Print making notes

In our session this afternoon we got stuck into producing a lot of work. Steve gave us a very quick demonstration on what we needed to do to prepare our plates and run them through the press, and with his and Emma's help we all managed to produce a lot of work very quickly. We used black ink, presumably only for simplicity - there is a lot of mess associated with print making and at such an early stage, to include much in the way of choices could be problematic. I had no issue with this, nor did anyone else as far as I know, but I'm looking forward to trying out more colours, and mixing things up a bit.

First of all, I did three prints onto plain A4 paper, and then moved onto using my prepared paper that I worked on earlier in the week. I had only used a few different basic colours when working on these sheets, but most of the paper either had patterns already on them (wallpaper with flowery designs) or some other rich texture that I thought would be interesting. Due to the design of my plate, some of the intricacies of the papers own patterns were not clear in the print itself, covered by the black ink. Less of a problem after the print had been run a few times without being refreshed, as the ink began to thin.

The results were a little better on the sheets that had simpler or lighter colour works on them, and I ended up trimming a lot of them down to size to better match the print itself, as the plate had a border of about 2 or 3 inches, which I liked but definitely affects the way the print looks when it's sat in the middle of a piece of A3 paper. I did probably 10 or so of these prints.

Later in the afternoon we moved on to collograph prints, using the plates we had made (most of us having done them the night before, myself included). I had originally attempted to make my plate earlier in the week, but ended up spoiling the card and having to start again. I used a simple combination of a kind of thick gauze, about 2 inches square and frayed around the edges, and lengths of elastic bands that I had cut to size and laid out as carefully as possible. The result worked surprisingly well - I wasn't sure if the PVA glue would hold the materials in place but for the most part they stayed secure, with only some parts of the elastic coming loose towards the end of the session, particularly during cleaning.

Cleaning involved a lot of turps and a lot of scrubbing, and then further scrubbing with paper towels, and also tufanega (swarfega) followed by yet more scrubbing. Oil based inks/paints are definitely more awkward to clean, but I am pretty convinced that I prefer them to water based paints, at least if I had to choose anyway. At school I was fortunate enough to have access to oil paints and I much preferred working with them over acrylics. The persistent fluidity that comes with oils feels more organic and unpredictable in some ways. Acrylics dry quickly, which can be useful but there is a different textural quality that doesn't appeal to me as much. I will have to grow accustomed to the mess of oils again.

Ideas/Video work

There is something fascinating to me in the process of image fidelity, compression, loss, and the vagueness you can achieve by running something through processes, either analogue or digital. This often applies to video images, as evidenced in some experiments I filmed a few years ago that can be viewed here. The inspiration for the video came in a few different layers.

First of all, it was opportunistic because of the weather. Will (the girl in the video) and I were living in Sale in close proximity to Sale Water Park, which is a regular photo/video haunt of mine, and the weather turned very cold and there had been heavy snow. I thought it would be a great and rare opportunity to film in these kinds of conditions, and so we went out and braved the weather to see what kind of interesting shots we could get. There was no sense of a narrative structure that I wanted to create, and beyond creating an interesting collage of moving images I had no particular agenda, hoping simply instead to just gather more material for later use. As we were out, the snow began again and proceeded to get heavier and heavier. I had some sense of inspiration for mood, or tone at least, and so we improvised some very basic sequences. Will was a trooper and did very well considering there was no narrative to follow, and she was very cold (she doesn't like being cold). All in all we used only about half of the footage in the above video, and all of it was from later on in the filming session. This is something I've noticed quite often when I attempt improvisational work like this, in that it takes some time to get flowing creatively and for the interesting material to be generated, with a lot of the early work being somewhat formless and not very relevant. I used a tripod in these early shots, but in the final edit most of the shots ended up being handheld. The camera itself was not new or particularly modern and although it has quite a decent set of features, the image fidelity is relatively low. It uses hard drive storage or SSD memory, rather than tape, and is fairly low resolution, making it a handy camera but not suitable for a lot of things, however it is this lack of fidelity that proves essential later.

I had cut together a video in a few hours using Adobe Premier (a horribly unstable piece of crap) and tweaked colours and tones in various ways to produce an interesting end product. There was a level of texture I felt was missing, however, and some time later (how long I am not sure at the moment, possibly months, maybe just days) I decided to try an experiment, inspired by this trailer for video game Silent Hill 4: The Room, which I found to be deeply provocative and interesting and is the video that had me hooked on the entire series, when before it was completely obscure to me. The trailer had a distinct 'VHS' feel to it, and it would appear that footage of the game (which is largely lacking in menus or displays during gameplay, leaving the player with simply the image of the game environment and characters) was filmed on a handheld camera, which transforms the often clunky graphics of the game (I was definitely a bit disappointed when I actually played it, because the level of detail in parts was certainly not as good as it could have been) into something very organic, very real. It becomes flesh in the video in a way that wasn't quite there in the game itself. Ultimately the trailer is simply a collection of images and doesn't have narration or attempt to relay the game's story in any meaningful way, like a trailer normally would. Also, the trailer is exceptionally long for the format, making it something more of an art-house film than a marketing product. It is an entity all unto itself and I keep finding myself coming back to it as a source of inspiration. I was also influenced by Shinya Tsukamoto's A Snake of June, previously discussed, in that it is filmed in black and white but there is a blue tone overlaying it, giving it a distinct, maybe slightly perverted feel, that really permeates everything within the film.

I filmed a playback of the video I made on my computer screen, and then ran this through Adobe Premier again, applying more effects and also making attempts at creating an abstract soundtrack on a number of occasions, eventually settling on a piece I made using Fruity Loops (primarily used for sequencing electronic music, but a powerful tool for recording and editing music or samples also), using samples of animals slowed down and mixed with various effects, with some layered synths. I removed all colour from the footage, and then applied a similar blue hue to 'wrap' the video, resulting in some very good effects. I showed Ian this video on my laptop (sadly my laptop speakers are rubbish and the soundtrack was inaudible) and he described it as "disturbing", which I took as a compliment. As an experiment, it is one of my most successful pieces so far.

See also a short video I improvised with a friend of mine, Dom. We did not record usable audio, with a mind to maybe adding it later, but this never came about as I hadn't planned that element enough in advance, and so it became quite a problem to implement. The video was meant to be simply an exercise, and fun, and from start to finish took about 25 minutes to produce, with around 2 hours time editing. It could be considered a silent film, I suppose. You can clearly see how much fun Dom is having in this video. I had a lot of fun as well. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn is definitely an influence on this piece. It is one of my favourite films. Comedy and horror can be one of the most successful combinations.

"How To Haunt Yourself"

Fine art notes

Today we were shown how to use water based ink/paint to make mono prints. The initial steps include:

• Preparing the work area; placing newspaper down and using masking tape to secure the 'working' plate, onto which paint is applied and rolled with one of two rollers (the 'wet' roller).
• A piece of paper of matching size (A5) is placed over the plate and the 'dry' roller is used to press ink thoroughly into the paper.
• Various effects can be achieved with marking off parts of the plate or placing materials under the painted area, ie: tissue paper/paper towels etc, for emphasis or texture.
• The effect is repeated onto multiple sheets of A5 paper, with differing effects each time.

The main objective is experimentation, but there is a knack to not over-working the prints, as very quickly the paint mix can become muddy and indistinct, and the prints cease to have the detail that they may have just had previously. Knowing when to stop is a key point.

With my prints today, I had about 6-8 A5 pieces, of which around half were of reasonable quality, however I did overwork almost all of them and this unfortunately reduced the quality of my results. With this in mind, I have decided to do more at home, but some additional materials will be required. This doesn't bother me too much because I suspect this is a technique I will enjoy utilising in the future, as I will the other forms of print making. There is an interesting contradiction that can be achieved through print making, which is the contrast of perfection of lines with the imperfection of paint being displaced. Impressions are made, and this is the key word I would use to describe printmaking in general, at least for me. It can be a strikingly versatile tool, also, for a variety of purposes and styles of working. It lends itself to experimentation in it's nature, too, with it being a somewhat unpredictable method (at least for a novice like I am). It is, basically, fun.

Greg talked to us about preparing our work for assessment later in the year, and talked us through how we can mount our work so far that we have done in Fine Art. We will need to use three A2 size pieces of card to place our work, including the drawings based on the 3D work and the matchbox drawings, the collage work we did yesterday and now also our print making experiments today. Greg strongly recommended that we aim to complete this process by the end of Tuesday next week, before our next stage of studying begins, which is Visual Communication with Ian. I have an additional piece to mount (chalk piece from Tuesday 26th, A2), so I will need four A2+ pieces for presenting my work later on. Greg also reiterated what Ian had discussed earlier in the day about presenting work for interview, ie: portfolios, which everyone who is considering University should be preparing for.

Work for the weekend:

• Complete collage colour theory pieces (need another three)
• Complete additional mono-prints (materials required, possibly inks although I will research alternative materials I may already have available at home that would be suitable)
• Re-attempt matchbox drawings, or at least complete additional sketches relating to this exercise.
• Gather A2 card (college shop apparently provides this for a decent price)

As for presenting  A5/A6 pieces, I may use two pieces of card per 'slate', cutting appropriately sized holes for each piece of work, so that these may be A) better presented, in a neat fashion and B) more secure. The card itself, if it is decently secured, should be more rigid also and look better. I recall Will's efforts with this earlier on in her time on the course last year - we found A3 size childrens 'colour in' cards, with a variety of themes including The Simpsons and Snow White. These were reversed obviously but ended up being perfectly usable for the task, and were very cheap. Will also had fun in colouring in a few of them that were left over.

Group tutorial

We discussed in good detail the university application process and things that we need to do in preparation for the coming months. Those of us that had handed in draft copies of our personal statement had them returned to us, with notes, and Ian's notes on my own statement were positive and encouraging. I had not been too sure about what I had emailed to Ian, but he said that the statement was strong certainly as a starting point, which is the only real concern at this stage. Ian talked us through Unit 3 which is concerned with preparation for looking at University courses suiting to our tastes, and making appropriate research, ensuring to make hard copies of anything that we found for analysis later on. He asked that by 4th or 5th October (next week) that we begin our UCAS application online, and emphasised the importance of noting our personal details somewhere safe as retrieving these details can be difficult.

Other notes of interest from the session:

• UCAS deadline is 7th November
• It is possible to apply for more than one course at the same uni (out of a maximum of 5 choices in total), but were noted to be wary of selecting courses that were too opposite, as this sends out a dubious message to the university in question - something to look up; can Universities see what other course choices you have made aside from their own?
• Ian also asked us to hand in our assessment books as soon as possible (for tomorrow)

Life drawing journal notes

Today we covered monocular drawing, with the aim of improving and perfecting proportion, accuracy and the relationships of parts to one another. This was more challenging in many ways than the more freehand, expressive way that we are all more accustomed to, and everybody found this to be fairly difficult. Some people found it to be more rewarding than others, and personally I found that after a while, this method did indeed help bring things to a better level. I do still have an issue with framing, keeping the entire ‘image’ within the boundaries of the paper, but this was improved today over previous drawings in the past few weeks. I found I made things a bit more diffiocult also because I had forgotten to bring my own pencil supply, meaning i had to use whatever was available, in this case an orange pencil. If I had a second colkour, oor a proper pencil or graphite stick, I couold have nforced some of the lines and this would have improved the clarity of the drawing.

Fine art notes

Today we went over colour theory, and were set a task of producing six pieces, each one tackling a specific area within colour theory. These ranged from using only primary colours, as well as using complimentary colours, warm and cool colours etc. I managed to produce three of the six pieces in the afternoon session, with a mind to trying to complete the remaining six the following day, time permitting. It is likely that there will be some work needed at home to complete all six to a standard I am happy with. My most interesting piece today was a5 size and was mostly made with coloured tissue paper (for warm colours) dipped into PVA glue mixed with (too much) water, to saturate the paper and make it more malleable. This led to some interesting results, however because of the high water content of the paper, it was too wet. Once this dries however this should be quite effective. Greg and I discussed the days work and also some preparatory work that I did in photoshop combining elements taken from photographs taken of the group 3D work at the beginning of the course. There was significant elements that could influence further pieces, and these pieces directly influenced today's work as well as a piece I prepared at home the day before. Greg commented on the textural qualities of the tissue paper based work, and that gave me the idea of photographing in extreme detail some of the intricate parts of the work once it had dried, possibly with a macro lens which would have to be provided by the technicians (this proved to be unavailable). I will bring my own Sony A390 DSLR tomorrow to photograph as well as I can some of these features, for further work in photoshop, to then continue on at home.

Shinya Tsukamoto

The following images are taken from promotional material for the film Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009), the third film in the series by Shinya Tsukamoto, who is a personal favourite of mine from since I was a child. I first saw Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1991) in the mid-nineties, when I would have been around ten years old, after my older brother had taped it from television. The plot follows a man who is pursued by mysterious thugs subscribing to a kind of metal fetishism, who seek to draw out a violent transformational physical response from the man, in which weapons, namely guns or cannons, emerge from his body. Through their actions, the man accidentally kills his own young son in an uncontrollable fit of rage, aimed at the men who kidnap him. Throughout the film, he goes to and from a state of physical transformation, somewhat reminiscent perhaps of a cross of Cronenberg's  The Fly and Cameron's The Terminator, becoming entirely lethal and completely out of control. By the films conclusion, he is essentially a tank rolling through Tokyo with no intention in mind other than destruction.

The third film in the series is essentially a more modernised reworking of the story of the second film, with some more of the art-house influences present in the 1989 Tetsuo: The Iron Man. The visual effects are refined and the 'Tetsuo' design is more complex visually, and the film itself has a considerably higher fidelity than the grainy film used in the original two films. However, by transitioning to digital film, there is a quality in the original films that is lost, namely the dirty roughness reminiscent of rust, a theme very significant to the first two films. The Bullet Man is a more chaotic affair than Body Hammer but lacks of the black humour of The Iron Man, resulting in a film that is less certain of itself perhaps than it's predecessors.

Tsukamoto's work is often concerned with transformation or the transformational effect of emotions, often rage, on a person. Tokyo Fist (1995)  is similarly concerned with anger and violence, infused with a great deal of the black humour present in the first Tetsuo film. In A Snake of June (2002), the main themes are voyeurism and malaise, with the main character a woman in an interminable marriage that is completely sexually repressed, who inadvertently inspires a photographer to 'save her' the way she saved him through a sort of Samaritans hotline. He does this by blackmailing her into exploring her sexuality, threatening to send on photographs of her masturbating to her husband if she doesn't comply.

Tsukamoto stars in all of these films, and would typically be considered an auteur as he writes and directs most of his work, occasionally taking direction only projects. This would indicate that these roles that he plays (the antagonist in all three Tetsuo films, the photographer in A Snake of June and the anti-hero in Tokyo Fist) have great significance to him.

 

Man-machine physical transformation (American actor Eric Bossick) in Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

 Shinya Tsukamoto in Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Promotional artwork for Tetsuo II: Body Hammer

Promotional artwork for Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer trailer

A Snake of June trailer

Manifesto of Futurism - F.T. Marinetti

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.

3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

9. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.

10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure, and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

[My emphasis]

There is much in this manifesto that is in line with the ideals of Satanism and anarchy. Satanism, as it's practitioners would point out, is less to do with anything actually religious but is more of an ethos of self-servitude, rather than the servitude of others, or those perceived as weak. There is a thin line, in my opinion, between anarchists and nihilists, with satanism having more in common with anarchy, but perhaps without the socialism.

These ideals come up in art a lot, and clearly in futurism it has a considerable history. In more modern times, satanism is more associated with heavy metal theatrics, or 'black metal' extremism and neo-fascism.

More on 'Satanic panic' later. See West Memphis Three.

Also, look up brutalism re: architecture.

Luigi Russolo - Solidity of Fog (1912)

Comment pending

Luigi Russolo - The Revolt (1911)

This work reminds me of some of the things I did for the summer project and also in the recent fine art sketch exercises in the last week. The colours are very vibrant, however, which resonates the idea of revolt, or revolution, upheaval. It is aggressive, even violent. With what appear to be shapes of buildings surrounding it, the combination conjures impressions of a city on fire.

Blog

I have been updating and configuring the blog and editing posts to match up with the dates they refer to. I still need to work on physical journals but this will help me organise myself in the meantime I think, as I am more technically minded on the whole than I am in other ways, at least some of the time.

Print making

Steve and Emma talked us through a variety of examples of print work done at the college, as well as some samples that Emma had prepared a few days earlier. Steve emphasised the importance of experimentation with this stage of the course, and noted that we shouldn't be discouraged if our efforts do not always work out as planned. He presented a few variations on the same template, to demonstrate this.

We were asked to create a print plate based on work done in the fine art lessons previously. Personally, this wasn't something I was keen to do so much as the results from the fine art class, or at least the previous class, had not been too productive in my eyes, but I found a drawing (charcoal with lines marked out in rough masking tape on A5 paper - I will upload this) that I felt could fit the requirements, and set about creating a plate based upon it. This plate was finished only just in time for the end of the lesson. For the next session we have been asked to prepare around 5-10 sheets for us to print onto next week. I should prepare my plate in advance with PVA also, as Steve noted it might take around a day to dry properly, and if it is not ready by the lesson beginning then I will not be able to use it.

We also covered collographs and have been asked to prepare a collograph on one A5 board, which Emma provided. I need to look this up in some more detail to understand just what is required for this, as I wasn't entirely clear on this from the lesson itself. I have some accompanying handouts from the lesson that should fill me in on this.

Fine art session notes

Today we worked from collected items from home, contained with matchboxes. My matchbox was for extra long matches so the box measured about 4x2 inches, and about 2cm deep. The items I included were: a USB memory stick with rubberised case, a cut-down cable tie, a clip, a spring, a screw, an AA battery, two motherboard connectors (connecting to each other), and a stereo jack. We were asked to draw literal but straightforward drawings of the contents of the box, ie: line drawings, not been too concerned with shading etc, at A5/A6 scale. I found this task extraordinarily difficult and frustrating. I had not anticipated so much difficulty in determining proportions at this scale, in fact I could safely say that it was the exact opposite to what I expected, which was that this would be a straightforward task because of the reduced scale and relative simplicity of the items. After an hour and a half of attempting several times to draw the items, in a variety of configurations within the box, we had our afternoon break. After expressing my frustrations over a cigarette with a fellow student, it became clear I was not the only person struggling, and after speaking to other people as well, I quickly felt better about the task. It had become very frustrating and stressful and because of my own perceptions about the simplicity of the task I even felt embarrassed about it, but this was unnecessary. After returning to the class I began work again, feeling a little refreshed but still struggling to a degree with the subject. I decided to alter my approach (I had previously tried a variety of techniques to overcome the problems with proportion, including negative space, measuring, and using a ruler) and take the best drawing out of the several I had attempted, which even then was not one that I was particularly satisfied with, and used copy paper to trace the image but only in a very loose manner, using only straight lines in fineliner with a ruller. This broke down the image into crudge geometric shapes. I repeated this process three times in all, on separate pieces of copy paper. Later I used pencil and masking tape to create blocks of solid shading. Finally, as a fairly spur of the moment impulse, I used masking tape to bind the class summary worksheet behind the copy paper. This came about as I had quickly searched for some white paper to put behind the copy paper, simply to provide me with a clearer backdrop to view the lines I had created better. I thought about how frustrated I had been with the brief, and considered how I might instead benefit from that experience, and link it into the process of the work. The work itself became visually complex and peculiar, and combined with the text of the worksheet behind it, describing the lessons themselves as per the lesson plans, somewhat summarised how the experience had felt for me. I intend now to create a larger piece of work, to A2 size, over the weekend and hopefully have it ready for next weeks lesson.

This has been an interesting experience, though I am going to reserve judgement as much as possible at this stage as the main piece of work hasn’t yet been started. What started as deeply frustrating may well be turned around into something positive, reminding me of this quote:

“As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.” - Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe

Fine art session notes

Started with several A5 sketches based upon last weeks 3D project, in a variety of drawing styles - including continuous line drawing, on paper covered in emulsioon paint (the paper kept tearing, wasn’t impressed), with fineliner, charcoal, negative space, etc. We then combined elements of these drawings into a larger ‘master drawing’ at A2 size. I mainly worked in charcoal, with some graphite use to mark out rough lines. Didn’t get through as much of the piece as I would have liked but I will bring it home to continue and finish there before next week. I intend to incorporate other elements except charcoal but I’m unsure what as of yet. I have been using a stencil effect to create lines, namely curves, which works very effectively and is reminiscent of the curves of the cable-ties and bundles of cocktail sticks.

Life drawings

Similarly to last week, we began with quick exercises lasting a few minutes each, before moving on to new techniques. We were asked to try continuous line drawing, and then to try this with our ‘other’ hand, in my case my left hand. The purpose of this was to free ourselves from concerns of quality, fully expecting that these drawings would be technically inferior, but possibly more abstract and interesting because of the removal of the traditional means of approaching drawing.

These ideas were continued on into later drawings, but not as an absolute rule - we were able to pick which elements we wanted to draw from, with continuous line drawing as a starting point.

I had previously been avoiding using graphite as I did not find it allowed me the freedom of range that charcoal provides, however I decided to persevere and attempt to incorporate it. I found very quickly that graphite was very effective for drawing out early definition of shapes very lightly, allowing me to experiment before committing with charcoal in a more severe manner. I did find however that white chalk does not go over graphite very well at all and so I was thwarted when I tried to blend white chalk in with the graphite and charcoal, in the way I had mixed the previous week.

Life drawings

First sketches were quick 1 or 2 minute exercises, covering multiple poses on individual sheets. Detail not a factor - simply intended as a warmup. We moved onto increasingly longer exercises, added tone and detail over time. The last piece of work was set to take around 45-50 minutes.

At the end of the 3 hours, everyone picked out their preferred piece of work from the morning and all of these were lined up for quick analysis and comments from each student