FINAL EVALUATION

'Analyse the requirements and parameters of an art and design project.' To start off my project I took primary research in the form of Photographs, drawings and a couple of notes at the Pitt Rivers and Natural History Museum. Before going, I looked into the range of artifacts they had on show there so that I knew what I’d be more interested in and spend more time looking at those. That was a good idea because we only had two hours in both museums so time was quite limited. It takes me a while to draw sketches so I did end up missing on some of the exhibits.

Magic charms

I documented this trip’s outcome on my blog, presenting photos alongside my sketches with notes.
Looking back now, I think that I did not write nearly enough about the trip and my thoughts from it. Next time, I will try to write a lot more of my thoughts down because I think that I forgot / moved on from quite a lot of the immediate thoughts I had from Pitt Rivers by the time I got round to writing my blog two weeks later. My mind had already started to process and develop my project ideas. I think that I do this too much and hold off from writing things until I have reached the next stage of a project and definitely need to remember to write my immediate thoughts down more. Maybe I need a small ‘thoughts journal’ ?

My chosen theme inspired by the Pitt Rivers Museum was the afterlife. I considered other project ideas such as magic or the way different cultures’ art represent themselves. I decided simply choosing magic would be too simple and that exploring the relationship between culture and art using art would be really quite difficult to visualise. I chose the afterlife because it still seemed challenging for myself because it is literally impossible to imagine but has a rich cultural history. Now that I am close to the end of this project, I can confirm that it has certainly been challenging . With hindsight, magic still could have been a good theme because it is also culturally rich and I am very fond of wizards, energy and superpowers. I will definitely do a project on magic at some point in my life.

Analyse a range of research sources to support an art and design project.

I think that I definitely managed to find a range of sources to research. After writing my project proposal I started to look at religious painting depicting heaven, hell and purgatory, I also looked at John Martin because I knew that some of his paintings were inspired by heaven, hell and the bible. I carried out this research online by googling and following links, then googling some more. Some of our teachers seem quite cynical of this method of research and I understand why; because information can be wrong or falsely given and a written book is curated by a professional author. But where online research lacks in certifiability it doubly has ‘explorability’- one link leads to another which leads to another, research is active and self-led in the direction you’re interested in rather than being confined to the order of information the Author wants to give to you.

When I do research online, I make a Pinterest page and slowly fill it up with images I have found. I think that it is a great way to compile visual research on the fly. I did this for the afterlife project (www.pinterest.com/dominicewan).

But my research wasn’t just online, I took out four hefty books from the college library. All of the books were relevant to my project and definitely contained images that would not be online/I would not come across.
I scanned quite a few pages of the books and kept them on my USB stick. Some of these scans are on my blog.
I then did further research online from some of these books. I found websites dedicated to various ancient cultures including the Romans, Greek and Egyptians.
These websites had pages dedicated to beliefs on the afterlife and were rich in imagery and text which I found very useful and inspiring. I quoted one of these sites on my blog and linked to them. I also added them to my bibliography.

Later on, after talking to a couple of teachers, they gave me various artists to look into including Gustav Dore, who illustrated Dante’s Divine comedy and Damien Hirst’s pieces about death. I did quite a lot of research into Dante’s divine comedy, mostly on a very good website dedicated to it. I read and looked at various artists interpretations of the epic poem. Once again, I saved images from the site to my Pinterest with the intention to write a blog about it. I have not written this blog post yet, though, and definitely need to do it because it inspired part of my work. My problem is that I did so much research that I want to write about but it is so much to write about and on top of that I have to show how it inspired me and give my critical opinion on the work. That is a lot to write and try to evidence.

I posted a blog post using images I’d collected on my Pinterest (http://dominicewan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/traditional-art-researchthe-destruction.html)  and a blog post purely about research about skulls (http://dominicewan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/skulls.html) . When I write my blogs, I go out and do further research so that I can provide more information about the images I show but this can inspire me further and then I feel that I need to write another post about that.
It is also hard to cram all the visual research into a blog and to properly do it justice by discussing it all. Quite often I can do research and nothing actually comes of it so it is not relevant to my project.
I’m not entirely sure what I can do to improve this, though. Maybe more written notes could be the answer to my problem here, too?

Interpret research activity to develop ideas and creative proposals

Quite often I will make drawings similar to or inspired by research images and then try to put them next to one another on my blog to show how I interpreted the research. On every single one of my blogposts for this project I have included a research image next to what it inspired:
A pitt River’s skull next to a photograph of my finished ceramic skull; an etching from the 1300s next to my illustrated hell money and some asian hell notes and an oil painting by John martin next to an ink marbling of mine.
I think that this is a good way of showing my inspiration but still doesn’t evidence the full extent of my inspiration well enough.

So to try and display my development of ideas fully, I am currently making a digital collage of my illustrations and work juxtaposed to their inspiration. The ‘Inspiration map’ shows how interconnected my research is and visualises how my work often bridges between multiple points of research inspiration. I am making this inspiration map because of a personal self assessment where I sat down and asked myself how I could evidence my inspiration better. I remembered a moodboard that I made last term which showed how my work interacted with research through colour and thought a variation on that would work well for this project, too. I definitely find things a lot easier when they are visual so visualising my inspiration and work together helps me process and understand it. I struggle with evidencing anyway because a lot of my inspiration and thoughts can be subconscious from all the art I’ve absorbed throughout my life and mentally processed and disseminated already. Inspiration can come from something you’ve seen years ago.

One of my inspirations was the idea of an explorer’s journal but I really struggled to find any images or archives of the diaries of tomb explorers or things like that. This idea still inspired the book that I am making for my final piece but I couldn’t find any relevant visual research. Demonstrate the ability to plan, organise and develop an art and design project

In some of my blogposts, I assess how I feel I have done relative to my time plan that I made at the beginning of this project. I would then discuss what I want to do next in my project to develop it further, here are some examples:

‘I intend on combining these two images next week.’
‘I am considering making some of my own death money to take to the grave’ ‘I think this week has gone well, I feel I've been pursuing research and developing ideas with notes and sketches rather well. Next week I'd like to make a series of ink drawings on marbled paper and I would like to produce some Underworld currency.’

I kept my plan quite vague because I didn’t want to box myself in and wanted to let my research lead my project more than last term but I think that I should have written about this more on my blog. Last term I made a ‘How is it all going’ post all about where I’d come from, and where I felt like taking my project. Ideas are a lot more solid four weeks into a project so maybe writing a plan for the end could direct me more.

Overall, I feel that I planned my time pretty well but could definitely do better. One problem that I’ve found is that simply everything takes longer than you’d ever think. Writing just this self evaluation has taken me hours and thinking takes just as much time.

Apply practical skills and theoretical knowledge and understanding to complete an art and design project within an agreed timeframe. There are three practical skills I’ve used a lot and developed this term; Ink pen illustration, paper marbling and ceramics.
I used the ink pen a lot because quite a lot of my visual research was old ink illustrations and etchings which use cross hatching a lot to display shade/value. I definitely feel more comfortable and competent with an ink pen now after using it for a few weeks and attempting to emulate the style of other illustrators.
I was introduced to paper marbling in the first week because another student was using it and I thought it looked very cool. After trying it a few times I saw the potential the technique had and tried quite a lot of experiments with the technique in colour and style to represent different things. In my work you can see how I use fiery colours in the marbling for hell, very subdued and well mixed for purgatory and bright, contrasting colours swirled about for heaven. I think that the technique feeds into my project well and I discuss this on my blog: ‘The idea of floating about in an unfamiliar place seems quite common and is a recurring feature of near death experiences... I felt that the ambiguous swirling shapes represented the inconceivability of a reality beyond death. The bold, bright colours feel rather dream-like, too.’
Finally, I used ceramics to produce a life size skull. I posted a blog post dedicated to this where I go through the process over the course of five weeks. I also discuss the development of ideas, the adaptation of plans and provide a final evaluation.

Overall, I feel that it was a good idea to mainly just stick to a handful of techniques, it gives your project a good basis, especially when your final outcome is changeable. I would have liked to have done more etching as it is relevant to my research but Thursday was the Ceramics and Printing day and I spent every Thursday in Ceramics. You need more than just 3 hours a week to make something decent in ceramics.

Critically evaluate an art and design project against the agreed requirements and parameters.

In my college feedback, I’ve been told that self evaluation is my weakest point. That is why I’ve tried to write so much on this sheet.
I think the reason I don’t do much of it is because formal written evaluation takes an age to evidence. Real evaluation is when your classmate comes over because they’re bored and you have a chat together about how you feel you’re doing on your project- what’s working and what’s not. I’m constantly doing this either with a mate or in my own head and that kinda makes it difficult to document. This is why a Thought Journal could be good if I remember to get it out and write into it.
I’ve found that I act directly from my thoughts often and don’t like digressing and sitting down to write about something rather than just doing it.
Often when I evaluate myself, I Identify what I need to do more of. The trouble is that it takes time to do more of something. It then takes time to properly evidence what you did and then even more time to assess that and then you have to evidence the  assessment.
Everything takes so much time and for me it’s often typed evaluation that I end up neglecting.

I have not critically evaluated my final outcome against my proposal and plan but intend on making a final overall self review on my blog like Andy has suggested.

Journals, grimoires and spellbooks

Books have inspired me quite a lot this project. I liked the idea of dusty old magic books containing secrets of the afterlife.
Right at the beginning of this project I was reminded of a comic I really liked that was relevant; 'After you die' by artist and comedian, Ramin Nazer.
The book is bright and cartoonish. It illustrates a variety of more surreal concepts of what happens after you die;
 
You can see the rest here. I really like how the artist used the same general layout for each page but customised the typography for each. I feel he visually communicated these concepts very well while maintaining a simple and friendly style.

This comic put the idea of making an illustrated book in my head. I really like the weirder concepts put forward in this book but did not cover any of them in my own project. If I did this project again I'd definitely like to illustrate my own perspective on the concepts put forward here.


The next thought I had from the idea of making a book was inspired by my research into the Romans, Egyptian and other ancient cultures. I thought about explorers' journals- dusty battered books containing sketches of artifacts, maps of foreign lands and notes of ancient tombs- think Indiana Jones.

I didn't manage to find many explorer's journals, possibly because they haven't been scanned in and published online but I did find the diary of Captain Matthew Liddon, part of the 'Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Performed in the Years 1819-20'
I had the idea of Making a fake journal, presenting my art like it was sketches of ancient artifacts and my notes written like I was an explorer in the 19th century. I didn't go through with this but I really liked the idea.

Captain Liddon's Journal of the voyage     >









The last type of books I looked at were Grimoires- magical textbooks which 'typically include instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination and also how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, and demons. In many cases, the books themselves are also believed to be imbued with magical powers'. There are real Grimoires from many different cultures dating all the way back to the Sumerians in 3000 BC. Famous books of magic include The Book of Enoch, The Black Pullet and The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.

Once again, I really liked the idea of making my own Grimoire with illustrations, a made up language and some nice cover art. This has actually been done already by quite a few gothic and occult fantasy authors including H.P. Lovecraft who created the infamous Necronomicon.

The Necronomicon is now a pop-culture book and has been featured in books, films and has been parodied many times. H.R. Giger made his own grotesque version full of mutilated robot angel women and mutated sacrifices. You can find that book in the college library!
I was interested in the meaning of 'Necronomicon' and looked it up. Turns out that it's the words Nekros- Death, Nomos- Name and Ikon- Image merged together meaning 'image of the names of the dead'
I decided to look up relevant words to my project in Latin and Ancient Greek:

I found it very interesting to see how a lot of our English words simply come from Latin.
I used the phrase 'Exanimus Expensum' on the money that I made and wanted to find a name for the book I was going to make. I think that 'Aither Ephemeris', translating to 'Heaven Journal' could be a cool name.

Now that I had a name and quite a lot of inspiration, I actually needed to make this book!
My first thought was to make my own book. My sister has done this before and my friend, Minnie is skilled in book binding too but I decided that that was going to be too time consuming for this project.
So I decided to take an A3 sketchbook I have for college and cut it in half using a bandsaw!
A3 was too big for me and I think that the edges of the sketchbook that were cut look very cool and has frayed the black fabric covering a little.
In my mind, I wanted my book to have a golden design on the cover, like the necronomicon pictured above and I wanted marbled paper edges to tie in with my project.
So I did exactly that!
By dipping the edges of the book in ink, I successfully marbled them, producing a great effect.
A classmate then gave me some of their bronze acrylic. I painted a few demo designs on black paper then just went for it:

I'm very pleased with how this turned out and feel that it looks really interesting. The lack of writing makes people want to look inside and find out what it's about.
Inside, the book is comprised of about 12 sections; Intro page, Imagery, Judgement, Burial, Tombs, Skulls, Currency, Ceremonial skull, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven and Altars.
It contains a lot of my own work alongside photocopies and printed out research images.
I tried to present everything like a journal or scrapbook, pertaining to my earlier research and thoughts.






































The book still has gaps in parts and is missing some things which I would like to do something about but I don't have the time to do that. I made this about a week and a half before the deadline for this project but have reminded myself that I have written all of these blog posts as well as making the money and ceramic skull so I've made quite a lot! That it why I'm not being too harsh on myself over this book.
Overall, though, I am very happy with my outcome. I think I've presented the book nicely and it was almost completely inspired by a variety of research done for the project which I feel I have done justice.

Inspiration map

CLICK HERE FOR READABLE VERSION.

When writing my self evaluation, I identified my evidencing of inspiration as a weak point.
In this project I was inspired by a lot of different things and it all kinda interplayed.
I decided that the best way to show this was to literally visualise it.
So I made this, an 'Inspiration map' which is a cloud of images which are 'interspired' . The ones with red dots are images I've made.

It was a bit hard to work out how to show them all together but I quite like the way I ended up doing it. My sister suggested showing the images in chronological theme specific threads which I thought sounded interesting but did not have the time to do, I might try this next project though.

Ceramic Skull

Right from the beginning of this project I knew that I wanted to make a Skull out of ceramics. I wanted to make something real and holdable like the skulls I'd seen in Pitt Rivers, something kinda believable. This is what I like about making things in 3D, they're physical, real and right in front of you.
So I went to Valerie, the ceramics teacher, and asked her if I could make a skull and how I should go about it. She told me I needed to start with a big lump of clay then slowly carve and mould it down into shape. I worked from a skeleton reference book she had. After a whole day of working I produced this:

Yeah, it doesn't really look like a realistic skull at all..
The proportions are really quite off: The eyesockets are gaping, the nose low down and the whole form is rather flat. This is what happens when you work from a reference image with just two perspectives and work from your imagination a bit too much. Turning a 2D image into a 3D form is pretty hard as I discovered.
In fact, it was that day that I discovered that ceramics is damn hard!
So I squashed it up and gave it another go the week after.
This time, I changed a few things; I borrowed a model skull from college and decided to try and replicate it as closely as possible. This is what I managed after another full day in the ceramics room:

   

I think that I did far better this time! Having a real 3D form to work from clearly helped a lot. At no one point can the clay be thicker than 2cm if you want to fire it so I opted to scoop out the inside then make a lid/the top of the skull but while I was making it I decided against this because I realised the skull would make a great bowl to 'offer' things in. Yes! I could present the hell money that I made in it like an offering in an altar.  I was very happy that I had this idea because it gave me a way unite the ceramic skull and hell money projects which I felt were kinda lacking when presented on their own.

I have an image in my head of setting up a little altar with this skull, the money, candles, flowers and the book I am making for this project. I'd like to make that!.

But before that, I needed to glaze my skull. I looked at various examples around the classroom and decided that a plain glossy white would look nice on the outside of the skull and wanted a golden effect on the inside of the bowl. This is for purely decorative reasons but think that it will look quite bold. Anyway, Plenty of the skulls I saw in the museum had been purely for decorative reasons rather than for specific meaning. For example, this skull of a tribe leader, decorated with macrame'd carved stones:

I glazed the skull last week and it looked like this before going in the Kiln:

The Golden/bronze glaze looks like a matte gray when unfired. It also contains Lead, which is poisonous so I had to wear gloves and be very careful where I got it. It should be done tomorrow and I am very very excited to see this skull. It's been four weeks in the making!

 I am really pleased with how it turned out and I definitely think it passed the 'classmate test'- lots of people wanted to hold it, examine it and play with it which I always think is a great sign. Who wants to make art that people don't want to look at and play with?

I think that the skull presents the money well and love the uneven golden mirroring on the inside. If I was going to make this again, I would consider glazing the inside of the nose and eyes golden as well. I would also make sure the teeth were securely attached because most of the ones on my skull came off when it was drying on the shelf.
Overall, though, I managed to make a skull that I think has a very realistic form and I learnt the most I ever have about ceramics and glazing from making this.
In my final piece, I'd like to present this skull along with candles, flowers and my book, like an altar. I think that the lit candles will reflect amazingly off the skull.
I will go more indepth about my final piece in a later blogpost.

Skulls!

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette- Vincent Van Gogh (1886)

Everybody loves skulls, right? I think they do. Artists love skulls for sure, they are a powerful motif and symbol representing many things including death, decay and the inevitable. Skeletons show what lies beneath every singe one of us.
It was the skulls and skeletons that were on display in the Pitt rivers that particularly interested me and sparked my project on the afterlife.

I wonder what he did to deserve this..
Below: Photographs from Pitt Rivers

Left: Ink drawing from a photograph I took at Pitt Rivers.
Right: observational scratch drawing of a rabbit skull.

                   

Various skulls and skeletons I found inspiring.

Initial drawings and mind map.

I was interested how the skulls of heroes were decorated but the skulls of enemies were bound up or put into torturous positions. The tribes who made these clearly believe that the condition of the skull has an impact on the person who it used to be.

It was then that I realised that a lot of cultures have death rituals and wondered what they are all about or mean.
And that is what started my research. I looked at contemporary illustrators' images of skulls using tumblr and pinterest to see different styles and interpretations. I also paid attention to other motifs used in conjuction with skeletons.

Dead King- Vance Kelly

Skull girl 1- Gaksdesigns

The Grateful dead's logo.

Artwork for the Grateful Dead, whose logo is a 
skull and lightning bolt. Roses and other 
flowers are seen with skulls in art a lot.

Dia de los Muertos, or the 'day of the dead' is a very famous south american festival of the dead. Families gather to remember lost loved ones, share gifts and build private altars to pray to the dead.
I like when flowers are used in conjucnction with skulls because it makes me think of new life. Our bodies rot down into nutrients which is food for worms, maggots and plants. Once we die, our body becomes a small part of many organisms and effectively lives on.
Our bodies are made up of chemicals and energy that have made up millions of other life forms. Ain't that crazy?

''Per Peccatum Mors..  In Omnes Homines Mors Pertransiit'
'death through sin..   death spread amongst all men'
-Alexander Mair 1605

The hell money that I made features two grinning skeletons.
I hope you can see how the image above partially inspired this.

I made this drawing over a marbled piece of paper in the second week and a teacher mentioned that it reminded them of a Damien Hirst installation that features brightly spin-painted skulls. 

Aztec skull in the British museum.

I found This video about Hirst's thought process behind this piece which is very interesting and I feel we share quite a few thoughts on death, especially that it is incomprehensible and thus very hard to picture in your head or communicate. Hirst especially addresses this with his most famous piece; 'The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'. I think that the name explains itself really quite well already. 

It is a Huge shark preserved in formaldehyde. When seen it can trigger quite an immediate fear response before the viewer realises that is is dead. The shark looks so alive, so animated within the tank. Hirst has managed to capture a feeling of life and death within one thing. I'm not surprised this is as famous as it is.

I also made a ceramic skull but that will be covered by a whole other blog post!