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Putting Up A Sign: Progress Review Tutorial Repsonse

The key takeaways of my Progress Review Tutorial were that I need to Focus More and Write Less.

While what I’m doing makes sense to me, this is a visual communication course, and so I need to find a way to explain it Clearly and Concisely to others. Paul Tarpey, my tutor, said it like this- “you’ve got an interesting factory here- but I don’t know what you make”.

I write too much- this is primarily a Visual course, so visuals take precedence over written word. I need to change the way I communicate.

I was also told that I need to show the process, the journey I’m taking with my art more, but just my end results. Show the planning, the thinking, the construction process

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Study of Plastic Dinosaur Toy

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Sketchbook

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PRINTING WORKSHOP: RESULTS

I enjoyed this workshop quite a bit, but I'm not sure I cut out for print. It's a little too particular, too delicate for me. If anything, I'm excited to use the mess I made for backgrounds. I think the most compelling thing through this process for me was the interference, the layer of ink you need to remove before printing in mono-printing. I like the texture, the noise of it.

That last one was a result of me forgetting to do my interference, a mistake I did not make twice

Some sketches, playing around with shapes and gradients

This is my biggest success of the bunch, one that I'm actually happy with. Print- mono print- requires just a little more confidence that I possess.

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Workshop Week 8, 11-11-24

Christ its week 8 already

This week I did the print making workshop. On Monday, the day I write this, we did mono printing, with acetate sheets covered in oil based ink. First we covered the sheets with paper, and traced out our print on top before removing the paper. Then we did the reverse: removing ink off the sheet, then running that and a piece of cartridge through the press. We also explored colour and texture with wall paper

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Visiting Artist: Peter Blodau

On Tuesday, 5-11-24, Peter Blodau gave us a talk about his work. He travels about the world, drawing in situe, telling the stories of the cities and their people. I find his work incredibly beautiful- his use of shape and colour is breathtaking, and I am so very envious of his careful imprecision, a looseness that is hard to master. Following along with his methodology, we the students were let loose on Limerick city, to sketch along the river between the three bridges of Limerick. I will admit, i love having an excuse to sit outside and draw-my setup is built around this, so I was quite in my element. I posted up at the river, hoping the chain "fence" to sit by the lock across from the old rowing club. I discovered this spot of Arthur's Quay during my Radius project, as its were my friend Artie the Heron likes to hang out. There, you have an excellent view of the river, the rowing club, the park, the birds and a little glimpse of Saint Mary's Cathedral in the distance. My one regret with this position was that it was removed from the people of the city: i was thankful for it a the time, but in retrospect an important part of Blodau's work is his interaction with people. Something to keep in mind for next time

Speaking of regrets, I somehow managed to not get a picture of my favourite piece, and the one i spent the most time on: a watercolour study of the water and the way the light interacted with it. It was good, but i suppose you'll have to take my word on that.

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Visiting Artist Brian O'Shea

On Thursday, 7-11-24, LSAD Alumni Brain O'Shea visited campus, and gave a talk about his work. Admittedly, it wasn't exactly my thing, but I really admired the way he iterated on his ideas, and showed us the process that lead him to his self-proclaimed most successful works: the initial idea, what worked, what didn't. I think the idea that sometimes you just ned to keep going, keep messing around with something until you get it to work for you. I think the work of his that he showed that resonated with me the most was the street he made on his way to his wood block prints.

Then took his MO- taking classical imagery and twisting it, "transforming" it- and did it for ourselves. My group took Artemisia Gentileschi's "Judith Beheading Holofernes" and recreated it in a photoshoot, keeping it simple. The fantastic @k00322323, who's a very skilled photographer, took the photo's, and the rest of us took turns directing, posing, and adjusting the lights. I edited the below photo's trying to invoke the theatrical influence of the Baroque.

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Primary Research: Making Egg Tempura

A key inspiration behind my Assemble project is the idea of making and dismantling as a form of exploration and understanding. So, when I heard that egg tempura, the most popular form of painting from Ancient Egypt all the way up until oil paints where invented in the 1400's, was as simple to make as mixing egg yolk and pigment, I figured i had to give it a go.

So first and foremost: is it really that simple? Well, yes and no. The method was the one suggested by the The Royal Academy Of Art:

Mix pigment with small about of water to form a sort of paste

Separate egg yolk, mix with little water (for smoother application) and lemon juice (to help with the smell, and to keep it from rotting too quickly)

Mix pigment slurry and egg yolk slurry

Paint

Success

This method did in fact work pretty well for me, with a few quirks of course. my ratio of egg to pigment was a bit off, meaning instead of the vivid matte quality egg tempera is typically praised off, mine was a little less vivid and quite shiny. i used a variety of different pigments- old makeup, pastels, chalk, charcoal, dirt, spirulina, turmeric- and each had its own challenges.

The make up, while vivid and delightfully shimmery, was hydrophobic, meaning it didn't want to mix with the water, or the yolk, and so kept separating in the palette. I couldn't get the chalk or the charcoal milled fine enough, and so they made their paints quite chunky: the chalk in particular was a nightmare, yellowing immediately, forming clumps, being both too thin and too thick, and generally just a nuisance to deal with. The easiest and most effective pigments where definitely the turmeric and the spirulina- both where extremely smooth and fine milled, and both mix perfectly with both the water and the yolk, and made for good paints.

Overall, a very worthwhile experiment, one I had a very fun time with, and would most certainly recommend!

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Engagement Lab 18-10-24: Lumen Studio Tour

I had been itching to get into Lumen Studios since I first walked by it 3 years ago, and I was delighted to see it as one of the engagement lab tours! I love the idea of sculpture with use- puppetry, elaborate costumes, community building. I was also delighted to learn that this year's parade was based heavily off the book Heavenly Bodies by Paul Koudounaris, a book I adore and find very inspiring in my own work.

I Love Making costumes, I love halloween, and i will absolutely find a way to incorporate what I saw and learned here into my personal practice.

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Workshop:Paper Doll Dreams

Week 6[21-10-24 -> 25-10-24]

I attended the Paper doll dreams workshop, a workshop focused around turning our primary sources into clothing, working with paper on a model.

For my primary source, I used a leftover sprue from a Warhammer: Adepta Sororitas kit I had assembled, pictured below:

I photocopied the sprue, picked out the shapes I found most compelling, and then blew those up a couple times with the printer

And then I stuck those to the form, as how above, and worked with the paper to see where it wanted to go, how it wanted to stick to the form, how it wanted to shape and bend, what I needed to adjust.

Warhammer was the first thing I thought of when the theme "Assemble" was brought up, and why I ended up going in the toy direction in the first place, so it was good to use it so directly in a project. The Adepta Soraratis are a faction of devoted warrior nuns, and so I think they're quite fitting for the more "the divintity of self creation" angle I've ended up playing with.

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Colour & Medium Studies

Did a couple studies on my favourite primary source (the picture of this bábóg) ina couple different mediums, to try capture the shapes, colours and shading of it, to see what I found so compelling about it.

First, the picture itself: I set the bábóg up in a corner of my desk, white a A3 whit page behind it for a clean simple backdrop. I used a mirror to bounce the natural light from the window more directly onto the subject, to better illuminate it. A lot of my unnatural means of lightning would have been too warm toned for the effect I wanted. I think there's something quite serene, almost surreal about this bábóg, and i though a cooler light source would better suit that. This was shot raw on my DSLR, and then lightly touched up in blacktable, just to enchance some of the colours, then exported as a jpeg for ease of use.

I really enjoy the warmth of the baby doll against the cool blues of the background, it almost reminds me of a sunset, or the evening light, the orange street lamps against the dying navy sky.

(I apologise for the quality of the pictures of my sketchbook, my phone camera is broken, and having problems focusin.)

In order, we have acrylic markers (posca), water based markers (tombow), alcohol makers (sharpie +) and finally water colours (mixture).

Inspired by a peer of mine, I wanted to try out using a more limited colour palette, to mixed results. I am most comfortable working in water colour: it is by far my most used medium. It gives me a lot of control over my colours and values, it blends and mixes beautifully, and I have a good understanding over how it wants to work. I think my final study is the one I'm happiest with because of this: as I didn't have to wrestle with the medium, I could focus more on what i wanted to do with it. I also used it to give a bit more focus to the Eye, my favourite part of this doll. There's something so .. captivatingly vacant about them.

I'd say posca is my second most comfortable medium ,of the ones used, and I'm overall pretty happy with it. I think it a little plain, a little unambitious- its doesn't quite grasp the etherealness of my reference, or the complexity of its colours. I'd chalk this up to two things-

Posca pens are a much chunkier medium than I typically work with, and instead of finding a way to work with that, i was trying to get them to blend, which made me much less experimental with my colours than I'd hoped to be.

This was the first of the studies that I'd done, and I hadn't quite gotten into the swing of it.

If I was to try this again, I'd remove/limit the more "fleshy" tones, to force myself to make different decisions.

Next theres the tombow markers, inspired by my mother's work with abstract ink and marker. I'm torn on this, as I think its weakest quality is also its strongest: the colours. I wanted to be bold with the colours, and I think I definitely accomplished that. Even if the end result is, well, garish. And I like Garish! I like Tacky! I like Bright and Colourful! This gives me pause though. I think its overall a success for this experiment, but also warrants revisiting.

I don't have much to say about the sharpie one. I don't think sharpie is my favourite medium to work with: it's best used for applying flat colours, a bit of a pop to sketches, in my opinions with it. Much like the tombow sketch, it's a little over saturated, but overall I'm happy enough with it.

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Artist Research: Mashiro Ito

Mashiro Ito, concept Artist, artist on Silent Hill 1 and Short Message, Art Director for Silent Hill 2 & 3, has designed some of the most iconic monsters in Video Game History. Silent Hill 2 in particular is one of the most consequential games in the horror genre, and as a medium, and that’s in large part due to him.

I’m fascinated by the way Mashiro twists the human body, distorts it into something nightmarish, both universally horrific, and deeply personal to the characters they’re made to torment.

One of my favourite Mashiro designs has to be the Mannequins from Silent Hill 2.

Silent Hill 2 is a game about the guilt of its protagonist , James, for what he did to his late wife Mary, and his journey in accepting and moving on from it.

The mannequins, as seen above, are an early game enemy type, the second you’ll encounter. Like all monsters in Silent Hill 2, the mannequin is a representation of Mary, her illnesses and guilt James feels at her death. The Mannequin is faceless, like most of the monsters in this game, possibly representing that James refusing to acknowledge what actually happened, what is actually tormenting him. Or, it could be a way of dehumanising, objectifying the mannequin.

Instead of a head, it has two legs. I at first thought they were table legs, but on further though they’re probably bed legs. Mary’s illness left her bed bound, and this motif of being bed bound shows up many many times throughout the game. The medical imagery doesn’t end there though, it can also be seen in the plastic material of the legs, made to resemble splints, and what looks like a catheter bag on the creatures waist.

I enjoy how doll like it is, with its soft almsot stuffed stomache, and its hard limbs.

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Attended the Laser Cutting workshop today, and had a lot of fun!! As much as I enjoy working with my hands, I have to admit I feel very at ease working behind a computer screen. We made a little template snail in Adobe Illustrator, and then cut it out with the laser cutter.

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Working With Mixed Materials in 3D

[7-10-24 - 12-10-24]

This workshop was a wonderful excuse to do exactly what I've wanted to do for this whole project: take things apart, see how they work, and put them back together in a new way. With the encouragement of my tutors, and a bag of used toys from the curio shop, I set about my task.

I found that I had a few guiding principles: I liked the movement of the toys, liked the use and function of it, so kept that as much as i could. I found in both my selection of toys, and my work that I was drawn to the more humanoid figures, intrigued by the idea of taking something familiar and "ruining" it. Conceptually, I like the idea of An Assembly of self, the idea that we all have to construct ourselves, and i think theres something grotesquely Divine about that, so i aimed to give my creations a sort of Angelic appearance, to create a host of Angels Of The Self.

This was sort of inspired by the myth of the managol, a filipinio vampire, a woman who separates at the waist. I wanted a sort of dangling thing, evocative of organs. i used ropes to try simulate that sinewy texture.

A baby doll with a halo if legs. Originally had big buff arms, but it liked it better crawling around on its halo. Cardboard wings help with a paper fasteners, based of a set of plastic toys wings i have that you'll see later

This toy is the same as the one used for the torso in my first creature. It had a set of two screws in the back, and i thought taking it apart would be as simple as unscrewing the screws. It was not. This thing was unreasonably hard to get apart, and this is as far as it would split, even with the screw drilled all the way through, even with my tutor chiselling her open. I though there was something evocative here, something about her head splitting and cracking while the rest if her holds resolute. I think I'd eventually like to to fill the crack with red wool and tinsel.

This is Gabriel, my chief angel, and my favourite. Through a use of carefully made holes and axels, Gabriel maintains the articulation of both his arms and his wings. He's made from a baby doll, and some detachable wings from might've once been an action figure.

As i was working, I tried to keep an eye out for Interesting patterns, shapes, connections, as inspired by the work of Hans Bellmer

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Tuesday’s Drawing Seminar

I’m not entirely sure what the pint of Tuesdays drawing seminar was. I think a lot of the pints made were self evident and obvious. We didn’t even do any drawing, it was all “theory@ no practice

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First day of the Assemblage project

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Paper Puppets