Scottish Culture Innit

Scottish culture unit innit

[raz0rkin]

REMEDIATION

This is my take on the brief and what I and my mum thought scottish culture was to us as individuals and to us as mother and daughter. I used a lot of my upbringing and how i viewed living in scotland to my advantage to really find a theme that worked for me and made me feel good about my work. I also looked and what people in my life see Scotland as, many seeing it for the scenic beautiful country it is. So here you have my take!

[raz0rkin]

REMEDIATION

This research was more aimed towards the calming side of the sea, the side i actually like to the sea. Looking at the ripples and how the shadows and highlights lay on them and then looking at gairloch itself, my hometown, the place i grew up and how that place is a huge comfort to me and has been my entire life. And then lastly looking at scottish fish as my grandma being a marine biologist and always having a lot of fishy themed things in my life i thought adding fish to my references and to my sketchbook was a smart idea.

[raz0rkin]

These next couple of posts will be my research and inspiration for my scottish culture themes! I looked through the internet and through books on the internet to try and find the same sort of feeling and ideas i was going for and i think these do it justice.

The deep sea with horrifying looking monsters really helps to show through my fear to my art and to help me express what kind of fear it really is.

I also took some inspiration from a book i found online called Folklore of the scottish highlands, which gave me the idea of doing kelpies as an experiment.

[raz0rkin]

REMEDIATION

this is my mind map for my ideas for scottish culture, I tried to look at everything that i thought was scottish culture and not just what other people think it is! I also got the help of my mums thoughts on it and my girlfriends to see if i could link what they think to how i feel.

[raz0rkin]

REMEDIATION These are my pages of my second theme idea for scottish culture! I chose to do it on the sea as Scotland is obviously surrounded by the sea and the sea holds a close place in my bringing up in Scotland itself. This theme holds close to me as i was brought up close the sea. My house in Gairloch that my grandma owns is right in front of the sea, and even when my family moved to the east coast we were always close to the sea and would spend many weekends going for long walks on the beach, etc. I decided it would be a good theme to go with as although the sea is a special place to me as a Scottish person, it is also one of my biggest fears, I do not mix well with the ocean as I cannot swim and the deepest parts of the ocean scare me endlessly! So taking both my love of the sea and the sounds of the sea and also taking my fear, I tried to create experiments and a semi final piece that showed exactly that, fear and love!

While I think this idea could be devloped into the final piece, I prefer my initial idea of Scottish witchcraft, as it felt more interesting and i had a clear idea for seeing it to the finish.

[raz0rkin]

REMEDIATION

These are my 5+ A5 developmental pieces!

For these pieces i tried to take a new perspective. I’ve never been very strong when it comes to colours and paint as I've always stuck to what I know which is pencil and lino! But i think for these experiments, while some appear too cluttered for my liking, I actually really like how a lot of them turned out, which is very exciting! My favourite piece is the one done on paper from a highway code book and the one done of masking tape! They turned out in a way I didn’t expect, the masking tape one was an experiment that just sort of came to me while I was painting and i just knew i had to try it and I’m so glad i did, as it creates a texture I haven't seen a lot. The one on highway code paper was thought out as i was already thinking of doing something on newspaper but i took it that step further and did it on the highway code paper instead! I think this allowed it to stand out even more as the colours within the pages linked with my painting, creating a harmonious colour overall. These were all done with either posca pens or watercolour.

(More annotations are on my sketchbook in the pictures above)

[raz0rkin]

To create my final textile prints, I used a mix of fabric printing medium and acrylic ink, and used lino to transfer it onto the tshirts. I also tried to make each piece unique so i could see the full range of what the print could look like. I changed things like the direction i applied the ink, how much of the lino piece was covered before printing, the colour of acrylic ink mixed in, the orientation of the prints on the tshirt and the amount of ink applied. Overall I think the final pieces are very effective especially given the materials i had on hand. I think the method allowed for a textured, gritty feel which went very well with my theme, as the texture almost resembles concrete, linking to both the environment of skateboarding and the literal 'street' part of street style fashion associated with skateboarding. The uniqueness of each piece also links with the nature of skateboarding fashion which strives to be outside of the norm, in its own category.

[raz0rkin]

For these pieces I developed my previous sketch by turning it into an etching on a plastic sheets. Then I used oil based ink and wiped it over, allowing it to get into the etched grooves. What I love about etching prints is that there is so much variability with the effect that you can create, so I tried to show that i could create both a very fine, delicate effect (first picture), but that i also could create interesting textures for a more bold and striking final outcome. I really love the drawing I used here and for lino as well, and i think since the initial drawing itself was strong, especially the way i created shadow using lines, allowed it to translate well into these printing methods. Another thing which helped translate it to these mediums is strong outlines and contrasts.

[raz0rkin]

In this series of test prints, I began by testing the print on black, textured paper as it gave the print an interesting texture and I wanted to try printing with white ink. I liked how it left a black space where the 'image not found' recctangle is, which emphasised the fact that the head was missing. I went on to experiment with different coloured inks including a red and a purple which I mixed. I really liked these tests, especially the different patches of colour and the texture it created when there was less ink, so the next prints I made, I tried to really use it to my advantage. I used black ink so I could focus on this effect. I made sure to leave more ink closer to the cut out part so that there would be enough contrast for a really clear and recognisable image, letting the amount of ink fade as it got further away.

[raz0rkin]

These are pages of my sketchbook to do with textiles, where there are a lot of my starter drawings mainly done in pencil ! There's also a few pages on the history of clothing within the skateboarding community and a few of my first tester prints to see how my clothing would look cut out on lino. I really like my beginning pages because I feel it shows how much I really looked into the skating culture and how I really have a passion for drawing clothing, whether its clothing to do with this topic or just clothing in general, showing i chose a strong subject for me to work and experiment with.

[raz0rkin]

Last but not least this is my final print! This is my favourite because i feel like it brings across the message i wanted in a abstract way. I also feel this will work well as a riso print! I love how this turned out, i like the very blacked out areas and i like how the flames are white to show that flames are shining brighter than the souls that were taken. The cork keeping the bottle sealed shows the lack of interest and research that went into showing our painful past, our past of killing many many innocent people, mainly women, just from the fear of them having power.

[raz0rkin]

For a lot of my art inspo i used plenty of traditional images and such that i found on pinterest. I wanted a more authentic feel to my traditional art. I wanted to show where all my ideas of sketches, final pieces, etc came from and how from a small image something bigger developed, that’s what i was really looking for in my research.

I also used a book called Scottish witchcraft as i wanted to get an insight into scottish witches more than just the stereotype i knew.

[raz0rkin]

This is a big print of one of my ideas, again i really like this one but i don’t feel it conveys the message i wanted, it’s too open to interpretation and i feel like people won’t realise it is about witches, let alone scotland.

[raz0rkin]

These are the sketches of my two explored ideas. The first one is more of a trippy witches hands plus a skeleton. I tried to bring forward the idea of they have eyes in their hands, like they see all. The skull represents the dead souls that they communicate with, and all the lives of innocent women that were taken just because of the fear of women with power, aka witch powers.

The second idea which i chose in the end is a bottle filled with the past. It’s engulfed in flames with a centre piece witch hanging by her neck. There’s also loads of faces, completely blank and some without actual faces. All of this is meant to represent all the death and despair these witches in the past must of gone through and how our countries past has treated not just witches but also women.

[raz0rkin]

i created my witches hut into a lino, i actually really loved this but i knew it wasn’t enough for a final piece.

[raz0rkin]

My insperation for this blocks project was Tom Hazelmyer, he is a musician and printmaker. He started up printmaking after he came out of a monthlong meningitis/encephalitis-induced coma, doctors told him to go home and do Sudoku puzzles to regain his motor skills and brain function. He basically said "Screw that" to the doctor. “Veronica had a school project at home, some carving stuff, and we got some linoleum slabs and I started dickin’ around with it,” Hazelmyer said. “The brain damage was such that writing and some other stuff was scrambled up. So you have to relearn how to do everything, think about doing it while you’re doing it, and it’s to the point now where I can write backward upside down.”

Hazelmyer became “completely obsessed” — a phrase he uses often to describe his many projects. His office walls overflow with new prints by his artist alter-ego HAZE XXL.

I think what really struck close to me about his artwork is how much he adores the process of lino, I've loved lino for years and seeing someone just pick it up and instantly adore it is really great to me. I also adore how dark and blocky his prints are, its very similar to how i've always done lino prints and the familiarity feels really nice, especially as an insperation.

[raz0rkin]

I continued to look a bit at more modern witches, i wanted to see the contrast between how we’ve viewed witches from around the 90s onward to how they used to view them way back when there was still witch trials

It’s interesting to see how differently we now view them, they aren’t seen as a bad thing anymore, we now embrace witches and many people go to witches for tarot readings and such.