If I wanted to I could even make a massive collage of my prints at the end of the project where they are overlapping each other. I will keep this idea in mind when it comes to presenting my work at the end of the project.

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These are my first experiments with heat press printing some of my character designs for my mythical creatures. My aim was to see how many prints I could do on one length of fabric before the dye ran out and I really like the sequential outcome it created. It almost looks like the creatures are slowly coming to life, into the modern world in a sense.

The first one is my harpy design on blush chiffon, I chose to print it on the blush fabric so that the colour could reflect skin but it didn't work as well as I thought it would so I will stick to using white or cream fabrics.

The next two are kitsune focused, the first being on white crepe and the second is one white polycotton. I love how both of these turned out, the prints came out clear and the fade outs look very natural.

The last print isn't as successful, it is based on one of my selkie character designs. I wanted to experiment with creating a background through overlapping with this print, however the paper I used to draw my selkie on wasn't thick enough to act as a resist to the blue dye for the background design. As a result the background design bleed through the selkie design. I'm also not happy with how the shape of the iron can be seen on the print so I will have to be more careful in future to not leave the iron in one place for too long.

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Some clips of the videos that I took of the harbour seals at deep sea world today, part of my research for my selkie character designs

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Final Major Project

The theme of this project will be based around exploring mythical creatures in a modern world. The creatures that I have chosen to explore is a selkie, a kelpie, a kitsune and a harpy. To get my creative juices flowing I started by doing some random collages, represent my own fantasy world where mythical creatures are interacting with the modern day elements and coexist with humans.

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Specialist Creative Practice: Week 4, Day 3 - CAP1

Finally the last part to my sculpture that I added was the letters spelling out glass and stone. I chose to add them to give a little nod to the lyrics that this sculpture was based off of, it also helped to balance out the sculpture.

Then I decided how I wanted everything to be positioned before moving it all to the display I had picked out. I chose to have a low podium because I wanted viewers to have the option to be able to look into the cage from above and see the sculpture from all different angles.

Group evaluation/thoughts

• Well balanced, the rocks resemble mountains - suggests some kind of barrier or obstacle exists

• Nature in a cage, combination of man made materials and natural materials.

• Conveys an equal sense of fragility and sturdiness

• Environmentalist cage?

Weakness - would have used actual glass and stones instead of spelling out the words, such as light bulbs, mirrors

Self-evaluation

Looking back at the brief, i think i was successful in creating my own conceptual artwork based off of my chosen lyrics. I think I managed to convey the contrast between the heart and the mind successfully through the wire structure and leaves. I'm really happy with the overall outcome of my scuplture and how it looks. However one thing that I would do differently is I would have liked to try carving into the bowl, my chosen lyric of the song or the word glass and then used a piece of glass underneath the centre piece to reflect what's written. Also I agree with what my group said about the weakness of my sculpture, if given more time I would like to have thought of a different way to reinforce the idea of glass and stone instead of spelling the words out with letters.

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Specialist Creative Practice: Week 4, Day 3 - CAP1

Continuing on from the first day, I discovered that the leaves and flowers had started to dye - becoming crumpled and extremely frail. This unexpectedly reinforces the idea of the heart being fragile so I was quite surprised and happy when I discovered the state of the natural materials. I did go back out to gather some fresher leaves so to build the inside back up since the dying leaves were flatten leaving a lot of space inside the structure.

After speaking to my lecturer, they thought that it would be best to have some real stones or rocks in my conceptual artwork. I was shown to a supply cupboard of sorts where I picked out the rocks that I liked the look of - which you can see in the photos above. I think played around with the composition of the rocks with a branches of leaves before settling on what I liked the best. I wanted the composition to have a sense of balance to it, so to contrast the chaotic atmosphere of the centre piece.

I had some left over leaves so I decided to cover them in plaster along with some string which I could arrange around and on the centre piece. This was to convey how the mind is affecting the heart by caging it and stopping it from living free.

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Specialist Creative Practice: Week 4, Day 2 - CAP1

We were to pick a quote or lyric to inspire our conceptual artwork. I picked a lyric from Billie Eilish's song 'Lovely' - 'Isn't it lovely, all alone? Heart made of glass, my mind of stone. Tear me to pieces, skin and bone. Hello, welcome home.

My thoughts:-

• Heart made of glass - break easily, vulnerable, internally fragile

• My mind of stone - hardened, cold, impenetrable

• Battle between the mind and the body?

• Perhaps suggesting a contrast between her state of mind, which is like stone, and the emotions she feel inside that cause her to feel fragile like glass. The mind is blocking or caging her heart?

• Could be refering to the effect of heartbreak? Or mental illness

• Mental illness slowly tears away at a person until they feel like all that's left is bone - raw, exposed

• All alone - refers to the feeling of being isolated by something - her mind, emotions or mental illness maybe? Mental illness can feel like a battle, which you are alone in.

From this I chose to explore the idea of the contrast between the heart and the mind. I wrote down words/ideas associate with each part.

Heart - free, loose, uncontrollable, emotional, life source, spiritual, sexual

Mind - solid, logical, angular, controlled, reason, intelligence, compelling.

I also started to link what materials would best represent each side, more fragile and natural materials for the heart while more solid, man made materials for the mind.

I found some wire which bent and twisted into a wire and then I mixed some plaster, making it a little thick so that when I dipped the wire structure in the bowl the plaster wouldn't run off. However, I changed my mind and decided that I didn't like that all the wire was completely covered in plaster so I wiped parts of the plaster away so that the wire was peeking through.

I wanted to make a platform/centre piece of sorts that my sculpture could rest on so I left the plaster that I mixed in to bowl for it to set. After leaving that to set, I decided I needed to move on to gathering more materials so I went out on a 15 minute walk to gather different natural objects/materials to use for my sculpture such as leaves, flowers, branches, etc.

I then placed the leaves and flowers inside the middle of the wire structure. The leaves and flowers would represent the fragility of the heart meanwhile the wire structure is the solid, cold barrier that the mind creates, blocking out the heart.