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| 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.
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 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.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.
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.
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.
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