Rachel Herdman.

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Workshop:

Monday 24th January.

Today I attended the life painting workshop. I learned how to create a painting in under three hours using three tones, I also learned how to properly measure proportion when life drawing or painting, I mixed blue yellow and red to get my overall tone. It was a really enjoyable workshop which allowed me to learn new painting skills that I can now use to further develop my ideas.

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I decided to try mark-making with the ivy leaves, so I covered them in acrylic paint and pressed them onto the A3 paper. I then painted the edges yellow and used the leaves as reference. I let it dry and went back in with a white pen to create the leaf veins.

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After a small bit of research I decided to cut some ivy and wildflowers from the garden. I did some mark making and sketches with different mediums such as paint, pastels and pens. I will let the leaves and plants dry out for a few days and draw them again to see how the leaves have moved and withered.

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Research:

Ivy plant-Hedera

Hedera, commonly called Ivy, is a species of evergreen climbing or ground creeping woody plants in the family Araliaceae, native to western, central and Southern Europe, Africa and across to Japan and Taiwan.

Ivies are of major ecological importance for their nectar and fruit production, both produced at times of the year when few other nectar sources are available. The ivy bee is completely dependant on ivy flowers. The fruit are eaten by a range of birds also. The Hedera ivy plant loves the moisture and shade and keeps it’s evergreen leaves all year round, growing up to 80 feet.

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When I decided on movement in nature as my topic, the first thing I did was photograph some flowers and trees in my garden for research. Even though we are not in spring yet I noticed a lot of flowers are already out or starting to flower. Movement in nature could be the death and decay of flowers, the rebirth of flowers, the elements, or man made movements. Although some flowers or plants stay in full bloom all year round.

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Semester 2: MOVEMENT.

These are my mind maps and first initial ideas for the word movement. Firstly I thought of movement of the body through thermal imaging, but I decided movement in nature would be a much broader topic to choose, which will allow me to easily develop my ideas, and make the process full of possibilities.

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Ideas Book.

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Research Book.

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This is an A5 Lino cut I did based on the brief play, printed onto coloured A4 paper. It is an image of a unisex toy, with Bob the builders head and barbie’s body. “Bob the Barbie”.

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Project statement:

My first response to the theme “play” was to explore the idea of sexuality and playing with love, I soon realised this would be difficult to link to the word play as it’s a very broad idea. So I decided to reapproach the idea and thought instead to go with children’s toys and how gender is a big issue with boys and girls toys, so I decided to look into uni sex toys and what unisex toys already exist and how children should not be forced to play with toys associated with their gender, and what playing was like for me as a child and how it made me into who I am today.

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I decided to look at this photograph of my boyfriend when he was a child wearing his sisters pink headphones. I decided to do a print of him with this toy. I noticed when you take away the typical colours of pink and blue, it becomes just a toy and not a ‘girls’ toy. I plan to explore this concept more and develop my ideas to a finished piece or pieces.

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These are drawings I did of my young cousins. I watched them playing for a few hours to see how children these days interact and play and to see what toys they played with. I realised the girls would play with their brothers toys and their brother would also play with their toys. When your young you play with whatever you feel you like, not because your a girl and it’s pink, but because it looks fun. I plan to use what I saw as research towards my assignment.

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I decided to revisit my mind map for play and go with a different theme for the project, instead of the idea of love and sexuality, which is a very broad topic, I wanted to look at children’s toys and how there are no well known unisex toys. So today I visited toy shops to take some pictures and start to research and develop this idea of what society tells us about gender in relation to ‘play’ or playing.

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Research:

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static stabiles and his monumental public sculptures. Calder preferred not to analyse his work, saying “Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn’t be broadcast to other people”. Calder was born in Philadelphia in 1898 , the son of the distinguished academic sculptor A.Stirling Calder. Trained as a mechanical engineer, he turned to art, attending the Art Students League in New York City. There he took classes and subsequently he established himself as an illustrator and caricaturist in New York.

While in Paris he took up sculpture. After working on wood pieces, he began to make circus figures composed of twisted wire, wheels, string and cloth. His miniature circus captured the attention of the avant-garde in Paris, where he met and was influenced by a number of artists. He also went on to make a series of Woden push and pull toys which were mass produced and then stocked in various shops around the world.

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I decided the original idea I had of sexuality was not the best way to go with the play brief as I struggled to make a strong connection between playing and sex. So I decided to revisit my mind map and start with new fresh ideas and decided to go with the idea of boys and girls toys being pink and blue and how the toy industry and parents can be strict when it comes to what there child plays with, gender wise. Then I started to look at what toys I played with as a child. I plan to develop my ideas from here.

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Research:

Marilyn Monroe, or Norma Jeane, was an American actress, model and singer. Famous for playing comedic “blonde bombshell” characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the early 1950’s and early 1060’s and was emblematic of the era’s sexual revolution. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage, she married at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War 2 II when she met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up Madeline career, which led to short-lived film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictured. After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox late 1950. She faced scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photographs prior to becoming a star, but the story did not damage her career and instead resulted in increase interest in her films.

By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars. She had leading roles in film noir Niagara, which overtly relied on her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as “dumb blonde”. The same year her nude images were used as the centrefold and on the cover of the first issue of Playboy.

Monroe’s troubled private life received much attention. She struggled with addiction and mood disorders. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and to playwright Arthur Miller were highly publicised, and both ended in divorce. On August 4th 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles home. Her death was ruled a probable suicide.

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More pages from my ideas book. I’ve started looking at Marilyn Monroe and what she represented in her time regarding sexuality and sex in a playful way. I started exploring ideas of using her as an image in my play brief to convey the message of what she represented. However I’d like to do more research on Marilyn first.