Evaluation

In this project I have had a few areas of interest. I really enjoyed the Sound and Vision project that I started with and I brought a lot of my work into Mixed Media. I had a strong start to the project with a lot of ideas but looking back on it all now I can see a few mistakes I made along the way. Through out this project my ideas and focuses have been changing and shift along with me, it has been a bit of a journey. I carried on with my favourite aspect from the Sound and Vision project refining the work and developing it further. Through out this entire project I have been constantly trying to keep this project connected I want a recurring theme of senses. I started off with music then got very interested in Synesthesia which then led me to taste. I wanted to have a good consistency of theme throughout the development of my project.

I have found that always being aware of your work and not loosing sight of what it is your are doing is vital to a project. I lost my way in my project for a bit and it cost me a few unproductive weeks. I have found a way of viewing my work more visually and creative but whilst still being critical. I have developed skills in areas that I was blind to before hand such as Indesign, iMovie and the animation suit. These programs have been vital in the production of visual development in my project and how I have been documenting the growth of it. I have achieve more confidence in my work and in the process that are available to me. I was very experimental in this project constantly trying to create work in different and creative ways, such as splatter paintings and glue drawings. This is appropriate to my target audience as it has to be something different and interesting to make them stop and look.

My contextual and artist references have helped me a great deal in this project as they have given me vision and inspiration, they helped me develop my idea and produce more work.
I have found that staying late in the studio is the best time to get work done as there is more desk space and I can spread my work out and have a good look at my project. I find it easier to cut back my independent study for studio time, as I am far more productive in the studio than I am at home.

I think through out this project I have worked hard to produce work that is creative and relevant. My blog and sketchbook have been very useful tools in the project. I like working out of a sketchbook as it is portable and I am able to flick through my work it helps me track my development and progression. In the future I will have to work on getting out of my sketchbook. The splatter paintings were larger scale and vibrant and I think my project could have done with a bit more of that.

Upon reflection I probably would have stayed focused on the music aspects of my project but I am glad I got to explore taste in a more considered and creative approach.

Balloon splatter painting remnants

After the balloons were splattered I collected the ends up and put them in my sketch book as I though it would be a shame to waste them. I did't think through what would happen when I closed my sketchbook. The balloon pieces still had colouring in them, this leaked onto the page and made some beautiful marks. I collected all the spare balloon segments and arranged them in my sketchbook. I thought it would be nice to make a piece of work out of them seeing as they had already served their purpose in the paintings.

Balloon splatter paintings round 2

 I got a camera from the AV store, photographed myself popping the balloons. I also used my phone and I downloaded an app called SlowPro which allowed me to either film or import films into the app and then slow it down so that I could capture the explosion in slow motion. It does slow the film down just not to the extent I was hoping for. The video footage didn't get the the desired effect but the photos I took caught the explosion frame by frame and the was much better.

These are the stills from the camera I hired out I think they are better for capturing the explosion as it  gets lost in the slow motion clip. When scrolling through they have a really nice fluidity to them and it's easy to follow the entire process.
I learnt a few things the first time I did these so the second time I refined the process to be more productive I also changed how I popped the balloons as before I used a knife which didn't look very good and it wasn't subtle. When I was watching the clips back I noticed I was paying more attention to the knife than I was the balloon popping. This time I used a small piece of wire I did also try out a BB gun but the pellets just bounced off the surface of the balloons. In some other paintings I did later on I changed it up again.
I thought I would see what happened if I put the balloons on pieces of paper and lay them on the floor so there would be more splatter and none of the colour would be lost through gravity. I tried it out but the colouring just sat in pools so I eventually put them on the walls but gave them time to set a bit so there would be more splatter and less leakage.

Stop motion manipulation

This was a very recent development where instead of starting off with colour I slowly add the colour in each frame so it builds up. I just wanted some kind of variety in my stop motions and flip books as they aren't too adventurous beyond the movements they take whilst being manipulated by me.

Flip books

This last week of my project I have been focusing on flip books, I thought it would be nice to have a tactile way of showing my animations and clips. All I had was clips and animations things what need a screen to be seen o by putting my images into the flip books meant that they would be viewed on demand when ever and where ever and I liked that idea.
I developed a number of stop motions using food colouring and drawing in glue. I would manipulate the drawings and I made flip books out of the frames from my stop motions. 
I liked going into the workshop and making the flip books as they are effective and relatively easy to make. Below are image I took whilst making them and using the machinery.
If I had more time on this project I would develop more flip book ideas and different methods of making them as the end result was very successful for my work and I enjoyed the process.

Balloon splatter paintings

My inspiration for the balloon splatter painting was the Buzzfeed page I found and Princess Diaries, there is a scene where they do it and I have always wanted to give it a try. I did my balloon splatter paintings a little differently to how they did it but the idea is basically the same and I like how the ballon exposed and all the colour comes with it! 

I found the exercise fun and exciting as you never know how they are going to turn out even if the preparation time is a lot longer than you anticipate. 

Documenting my processes thought film and photo

At the beginning of the year I was initially going to choose Print but I chose Mixed Media because you can incorporate whatever you like into your project and I like that freedom. I really like and enjoy print but I also have an interest in film and animation I like to involve that in my projects. It's a relatively new interest I only realised I was interested in it last year in my Film and Drawing project so I'm still testing the waters to see what I can come up with. This is why I have been documenting most of my processes through image or film or animation, I will hopefully produce a few short clips or movie by the end of the project.
I wanted to film myself doing my ballon splatter paintings as I am interested in the explosion. Capturing the moment the balloon pops and the colour escapes.

Taste explosion

I have been looking into taste in recent weeks and I keep coming back to Michel Gagnet's work on Ratatouille. The explosion of colour and shapes and sound all the signify taste just keeps popping up in my mind. I want to explore this explosion that Remy ( the mouse ) experiences in the scenes that Michel produced. I started researching exploding fruit etc and came up with some really cool images that inspired me to try and emulate in some way or another.
My main inspirations where a Magnum advert, it was all about the explosion of flavour and the images were incredible. Now of corse I couldn't recreate or produce anything like they didI looked into it and the equipment I would need to capture the explosion of anything was a little beyond me.
I therefor turned to fun and expressive ways of capturing a colour or taste explosion. I found some very cool things, they were mainly activities for children but they were fun cheap and cheerful!

Glue Manipulation

This week I have been struggling with my project which is very frustrating as I had such a strong start and now I feel like I have just deflated so I thought I would take a more laid back and fun approach to my topic of taste which is very closely linked with colour. I took to the internet to find my salvation. I found on Buzzfeed its title is 

33 Activities Under $10 That Will Keep Your Kids Busy All Summer

I had a look through them and there were some very easy and fun suggestions that I thought I could manipulate and make work to my advantage. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/activities-that-will-keep-your-kids-busy-all-sum

I thought that I could develop a series of drawings that I would then turn into a stop motion animation. I used food colouring as my media and got to work. The first fruit I picked was a strawberry, I thought if I drew it and then slowly manipulated it so it looked unrecognisable by the end of the animation it would be pretty cool as it would just be a mess of colour. When I think of strawberry I think sweet, bitter, pink, red and the green stalk its mainly colour and whatever taste I associate with it. My idea worked quite well and I did a range of animations using different fruits.

Another very fun looking activities which includes explosion of colour was this experiment of exploding chalk paint. I would have loved to have a go at this I just didn't have time to get around to it! I think it would have worked very well with my project. 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/549298485771284639/

Development

My development process was quite simple I started off all about music about the journeys we go on when listening to a specific song and I wanted to document it in moving image so I made stop motion animation. It was very simple but so where all my other ones.
My target audience are people who don't go to galleries they don't actively seek art out. I want to appeal to those who have no interest in my art work or any others. I want to expose them to something that will make them stop what they are doing and look, think even ponder and see what it means to them.
I really enjoy taking certain aspects of my work that step further, like with my ink drawings which i then made into wavelengths and then made a stop motion out of. That was development and refinement.
 I envisioned projecting my animations or clips onto the sides of buildings very late at night or early in the morning. Early morning joggers would see them and stop to take a breath or drunk students coming in from a night out may stop for a moment and wonder what it was all about. I wanted to make a range of video about the sense, taste sound etc which is how I got into Synesthesia as its all about sensory confusion. I then chose a sense which happened to be taste and I explored from there.
I experimented with glue and food colouring trying to find a new way to manipulate an image I then tried balloon splatter painting in which I covered a lot of everything in food colouring and water.
I experimented with different forms of film. I took a simple strawberry drew it on strawberry juice then took that single strawberry and made a stop motion out of it which I then turned into a Flip book, if that's not developing an idea I don't know what is.

Taste, explosive or not so explosive.

From Sound and Vision I got the idea to research Synesthesia and from that I went into taste, I found Synesthesia really interesting but I went more into taste and colour then into sensory deprivation and mixing up senses. If I had more time I would probably revisit it and develop it more as it is very interesting.
Now that I am interested in Taste and how we perceive taste. I am interested in taste explosions such as the one from Ratatouille and how they are shown to us. My tutors suggested that I smash and explode fruit and see what happens. I did get a variety of fruits and cut them up in my sketchbook so I could get the texture of the skin and the smell of the  juices. A object to us it all about how we perceive it. Its appearance, colour, smell and most importantly in food it's taste.
In each case when doing this I found that I had these brilliant ideas of what I expected but when it came to the actual thing it was quite dull and less vibrant than I had imagined.

I had hoped for something like this, but maybe a little farther down the line! The way this video was created and presented was incredible! I loved it all the colour, music the variety of food involved, how delicate it all was. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/video-answers-what-flavor_n_4588798.html

When I first started looking into fruits I decided i would drive in by doing what I imagined an explosion of strawberry flavour would be and this is what I came out with. I then tried to recreate the colours by mixing food colouring with glue and it actually turned out very well I placed it over my watercolour to give it some texture. I also tried to make a strawberry shape in my sketchbook out of glue and colouring but it didn't set and the colours disappeared so it was a fail but I still like it. The experiment went wrong. The bottom images are the actual strawberry juices on the page I then drew a stereotypical strawberry on top to have the comparison. These photos have been edited to make them more vibrant as the pink is very dull. I added an unedited picture at the bottom for a comparison or imagination vs reality.

 

Apple

I did the same for the apple as i did the strawberry I tried to imagine what an apple explosion would be like and these images are what I came up with. I tried to show it in a mushroom cloud way as that it what i visualising when I thought of explosion. I then tried to emulate the exploding apple picture as I thought it would be a good way to show the explosion. The strawberry glue experiment I did was on the other side of the page and effected the watercolour which was a shame. 

 Kiwi

The Kiwi was very dull and brown not how i expected it to look I didn't do a water colour for this one but I did try to recreate the texture and colour of it. The green is much to bright for how the colours turned out but I think it does my imagination justice as that is what I had in mind whilst making it. 

 Plum came out surprisingly more vibrant that I thought it would, I like that the skin leaves a purple ring its how I would imagine it to be.

 The pear was dirty and grimy not at all how I would imagine it I did a splatter balloon painting with yellow's and greens and the predominant colour it leaves is brown.

 Orange I did a water colour explosion as oranges are bright and bursting with flavour and colour! Yet again it fell short of my imagination. My glue drawings and water colours were developments of the colour and movement I associate with an orange how the juices leak out every where and the smell is so overpowering it is all you can smell I wanted these drawings to show that to be very attention grabbing.