Protest! Gingerism is real.

For one of our classes we were given the brief of "Protest", to come up with a 2D piece that was a rant about something we felt strongly about. For this I picked Gingerism. It is more of an issue than people realise and that it can have more of an effect on a person than society is willing to recognise.

My first idea for this project, even before I had decided on what my topic was going to be, was that I wanted to create a picket sign as that is an obvious sign of protest. It is almost iconic to be placed alongside the topic of protests. But to not pigeon-hold myself too early I thought about creating a painting or a design that could be placed onto simple canvas or into a frame, but it brought me full circle to, "why can't I put this onto a picket sign?", so that has become my final piece idea.

Different ideas I had had for the themes was the media and how they portray things like, women's "beauty" and how they photoshop every image and the effect this has specifically on young girls and their fashion nowadays. I also thought about how social media almost fuels homophobia and the hateful "anonymous" comments you get. I thought about politics and the ways in which it is failing this country in particular but I know too little about politics and politicians to be able to create a whole project. An issue that I looked into was that of waste, and how land is being wasted to create more housing, create landfills, and in general kill the land and the animals that live on it. However I decided I wanted to focus on gingerism as it is something I have experienced myself, my sister has experienced and some of my friends and family as well, so I would have loads of first hand accounts to listen to and to use to create something powerful.

My main point is just to make it more commonly known. Not many people think about how their small comment about someones hair colour can be offensive, or showing that some people deem having ginger hair as being a bad thing and a cause for further bullying. The goal I want to achieve is to make people think about some of the comments they say to people and maybe having this span deeper into other hair colour stereotypes and bullying in general.

While researching I have found a website dedicated to the accounts of gingers being bullied and attacked for simply being ginger. http://gingerism.com/ So far I have only read some accounts but they seem to mostly have extreme outcomes, or at least the ones at the top were, leading to convictions.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/227R6QV

This is my survey to get the public's idea of how big an issue gingerism is and to find out more from people I wouldn't get to talk to. I hope to get around 50 realistically but will stop a little after that if it happens.

Why I love and hate London

For 3 days some of my class mates and I roamed around London. We visited 2 galleries and the Harry Potter museum in Leavesden and stayed in a hostel near Kings Cross. It was an experience and a half. 

On Monday the 16th:

It was my mother's birthday and some of the BAD2 students decided to stay in Edinburgh that night so as to be able to make it the Waverley station for half 6 due to trains being difficult to get so early. Everyone else got there for 7 but due to family plans I arrived around 9 and we stayed at CoDE, which was phenomenal. I always thought hostels were dirty places, full of strangers, a cheap place to be. But I was proved wrong right away. I thought it was amazing, having our own individual pods for beds, seemed so clean other than all of our cases everywhere, and so private with the codes to enter the rooms and even the entire hostel. It was around 10 we went to bed, but most of us didn't sleep till 11/12 due to just not being tired. However we didn't sleep long because at 4 in the morning the inhabitants of the room next door arrived, banging and yelling and laughing so loudly, we all woke up. So after 4 hours sleep at most, we all woke up and decided to just get ready and get out for 6. With no breakfast and no real sleep we headed straight to Waverley to meet the rest of our college group. 

Tuesday the 17th:

At quarter past 6, the 5 of us arrived at the Waverley to wait on the lecturers and other students, immediately we met some of the HND girls buying bagels making the others want to get some too, so we split, me and Zoe went to WHSmith and got some juice and met Rhonwyn the last of the BAD2. Eventually everyone arrived and we all got handed our tickets and headed for the train. It was a free for all kind of situation so we made sure to get 6 seats relatively close including a table. We were all so tired for the start of the journey it was mostly sleeping and listening to our own music. Catherine and Roisin decided to play card games the whole way and the rest of us talked, doodled, and tried to stay comfy on our 4 hour train ride. When we arrived in Kings Cross at around half 11 and we walked to the hostel, the Generator. It was so much more than I had ever expected, it had its own cafe, its own club/bar, its own cinema room, it was above and beyond. We couldn't go to the rooms right away so we left our stuff in the luggage room and decided to head to Leicester Square through the tube and so the art students went to the National Portrait Gallery and the media students went to a radio station. But after the lecturers showing us where the gallery was we went on a mad hunt for food, because some of us, including myself, hadn't eaten anything at all and it was already 2 o'clock. We found a small cafe across from Charing Cross station and we FINALLY got something to eat. After filling up we wandered to Trafalgar Square and took some quick pictures before we went into the gallery. We got to see the Grayson Perry exhibition that was on and I found some of the vases in particular to be disturbing, but I prefer art that I can tell the meaning of, it wasn't my taste. We saw modern art takes on portraiture and well, also were not my taste, work that looks like what it is meant to look like. But I can see some of the appeal. There was this one piece and the artist had created a sculpture of his face out of his own frozen blood. 8 pints of his own blood... controversial but pretty awesome to look at. There were so many amazing portraits so detailed and realistic it makes you crave to do something as incredible as that, and makes you sad you aren't at that point... not just yet anyway. When we had wandered all of the free exhibits we ended up shopping through China town and Catherine and I ended up buying Kimonos and after 10 short minutes I thoroughly regretted it and after feeling ill for most of these travels I told a lecturer that I wanted to return to the hostel and just relax after failing to be able to return the kimono... But 2 hours of nothing, lying on my bottom bunk in the unwanted kimono on the phone to my boyfriend I felt much better. While I lay there the other students were trying to see the red carpet of the premier of the Second Best Marigold Hotel and getting food from various restaurants.When they returned we all started to unpack and afterwards went downstairs for a few drinks and realised we were in dire need of rest so went to sleep. 

Wednesday the 18th:

Our first full day in London, and we had to be downstairs by 7 for our complimentary breakfast. Waking at 6 to be dressed and ready on time after little sleep again was pretty dire but we all made it through. That day was our Harry Potter day, getting a train to Watford Junction which was an extra £16.60 because we didn't use our oyster cards... But anyway, most of us made it onto the bus but others didn't including the lecturers... So they were mad... But we all waited and went in together and due to a student being in a wheelchair we got to go in through a side door before anyone else. So VIP. We saw some amazing props and scenes and got to try butterbeer - super sweet and topped by cream but was pretty good for the first few sips, but no-one could handle much more than that. I was especially taken aback by the detail of the sketches and machetes of the scenes and the props and the paintings of scenarios the concept artists created... they were beautiful. So detailed and just incredible. Now, if I could do that, I would die happy. I might just have to find out what that actually is. After all of the commotion throughout the tour, the amazing things we saw the store nearly wiped me out with the expensive prices on everything. Heading home we decided we wanted to visit the V&A gallery and so after going to the hostel to drop off our stuff and sit quietly for a half hour, we got back on the tube and wandered around that. seeing certain exhibits but after a while all we had was sore feet and shoulders. Luckily however we had booked dinner reservations for TGI Fridays at Covent Gardens and it was great to sit down, relax and laugh and eat all the food we could and have a lovely wee drink before we got seated at our table. Covent Gardens at night was beautiful with all the lights and the people and faint music. We ended up lost trying to get back to the tube but thankfully it was just us walking in big circles. We made it back and decided to have a few drinks in the hostel and it ended up being quite a bit more than a few for some of us. Zoe and Catherine sang "Love Is An Open Door" from Frozen on karaoke, a group of men with all different nationalities invaded our booth and tried to dance with us and sit with us all night, and Zoe left with an aussie's number during call me maybe. Most of us left at midnight to get some sleep but others partied the night away until 2. Although we had to be up to shower for our final day so again up at 6 with a broken sleep and being locked out at 5 running to the reception for a new key in my jammies. But it all went well in the end. 

Thursday the 19th, the final day:

Up at 6 to try to shower in the hostel, after trying 3 different ones and feeling like goldilocks. This one was too broke, this one was too cold, and this one was just right. We got downstairs and ate breakfast and tried to decipher how to get to our shopping destinations. Ending up going to Harrods to stare at the many expensive designer things, including the food, the designer food that cost more than my entire suitcase full of stuff. After walking through most of the store we walked, really far, to Oxford Street we went to primark, some of us wandered to Victoria's Secret but it was too busy to stay for too long and our feet hurt sooooo much. Once we managed all that plus a little jaunt through selfridges we ended up not having much time left so we headed straight for the tube back to the hostel to retrieve our luggage and to get some lunch. It wasn't too eventful for the ride back just being late for Edinburgh and needing to wait an hour for my next train home and to a bed I knew was clean and cosy and waiting for me. 

This trip taught me I don't like to walk. But it also taught me to branch out with my work. A bartender questioned whether my art involved music and that made me question whether that was an idea I could follow with my work. I saw so many amazing paintings and sculptures and artworks and it inspired me so much. And now, I know London is incredible and beautiful and just so busy. We'd need so much more time to do everything and not having all of us want to collapse from our aching feet, legs, shoulders, backs. 

New Blogging System

Well today for PDP we got our marks about our folder and blog and so in the spirit of committing fully to a weekly blog and trying to make up for the many that I missed I am making a few more this week to get up to date on my LAST brief and then letting people know about my new ones for this term.

Since what I am doing right now is re-mediation before I move onto my newer briefs I thought I would discuss my changes to the final piece for resubmission which I kind of did in my last post.

TODAY I was painting over the plaster faces and hands and foot so as to get rid of the tally marks that were over-powering the buboes made of modrock. First, I tried a matt gel which was near enough translucent which I had assumed was paint and now I'm thinking maybe not...Woops. But after that I found a ready-mix white paint and after layer upon layer it eventually started to cover the tally marks by the end only a few could be seen.

SO as you can see there are still some little marks showing through the layers of paint. Turns out you need more than 4/5 layers. Tomorrow I will be adding another one after the pieces are all entirely dry and hopefully that will be the last one. 

I also tested what painting the buboes would be like by sticking them to a page and painting them in different ways to experiment how to emphasise them. Trying full black coverage, red, yellow and black to look pus filled, and finally a black outline. But I didn't particularly like any of them so I have the idea to use a marker instead of paint as the outline but I'm unsure of how well that will look on the actual faces and not just on paper. Doing the outlines red would be a reference to the "Ring-a-round a rosey" rhyme which would be subtle and would really pop against the now brilliantly white faces... 

I am still undecided on how to present them once they are fixed up. I do like the idea of placing them outside in the muck like they are really coming out of the ground but now with all this snow, I'm hoping it melts in time. And also I don't want to get my work mucky because I know I will be the one carrying them places afterwards... The photos, if any, would be taken next week anyway more than likely. However, I will need to buy a frame or something to present the photo in... 

My brain is a big jumble for time keeping so I do hope this is all resolved well by next friday, the 6th. 

Another term another obstacle

After finding out I had marginally failed my Multiples project I then had a slight rant online - which is now forever removed from the public world - but talking things out with lecturers has helped me a lot.

I mean I did really well with my sketchbook so now its only working out how to redo my final piece which even I admit was not how I wanted it to be. It ended up looking like... plaster body parts placed on astro-turf... It had no real thought behind it seemingly when there was some, it just didn't come across.

SO

I have no clue what to change and how to change it. Its between painting over the tally-marks, possibly painting the buboes, and then maybe having an external photo shoot to get it in a real outdoor-sy atmosphere and then have a photograph of the "sculpture" be my final piece. Which is soooooo much better than what I had before. 

Or... Recreate an old idea I had of a drawing of a man's face in pain, with watercolour dripping buboes and all on top of the nursery rhyme "Ring-a-ring a rosey" (which is about the plague if you didn't already know that.) 

The decision is all mine but I cannot make a decision for myself ever so instead of starting it tonight... I'm blogging. 

I will get some perspective tomorrow hopefully and then I can start working on whichever I decide, what path I choose... Pray for me. This is gonna get hard... 

What I Learned Cause of College

What I Learned Cause of College

Because of our Contextual/ Essay/ Presentations class I learned a little bit about Japanese Legends, mostly the ones that follow along with the Studio Ghibli movie, Spirited Away. I learned about some of the spirits they believe in. 

In the Shinto religion they believe in Kami spirits. Kami is a term for supernatural forces that exist in nature. The spirits are generally associated with natural phenomena. They are thought to be associated or housed within nature, like in the rivers, mountains, trees/forests, etc. 

Yokai are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folk lore. They range from malevolent to mischievous or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them. Sometimes they possess animal features and other times they appear mostly human. There are also some who look like inanimate objects and others have no discernible shape.

I've learned some legends about the spirit world as well such as the story of Izanagi and Izanami. Izanami, mother of japan died during birth. Izanagi went to the land of the dead (spirits) to get her but found she had eaten some of the food. Unfortunately it is believed that if you ate food from another world it would be difficult to return forcing the eater to stay. Which is entirely what happened in Spirited Away.... Just saying. 

All of the information I found out was mostly notes so sorry for the disjointed wording and sentences. Also everything was made relevant to my essay and presentation because they are about Spirited Away and the folklore that some Ghibli's are based on. None of this has any relevance to anything else in my life but I thought I would share because if you know the movie I thought someone... maybe... might find this information slightly interesting. 

My Multiples

My multiples project is about the Plague in Edinburgh. It mostly focuses on the multiple bodies/deaths caused by the plague.

Now my 3 ideas were all 3D sculptures.

1. Create a memorial involving the mass graves. It was an hour glass shape with the top half being the ground and the bottom being the mass bodies, faceless to emphasise the lack of identities. Originally it was going to be a child playing on top to show how these mass graves are unmarked and can be anywhere, but a lecturer pointed out that it would be difficult to know it was about the plague that way so I should incorporate the iconic plague doctor into it.

2. A 2 faced hanging head that on one side is a plague victim and the other the plague doctor mask. I wanted it to hang down from the ceiling to seem eerie and easy to see all the way round. 

3. Plaster molds of faces, hands and feet, laid on the floor like they are coming out the ground like a poorly covered mass grave. The body parts would have buboes made of modrock and the faces would be left white and have tally marks on them to emphasise the sheer number of victims of the plague. 

I have decided to go with the final idea, no.3. The buboes are to be painted so that they stand out, the tally marks are still to be added and as part of context there will also be a plague doctor mask painted black to contrast the white faces of the victims.

I toyed with the idea of adding a "quarantine" area with cones and tape and a white flag to hang over the piece as they did to show people that that place had someone suffering the plague inside. But all of that would have been too expensive all together and lack of time led to the idea being scrapped. 

Christmas Break

Over Christmas break I have decided for the 2 weeks off, I'll give myself a week free of college/sketchbook work so as to enjoy Christmas and all the family merriment. These last few weeks of prep are being used to rearrange my sketchbook pages into an understandable order instead of it following my jumpy train of thought. After the setting up of everything when I return it will just be getting lecturers opinions on the layout of the sketchbook to improve on everything from last year since a while back Ewan mentioned how our sketchbooks last year were rather bare, too organised but its how we thought we were to do it as we were told in first year that painting the pages, decorating the sketchbook, was a waste of time... We were relieved to hear that we could make a mess of the pages now, throw in some colour and  chaos. My final touches to add some decoration, add some final comments on certain images, research and drawings of mine. Sometimes I feel like I am rambling when trying to talk about my own work especially when trying to describe in my sketchbook.

Although I don't feel confident about painting over pages and not laying out research in neat rows sometimes it is necessary to create a certain feel about the work and ideas that you are trying to show on the page. I just hope I am fixing them correctly but other than that it is time to celebrate christmas and the end of this brief approaching. Usually it is a last minute scramble but I am feeling like there isn't too much more to do or that I can do.