Course is on hold...for now!

While I was enjoying some aspects of the course to some extent, I found it really difficult to get stuck in without feeling anxious.  I would be terribly nervous and my stomach felt knotted.  There have been other reasons for feeling like this, of course, but studying added to these feelings.  Another realisation I had is how I hate being confined to the house for such long periods of time.  Opportunities for work are coming my way and not only will this allow me to get out and about, I am able to earn an income.

So, for the time being, my studies are on hold.  Even for this short period of time, I allowed myself to look at art in a completely different way.  I intend on coming back to it, one day.  There will be one final activity to publish, but that's it.

Activity 14 - Expanding the Visual Language

This activity allowed me to address my emotions with each image I drew.  While it may not appear to be as randomised in the way of drawing as the activity would suggest, I was, nonetheless able to spontaneously capture my emotions based on my recent chain of circumstances and this metaphor made the most sense to me.

 Using the boat on the open sea, the clouds are starting to roll in, the birds are flying away and the seas are getting choppy.  The storm is brewing, and the boat is in a vulnerable position by being in open water.  There is nothing else for it but to face whatever's coming, even though there is trepidation and it's on the rise.

The boat is now in the eye of a huge storm, the waves are high, the skies are dark with rain clouds, heavy rain is pouring and the boat is riding this storm out, hoping to remain safe, while the adrenalin is kicking in for survival mode.  There has been rising fear in regards to what was coming, but now the only thought in mind is to steer with the storm rather than against it.







While the storm hasn't quite abated, as the clouds are still about and the seas are still choppy, the waters are calming down and the rain has passed.  The rainbow in the sky holds much in the way of promise for this storm to pass, knowing that the worse is behind the boat.

The storm has long since passed and the boat is moving along calm seas once more.  The sun is shining and the birds are flying towards land, to let the boat know that a safe haven is at hand.





There is a polarity with these images also.  Image one talks about the impending storm, with the attaching emotions of rising fear and uncertainty, while image three talks about the storm receding and the relief with having passed the worst of it.  Image two shows the storm in its intensity and the resilience needed in order to ride it out rather than fight it, while image four brings the boat out to the other side, having experienced the worst and now enjoying the best.

Activity 14 completed.

Activity 13 - Storyboard

The last 12 activities were crucial for me to complete, as this storyboard is a reflection on my design fundamentals journey so far.  As I've summarised, what I've learned from doing these activities has been to open my mind to new ways of thinking and being creative.

13th activity completed.

Activity 12 - Analysis of a Drawing

I'm choosing two images to analyse, one which I believe to be successful and one which I believe to not be.

In the instance of this image, I believe that this would succeed in delivering the message for people who celebrate the pagan calendar, marking the period of the Spring Equinox, called Ostara, after the Germanic goddess of the springtime.  This image is sentimental in how Ostara is cuddling a rabbit, and from Germanic legend, the Easter bunny hides the eggs for the children to find on the egg hunt.  Rabbits are also symbolic of the onset of springtime, and of family.

This image is called Buddha, and it doesn't succeed with me, because I don't understand how this image comes across in any way to depict Buddha.  In my opinion, this lack of understanding is the cause for my inability to communicate and articulate its meaning, and if I were to have any clue, I would be able to articulate it.  To me, it's a series of scribbles and a greater explanation deserves to be given as to why this would be called Buddha.

Activity 12 is completed and I'm four more activities closer to starting on my first assignment.

Activity 11 - Altering the Format

Another challenging project accomplished!  This time, it's about picking an image, translating it into another drawing shaped inside an oval and adding extra bits to it from the edge of the original rectangular image.  The final drawing is translating it from the oval drawing and adding more to a big rectangular shape.

I found this spinning wheel image on pinterest and loved the sheer simplicity of a wood carved bird with wings to make the wheel's frame.

My translation of the same drawing, drawn inside the oval, a bigger area to work with and adding a few extra shapes to the drawing.

The final drawing has been made onto a different substrate, using a cardboard rectangular sheet.  This drawing was much easier to do than the middle drawing in that I added the woman spinning at the wheel, with the Wyrd Sisters of the past, present and future watching over the woman while she's spinning.

Activity 11 completed.

Activity Nine - Thinking Visually

This particular activity took a while to materialise, but I think I nailed it.  The scenario I'm working with is as follows:

I have a client named Ivana Havalot - Daughter of Ivan Havalot - who has commissioned me to do a concept drawing based on a product which she has come up with.  Ivana has written down her ideas in the hope of approaching her father to fund the project and have it produced, so she can make a name for herself in the family dynasty.

The concept project that Ivana has come up with is called the Trivialiser, something to make light of an awkward situation, and nip it in the bud.  The trivialiser needs to be big enough to fit in the pocket of a pair of jeans - about the size of an average mobile phone.  Light on top and heavy on the bottom, with some rough finishes and attention grabbing with the eyes.  Lengthwise, one side should be longer than the other.  So this is what I came up with:

Based on the mobile phone cover and setup, I have this picture as the cover itself.  It's a colourful cultural piece, depicting various cultural and spiritual beliefs from around the world.  Regardless of the beliefs behind this image, it's eye-catching with its colour detail and the features of each person would make for a focal point of conversation.

The hand belongs to Ivana.  Despite the fact that her father is a billionaire, Ivana wants to show the world that she has lived a full life, along with having a soft and caring nature.  This hand, while rough in appearance and texture, is very soothing and a simple touch of the hand is immediately calming for the recipient.  Inside the hand are mechanical components to operate the hand at the slightest touch.

This is the back cover of the trivialiser, with an image of a man and woman walking through a forest after some wet weather, with the promise of storms passing and it's safe to venture outside once more.  The colours of autumn are bright and vibrant, drawing the viewer in and along a path which looks like it goes on forever.



The front cover is made to fit snugly over the hand when it's closed on it, while the hand itself fits snugly inside its case.  Each part of the trivialiser is a stand-alone talking point, and brings out the eccentric nature of both Ivana, the commissioner of this concept, and her billionaire father, who has been in many situations which required a gentle and steady hand to seek co-operation and harmony.

Activity nine completed.

Activity 10 - Deconstructing and Reinterpreting

I'm over half way now with this lot of activities I need to achieve before I begin my first assignment, which I hope to start on by the end of this week.  This activity had me tearing up one of my artworks (I photocopied a drawing because I didn't want to destroy any of my originals), as part of the deconstruction, in order to reinterpret.  I have to admit, once I started on this activity, it was all free form from here.

When I undertook my sight unseen activity, I drew the first image intuitively, and this was the one I used to deconstruct, by tearing it into five pieces and using three of the best for the next image.

Using charcoal, as in the previous drawing, I glued the three best pieces onto a new sheet of paper and set about redrawing the image, thereby creating a new image.  I forgot to take photos of the pieces I ripped up but if you look closely at this image, you can see where it's been stitched up.  As you can also see, more has been added to this image, including mountains, more trees, some flowers, a sun, clouds and a pair of birds.



Activity 10 completed.

Activity Seven - Foreshortening

Well, I didn't have to contact my tutor in regards to this particular activity, because I finally figured it out.  In short, I had to draw up a viewfinder with a frame, clear plastic sheet over it and draw some cross hairs on the plastic in order to find a centre point.



With that idea in mind, I found an image that I needed to trace over:


Much as I love this image, I didn't go out of my way to trace over all the intricate bits, instead keeping it to the edges as closely as possible.

This is the image I traced.

Drawing a slightly larger frame onto a new sheet of paper, I had to draw the same image from the viewfinder onto this sheet of paper within the frame, keeping the proportions as close to the original image as possible.  Hmmm.

I had a go at superimposing my viewfinder over the drawing to see the difference.

I don't believe I was out by terribly much, but in saying that, drawing isn't as easy as one would think.  I'm already thinking in ways that I otherwise wouldn't normally.


Eight activities completed.

Activity Eight - Gesture drawing

This activity turned out to be most interesting in that the main focus is on studying the subject that I'm attempting to draw.




The original image that I was studying is of my granddaughter eating birthday cake:

I'm new to the concept of gesture drawing so I drew from a photographic still.  Even still, the image had to be broken down into two separate drawings.  The first drawing is of the main subject, while the second drawing is of the background. 

The idea of both these drawings is to give a person 25 minutes to focus on the subject and one minute to draw the surroundings, then 25 minutes to draw the surroundings and one minute to draw the subject.

Rather tricky, to say the least. 


After the drawings are made, then the concept of rhythm and curve is added to the drawings, basically giving the drawer some freehand curves that brings both the subject and background into focus.  I'm not sure how well I went, but there we have it.



This is the first image of my subject.  25 minutes of my focus.

The next image is 25 minutes of the background.  This is also a huge difference.








Seven activities completed.  I'm meant to be doing activity seven, but I'm stuck on its delivery.  Hopefully I can talk to my tutor about it soon.

Activity Five - Sight Unseen

Activity Five has finally been completed and all the first six activities have been accounted for!  Pretty good feat, considering the week I've had but that's another story.

This activity covers the subject of Sight Unseen.  The idea for this subject is to get somebody to choose an object from nature on my behalf.  In this case, I enlisted the help of my daughter, who popped the object into a plastic bag so that I wouldn't see what it was.



Once the object came into my possession at home, I was to dip my free hand into the bag and feel the object, in order to get an idea of what it is intuitively.  Using this intuition, I would then begin to draw the object.  This is what I came up with from the first image:

As opposed to how it really was. 

The difference couldn't be more stark!  Maybe I should use the force more (Star Wars pun).

In saying that, I value the use of intuition, as it guides me in other ways.  Now I can incorporate it more into this form of artwork.



Next activity to follow later.

Activity Two - One drawing, two different opinions

I was a bit stumped in regards to how I can cover this activity, because up to now, I haven't been able to find anything.  That is, until I stumbled upon this image this morning and while it's an incredibly complicated paradox to explain, there is a simplicity in its paradox - both sides of the image need to be explored!
Brian Ridgley

  

Two men, one of them pointing to the same objects from the left, believing that he's seeing four different objects, while the one on the right is pointing to the same objects and seeing three.  Let's look from the perspective of the gentleman on the left first.  

He sees four objects, and he sees four objects from his perspective because of the way they are drawn together.  From his angle, they are four wooden blocks laid side by side.

The gentleman on the right, on the other hand, sees three different objects from the way they are drawn separately, and while they are laying side by side, they're not touching each other.

The thing about such images is that if you look at it from a centrist position, you can see exactly how it's drawn to look like an optical illusion.  To stand on one side or the other only is to capture the limited view, to not be prepared in how the objects are seen from the other side, or take in the other person's opinion in regards to why it's seen that way.  The time it takes for each person's opinion to be recorded will depend on how long that opinion is maintained.  Until the bigger picture is seen, each opinion will never change.  It's not to say that either one is wrong, but because of how this illusion is drawn, neither of them are actually right either, and here is why we have a paradox.

Another example I have is this one:

Half full or half empty 

One glass, two differing opinions.  The gentleman on the left is seen as an optimist, because the glass is half full, while the gentleman on the right is seen as a pessimist, because the glass is half empty.  This is a psychological difference of opinion, as the optimist is always seen to always uphold the view of everything being right and always working out, while the pessimist is always seen to always uphold the view of everything being wrong and never working out.  From a centrist perspective, it can also be seen as an incomplete drink that the person drinking it will eventually come back to and finish it off.  To sum up, it's a glass with fluid in it.  Why does the psychology enter into it?
This interesting blog gets to the core root of human thinking and feeling in that we are subjective and Shakespeare sums it up succinctly with this quote:
"There is nothing good or bad, but thinking it makes it so."
Psychology today

While I'm no psychologist, it's fair to say that artistic expression is linked to the human psyche, and how we think reflects in our work.

Five activities completed!  The next activity is the seventh, while I will get one of my family members to procure an object for me later today.

Activities three, four and six in one

I'm slightly out of sequence with my activities, as I need more information about the second activity, and the fifth activity involves somebody else choosing something that I'm not aware of to draw blind later.  Having said that, I have completed activities three, four and six, much to my relief.

Activity three consisted of three different paintings, using three different shades of the same colour and three different tools that I have around the house.





Photo one shows the different colour strengths, using the three different tools of the skewer to the left, wire brush handle in the centre and paper towel to the right.
 What can be seen is not only the difference in the hues, there is also a difference in the texture from each tool used.

Picture two is of a leaf that I procured from my back yard.  The first three leaves were traced and painted with each of the tools, using the different hues and highlighted.

The next three leaves are of the leaf itself, dipped in the three coloured hues and showing the different texture  and colour.

The last image is a combination from the previous two images, outlining what was used  and how.











Activity four saw me doing a charcoal drawing of an object in observation.  I took a photograph of a tree in my front yard and attempted to draw it in charcoal.

I'm not an observational drawer by nature and I didn't expect my image to be the same.  It was more about what can be achieved from using crushed charcoal in the background, drawing with sticks and compressed charcoal in the foreground, and using an eraser over the whole
drawing to capture its weight and volume.

The final activity and image consisted of Frottage, to colour in on a piece of paper over a rough surface.  I drew an outline of a ball which hangs outside in my back yard and let the colouring in begin, with a corrugated placemat, straight down and crossways, using different shades of black pencil.  As can be seen, the colours ran deeper inside the ridges while the colour is lighter along the wooden surface.



Three activities completed, with more to do tomorrow!

Images which evoke different feelings

While my blog is mostly of visual arts, it's also a journal that I'm compiling in relation to my course.  My first unit is about producing drawings to communicate ideas, and there are various activities involved.  The first activity is about gathering resources and inspiration.
So, in breaking the resources down:

• What I currently have on hand are pencils, paint, brushes, sharpener and eraser
• Art paper
• Digital media software
• Workspace for my laptop is my dining table, as it provides good natural light without glare
• I also have an outdoor setting under an enclosure for other forms of creative inspiration
• I'm collecting a digital media library which is kept on my laptop

Now for the fun part - images!
There are five to choose from which invoke differing feelings, what I love, what I hate, what I don't understand, what I think is really out there and what gets me in deep down.  The first image of this series is what I don't understand:

While I bear in mind that this is an image the artist understands, I can't see anything beyond scribble and I don't understand its value or content.  The link from where I provided the image is below:
Claude Heath

The next image I've chosen is of my own creation some years ago and what I love.  My source of inspiration for this image was Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist who also happened to be a rather gifted artist.  My image is of separate images within the image itself, which was made to hang as either a square or a diamond, and the main feature is that of the centralised cross which has the cross quarter points of a compass and can be hung diagonally to feature the cardinal points of a compass.

Image number three is also one of my own creations, hand drawn with a mouse and what continues to invoke in me a deep spiritual meaning which is intrinsic to my personal development and growth.
While the pentacle is one of the suits depicted in a Tarot deck, it also lends itself to the meaning of head, arms, legs and the nerve centre.  The colours are of a receptive and reflective nature.

Image number four inevitably addresses something that I don't like in terms of its style.  While I can understand how colour is brought in to make the image less dull, I see nothing of the facial features.  It could be seen to represent how a person would think and I would be looking into the mind, it reminds me of a mask, the face that's deliberately hidden.

The final image I chose is what I've long considered to be out there as it evokes so many meanings, elements, emotions and depth in its use of image, colour and its exploration of various concepts within this image.  The image is from the album cover of King Crimson's second album In the Wake of Poseidon, created back in 1970.  There is magic and mystery, history and mythology associated with culture, night and day, young and old, bright and dark, sharp and blurred, thought and immediately striking at the same time.


The next part of this activity is of images that I have found and am able to reference, five in total:

This amazing fractal image incorporates multiple spirals using and assortment of colours.  Each spiral is definitive in its curvature and clarity, and I can personally see that being made as a cake, as it reminds me of decorative icing.

Link to the creator's blog can be found below:
Agate Lady

I have to admit that there is a soft spot for impressionist paintings, as there is a softer edge to how the painting is constructed, while not limiting in use of colour and scope.  This image is called the Rain is Gone, and while the wet ground hasn't completely dried up, there is still an opportunity for this couple to walk through this colourful forest.  Is it purposeful in terms of a destination or are they wandering through in a place where they can simply enjoy each other's company and their surroundings?  From where they came is in the distance and it gives the impression of going on for a very long time.
Link below:
Images by Bing


I've just stumbled upon this beautiful image, depicting who I believe to be Ostara, the Germanic Goddess of springtime.  Ostara is celebrated by Pagans during the time of the Spring Equinox - March in the northern Hemisphere and September in the Southern.  Ostara is always seen with rabbits, from where the legend of the Easter bunny and the egg hunt derives.  Interestingly, there is a similarity to the word Ostara and Easter, although it's not generally known where the word Easter itself comes from.
What grabbed me about the image is its warmth in its earthiness and muted colours, along with the love given between woman and animal.
Link below:
Goddess and Green Man

 I love spinning wheels, and I love spinning my own wool.  Although my wheel is made from wood, it's a more commercial design whereas the impression I get from this wheel is how it's a clever once off, using branches from trees, carving and shaping in a fashion to make a unique and functional piece of equipment.

Link below:
Home and Garden

Where I live on the South Coast of New South Wales, this migratory bird graces our wetlands and was one of the birds I saw for the first time when I moved to the area nearly six months ago.  Although the colour is darker than the bird's normal appearance, it is striking nonetheless.  I knew immediately which bird it was before I read its name as the sharp yellow beak is recogniseable, along with the distinctive white marks in the feathers.
Link below:
Leslie Vandersluys






The last part of this activity entails collecting a box of objects which are all different in texture and evoke four different emotions. 


From my back yard, I get leaves from the bottlebrush and bluegum trees.  I love the smell of eucalyptus that they emit when I use them for dyeing wool and slow cook them.  They are the smells of the bush which have been with me since childhood.  I bought a fluorite wand crystal some years back and I love its polished smoothness and colour which is associated with healing.  I have a wooden branch which is both smooth and rough and I think of those times when I like carving with them to make wands and staves.  The last pieces added to my box are a bunch of feathers I found on my walk this afternoon.  I grew up with birds, as my father was a breeder who kept aviaries of different types, and although my father passed away many years ago now, his memory is always with me, and especially so with the birds that I always see.

And So This New Journey Begins!

I commenced my enrolment for the online Certificate III course in Design Fundamentals three days ago.  There has been much in the way of trepidation and nerves, because already there is so much to learn - and I'm still navigating my way through using the websites, course notes, colour theory and assessment guides.  As is typical of starting out with something new, other stuff goes on and new stuff enters, reminding me at this point that I must remain focused on my intention and outcomes for this course, plan my time every day for study and assignments, and incorporate new time management skills so that everything I do in my day is set to a routine, while allowing myself the free time I will need to enjoy myself in a spontaneous fashion - a perfect balance!  HA!

Enough about that.  With each subsequent blog, it's about my visual diary, one which outlines my learning curve and development in the world of design.  This will reflect challenges as I delve deeper into this area of learning and open areas of my brain which I would not otherwise use - or haven't used for a very long time.  Fortunately, I'm a very visual person and I love exploring concepts of colour, texture and design.  I'll even have the opportunity to sketch and draw again, and incorporate my love for photography.  With all that, I will also learn to alter designs with photoshop and other such techniques.  Even as I write this, the nervous knot in my stomach is already starting to loosen as I feel a rising sense of anticipation in what I will eventually produce.

So let the fun and games begin!