Rosey, Skiving! BT

Rosey went off to Antarctica today, with luck she'll be able to keep her blog going occasionally so we can see what she's up to. Looking forward to seeing some pics. Have Fun!
I spent yesterday evening & this morning taking a break from art, just pottering with L&A. Have to hand it all in tomorrow.
Another BT I should have posted earlier in the week, my class-mate Marco came hunting for me on Mon as he wanted me to try the spicy iced biscuits he'd made over the w/e. Yum, thanks!

Rock, Gem'n'Bead Show

Laura took me to this, which is on today & tomorrow at Kempton Park. 

As well as the usual Aladdin's cave of semi-precious beads there's a museum of fossils & crystals. Their weird shapes and colours, are fascinating, especially the extraordinarily mathematical looking bismuth crystals.

There was a spiky variety of trilobite which was tempting. I bought a few (more) crystals to take photos of, & see what I can do with the way they handle light, as part of a photographic project. I'll post the results presently.

Assessment week next week, so much still to do. The official blog came as a bit of a surprise as  none of us had read  through all the course notes in advance, so when the last day came we found we should have done it from the start, and had to do it all over the weekend as by pot-luck the IT workshop was the very last thing our group did!
L&A both here tonight for early girly Halloween of film, nibblies & last bottle of bubbles left from my birthday.

29:1st triumph over Mac! New blog, Haiku 33-36

 I think I'm beginning to beat the Macs into submission! We have to set up a WordPress blog so our tutors & classmates can follow our progress. It means recording everything here, there, in our studio sketchbooks and reflective journals as well as any finished masterpieces needing to be handed in. I can now make them write what I ask and record and save pictures & film from the internet.

The address is:

http://60pix.wordpress.com/

I've also written a few more haiku, I've been so busy I'd nearly forgotten everything else.

33

leaves rip’ning from green

gold danish apricot jam

edible autumn

34

trees rip’ning gold red

feastybright autumn spectrum

wind eats them naked

35

mellow fruitfulness

rainbow berried bird harvest

bone aching dampcold

36

oldcoldgold sunrays

brown red green tiffany leaves

hibernating trees

life drawing, more artists!

Moderately successful life drawing, Steve, the very helpful & positive tutor said nice things about my efforts, then sent us off to "just research three of these artists & write about their techniques with illustrations, and how it is relevant to your work..." ready to be handed in on Monday with the rest of our work! In fact, several really inspiring ones,Alberto Giacometti, Gary Hume & Dryden Goodwin. I need to go back to the last one for his film work, but the pencil portraits is what we need to study at the moment.

animation, drawings

Our animation is now on youtube, thanks Bess!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsMWySa5qMc 

 Eat your heart out Aardman!

I also feel brave enough to show some of my drawings, these are my takes on other people we've been studying.
Milton Glaser is familiar to lots of people for his image of Dylan. Some of you might recognise the profiles.

The others are from finalists in the Jerwood prize, we have to study 5 of them, Iain Andrews did a series of purple ink&wash drawings from Tolkien, they're full of wonderful detail, quirky buildings and people, with a range of fantastical beasts. I'd love him to publish a book of the full stories. Mine is ink on birch bark, the natural material seemed to fit the strange world

These are in the style of Lottie Jackson-Eales, a recent graduate of my own Art school, sadly she's a bit better than me, but the perfect style for me to try.

28, spot welding! book report.

At last, another real new thing! We had our workshop induction today, ie Health&Safety talk, then demonstration of all the "toys" in the workshop, saws for cutting twiddly bits, giant drills, vacuum-machines for shaping plastic, a 3-rollered mangle for bending steel and of course the spot-welder. We then had just 2 hours to play, designing & making a clock-face. The good thing is that we can now use the workshop to make anything we like related to our studies.
It's not perfect, but here's my clock, remember 2hours only from design to finish, so ignore the rough edges.

I've also had another report on one of my books (5th July) it's been doing the coast-to-coast with anon! Good Luck

"We Have Normality" Decision

After fretting over what to do for the rest of the year, I've finally decided on "Moving Image & Photography" which was my original plan until I was enthralled by visual communication. I think photography will give me more to do in the next few years, & I was fascinated by the brief adventure in animation.
We went to the Lake District at the weekend, the "normality" of trudging up mountains in zero visibility cloud & 50mph gales was a bit of a novelty after all the new stuff I've done. It was, in fact a very good couple of days.

Disappearing days. Animation.

This refers to the darkening evenings as well as the terrifying speed with which our first assessment deadlines are looming, less than 2 weeks for essay plan, & having read more carefully the brief for next week I find we have to do a "proper" blog, with a specific format, including all the work we've done and some artists in each field. This is our last rotation so it needs to be done in one hit before the dreaded assessment, rather than as we go on through the others. This week's been moving image & photography, have to animate a small film in groups, less then 2 mins but takes all week to do. I'll report back on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsMWySa5qMc 

 

 

Harvest! 2 more artists.

It occurred to me that I'd been so tied up with arty stuff I'd ignored the leafy babies; at last we have a huge torrent of tomatoes, cherry, beefsteak & purple ones, as well as peppers.

There's also been a trickle of edible Physalis, more decorative then nutritious, but quite tasty.

For the arty amongst you, can I suggest you look at Fred Baier for his wonderful furniture, a mixture of complex 3D geometry for the geeks with textures and colours to commit murder for!
http://www.fredbaier.com/index.php
The other one I've recently re-discovered is Thomas Heatherwick & his seed Cathedral, there was a display about it at Kew a couple of years ago, I was blown away by it then, & he recently came up in 3DDesign for his magical bridge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq_GVcApKDQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCDReIX88FA
Have a look at them both, you'll be delighted.

building!

The end of another week, where on earth has it gone? 3D Design was enormous fun to work on, but the end product was not so good. A rather untidy card model of a modular building kit, squares to clip together into a range of buildings.Given a few weeks & lots of money to make them from plastic in many colours  it would have been good. I think I should have stayed with my original idea of a trebuchet! Paperwork & stuff more or less up to date, off to M&R tomorrow, Dr Rosey's off to Antarctica for 18/12, I'm so envious! I hope she manages to keep us informed about it all.

3DD

3D Design this week, I wasn't really sure what to expect. We have to come up with a flock of ideas for something to be built in a 55x40x20cm suitcase, which then expands out and does something! All sorts of ideas from inflatable chair, collapsible trebuchet to my final choice, a modular play-house, made from 39cm squares, with 1/2 & 1/4 pieces. In real life it would be coloured plastic, the model will be cardboard. I'll do diagrams to show the possibilities, it can be a house, tunnel, fort, boat, castle, & possibly many other things. A fun project so far.

garden, drawing.

Half a day off, doing the lawn and bringing in the tender plants. Always means Christmas is creeping up, & weather creeping down: dark evenings soon! I hope everyone has simple wish-lists. I've finished my research projects, but no good ideas on the essay yet, have to compare & contrast two artists, no other clues!
Spent this afternoon drawing, seem to be improving a little, not Leonardo yet.

Knitting show

A must for anyone remotely interested in the arty side of needlecrafts, the whole place is full of vibrating colours, buzzing artists, more materials than I could imagine using and ideas from enthusiasts to last a lifetime or two. I chatted to many people, including Ruth Lee, who's the subject of my research project on textiles. I discovered her as a knitter, but she now does prints on fine fabrics, some like the first are multi-layered.

Here are some more of the treasure trove:

I love the way the embroidery spills onto the surround, the mixed textures and the felt sky.

The witch was almost unique in being fun rather than beautiful.

 This one is hand made lace, she's been doing it for 35 years!

I have to try this, mixed photographs with mixed media, felt embroidery and all sorts.

And finally, a ball gown for the more-adventurous-than-I

"Fashion" 23

I can't believe Amy was 23 yesterday! We had supper at her house, it looks wonderful now, well worth all the work.
Where's the week gone?
Finished fashion&textiles, our brief was to design a body adornment (i.e. garment/decoration/protection) for 10,000 years after an apocalyptic event on the earth. As always some of my classmates came up with stunning designs, I had a problem being bizarre enough. Eventually came up with armour plated pointy-fishy-scale tunic with a foil head-dress and shoulder protectors. My scenario was that aliens had nuked the sun, so the explosion blew away our ionosphere, so we had to be protected from the violent electromagnetic radiation. We also needed protection from the aliens who were exporting us for slaves, and using us as an organic power source...
What next?

Real peppers! Brainwork.

Just finished the first 3 of the 5 research-into-artists files, I find it hard to comment sensibly on the quality of a bit of art, and its place in the greater scheme of things, but have found some useful & fascinating things. Look at Susan Derges & her fascinating photographic art-crossover-with-science at http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/derges/guide.htm
I'd love to try some of this, but developing 7 foot long Cibachromes might be a problem. I have, however just ordered some cyanotype paper from Amazon. That's the stuff that develops itself just with light & water, it's a start to play with. No doubt L&A will want to "borrow" some.
Finally after inspecting them every day, 2 peppers are ripe&succulent. I'll have more in time for A's birthday supper on Wednesday.

Looks yummy doesn't it!
All jobs done now, so settling down to some hands mucky type art.