Development Writing

‘Figure in Space’ workshop

This workshop presented an important opportunity to experiment with new media and engage in drawing, collaging, photography and 3D exercises. The first of these exercises involved randomly splattering blobs of ink onto a blank white page; the effect of this was to make us see shapes in a different way as after creating the amorphous pattern with ink, we were told to link the dots together to create stick figures. I enjoyed this exercise and extended my exploration of amorphous shapes and forms by creating another series of ink experiments but this time on watercolour paper; due to the textured quality of the paper, the patterns created differed from the first exercise. I also noticed the visual similarities between the Chapman brothers, who subvert dot to dot colouring book exercises to create more sinister images, and my own experimentation with amorphous shapes to create forms, I developed my own dot to dot images using pages from children’s colouring books to emphasise my interest in their work. Although I found this exercise beneficial, I found the use of materials limiting so the next exercise, which involved using match sticks to created rubbings, was more enjoyable. This next stage of the workshop was intended to encourage use to see the human figure in its most essential form so to start us off, we collected images of footballers in motion and then quickly traced the basic structure of their body using only straight lines. Still using straight lines to replicate the human form, we began experimenting with fragments of matchsticks to create basic stick men. With these 3D models we then created rubbings using thin paper and graphite sticks; the subsequent images we successful as they captured the basic structure of each matchstick model while also lending the figures movement and energy. I was eager to continue working in 3D so after the exercise I went home and created a stop motion animation and thereby added another dimension to the exploration of the figure in space as I depicted a matchstick figure in action. While this experiment was successful, it was my first stop motion animation so the transition between each frame was not as smooth as it could have been had I been more experienced.

After using straight lines to depict the figure, I changed my sketching technique and began drawing using curved lines. After creating a brief 30-second sketch of a friend of mine sitting and then standing with her leg and arm at an angle, I furthered my use of curved line and used white string on black paper to depict tow body forms in motion. The effect of this was to create a negative image of the original sketches. Seeing the visual similarities between my own experiments and Matisse’s line drawings, especially his lino cuts of nude figures, I was inspired to extend the exercise further by using tracing paper, white gouache and black pen to create a layered black and white response to the original sketches. As I enjoyed experimenting with curved lines, I also began playing with thin malleable wire to create curved line shapes, which I then preserved between two sheets of adhesive plastic. From these wire models I then created rubbings using graphite and developed the second of these images to abstract the shapes of the original wire model further and create a black and white graphic response. This third experiment was also highly evocative of Matisses work especially his later collages; in particular I noticed similarities between my sketch and his series of blue nudes from the early 1940s. Overall I was surprised at the extent to which I could extend the simple notion of line drawing to create such a wide variety of responses. Furthermore, I was also pleased with my discovery of the visual connections between my own sketches and Matisse’s work as this gave me greater direction in my experimentation.

On the next two pages I continued working with wire to explore the body form and was eager to extend my lie drawing technique to 3D work. Consequently using thin wire again, I created a small 3D model of a human like form and took several photos of the experiment, each showing the model in different positions. To emphasise the continuation of my interest in curved line, I used white paint and biro to highlight the contours of the model’s frame. Although creating the model gave me greater confidence in experimenting with 3D materials, working with wire inspired me to create another set of line drawings but this time using the idea of the contours of the wire model. This five-minute exercise was the most successful so far in the project as it gave the figures I was studying body volume and greater shape and sense of proportion. As a result of this exercise, I also discovered the relevance of performance art to my exploration of the figure in space; a series of photos from the Triadic Ballet by Oscar Schlemmer, which depict dancers in strange, voluptuous costumes, related directly to my exploration of curved lines. Moreover while Anthony Gormley’s 3D wire sculptures tied in with my experiments with wire to created small models, the images of his models were also visually similar to my pencil drawings.

Unlike in previous exercises where we were require to focus on the linear outline of a figure, in the next workshop my art class were encouraged to experiment with depicting body mass and solid form. Therefore using white paper, each person created a 2D small-scale replica of a human figure and we placed these against a black backdrop to create an interesting and entertaining image. Working in paper and positioning the figures separately in a space created a sense of scale and depth in the subsequent photos we took; I then tried to capture this engaging and playful scene in an observational pencil drawing of the set up and overlapped the paper cut outs to lend the image energy and create an interesting composition. However I think the photos of the paper figures against the black backdrop were the most successful as they effectively contrasted the paper cut outs with their surroundings, thereby evoking the theme of the figure in space. Keen to continue working with paper, I created a replica paper figure cut out which I then used a knife to cut geometric shapes into. This image was intended to create a more interesting image when placed against a black background but it was actually the paper model’s shadow that made the photo’s I took of the cut out the most visually captivating. This set of photos was also successful as the images clearly reflected my experimentation with paper; not only did I manipulate the paper models into different positions but the photos showed the extent to which I had cut into the paper. The photos also drew upon the monochrome colour pallet of the previous exercises (particularly the original experiment using paper figures). After using the paper models to create abstract shapes and indistinguishable forms, I also decided to play with positioning the paper model amongst household objects and documented this experiment on my art blog. Although the photos I took of the paper model positioned on top of a peanut butter jar and standing next to a cabbage in the fridge were not visually convincing, they did communicate the purpose of the exercise, which was to give the 2D figure animation and personality.

The next exercise explored abstracting the figure even more but also focused on the figure’s relationship with it’s surrounding environment. Although I had explore the alliance between the figure and space in my experiments with the paper model, especially when I placed it alongside different household objects, these exercises did not sufficiently show the figure engaging with it’s environment and lacked narrative. Thus in the next exercise I used burnt matchsticks – they reflected more personality than unused matchsticks – as characters in a freeze. Using a cardboard box as a tower block, I positioned a group of matchsticks at the bottom of the block and had them looking up to a lone matchstick figure at the top of the structure; the scene clearly illustrated a suicide and the lone shadows of the matchsticks appropriately added to the mis en scene of the photographs I took. While the exercise revolved primarily around creating the scene and constructing a clear narrative, I was eager to explore the other properties of matchsticks; using a charcoal head, I created a sketch from one of the photos and also burnt small circular holes in the paper, which I then used to create another response to the photos.

After a week of experimenting with different line drawing techniques and methods of depicting the figure in space, I then began to look more closely at the work of artist Anthony Gormley. His work in 3D directly related to my previous exercises using 3D materials such as wire and paper, however more importantly his sculptures resonated with my exploration of the figure in space. I was initially drawn to his ‘Event Horizon’ project after seeing his cast iron figures firsthand on the rooftops near my house. Yet it was his ‘Another Place’ installation, in which Gormley placed dozens of solitary iron figures along the coast in Norfolk, that most inspired me to create my own small-scale 3D replicas of the human form. Using tea towels, I manipulate the fabric using plastic bands to create five abstracted figures, which I then hung up on the washing line to evoke the singularity of Gormley’s iron sculptures. I also intended to draw upon the soft sea blues in the photographs of ‘Another Place’ so I shot the photos of the installation as the sun was going down in order to achieve a similar colour composition. Having documented this process on my blog, I explored different ways of extending this exercise; firstly I experimented with different ways of depicting the fabric models using biro line drawing. The resultant image was successful and the line quality of the biro drawings evoked Gormley’s wire framed sculptures, which I referenced beside this experiment. Eager to continue working in 3D after my fabric models, I also created a brief response to the photos using thin wire; this image was successful as it effectively demonstrated the differences in shape and form for each of the fabric models but also further abstracted the shapes from the original photos. As I gave the image a quick watercolour wash in similar shades (blues and purples) to the photos and the Gormely shots, the experiment clearly linked in with my artist research and showed a creative progression of ideas.

Landscapes

As I had focused entirely on depicting the figure in space up until this point in the project, I then chose to explore different types of spaces and environments. It made sense to respond to the task with photography as this offered the best assessment of an environment, so during my Christmas holidays I took several wide-angle photos of the Suffolk countryside. I also picked out defining features of each environment and posted the most successful image – a photo of a hillside with starkly contrasted landscape features on the horizon – in my book. Continuing experimenting with different materials and working in 3D, I decided to respond to the photographs by recreating the hilly countryside landscape using scrap fabric and materials. I was also inspired to work with material and recreate a miniature landscape after discovering Slinkachu’s ‘Little People’ series, which documented the artist’s installation of miniature people interacting with urban landscapes and objects. I particularly liked the playfulness and humour of his work and sought to replicate this aspect of his installations in my own work.

Slinkachu’s work also inspired me to explore the ways in which different artists create installations that engage with a specific environment. Discovering art interventions such as Christo and Jean-Claude’s ‘Wrapped Reichstag’ was pivotal for my exploration of landscape and space as I realised that in order to create a successful artwork concerning the figure in space, the figure must engage or interact with it’s surrounding environment. I was also drawn to the Skyline project in New York and began to explore the impact of introducing nature into an urban environment; this conflict between the urban and the natural intrigued me and using my online blog, I documented my own small-scale responses to organic intervention. Using two boxes of cress, I strategically placed the plant in distinctly urban spaces, such as roads or between pavement cracks, in order to document the effect of introducing greenery to a monotonous grey environment. My efforts were also inspired somewhat by the actions of the guerrilla gardeners, who plant in city environments to utilise unused spaces for flowers and vegetable gardens, and Austrian architect Hunderwasser’s, whose building’s encourage people to live alongside nature and incorporate organic features into their structural appearance.

Art Intervention

After exploring different types of landscapes and the importance of engaging with the surrounding environment when creating an art installation, my art class were then set a challenge: we had to draw up plans for and create our own art intervention in selected areas around the school. As I was allotted the art room, I set about evaluating the space – I took photos of different features in and around the room – in order to get a sense of what kind of project would be viable.  After physically assessing the space, my project partner and I also discussed the connotations of the art room: to many people it represented work and thus projected a serious, formal atmosphere. Therefore taking this and the limitations of the space into account, we decided to subvert the idea of the art room as a workspace and instead change it into a space to relax and be entertained. The most obvious transformation was to turn it into a restaurant and so we began planning the room’s layout and deciding what physical alterations – such as rearranging the tables and changing the light - we would have to make to achieve our goal. We also drew up a list of props (a blackboard, table cloths, napkins, place mats and paper plates) we needed to create an authentic restaurant experience. Overall our execution of the intervention was successful as not only was our transformation of the art room complete in that we changed the purpose of the space from a work space to an entertainment space, our intervention also encouraged audience participation and engagement with their surroundings.

Brainstorm – Combinations and Alliances

After exploring different artistic techniques such as the ability to work in 3D and exploring the relationship between the figure and space, our art class focused in on the exam board’s brief by creating a room-sized brainstorm of all our different ideas. As the theme for this project was ‘Combinations and Alliances’, my classmates came up with some key buzzwords: cultures, community, marriage, protest, politics and war. Within marriage, politics and community, I was particularly interested in exploring the idea of alliances between different or hostile parties. I was also engaged by the idea of protest as a means of creating or destroying alliances and this theme proved a popular one amongst my classmates. In order to clarify the links between themes and visually illustrate our thought process, we used arrows, post-it notes and coloured string to link our ideas together in a giant complex web. To generate more ideas, we also all drew personal responses to each of the buzz words we had come up with and this was especially helpful as we were able to see the already different directions many people were heading in from the same concept.

Blue-tac figure

After the workshop with the matches, I was inspired to continue exploring the idea of the figure in space in a narrative context. Much like the story I created in the match stick set up, I decided to use stop motion animation to lend an inanimate object personality and energy. As I experimented with stop motion animation earlier in the project (I created a short film using matchsticks) I tried to be more ambitious with this attempt. As the blue tac was a lot easier to handle than the match sticks and much easier to manipulate, I found that I could create a longer animation which depicted a moving object with a lot more energy. I was pleased with this attempt and thought that the film successfully displayed a narrative, albeit a very simple and fairly one dimensional narrative (the blue tac man rises out of a ball of clay, does a somersault and then descends back into an amorphous ball). 

Evaluation

At the start of my project, I was fascinated by the relationship between art and madness and pursued this line of thought by visiting the Beyond the Moulin Rouge exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. This exhibition was vital to the development of my project as seeing Lautrec’s energetic paintings and his depiction of movement and the human form I became interested in the idea of distortion. Inspired by Lautrec’s fascination with the Moulin Rouge dancer, Jane Avril (her frenzied, jerky movements were a result of her treatment at the Salpetriere Hospital for the insane) I also became increasingly interested in exploring the contrast between appearances and unsettling reality. Visiting the exhibition and being inspired by Lautrec’s work and life, I realised the importance of making visual connections with artists and visually demonstrating how their work has influenced my project. This is why I took a series of photographs which channelled the aesthetic of the photographs of medical examinations I had seen in the exhibition and then worked into them with white acrylic paint and black ink in order to evoke the sketchy, energetic nature of Lautrec’s brush strokes. Noticing the visual similarities between Avril’s contorted poses and the work of Robert Longo I used tracing paper to emphasise the aspect of the painting that interested me, which was the figures contorted, tensed pose. Using tracing paper, black ink, pen and white paint I also experimented with using a new layering technique to visually respond to a photograph of women at the Salpetriere Hospital; I was initially attracted to the image because of the ghostly quality of the women’s faces and used this layering technique to exaggerate this aspect of the photograph. This experiment and others in response to the exhibition were of crucial importance as they generated ideas which subsequently dictated the direction of my project. Furthermore my research on Lautrec directly inspired my subsequent exploration of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele; the sketchy nature of both artist’ work evoked Lautrec’s energetic brushstrokes and Schiele’s unsettling, disturbing self-portraits particularly related to the theme of distortion. When researching these two artists I demonstrated the visual connections between Klimt and Schiele’s work with that of Lautrec’s in order to clarify my artistic journey. Furthermore as with my previous artist page, I used a camera as a means of documenting my responses to Klimt and Schiele’s works; as well as taking several self portraits in the style of Schiele’s, I also took photographs of my family which I then collaged together in response to Klimt’s paintings.

This double page was also critical to the direction of my project as following on from my research on Schiele I became increasingly interested in portraiture and attended the Taylor Wessing photographic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in order to extend my exploration of this theme. Although the photography exhibition and with its eclectic range of portraits failed to ignite my interest as much as previous exhibitions had, it proved important as it showed I had looked at the work of photographers working in the 21^st century as opposed to European painters of turn of the century Europe.  Moreover, the exhibition was an important stepping stone for further colour experimentation as I took a series of portrait photos in response and then created a colour study from one of these images. In fact, this exhibition also fuelled my interest in portrait photography and I attended Don McCullin’s ‘Shaped by War’ exhibition at the Imperial War Museum to extend my exploration of high contrast portraiture. McCullin’s grainy black and white photographs inspired me to work into my last set of portrait photographs, which I photocopied and worked into with ink in order to evoke the dramatic quality of McCullin’s images. I also experimented with using white gouache paint on black paper and created an observational response to one of my photographs using this technique which was inspired by McCullin’s work. As a result of these experiments as well as several sketches I made of paintings that were particularly relevant to the theme of distortion and appearances contrasted with reality, I think that my artist research pages successfully present a clear visual journey and demonstrate my fascination with distortion, portraiture and the contrast between appearances and reality.

In the next stage of my project I began developing my exploration of distortion took several photos of bones as I thought they were visually evocative of Schiele’s skeletal, disturbing depictions of the human form. After creating an observational drawing from one of these photos, I photocopied an image of bones on a plate and used tracing paper and black ink to combine the two images to create a completely new composition. As I had worked in paint up until this point, I also began experimenting with line drawing and still using the image of the bone, I created a two minute line drawing in biro. To extend my experimentation further I then used a photocopy of the image to create a continuous line drawing on the sewing machine; this exercise encouraged me to continue experimenting with working in different media as the image on the sewing machine was successfully channelled my interest in line and form. As a result I also created a continuous line drawing using thin wire; this experiment was also successful and was equally visually evocative of Schiele’s sketches. Inspired to continue using different media, I looked at Picasso’s light drawings and replicated his use of light to create continuous line drawings. In order to ensure that my project remained consistent and showed a clear development of ideas, I used the light drawing technique to distort and obscure my face, thereby creating self-portraits which reflected my interest in portraiture and also my experimentation with line drawing.

After playing with different ways of depicting form and using line to distort the face, I created a focused pencil drawing of a bone to show I was capable of using a more focused technique as well as a looser style. However as I was eager to continue playing with new materials, I used paper folding techniques to distort the pencil image and create an entirely new composition. I also flattened the model out and used the geometric folding pattern as a template for a small colour study in neutral tones. Finding this paper folding technique produced interesting results I continued exploring different ways of distorting images using geometric patterns; George Condo’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which featured portraits in which the subjects face appears contorted and angular, further fuelled my interest in distortion and I was able to apply the paper folding techniques I had learnt in the previous exercise to my responses to Condo’s work. 

After exploring several different avenues within the themes of distortion and portraiture, I began developing ideas for a final piece. In order to progress my ideas further and make sure I produced a final piece that was both consistent with my project so far and that was interesting compositionally, I looked at the work of artist Sarah Van Beek. Her unique 3D collage technique inspired me to create my own collage of images; by setting up a web of thread across my staircase and then attaching images to the structure I was able to replicate Van Beek’s technique as the images appeared to be floating in mid air and thus created a foreground, middle ground and background. To extend my visual response to Van Beek’s work I also collaged together sections of the photographs I had taken of my installation; these two collage experiments were compositionally successful and enabled me to explore themes of portraiture and distortion alongside each other. Thus Van Beek’s work significantly contributed to the development of my final piece as it was from the 3D collage installation that I began developing my thumbnails. From the three collages I made in response to her work, I continued to use tracing paper, fine liner and paint to refine the images in order to stimulate ideas for a visually exciting and relevant final piece.  As I enjoyed the collage exercise so much, I also took another set of photographs in which I played around with the idea of collages, however instead of creating a paper collage, I stuck the end section of an image of a bone to my mum’s face. In these photos, I intended the bone to appear as though it was part of the face, however due to the quality of the paper, it is clear in the photos that the bone is a separate object to the face. Despite this, these experiments generated more ideas and I was inspired to use the concept of a bone emerging from beneath the skin as an image for my final piece. Developing on from this idea, I photocopied the observational drawing of the bone I created earlier in the project and stuck sections of this image onto black and white photocopies of some of my photographic portraits. The effect was visually interesting and achieved the effect I was hoping for – the skin appeared to be stripped away to expose the bone – and these experiments also combined techniques I had learnt previously in the project such as sewing into images in order to emphasise facial features. I also continued using the collage technique to arrive at an interesting composition and looked at some of Andy Warhol’s screen prints, which enabled me to incorporate continuous line drawing into my final piece. In fact, because I enjoyed the continuous line drawing exercises so much, I created a small scale etching of a bone to print on top of these collages; this etching was particularly evocative of the line drawing techniques (such as using thread and wire to depict the form of a bone) I explored earlier in my project.

As a result of my collage experiments, I arrived at a thumbnail image I was happy to develop into a final piece. The composition of this image combined all of the themes I had been looking at so far in my project; not only did my observational drawing of a bone feature as the central anchor of the image, the thumbnail also included four prominent faces around the edge of the bone. Therefore the image successfully united my interests in portraiture as well as themes of ugliness and distortion. After creating a colour thumbnail from the brief collage I had created, the image also evoked the artists I had looked at earlier in my project, especially Klimt and Schiele although the image also strongly resonated with Sarah Van Beek’s 3D collage work.