More Monoprints

Made in China and the Transform Exhibition

The Transform Exhibition is a ceramics exhibition that is taking place in the L.S.A.D. Gallery at the moment. The work is absolutely amazing and has inspired me to go to the next ceramics workshop :) Here's just a selection of some of the beautiful pieces on display.

Nuala O'Donovan

Elaine Riordan

Jennifer Hickey

  Frances Lambe

 Michael Flynn

I also went to a talk called 'Made in China' by one of our tutors Elaine Riordan (who's also taking part in the transform exhibition) about the time she spent in Fuping, Shaanxi in China with other Irish artists to make a collection of ceramic pieces for the Fule International Ceramic Museum. She showed us loads of different slides and photos of their time there, what their workshops were like, the Chinese who were working alongside them and their final works and opening exhibition. It was a really interesting talk and it was nice to see some of the artists who exhibited in China , exhibiting in the L.S.A.D. Gallery.

Wire Soles

At the moment I'm trying to make a sole of a shoe out of wire, based on this charcoal rubbing I took of my runner.

It's still a work in progress but here are a few photos...I hope to have it finished during next week :)

It's made from a really pliable aluminium wire and I use black florist's wire to create the joinings.

Life Drawing

On Thursday I went to a life drawing workshop where we had to draw the figure out of scribbles and like we were building it out of sticks. All the poses vary from 2 mins to 5 seconds and they're all done in charcoal. I found the workshop really useful as it helped loosen up my drawing.

First Attempts at Monoprinting....

This week at the print workshops I attended I did some monoprints of sections of hands which I really enjoyed :)...monoprinting involves drawing what you want to print on a sheet of acetate, rolling on the lightest colour of ink, taking away what you want to keep white using a cloth dipped in white spirits and then printing it in the printing press. You keep repeating this process for all the rest of the colours you want to print. Here are some of the results...

 

I tried to get the ink to be as close to the colour of skin as possible but I don't think it work out that well. It was a good learning curve though as it was my first ever monoprint.

In this print I used used red for my first colour and blue as my second colour and was much more effective than trying to recreate the colours of the skin.

I'm really looking forward to more monoprinting next week and moving onto drypoint etching aswell :)

Taking Inspiration from McQueen

My tutor Pamela told me about Alexander McQueen's famous 'Spray Paint Dress' (Spring/ Summer 1999) where 2 robots sprayed paint onto a plain white dress the model was wearing on the catwalk, which then went on to be sold.

Here's the link to McQueen's SS 1999 catwalk show if you want to see the spray paint dress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reK0A1XIjKA

This got me thinking about the marks fabrics can leave behind. So I took a cloth that had been dipped in paint and made marks on a page with it. Here are the results...

 

I also tried making marks and tracks with Indian ink by pouring it on a page and moving it around the page using a hairdryer.

Mark Making and the likes..

I've been trying to recreate the wrinkles of the hand in different mediums and by using different mark making techniques

Watercolours : I let the water run on the page to try and recreate the lines in the hand

I really liked using the watercolours and began looking at the artist Marlene Dumas, who also uses watercolours in her paintings

Acrylic Paint: I scratched the surface of the paint using the end of the paintbrush

Gouache: The black colour is where the deepest wrinkles are and the colours work their way up to the fleshiest, unwrinkled part of the skin which I left white

Tinfoil stuck to paper: I pinched, folded and creased the tinfoil to recreate the lines of the skin

Ohhhh we're half way there...

It's the half way mark of the project and after having my Progress Review and Feedback in the past week or 2, I've decided to give the skies idea I had been partly working on, the boot. I really wasn't that interested by it and felt that I was going nowhere with it.

I'm still going to focus on tracks, traces and the remnants of movement and motion. I'm really happy with this as it's a solid concept and I've so many plans for it. I feel like I can go far with this theme and have lots of exciting ideas for it so I'm really looking forward to the work in the coming weeks ahead :)

Deep Set Wrinkles

I started to investigate the wrinkles, lines and tracks that are left in the skin. These lines and wrinkles are the ultimate remnants of movement..if we never laughed or smiled we wouldn't have crows' feet :P

I started looking at the same section of each of my family's hands and the difference in the amount of lines in each section.

                                         Dad                                                             Me

                                          Mam                                                             Jim

I took acetate and started drawing over the wrinkles with marker

 Here are the finished acetates (surprizingly my hand was the one with the most wrinkles :P)

 And here are all the acetates on top of one another

I really like this image and think it would make an interesting print which I shall look into doing during the coming days :)