Visual Skills. Studio Brief Three - Concept Crit

A day in the life of:

Feedback forms from peers:

1.

 2.

General points, brought up from everyone where, to keep in mind that the final three images do not have to be sequential, and that they can be three quite different ides. It is important, as always to think about which idea solves the brief. These should be kept in mind to ensure that we can come up with better solutions to the brief. Also its really important to consider use of media, and how that can affect the tone of your message, So I need to think about how I want my image to feel, which could perhaps be more serious, or comical with seriousness more hinted at as underlying tone? Or none of the above. 

My initial Idea generation:

I liked the idea that involved the dogs. The concept to it is that, like the 'laptop warriors' of the article a little dog is happy to bark out aggressively and noisily to much larger dogs when it is within the security of its owners arms, but as soon as you take that away and it is own its own beside the bigger dog it was just barking at, it loses its 'ferociousness' and its big talk and is suddenly just a vary scared little dog. I played about with trying to get this to work as a composition, however as a concept it proved rather difficult to communicate.

for moving on I think that there is potential in the way I have gone about creating the different characters with their various attitudes, but the drawing needs to be tightened up a lot, so that its clear and easy to interpret and so that it conveys my idea as effectively as possible. If I can achieve this then it should help to give to give my solutions good visual impact.

Pointers from my peers were to try to include hypocrisy into some of my images, if I can convey this then it would give a more accurate account of the article. However one actually one quite key point that was discovered during tutorials was that actually all the brief was asking was for was to portray your own response to the article, so it isn't actually necessary to focus on this.
Some of my other ideas were flagged up as having potential, so I can work and develop on these for the next stages. I also need to focus on the composition of my images, how to maximise on the size constraints.

Sketchbooking and Drawing for Drawing

Some of my initial sketchbook work, inspired from listening to this presentation:

I experiment with a whole range of things, a lot of it is influenced by what materials I have to hand, but if I am drawing from reference I take more consideration over what media I think it will be the most successful in. I suppose in the future it would be much better to see me simply tackle the same image but testing out different approaches to creating it. 

I liked the softer more opaque feel that pencil and coloured pencil can afford, it makes this sketch of a photograph of my sisters feel more like the memory that it is. It still appears quite unfinished though.

Playful with acrylic and scraps of paper.

Visual Skills. Studio Brief 1 - 128 ideas later.

Your Initial Brief

Idea Generation:

Folding an A2 piece of paper eight times creates 64 little rectangular boxes. Boxes that are  the perfect sizes to generate lots and lots of scamps. Its a really great technique for forcing yourself to come up with so many ideas, to the extent that it becomes almost obscured from the original word you were trying to depict. I doubt that I would have found it as easy to come to the types of outcomes that I have so far with methods that I might previously have used. It was also very different for me not using words and mind maps to generate ideas, to simply explore them through image making. Its good practice for me though, and I think I found it easier this way. 

In our Crit peer review session we discussed and asked questions about our five favourite ideas, that we had photocopied up to A5. I generally tried to ask questions that would help me select, refine and further develop my ideas closer to achieving the brief's objective. This poster will be a somewhat challenging for me no doubt, as my little biro drawings are just that, little. It wont be easy to scale them up so that they would work on A2, I shall have to experiment and explore with different media to find a way to make them work on a bigger scale. One group member suggested scaling these little drawings up even larger on the photocopier and seeing how that would work. Others suggested that I should perhaps try to combine a number of my ideas and put them all together on the larger poster, as I would have enough space for them all and this would avoid the difficulty of having to make my drawings huge. However of course the problem with this idea is that its going to become even more complex trying to make a bigger and busier scene successful aesthetically. It easily runs the risk of being either over crowded or not impactful enough, which rather defeats the purpose of using image to convey a meaning. 

Common issues everyone has been finding with this brief are, black and white! Its such a constraint not being able to use colour. It forces you to think far more about the materials you are using and how to go about making it more interesting for the viewer whilst still complying to greyscale. Another one that was even more easy to get caught up with was when choosing your own designs or discussing others was getting distracted with an idea that would perhaps look good but not really the best idea. These ideas don't quite answer the brief, and at the end of the day this is the important thing to keep in mind. It was also heard to strike that perfect balance between conveying the letter and the drawing, its hard to give both the equal care that they deserve and indeed require to work as a whole.

 


Above are the five ideas I selected as my favourites. The peer review didn't really help to choose one to take forward for development. Suggestions were to perhaps attempt to combine them in various ways, although as to what those ways could be no-one had any finite ideas. So I'll just have to experiment a lot more in my sketchbook. Everyone did quite like the slight simple charm of the ghost though. 

Summer 10

Early Sketchbook experimentation 

In the end I decided to pursue the second, horse, idea. I felt this had a little more substance and scope behind it, and its a subject that I'm just that bit more passionate about. On my idea sheet I had sketched out some very little horses, drawing them with minimal simple outlines using watercolour. I quite liked this fast and more minimal approach, but the poster that I was aiming towards was A2, and so my next challenge was to find a way of scaling these drawings up, without losing the simplicity, yet effectiveness with the line of these smaller drawings, that due to their small scale I could let the brush strokes and marks do a lot of the work for me.  So I used my sketchbook to practice scaling up, one of the first techniques I tried to achieve this was simply by using a bigger and wider brush, so it would be the same as before only everything would be larger. This proved quite successful, and so I stuck with it doing drawing after drawing in an attempt to find that perfect balance of simple mark making, yet descriptive image. As I mentioned in my previous post I am getting a lot more visual with my sketchbooks and such, as before with the sketchbooks I had to create for A-level I could be known to fall into the trap of getting caught up with perfect presentation and writing, that some of the exploring and experimenting that sketchbooks can be essential for became a little lost. However this time I simply used it to practice again and again, and it completely transformed how I originally expected to produce my outcome. In the end I was making images that I did not see myself making at all, which is very exciting. 

My final poster, displayed on the wall in our mini exhibition. 

Overall the poster still needs more resolving, particularly when it comes to the spacing and placing of the ten images. Some are too close, and at rather different scales to each other. The images themselves are also still quite rough around the edges, but as was pointed out to me, thats the way with analog methods, there comes a point where you have to keep going with it and work with what you've got. I know that if i were to continue to resolve them through practice as I have been doing then they would continue to improve and become so much more together. I am a bit pleased with how I managed my time with this brief, although a long way from perfect, I still managed to achieve it with no rushing; a stress-free deadline! This project draws to a close the second and final induction week, and I have completely loved it. The more I learn about the course ahead, the more excited I am for it, and the more I think that it truly will suit me and the kind of person that I am.

Summer 10 - Idea generation

Idea generation is often one of my favourite stages, in the whole process of taking a brief to an outcome.  There are nearly always so many different possibilities, some of which more feasible than others. We were to fill an A1 sheet with as many ideas as possible, one thing that I am already improving on is trying to keep my ideas visual. Which means trying to instead of just write my options, actually use drawings and pictures instead. Often I can get carried away with writing far too much, and not attempting to use enough drawing at the same time and in the same way as I tend to use my writing to describe an idea, and how it might work. Already I feel that this is improving me, and my ideas, as it begins the whole process of exploring and experimenting of how to achieve my image and outcomes sooner. 

We reviewed our ideas this time in small groups, where we could pitch them to each other and bounce some feedback around. I actually found this to be rather helpful, as you could take on board advice given to others pitching their ideas. I still wasn't very decided as to which idea I would take forward, but after I had talked through all of them it helped me become a lot more clear in my mind as to which ideas would be a little too complex to realise, and those that didn't quite have enough substance to them. I managed to condense myself down to two ideas that I believed had the most potential to be a success. Firstly my Jars idea, which involved drawing out ten jars of things I had tried for the first time this summer. Group feedback was that this could be quite charming if it was all kept simple enough, as the jars looked good together, just on their own. My second favourite idea came from the tenth title of image we were asked to create, which was, 'something scary', and for me that was my horse falling, and injuring his back. To help him recover I had a series of physiotherapy exercises, and some more general things that I could do to help him heal. So this second idea is ten ways to look after a horse, or more specifically, Dermot, my horse. This idea received encouraging feedback too, it would be quite practically achievable. I wasn't sure if this idea would work at first, as some of things would be quite tricky to portray, but through having sketched out my ideas instead of having just written in the first place let me see that there was potential there, and the group backed me up on this. These would both be exciting ideas to work with as they are both things I'd be very interested to draw in look further into. 

10x10x10

10x10x10 was our summer brief, in which we produced ten images, all to be 10x10cm. I rather enjoyed working on it, because it was all personal things that we're interesting to me, made that much more fun to document and develop my ideas and thoughts in my sketchbook. My final results weren't perfect though, some of my drawings weren't my best, sometimes, as can often be the case with my work, they looked better in my sketchbook, where I am completely at ease, and just jotting down ideas and experimenting. When I become really concerned with making them perfect then my drawings can become a bit too forced, and lose their natural, more flowing feel to them. I would have preferred if I could have made them work more as a set, instead of concentrating on the content of the individual titles of them. I probably should have thought about that in my initial idea generation, to produce a series or set of images that worked together, instead of simply looking at the content for the individual ten titles we were given. After having seen everyone else's work laid out together, this realisation was driven home to me all the more, as many had some very clever ways in which they had gone about their briefs. The feedback I received rather supported this in the way that any notes made, would only refer to individual images of mine, and indeed make quite different points on the different works, further highlighting just how different and miss-matching my images are. For example one image, the one displayed bottom row, on the left at the end, received comments along the lines of, "comes across as quite violent" (this image was n attempt at showing how distorted and perhaps somewhat distressing my vision became when I became concussed. It fell under the title 'something you'd rather not have done' which was, foolishly attempting to jump a dangerously located ditch out riding at home with Dermot, which resulted in him us both falling!) contrast this with comments I received for my landscape painting of my favourite landmark (referring to 'somewhere you found yourself' I explored it one day, also with Dermot.) that went along the lines of, "sensitive use of media" and "the use of colours is lovely". Very opposite reactions to different aspects of my outcome! So for future I must remember to keep in mind how my outcome will work as a whole and not to get caught up solely in the content. 

The most stupid brief ever.

Not so much stupid but more fun, our task was to draw or paint on a piece of clothing, or customise it, so that when people see you wearing it, it makes them smile. This seemed quite straightforward at first but complex ideas and designs wouldn't really work on fabric, elaborate detail could be easily lost and most media doesn't come out so well, therefore the design needs to be kept simple. But as one critique note left on my ideas sheet, pointed out, "simple charm isn't easy". and its very true, its hard to make an image that can reach out to most people and make them smile, especially with the constraints of the what we had to produce it on with this brief. At first I became sidetracked with ideas that would make me or friends and family laugh, inside jokes and such, but of course these would mean nothing to just anyone looking at it, so it wouldn't be effective at all. Cats are something of a failsafe for me, they're so brilliant on so many levels. They are a source of much inspiration and amusement when it comes to all walks of life, thats more or less how I came to my final image. Overall it didn't quite work out as I would have liked, although I like the idea of the cat on the swing, I don't feel that I managed to achieve the simple charm of the character. My lines weren't quite as flowing or as expressive as I would have liked, partly this is maybe down to the limited materials that would come out with out bleeding on the fabric.  I also failed to take into consideration exactly how important the scale and particularly the location of the image would be, its not terribly clear when worn, its so small it gets a little lost. So overall I think its an idea that certainly had scope, but needs more resolving. If I were to go back and do this again, I'm sure I'd do it differently.