Evaluation

Within Unit X I have been looking into Identity and what that means to me as a person, I have explored many different avenues within this unit and enjoyed where my work has taken me. I have developed and refined my drawing process; experimented with hand embroidery, digital printing and the Risograph machine. The under pinning theme of Identity really drove my interest with portraiture. What about a face captures our attention? What makes that person them?
I did this by studying people close to me, home or in studio. At first I would draw them until I was finished but as this process developed and I refined it I found when I challenged myself I had the best results. With this in mind I created a series of drawing configurations. Time was a tool I used along with, colour, reductionism and repetition. Within my drawings I try and capture more than just a visual representation, I use time as a limitation to my drawings and reductionism in the face. This means my pieces are not fully formed pictures but still translate aspect of the person within them. The aspects that are often most identifying about us often are over looked; they are subtle such as a face shape, or our brow line. Often less is more and we (the audience) fill in the blanks. I have developed a more in depth understanding of what it will be like to be a working artist with in my area of interest. Only recently has the word ‘illustration’ been used to describe my work. I envision my work in gallery spaces as large scale pieces that can be rearranged and made into something new. I like the idea of people interacting with my work as it is flexible and easy to manipulate, along with gallery spaces I am drawn to commercial use for my illustrations.

“The character of a face in a drawing does not depend on its various proportions but rather on the spiritual light that it reflects. It is true that two drawings of the same face can portray the same character, even though the proportions of the face may differ. No two leaves on a fig tree are the same, each has it’s own form. None the less, each one cries out: Fig tree.” - Henri Mattisse

This quote really resonates with me, Mattisse perfectly sums up what I am trying to convey through my work on portraiture and identity. I can draw the same person ten times over with different times restrains and each drawing will look different. They all stem from the same source, no matter how they differ; all hold a quality or essence of the person. 

Most importantly what I found out within my project is that our differences are what separate us and make us who we are, they are our likes dislikes, our individual identities.

Photoshop configurations

Last week and this week I have been working on configuration using photoshop, I scanned all my A5 drawings in and tried to come up with new arrangements. The photoshop aesthetic is completely different to my wall configurations in the fact that I can duplicate and move them around a lot easier. It's a quicker and more efficient process, but I still perfect making my configuration on the wall and getting a feel for the scale. Below are a few of my photoshop configurations and my card configurations to show to contrast between the two. 

Wall of Faces

This week and last week I have developing my A5 card drawings into configurations on my studio wall. By scaling my drawings down I have been able to scale them up and produce bigger pieces. This was very enjoyable for me and i just played around with different configurations for a few days. I couldn't help but think they would be a great installation within a gallery as they are so easy to move around that the pattern can constantly be changed. I envisioned it in a large gallery space when the audience can interact with the piece changing it as they see fit.

Scaling down the faces

This week I decided to scale my drawings down to A5 size as they work large scale and small scale. I selected 6 faces to replicate and make a series of them, in both colour palettes. Once I finished them I realised I could photo copy the coloured faces and turn them into tonal faces which would give off a completely different look, I found it interesting that I had six of the same face but all different due to the way they were filled in and the personality that gave them. I created a series of drawings done in a few different ways. I coloured in their faces, I coloured in the backgrounds then photocopied them to get tonal versions of each.

Drawing process development

This week I worked into a drawing with stitch but it was on card and not fabric. I really liked the outcome and the general aesthetic of bringing the thread back into my drawings. Stitching back into my drawing on paper resulted in a very good piece of work but the process was challenging. The card couldn't hold up against the satin stitch I was using and it was difficult to sew through such thick card.

This idea led me onto get some drawings digitally printed. I have got some of my drawings digitally printed onto Cotton Canvas and Silk. I picked cotton canvas as I wanted to work into the drawings with stitch and I knew it would come out well on a heavy weight fabric. I also chose Silk as I wanted it to have a luxurious aesthetic and I wanted to see how the ink would interact with the fabric and my drawing. I have done one embroidery sample out of the prints, I did it all by hand and its a long and slow process. I did however immensely enjoy making it and will continue to develop other rest of the prints. I used flock and embroidery threads, I kept to my colour palette and tried to recreate my drawing in thread to the best of my ability.

My drawing process

Drawing in thread and glue have been pretty focal for me so far in this project, I use time as a tool when drawing as I set myself time limits, this means I am giving myself limitations which in turns makes for a more interesting piece. Over easter I did a lot of drawings and now I am developing them further. The initial thread and glue drawings were very effective and I really enjoyed that making process but the over all look of a piece was quite messy as the glue would pick up dust etc. By photo copying the drawings I was able to keep the thread line quality as it translated very well but to leave the glue behind.This means I could turn it into a flat image and re-produce my work to experiment and play with. I copied my thread drawings on to card and then decided it was time to bring colour into them and give them a bit of personality. After doing a series of drawings in various colours I decided to go with two colour palettes and base all further colour variations for my drawing in them.
Below is a sample of some of these colour drawings in the selected colour palettes.

Risograph development

This week I have been using the Risograph machine to replicate a select few drawings in different colour inks, on different thickness and colour of paper. I have used to Riso before and really liked the outcome so thought I would seen how my drawings came out. I know from experience that the thicker paper has a nicer quality to it as the ink seeped into it. The faces I chose where put to good use and I had a lot of different arrangements on each piece. They were just line drawings so nice and striking on the page. I book in for later on in the week and made the images smaller and used different colours. This allowed me to layer them on the pervious work I had done, which created interesting outcomes. I even cut into some of the drawings and added gold foiling to try and illuminate certain areas on the darker pages.The original drawings I used are as seen below and a selection of the work that I produced with the Risograph machine.