Chosen Silhouettes and Values

I think I've been getting the end of year blues, I've been spending so much time thinking about graduating and what is going to happen after I leave uni that it's been setting me back as far as my creativity goes. I had a look through my silhouettes and I've decided which I would be taking forward to the next stage which is Values. These are my chosen 9 (three for each character)

And here are the values, I am in so much love with how they all turned out especially with how bummed out I've been feeling in regard to creating, the Pear of Anguish in particular I feel is the strongest and I am adoring how her costume came out in the values! I often feel my values are really messy in comparison to other peoples but for the kind of style I want to use it works really well. One of my biggest hurdles is to stop comparing myself to other people and their work ... I have to just keep believing in myself and it will all come out right!

A few more silhouettes!

The feedback I got about my silhouettes was "Although meant to be quick, silhouettes need to be more considered and contain deeper thought into the choice of shape / form intended for further development." so I thought I would have a little bit more of a play with them, this will also loosen me up and get a few conceived ideas out of my head.

I also wanted to explore shapes more and found Alchemy is one of the best ways to do it, I always struggle to do silhouettes in Photoshop as all my silhouettes end up very human and stick man-like. Alchemy give me that certain inhuman shape I am looking for with these torture device characters.

There were the results.

I wanted a little more of a rounder shape for some as the Pear of Anguish has the curvy bell shape to it and because it is also a very benign device, it doesn't look threatening. The Rat Torture and Iron Maiden are a little more harsh because of the nature of the devices, I went with more spiky shapes and more square because for the Iron Maiden its a bulky object and must be represented as such visually, the spikes because of the inside of the Iron Maiden. The rat torture also features spikes to represent the bucket that held the rats, these can be developed further in Photoshop to make them bigger when I do my values and colours.

I'm not sure if I want to do any more with the silhouettes, I got a lot of nice shapes here and I need to stop being so obsessive with them, Nigel said do hundreds but I honestly don't think I can.

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In anatomy we've started adding leg muscles, it's really progressing quite nicely. It's so fascinating watching it all come together! I'm still rusty with all the technical names, but I can start to recognise particular muscle groups during weekly bouts of watching wrestling so it must be impacting me somewhere!

Starting the creative journey.

I seem to get along with doing these weekly posts, as two week events, especially at the moment with life being so hectic. In the few weeks coming I will attempt to make time and sit myself down and get something done. In this regard I am my own worst enemy with forcing my brain to sit and just write.

So ahead with the post, sipping a cool glass of OJ I sat and looked through my research images and I can totally agree with the feedback I got from Nigel, there is just so much, so many images! The start of this creative journey can only begin with a clean out and a reshuffle. I need to select a few relevant images for each torture device and each inspiring image. So out of like 300 images I will get around 40/50 in total, still a lot but I do like to have a selection. I am aiming to have just enough to start my Silhouettes and values,

Pear of Anguish: Anjou

Iron Maiden: Claustrum

Rat Torture: Bubónica

A mostly anatomy post 1

This summary is the culmination of the past three weeks, as with year 2 I chose an unfortunate time to move house (at least this time it's not on hand in day!), recent events have kind of forced me to change my dwelling as this current house has been affecting my ability to work, and my mental state hasn't been great here. As such all the stress from finding a place to now moving has really affected my ability to start working. Not trying to make excuses but it is what it is.

For the past three weeks I have been attending the newly put on anatomy classes and lectures with new tutor Ron Spriggs who I have to say is an amazingly patient and knowledgeable tutor, we are building a model comprised of wax, it's been a challenge as the wax isn't the easiest material to use, I have used wax before but this was a very different type of wax that goes cold very quickly so you have to be on the ball with it (and have very warm hands!)

Here is my progress so far:

It's been great to be actually doing something in uni apart from life drawing, I feel like I'm learning a lot from these sessions and makes me feel like how it was back during the easy years of Year 1. The biggest challenge here was overcoming my squeamishness (I still get a little scared of pictures of muscles oh dear!) This series of lectures and workshops will really help me understand the body and how to draw it, I normally don't really think about this sort of thing when I draw but now I have a better understanding of what the body looks like I feel my drawing will improve and will vastly change how well I draw my final images for this project.

As far as Project work goes I haven't really done a lot with it, again the stress of moving has really drained me of ideas and the only topic in my brain is moving. Hopefully with the actual moving date coming up my motivation will return. For now I will look back on my previous work and documents for BA3a and get some ideas on where to go next, I have emailed my tutor Nigel and await for some more ideas and feedback.

Creating a website.

For the final task of year 3 we were instructed to create an online portfolio to get ourselves out there and show our work to the world. I already had an online portfolio via carbonmade but I wanted to create a website anyway. I had heard about wix through a few people at uni, currently it is just a free one but as time goes by I will definitely be upgrading when money allows.

Online I've always gone with the title Hazel's Hive, because of my hivelike mind and I consider my online space as a honeycomb for my art to live in (don't ask) I'm really enjoying the amount of customisation with this site. I will change the design in the future running with the theme of honeycombs but for now it gets my work online.

I connected the website up with this blog, and my linkedIn page, as I work more on it I will add a personal art facebook page and a personal twitter page, I've not gotten into twitter yet better late than never!

http://hazelshive.wix.com/hazelpageart

https://meshlabeviin.carbonmade.com/

Starting BA3b (not BA8)

Well it's been awhile since my last post. BA3a was a massive challenge for me with many ups and downs so I'll keep my recap of this brief ... I was very happy with the results from my dissertation, my mark for that was 70% this was a real achievement for me as I'd never really done much as far as my essays go, so I was happy about that. My results overall for this project was 56% this was a step up from the 50% I got last time so I was relieved about that but I couldn't help feeling I'd failed with the amount of effort I had put into the work. I understand and appreciate where I messed up though and the feedback was very helpful so I will be able to put that towards this project and hopefully my grade will increase as I put this into practise.

We now begin our next phase of this project. The next unit of work is called "UNIT BA3b: Resolution and Innovation" basically, we've done all the research now we just have to expand on that and create the work.

Self Evaluation.

Today is hand in day and marks the end of BA3a ... sad times! Any research that is missing from this blog is now inside of the Research and Design documents I will submit as this research will be clearer and in order.

Now for my own self evaluation of how I handled this project and the tasks.

Self-Evaluation.

I was very happy with my project work. I love the nature of my project and for the first time at university and am really happy with how the project is going, being able to be true to myself after my failure in Year 2 really fills me with so much promise as I take this work into the next stage. I also discovered that I could overcome my own phobias, having to expose myself to the things that scared me the most made me feel braver, I have a feeling this bravery will carry through into my designs. Being able to let myself go has done wonders for my skills and how I react to having to do work.

As always, I let time get the better of me, start of term went very slow, the lack of guidance and lessons this term has made me slow up in terms of work production. I also underestimated how fast time had gone even though it felt like it was going slowly. By the time I realised this it was almost too late, though this is something I will take through with me to BA3b. I will be stronger with myself and not allow myself to be distracted by frivolous activities.

I really let myself down with the tasks, I started out with a lot of interest in them, but as the weeks went on I didn't consider them as important as my main project, even though I still feel like they aren't and I felt that I was not allowing myself to fully engage with the main project (as there were all these little tasks breaking into my thought process). Though I did end up loving the pieces I created, especially the Treehouse and the Insect.

For the first time with any project I really felt I had improved with my essay writing, and for once, I finished my essay long before anything else, I found having a project that ran alongside the essay was one of the reasons I felt more interested in it, and also I was writing about a topic that really interested me which also helped.

If there would be anything I would have changed about this project, I would have gone to more life drawing sessions as, due to timetabling, our group missed a fair few, I myself only getting to one of them. Next term I will actively attend more sessions and will explore more into colour on black. I would also look to sticking to my timetable more. Having the timetable was very handy but as normal I leave it in a folder on my computer and generally forget about it. Next term I will probably have a copy stuck on a wall by my computer to always have it visible.

Overall I feel this has been a good learning curve. For me this was one of the hardest projects, juggling this project with side tasks for the first time, alongside bouts of insomnia and newfound anxiety attacks defiantly made it a difficult time. But I feel stronger having come out the other end with a strong project to carry through to BA3b.