Gender Ideas

From looking at Butler's I've discovered her idea that gender is just a performance that it is built up by through the repetition of specific behaviours: like lipstick for women and suits for men. I was looking into those ideas for myself, like how dying my hair is seen as very feminine but going to the cadets/military involvement is seen as being masculine. So I looked at those aspects of myself and created a small series of paintings. Looking at the different 'versions' of myself. I used blue and pink for my colour scheme because they are the recognised colours for male and female.

Sketchbook Pages

Here are some of my sketchbook pages so far and some experiments that I've done over the past few weeks:

 I've mostly been creating portraits as I've been looking at the different ways that people present themselves.

Initial Ideas!

From using a filter my phone I've created some different pop art like pieces that I think work quite well but I feel they could look better if they were printed, which is something I plan to investigate later. 

First Week back!

Well starting this week off, I haven't slept much so having to get up at 9am on Wednesday I was like a little zombie. Wednesday was a good day mostly filled with information and we didn't start doing much, we got our brief (the Edinburgh one) and discussed our other classes.
Thursday wasn't much different just starting research for the Edinburgh brief. However on Thursday mornings we have a new class, a video class which seems really interesting so hopefully that'll be good. The afternoon was more research
Friday in the morning we have painting which I think I'm really going to enjoy, haven't had a chance to paint as much as I would've liked so it'll be good to get back into the habit. In the afternoon we have contextual studies again and we are looking at knowledge and power, not sure what we're going to do with that but it seems like it'll be interesting.
I hoping that this year goes better than last year, I want to try my best and make sure that I speak up when I don't know what I'm doing.

Working, working, working!

Been busy this week creating prints and stencils for my new final piece! I'm really happy with how it's coming along, I love the bright colours. The only thing is I need to make sure all the colours actually represent something and aren't just here for the sake of it.

Week beginning the 17th March

On Monday we listened to some more of the presentations that people need to give, interestingly I enjoy listening to other presentations I just hate giving them. I like hearing who everyone talks about the same thing differently. In the afternoon we worked on our pathways stuff and I'm definitely sure I'm going to work on the Huntingtons idea as I think it'll give me more options and more things to talk about.

In the morning on Tuesday we continued with our paintings this week I started a large A1 piece of a hand. However I didn't use traditional colours, I went with blues and purples. This was because I wanted it to look odd and out of place as a way of symbolising how some people felt about the industrial revolution. We learned about using a grid to split up an image to make it easier to scale something up (that's why this painting is A1)  For pathways we continued working on our ideas and started a 1st draft of our PLP's.

On Friday we had directed study we all worked on our powerpoints individually. I've decided that I'm going to look at Lady Gaga's new album "ARTPOP" and where she is a contemporary artist or not. It's subject I find very interesting, looking at how people can be different artist and how their work can merge into more than one art form. Think that the reason that I find that this is so interesting is because I don't know where I want to take my own art and I don't know what category I want to be apart of. In Dee's class we worked on our sketchbooks because we have a mid module tutorial next week.

The rest of the week

For Transformation on Tuesday we painted the canvases that we stretched last week. We were to concentrate more on colours, tones and shapes rather than creating an image so what we did was take in photocopies/black and white print outs of images that related to out theme and cut them up and work with a small section of the image. I liked working like this and I quite happy with the outcome, it allowed you to create an image with focusing too much on getting it to look like something. Something else that I did was paint onto textured boards and pieces of wood as to see the textured effects that I could achieve. I'm quite enjoying working in this way and I like create these little samples, I think that I want to create some sort of mixed media piece for my final that would allow me to use the painting techniques that I've learned and use the collage pieces that I love creating.

On Friday we were looking at Pecha Kucha which is a Japanese form of presentation. It has 20 slides and each slide last 20 seconds and you talk about your chosen subject in those 20 seconds. It seems really interesting and as I hate giving presentations I'm hoping that by trying something new it won't be as bad.
In Dee's class we each worked on our computer work individually, so I made some more collages, something that I'm really enjoying and think I might use within my final piece.

Printing not Painting

Actually instead of painting we are actually printing, which was still really good. I've done mono-printing before so it was quite fun to try the technique again. However when I was at school we didn't have the best of supplies so getting to use more high quality materials was really good and I feel like it did make a difference.
Although I would've liked to get back into painting the printing was really fun and I've been having fun experimenting with.

Painting starts today

Today we will be starting painting which I'm really looking forward too (as is Rhonwyn never seen her this excited!). Painting is what a few years I thought I was going to be doing for the rest of my life, whilst I'm glad I decided to allow my self to try new things and look into more options I think it'll be good to get back into painting. It seems like such a long time ago since I last painted something, I'm not sure what I'll be painting (as it's for our Teansformation brief) but I'm sure I'll enjoy the class and hopefully learn some new techniques.

These are some painting that I did whilst I was in school. I'm still really proud of these and I hope that I'll get the chance to do something like this (not about music but using the techniques and skills I already have and know about).