Enjoy!
Thursday, 25 September 2014
Video Diary?...
During the last week I completed a video diary for part of my course work and it went rather well. So I thought that since I missed a post last week I would show you some of the stuff I got up to that was not really college related.
Saturday, 13 September 2014
Why I'm disliking Edinburgh...
So our second week of college has come and gone and on Friday we had a college outing to Edinburgh for the day to get some research for our "Multiples" project.
Now... Firstly, why did NOONE mention Edinburgh is a death-trap with hills and stairs galore?! I swear I have never been so sore and tired in all my life. We only got lost the once but it was hardly far off from where we had intended to go. I realised there were so many multiples in Edinburgh I got a bit snap happy with 440 ish photos throughout the day... oops. AND I lost my phone in the National Museum! Luckily I got it back not long after but jesus I was terrified.
Also, I would put up some of these photos but I am still sifting through them all... this might take me a while so yes, photos will be up at some point. Possibly after my editing starts.
Anyway, I guess I picked my multiple and it is definitely ghosts/the multiple lives that have passed through Edinburgh. Mary Kings Close's tour was amazing and educational about the time with little facts I had never known. A lot of it was rather creepy just due to the cramped surroundings and dim lighting. It really made you appreciate the sunshine. I was upset I couldn't record in the tunnel and I would have loved to take some sound recordings while we went through but there was no way I wouldn't I have been caught which was unfortunate. I was also disappointed that nothing paranormal was happening at all. We obviously couldn't just wander off into random tunnels to look for ghosts but everywhere we went was so uneventful in that way. a ghost tour there would be good to try but otherwise I will have to use the footage of Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters International, the television shows as reference to any form of haunting.
Since I HAVE to go back to Edinburgh I will look deeper into the older parts of the town and try to go to the more haunted spots. I heard about ghost tours that take part there, and it would be interesting to go on one and take real notes on the goings on.
I haven't got much to add from last weeks as those are all still the ideas I have for this project but I hope to have images and sketchbook pages to show next week. :)
Now... Firstly, why did NOONE mention Edinburgh is a death-trap with hills and stairs galore?! I swear I have never been so sore and tired in all my life. We only got lost the once but it was hardly far off from where we had intended to go. I realised there were so many multiples in Edinburgh I got a bit snap happy with 440 ish photos throughout the day... oops. AND I lost my phone in the National Museum! Luckily I got it back not long after but jesus I was terrified.
Also, I would put up some of these photos but I am still sifting through them all... this might take me a while so yes, photos will be up at some point. Possibly after my editing starts.
Anyway, I guess I picked my multiple and it is definitely ghosts/the multiple lives that have passed through Edinburgh. Mary Kings Close's tour was amazing and educational about the time with little facts I had never known. A lot of it was rather creepy just due to the cramped surroundings and dim lighting. It really made you appreciate the sunshine. I was upset I couldn't record in the tunnel and I would have loved to take some sound recordings while we went through but there was no way I wouldn't I have been caught which was unfortunate. I was also disappointed that nothing paranormal was happening at all. We obviously couldn't just wander off into random tunnels to look for ghosts but everywhere we went was so uneventful in that way. a ghost tour there would be good to try but otherwise I will have to use the footage of Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters International, the television shows as reference to any form of haunting.
Since I HAVE to go back to Edinburgh I will look deeper into the older parts of the town and try to go to the more haunted spots. I heard about ghost tours that take part there, and it would be interesting to go on one and take real notes on the goings on.
I haven't got much to add from last weeks as those are all still the ideas I have for this project but I hope to have images and sketchbook pages to show next week. :)
Friday, 5 September 2014
BAD2 Begins!
It's another year of college! I actually made it! But I have no delusions of grandeur... I was far to close to not making it back to the hallowed halls of Forth Valley college. I regret failing my resit after having a summer to do it, and also to put my lecturers into such a horrible place of trying to work out what to do with me and honestly cannot thank them enough! I especially want to thank Linda, the head of Creative Industries, for keeping me up to date and getting me back in. She saved my skin 'cause I don't know what I would do if I wasn't in college...
Anyhow, happier thoughts! This year. This year is MY year. I'm going to prove I'm worth it, all that hassle. I am going to work so much harder and think so much farther out of my proverbial box.
We have one brief to last till Christmas and all but 2 classes are dedicated to it. We now learn video skills and I plan to use it. In fact, right now I am downloading Windows Live Movie Maker so as to do some of my homework of piecing together shaky clips of the college and creating a minute long video. But all of our classes seem interesting and I know each lecturer will make sure we learn a different skill with them.
Our brief for these classes is Multiples.. Focussing on multiples within Edinburgh. I've already had FAR too many ideas but my favourites are that of multiple hauntings/ ghosts or connecting that to multiple lives that have passed through Edinburgh? I dunno, I thought it was cool... Also, I have the idea of the multiple layers of Edinburgh, you know, because they have old Edinburgh underneath the new. But I then thought of taking it a step farther and showing the multiple ways people view Edinburgh due to their connection with the city.
Let me paint the scene... So this will be an installation piece (if made), and it would be like 4/5 plastic sheets vacu- formed to resemble the shape of the city, but each one shows different areas.
One layer would show the Edinburgh that shoppers see, so Prince's street and the Royal Mile and such.
The second layer would show the Edinburgh tourists see, so the Royal Mile, tourist shops and museums basically.
The 3rd layer would involve spooky Edinburgh showing the underground section. I am still to think of other layers but the underground one would be last, and each layer would maybe be painted a different colour to kind of emphasise that they are different. That's just one thought.
I had another about a painting or sculpture that would convey the ghosty one more. It was showing a child either standing holding his teddy or playing on a level ground then the ground goes into a kind of hour glass shape where the top section is the earth the kid is standing on and the bottom is a mound of bodies from a mass grave so it would encompass the plague mostly, the separation caused. The idea mostly comes from Mary King's Close and the Most Haunted episode about it, about the child who haunts down there looking for her mother. It's one of my darker ideas to say the least.
My only other idea connecting to these in some way was to take a picture of a busy high street area and then fade in a picture of some dressed Victorian looking rather sombre standing stock still, well, either in the busy street or in one of the haunted places.
OH! Also had the idea to sketch the faces of the ghosts from descriptions, detailed drawings of the rooms and hopefully the ghosts or even just making them a shadow...
Then there was the idea of drawing the multiple faces of the plague so there was the faces of the doctors with their crow mask things, the bubonic spots all over someone's face and maybe another face if I research more and drawing it all like it is multiple faces on the same head, if you know what I mean?
Then there was my real last idea where I make masks of peoples faces one of the doctor's from the time of the plague, one of an ordinary victorian person, and another of a modern day person and have them hang at intervals from the ceiling. So on the face side they look like what they are meant to look like but on the inside they have at the brain, thoughts that they might have thought about, at the nose, descriptions of smells they might have smelt, at the eyes drawings or images of what they would have seen so when you look into the mask you almost experience their experience?
To be perfectly honest I am going over-board with ideas at this VERY early stage and I still haven't even picked my topic yet... I shall see how the trip goes and if it pushes me towards any of these ideas and if I do them I will try properly this year to upload them.
This was very wordy and if you made it this far I applaud you. This was my introduction to my first week of BAD2 thanks for reading!
Anyhow, happier thoughts! This year. This year is MY year. I'm going to prove I'm worth it, all that hassle. I am going to work so much harder and think so much farther out of my proverbial box.
We have one brief to last till Christmas and all but 2 classes are dedicated to it. We now learn video skills and I plan to use it. In fact, right now I am downloading Windows Live Movie Maker so as to do some of my homework of piecing together shaky clips of the college and creating a minute long video. But all of our classes seem interesting and I know each lecturer will make sure we learn a different skill with them.
Our brief for these classes is Multiples.. Focussing on multiples within Edinburgh. I've already had FAR too many ideas but my favourites are that of multiple hauntings/ ghosts or connecting that to multiple lives that have passed through Edinburgh? I dunno, I thought it was cool... Also, I have the idea of the multiple layers of Edinburgh, you know, because they have old Edinburgh underneath the new. But I then thought of taking it a step farther and showing the multiple ways people view Edinburgh due to their connection with the city.
Let me paint the scene... So this will be an installation piece (if made), and it would be like 4/5 plastic sheets vacu- formed to resemble the shape of the city, but each one shows different areas.
One layer would show the Edinburgh that shoppers see, so Prince's street and the Royal Mile and such.
The second layer would show the Edinburgh tourists see, so the Royal Mile, tourist shops and museums basically.
The 3rd layer would involve spooky Edinburgh showing the underground section. I am still to think of other layers but the underground one would be last, and each layer would maybe be painted a different colour to kind of emphasise that they are different. That's just one thought.
I had another about a painting or sculpture that would convey the ghosty one more. It was showing a child either standing holding his teddy or playing on a level ground then the ground goes into a kind of hour glass shape where the top section is the earth the kid is standing on and the bottom is a mound of bodies from a mass grave so it would encompass the plague mostly, the separation caused. The idea mostly comes from Mary King's Close and the Most Haunted episode about it, about the child who haunts down there looking for her mother. It's one of my darker ideas to say the least.
My only other idea connecting to these in some way was to take a picture of a busy high street area and then fade in a picture of some dressed Victorian looking rather sombre standing stock still, well, either in the busy street or in one of the haunted places.
OH! Also had the idea to sketch the faces of the ghosts from descriptions, detailed drawings of the rooms and hopefully the ghosts or even just making them a shadow...
Then there was the idea of drawing the multiple faces of the plague so there was the faces of the doctors with their crow mask things, the bubonic spots all over someone's face and maybe another face if I research more and drawing it all like it is multiple faces on the same head, if you know what I mean?
Then there was my real last idea where I make masks of peoples faces one of the doctor's from the time of the plague, one of an ordinary victorian person, and another of a modern day person and have them hang at intervals from the ceiling. So on the face side they look like what they are meant to look like but on the inside they have at the brain, thoughts that they might have thought about, at the nose, descriptions of smells they might have smelt, at the eyes drawings or images of what they would have seen so when you look into the mask you almost experience their experience?
To be perfectly honest I am going over-board with ideas at this VERY early stage and I still haven't even picked my topic yet... I shall see how the trip goes and if it pushes me towards any of these ideas and if I do them I will try properly this year to upload them.
This was very wordy and if you made it this far I applaud you. This was my introduction to my first week of BAD2 thanks for reading!
Friday, 23 May 2014
I ACTUALLY MADE A BOOK!
Ok, so I forgot to take pictures of each stage of the making of my hard back book but I have pictures of the finished piece... No excuse, I'm sorry...
SO! Since I don't have pictures of each stage then I will just have to describe my process! HERE WE GO!
STEP 1: I took pieces of A2 sketchbook pages and cut them into the appropriate size for the book but doubled in width because it needed to be folded in half. each page was folded in half, the instructions call for 4 piles of 8 sheets but I only wanted 24 pages so I created 6 sheets and folded them all in half individually.
STEP 2: Next I cut a piece of fabric the length of the pages but 5 times the width when held together and the bend, and then I glued them to it at the bend with PVA but wrongly, instead of keeping the wings unglued I attached them also to the paper...
STEP 3: After I cut up some greyboard with the bandsaw to the same size as the paper as a spine the same width as the join in the pages.
STEP 4: Then I cut the fabric with an inch extra border to be folded over the greyboard. I covered the greyboard in PVA glue and then placed it face down in its place in the fabric with a small gap between spine and covers.
STEP 5: when all of that was stuck down efficiently I SHOULD have stuck the wings to only the covers of the book not the spine so that it was stable. But because I had screwed up the wings I had to get extra fabric and create new ones and try to attach that to the covers and to the already fabricated pages.... it didn't like me... so I gave up, and when the glue was a little drier I stitched it together... badly.
STEP 6: Then to cover up the botched job I had made of the fabric I covered it with extra paper to be patterned by me later.
So basically... Voila! I had a book at the end. But since my instructions are pretty below par I will give you the link to the tutorial I used
http://www.instructables.com/
SO! Since I don't have pictures of each stage then I will just have to describe my process! HERE WE GO!
STEP 1: I took pieces of A2 sketchbook pages and cut them into the appropriate size for the book but doubled in width because it needed to be folded in half. each page was folded in half, the instructions call for 4 piles of 8 sheets but I only wanted 24 pages so I created 6 sheets and folded them all in half individually.
STEP 2: Next I cut a piece of fabric the length of the pages but 5 times the width when held together and the bend, and then I glued them to it at the bend with PVA but wrongly, instead of keeping the wings unglued I attached them also to the paper...
STEP 3: After I cut up some greyboard with the bandsaw to the same size as the paper as a spine the same width as the join in the pages.
STEP 4: Then I cut the fabric with an inch extra border to be folded over the greyboard. I covered the greyboard in PVA glue and then placed it face down in its place in the fabric with a small gap between spine and covers.
STEP 5: when all of that was stuck down efficiently I SHOULD have stuck the wings to only the covers of the book not the spine so that it was stable. But because I had screwed up the wings I had to get extra fabric and create new ones and try to attach that to the covers and to the already fabricated pages.... it didn't like me... so I gave up, and when the glue was a little drier I stitched it together... badly.
STEP 6: Then to cover up the botched job I had made of the fabric I covered it with extra paper to be patterned by me later.
So basically... Voila! I had a book at the end. But since my instructions are pretty below par I will give you the link to the tutorial I used
http://www.instructables.com/
Monday, 19 May 2014
Statement for Assessments
Ok, so my class can't be the only one needing to complete Statement for Assessments any time they are nearing completion of a brief or project so I thought for future reference I would place up a semi-detailed idea of what should be included in one.
SECTION 1 : Explain what you did in your project - how
- What was the subject matter? like of the drawings etc.
Relate to the outcomes given in the handbook/brief - Strengths
- Weakness
What pathway have you focused on in your project?
SECTION 2 : Evaluate research - How it helped you? What ideas it gave you?
- How you analysed the information you found?
- Things you did or could have tried
- What exactly did you research? eg, artist's books.
SECTION 3 : Explain the experimentation - Mediums you used
- How they join in with your take on the brief
- Why you liked/disliked what you tried
Lists are ok - bullet point certain ideas
SECTION 4 : Transferable skills - Learning & progress
- Time
- Cost
- Skills
What you would have done differently if these things had been different.
This is morely for me but if this helps anyone... yay
SECTION 1 : Explain what you did in your project - how
- What was the subject matter? like of the drawings etc.
Relate to the outcomes given in the handbook/brief - Strengths
- Weakness
What pathway have you focused on in your project?
SECTION 2 : Evaluate research - How it helped you? What ideas it gave you?
- How you analysed the information you found?
- Things you did or could have tried
- What exactly did you research? eg, artist's books.
SECTION 3 : Explain the experimentation - Mediums you used
- How they join in with your take on the brief
- Why you liked/disliked what you tried
Lists are ok - bullet point certain ideas
SECTION 4 : Transferable skills - Learning & progress
- Time
- Cost
- Skills
What you would have done differently if these things had been different.
This is morely for me but if this helps anyone... yay
The pathways project
Our Pathways project was to be a book based on a journey. My journey was about the day of an average student, the thoughts and feelings this student has through the average day faced with situations and such that the average student has to deal with. The book I was going to make was going to be a real hard back book, made with red fabric for the outside covers and grey board and sketchbook paper. The art work on the inside will be a mix of mediums such water colour paints, markers, acrylics, sketching pencils, etc.
The subject matter in the book will vary from pictures of people I have seen but never met, like the people I see daily on my bus, selfies with my class mates, people who influence your life, things you encounter like mountains of work, deadlines, lack or or excessive sleeping, and obviously the lack of money and full on partying that is associated with student life.
When I complete the book I will upload a almost tutorial on how I created the hard back book. Step by step pictures. I haven't entirely started the physical making of the book because i still need materials and such but that should be completed tomorrow, well at least the combining of the cover to the paper, maybe not all of the pictures on the paper. My problem is with that I don't want the paper to crinkle due to the use of paint but my only real alternative is to do the paintings in my sketchbook and take photos and print them and stick them into the book instead but I don't think that will be much better, I'd like it to contain all the originals.
I am sorry that right now I don't have any real pictures to show to go along with this post but I swear there will be a descriptive post about the making of the book within the next week.
The subject matter in the book will vary from pictures of people I have seen but never met, like the people I see daily on my bus, selfies with my class mates, people who influence your life, things you encounter like mountains of work, deadlines, lack or or excessive sleeping, and obviously the lack of money and full on partying that is associated with student life.
When I complete the book I will upload a almost tutorial on how I created the hard back book. Step by step pictures. I haven't entirely started the physical making of the book because i still need materials and such but that should be completed tomorrow, well at least the combining of the cover to the paper, maybe not all of the pictures on the paper. My problem is with that I don't want the paper to crinkle due to the use of paint but my only real alternative is to do the paintings in my sketchbook and take photos and print them and stick them into the book instead but I don't think that will be much better, I'd like it to contain all the originals.
I am sorry that right now I don't have any real pictures to show to go along with this post but I swear there will be a descriptive post about the making of the book within the next week.
My transformation project
My project for specialist skills was based upon the transformation of games, the Evolution of games over the last few decades. I looked into the range of games that have existed coming from the game pong, going up to all the more violent games nowadays such as COD and GTA and also trying to see about the consoles for gaming.
Because this project was a whole year long I don't want to bulk this up with just pictures upon pictures of my sketchbook pages and so I will only show and explain my final pieces.
My first piece is a 80cm by 40cm acrylic painting. I showed the difference between old games and new, conceptually showing them in battle, like, which is better, fight it out. One side is the old versions of Pac-man, Mario, Link and Pikachu, all looking like they are in 8-bit form. And the other side has all the newer high definition versions of those same characters. Although, all characters are surrounded in a light haze to make them stand out from the dark grey background. The background was a mixed up colour so in some places it is a little darker or lighter because I didn't mix it correctly. The middle shows the word "FIGHT" done in the style of Mortal Combat, which is a popular fighting game.
Well in the end I was pretty proud of my final pieces. My work in the sketchbook leading up to them could have been more in depth and better done I believe... But if I pass I will be proud of what I accomplished.
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