Activities
For this semester, I was involved by attending to every class and consulting with my mentors, using their feedback to improve my project. I also sought after the help of some of my peers when in doubt, as well as using them as a reference to know what I should aspire to achieve with my project.
I completed most of the IOL Tasks, however, I didn't always manage to submit them on time.
I nominate myself to a grade of 11/15
Week 1 - OBSERVATION
In the first week’s topic I felt right at home. Observation feels like an ingrained step of my creative process as an illustrator and animator too. In the past I have thought a lot about what and how to observe and also how to capture this observation. For my response this week I interpreted observation as the study of attention in both a literal visual and mental sense - what do you notice when you are mindful of where your attention is? When practicing this mindfulness I wanted to visually record how my attention oscillates between my internal world and the external.
I sat in the library for some time and created a ‘brain dump’ sketchbook page. The pages began with sketches of the environment around me - objects, details etc. After a while I began to notice the drawing get more automated as I got more ‘lost in thought’. During these periods where my attention slipped internally, the trains of thought were often triggered by something I saw around me. The images of these memories and thoughts were also recorded on my sketchbook page in the form of symbols or colours or patterns. Whatever visual that I associated with that thought and saw in my head. In this way the Brain Dump became a study not only in sight based observation but also in self-reflection and internal observation of memory and visual association with memories.
The actual aesthetic and visual composition of the brain dump was kept fast and loose. It wasn’t important to record every single minute detail of what I observed but just enough information to capture what it is that actually caught my attention (.e.g. the girl’s red hair, severe looking eyebrows, the pattern on the Boost Juice cup). Like most automated drawings the composition is scattered. As attention is fragmented, so is the visualising of them. I tried to use mark making techniques that focus on design elements/principles (.e.g. line, shape, pattern, tone etc) rather then a figurative approach. This is to further break down the layers of learned habits instilled in me about ‘how to draw’.
Inspired by abstract illustration and ‘doodling’ my context for this week’s activity was Automatism and Automatic drawing practiced by Surrealists such as Joan Miro, Max Ernst and Andre Masson. Contemporary illustrators that influenced me were Lisk Feng and her sketchbooks/mark making styles, Evie Cahir’s ‘Brain Dump’ pages and Christoph Niemann’s ‘Abstract Sunday’ series. My findings are that observation is closely linked to representation and recording of information that is linked to aesthetic and style.
Week 2 - TINKERING AS METHOD
Response: Character Design Drawing Game
In my past and current practice, ‘working straight ahead’ often features as an important part of the early stages of my creative process. With a more intuitive method of working, I don’t find exact and rigorous planning to be that helpful and much prefer to be guided by a general goal that is fine tuned through quick iterations. Making, experimentation and ‘play’ becomes important here. A large reason behind this is to keep the creative process fun! Fun provides fertile soil for imagination and the extrapolation of ideas (in my humble opinion!). Scoping down and fine tuning comes at a later stage. In the light of this thought, this week’s theme greatly excited me.
For context I began to look at art forms that re-contextualised forms or ideas such as collage and Found Objects. I also looked at moments of play in drawing - artist sketchbooks and drawing games in particular. These are spaces where experimentation of form and thought are active. For this week’s method I decided to create a drawing game. I tasked myself with creating characters from cut out random paper shapes. I had to play with the constraints of the shape and extract a character out of it. I found myself questioning the shape itself and looking at its properties - how organic or angular it was and what associations I had with that type of shape or the colours of that shape. I also thought about what I wanted to imbue in that shape. Did I want it to have a particular personality or express a certain quality? It was a back and forth between the inherent nature of the shape and what I wanted to impose onto the shape.
Working with what I am given became a great way to unravel and loosen up existing approaches to character design. In figurative forms, illustrators and animators usually end up developing a go-to style - preferences of line, shape and form. These comfort zones of working allow us to create confidently. Aesthetically it provides some sort of unity in our work. Some character designers have a rounded approach to characters, some long and skinny. I found this drawing game to challenge these pre-existing drawing habits that I have and have a deeper consideration into shapes that make up a figure.
Week 3 - FOUND OBJECTS
Response: Coffee Cup + Pop Art
I initially struggled with this week’s topic. I had trouble deciding what my found object was and how I even wanted to interpret the idea of a ‘found object’. I initially played with the idea of ‘found objects’ being a collection of visual imagery and memories. Found images that we stored in our head - a database to draw upon laden with imbued meaning through culture and self. As I searched and collected photos based of this idea, I began to see it was too vague to draw upon. It wasn’t based in any one object but more a collective of ideas and visual association. I became a little lost and decided to scrap this concept. I took it back to the beginning and reground my response in a random found object - a takeaway coffee cup.
As I was considering this object I began to think about the cultural connotations surrounding it. The huge cult of ‘coffee culture’ - it had its own memes, jokes and deep reverence for a simple hot beverage. The takeaway coffee cup has become a symbol of this culture. For context, I began looking at art forms that re-contextualised through appropriation and parody in order to subvert meanings of those objects and images. I began to look at collage, pop art and artists such as Ron English, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Williams as well as the Garbage Pail Kids Campaign.
I really liked the idea of pairing existing objects and ideas to make new comment about something else. This pop art approach serves as a reminder that imbued cultural ideas are never set in stone and are flexible and interchangeable. Subversion can serve as a way for us to re-examine normalised ideas. I created a visual response that appropriated the style of Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portraits to a coffee cup - a combination of a found object with a found idea. In adopting this aesthetic choice I also adopt its meaning and hope to draw a parallel. Warhol created these portraits as a comment on celebrity and commodification. Repurposing Warhol’s ideas allow for new dots to be connected. I parallel these ideas to the coffee cup as a comment on ‘coffee culture’ that is enacted in popular culture where Coffee becomes a revered substance and habit with a cult like following (not unlike a celebrity).
Week 4 - DISCUSSIONS OF PLACE
Response: 4 Panel Semi Abstract Comic - “Reprieve”
My initial brainstorm of ideas in response to this week’s topic was wide and varied. The common idea that linked them was the consideration of the relationship between Place and Identity. How spaces leave a mark on our identity and we leave a mark on spaces in order to then assert this identity. I began to think to examples of this such as scrawling of anonymous confessions in the form of toilet graffiti, etchings into doorframes of a growing child’s height and carvings of names into wooden objects like desks. As I thought about these things I realised what I really focused on and thought of was the emotion and nostalgia that were connected to these places. They serve as important markers to a particular time in someone’s life.
In my contextual research I began to look into the intersection of Place, Memory and Affect and through this line of thinking discovered ‘psychogeography’. ‘Psychogeography’ is a term first coined by theorist Guy Debord in 1950s emergent of the Situationist movement. It focuses on the psychological experiences of urban environments and viewing these environments through an the lens of Affect in order to make emotional maps of urban spaces. Psychogeographers (writers, poets, philosophers) ‘drift’ and get lost in urban worlds, using their emotions to guide them through the cities they explore. I found this really interesting as it is a study of how internal and external worlds run parallel to each other.
My first idea for the method of response was a reflective and written one. A side hobby of mine is film photography. I often go on photo walks with my camera. The film process makes me a more considered photo taker and like the brain dump activity I am mindful of what I notice and what I find interesting enough to capture in my limited 36 frames. When I get a roll developed I often find that the things I notice have some sort of common idea between them. For example, plants amongst built objects, construction sites etc. As I reflected upon this photo walk process I began to think about how I choose the direction of my walks and what I capture and this goes back to the psychogeograph idea of emotional responses to space.
I began to think about a very personal memory I had. At a particularly sad but extremely busy time of my life last year, I used to literally schedule crying time during this part of the walk. So I could get it out of my system in order to continue with whatever tasks I needed to get done when I got home. Even now, in a much happier emotional space every time I walk through this section of my walk home I strongly remember these emotions or this period of time. Strong memories and emotions had been imbued into the space just through the habits and behaviours I had enacted within it. For my response I decided to try capture this memory, visualising emotional overlays on physical spaces through abstract illustration.
Week 5 - OBJECTS ARE NOT EXHAUSTED
This week’s theme examines Object-Orientated Ontology. It is the consideration of the role and existence of objects outside of the subjective purposes imbued into them by people and culture. I extremely enjoyed this week’s topic as a playground for thought experiments. Considering objects through the lens of OOO is also a consideration of materiality and relationships the object has with the world around it - not just humans but also the environment it lives in. Within these considerations there is plenty of space to ask some big questions.
I however enjoyed these considerations as an opportunity to ask ‘what if?’. My contextual research brought me to an episode of animated series ‘Love, Death and Robots’ where three robots took a tour through New York city in a dystopian future where humans are extinct. As they explore the city they discuss human made objects they find. In one such scene they question the purpose of a basketball. I took this same approach of questioning to my chosen object, a Moka coffee pot. An object extracted from my Studio animations. Imagining that in a world that didn’t know its intended use - what else could a stainless steel coffee making pot be used for?
Considering the Moka pot was an interesting activity in itself. The Moka pot was created by engineers to facilitate the coffee cooking process. It is a vessel that facilitates change through heat to combine ingredients. It is a vessel to contain a process. As an object outside of this process it is a stainless steel container. I began to think about the properties of steel. Steel itself is an alloy, created to withstand time and the elements - made to last. Considering the pot as an object of steel became the gateway of thinking about some of my response to ‘what else?’. Consideration of its shape also became important as well as ides of how it could stand.