Ella's art blog

Hello, my name is Ella McNally and I'm 18 years old! I am from Scarborough but currently doing a foundation year at the University of Salford.

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This week we had to use typography to make words interesting. I liked the USB (usBEE) drawing, as I think it’s a fun play on words despite it not being typography. I then decided to make the word EARTH out of countries. I cut them out on photoshop from various maps and pieced them together like a jigsaw to get the letters. I think it was successful but next time I would be sure to make sure they fit properly as some of the countries overlap a little and stick out at weird angles.

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For this week we had to design a “chindogu” (something that seems useful but is actually useless.) I made a finger toothbrush, but apparently it had already been made. I could have improved on this idea by adding toothpaste to the toothbrush that pops when you put it on your finger and comes out of the bristles.

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For my material world project I decided to draw on the ideas of receipts and what we have left at the bottom of shopping bags after spending money on things. I was inspired by the work of Gabriel Kuri who blew up receipts to a huge size and made them into a sculpture to display. I made a receipt of my own listing things I had touched that day. I wanted to continue with this concept so for my piece I created a sculpture out of an old shopping bag, receipts and coins from the bottom of my handbag along with clothing tags and leaflets.

I think I liked this piece because it represents the concept of “you are what you buy” and the fact that receipts tell you a lot about a person as they are a footprint of everything you have ever bought. I also like the fact that they are my own receipts and show everything that I have bought over the last few weeks and I think this makes it quite personal.

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Contact sheet for Recording the City

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Change a space through light, reflections and filters.

I took flash photos of the inside of a tin and a bottle. I especially like the tin photo (right) and how I changed how the space looked with light and reflections.

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Results of our research for ‘Making a Mark’

I liked using a comb with paint the best.

We used various tools to make marks with poster paint on paper, relating our pieces to words that we were given (eg: electric, bold etc), and then took rubbings from around the university with charcoal and chalk. 

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A drawing of part of Manchester from our Recording the City project.

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A receipt of everything I touched today, I like the receipt idea as I think it materialises things in my life, and I may use this idea again.

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A couple of tasks from Material World week, the first we were given the task of drawing a pencil with various descriptions. I couldn’t complete the smell task because I didn’t have a sense of smell that day.

The second image is a miniature scene I created using my right earphone, as I thought it looked like a tiny hairdryer. 

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In Creative Risks, we tried to create 1 minute human sculptures from instructions we had given each other. This was inspired by the work of Erwin Wurm who gives people instructions in his exhibitions to follow and become part of his sculptures. We then took this to the foyer to display our “sculpture” in public. I think because we did this in a public place it was successful, as if we had of done it without an audience there would have been no point.

I gave the instruction for someone to stand with both arms out to the side, but both arms must be wrapped in paper.

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Visit Original Link

For Creative Risks we were asked to make a piece of music or sound from something that wouldn’t usually be used to make sound. I put together a piece from short 3 second video clips taken from the past year of my life. Some were from parties, most were from Japan and Disneyland.

I think this was a successful piece, I presented it without video because I wanted the sound to be out of context, which worked because the class thought it sounded “creepy” and compared it to “something out of silent hill” which is contradictory as the clips are from Disneyland. I liked this because the clips were from happy times in my life which shows a contrast to what they sound like to other people out of context. I think this also reflects the fact that my pictures and memories from my life don’t mean the same to anyone else, simultaneously, someone else’s memories not meaning anything to me. 

If I were to do it again I would polish up the sound better, but due to a positive reaction from my peers I decided to leave it as it was.

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Creative Methods - Recording the city

For this project we were given the task of recording Manchester in unique ways such as recording the sights and sounds, drawing and capturing the typography of what makes Manchester, Manchester. 

I recorded pictures videos and sounds from around the city, and pieced them together in a video. The video shows the typography and graffiti around Manchester’s northern quarter and city center. I think I captured the spirit of Manchester well, shown in clips of the bees, graffiti and street art. I also liked the stickers and doodles on the streetlamps and in the toilet cubicles as I think this reflects the typography of what makes Manchester unique and recognisable.

If I were to do this again I would explore other parts of Manchester to get a more varied and less one sided approach to the sights of the city and take longer videos so that it flowed better. 

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Please click the images to enlarge!

A few scamps for my zine which I will be making over the next few weeks. 

The zine will be about the development of the video game industry in Japan, featuring early developments from arcade machines to post 2000 where I will comment on modern day video games.

I am planning to make the zine almost entirely out of pixels to give a consistent aesthetic throughout the zine.

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For fashion week, I had the task of creating a piece of head wear out of packaging. I took the pieces of art we made outside the week before and cut them into shapes to create flowers and other nature-related things like leaves. I then took plastic bottles and bags and added them in spirals and in the place of netting. I really liked how this piece turned out, I loved the monochrome colour scheme that came out of it accidentally. If I were to do it again I would attach the pieces of packaging and paper to the headband better so it was less delicate and so that the sticky tape was not visible.

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This picture shows 3 pieces of work we created using only natural materials that we found in the park as tools, dipped in ink and attached to charcoal to create marks on paper. We were given a task to draw things blindfolded and this is how it turned out. The piece on the left was the one I liked the most because it began to look like a tree after I had hit it with a piece of charcoal attached to a twig for a while. I think this reflected the fact that nature played a big part in these pieces of work.

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Photography Week - We were given a smell to turn into photographs which represented it, we weren’t allowed to directly photograph what the smell was. Our group got ‘Coffee’ so we took pictures of the cafe, coffee stirrers, bins, etc. I like the salfood logo photograph because the cafe always smells like coffee and I think it instantly makes you think of the smells in the cafe. Also the coffee stirrer is technically breaking the rules but because it is so out of focus I think we could get away with it, as it’s hard to tell what it is without any context of the task we were given.

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My morning as a time-lapse! 7:30AM - 8:45AM

The idea of this was to show what time we miss and don’t realise. This was filmed over an hour and a quarter, condensed into 1 minute of footage. I like the cranes moving, the birds and the rain. I think it shows well what goes on in our lives when we aren’t watching. (I left my phone on the windowsill whilst I got ready for the day, so I didn’t see any of this until afterwards)

I think if I were to do this again, I would frame it landscape, record from earlier in the morning and make sure my phone stayed still during the recording. Also if the weather was better and the sun was more visible I think it would make a more interesting sunrise to document.