This weeks tutorial.

This weeks tutorial has given me some more food for thought to progress with this week. One of the main things that I still want to develop more is the idea of mixing together processes and ideas as I was really happy with the results last time. Also after investigating some minimal artists, I would like to take some inspiration from Sol LeWitt's work by trying to incorporate the use of instructions in my work.

After today's photoshop workshop, I feel like this week would be a good week to further develop my photoshop skills as I have very little knowledge of how to use it. This weeks workshop was based on placing our work into the environment that we see it, for example, onto a garment, or on a wallpaper. As I am unsure about whether I want to create prints for interiors or fashion, I would like to take this week as an opportunity to investigate both, and understand where I want my work to fit.

Minimal Artists.

My final task this week was to look into minimal artists, as Piano Phase was created in the Minimal Movement, by a minimalist musician.

Piet Mondrian...
... was a Dutch painter, famous for his work during the minimal art movement. Music was a big influence in his work, and he was fascinated by American jazz, particularly boogie-woogie, finding its syncopated beat, flippant approach to melody and dynamic rhythm particularly of interest.

I like his linear and colourful responses to the music, and I would like to try and interpret my work in a similar, linear way, as that is how Piano Phase sounds in my head.

Sol Lewitt...

... is another artist that was part of the minimalist movement, as well as being a Conceptual artist. The use of instructions was a major strategy used by such Conceptual artists, and Sol LeWitt's instructions were made directly on the wall surface and sometimes took teams of people days or weeks to execute.

LeWitt likened his instructions to musical scores, which are realised in a new way every time they’re played, and it’s possible for LeWitt’s wall drawings to take slightly different forms, depending on how his directions are implemented.The idea was that the person who was carrying out the instructions, (often a team at the Gallery) become part of the creative process.

Successive Rows of Horizontal, Straight Lines from Top to Bottom, and Vertical, Straight Lines from Left to Right, 1972

I could reflect this in my work by getting someone else to set me some instructions, or give someone else some instructions and see what the results look like to give myself some inspiration based on the work of Minimal artists like Sol LeWitt.

Developing my ideas and visual research.

My work this week has been based on completing the targets that I set myself at the end of last weeks tutorial. Below are the targets, as well as how successful my response to them was.

Combine some digital/photographic ideas with my mark making.

This week, I wanted to use the techniques that I had used on my summer photos on scans on my own drawings and mark making. I tried this on one of my line drawings but I don't think it was as effective as my first attempt with my seal photo. 

(photo to come)

I didn't have time to do any more samples of a similar nature this week, but as my work develops I will continue to try out this method and see how I can manipulate the drawings I do.

Mixing ideas together 

I really enjoyed playing around with this target this week, and I would definitely like to merge more of my ideas together in the same way next week. Below are drawings representing this, where I combined the paintings of my fingers playing the piano, and my drawings based on the rhythm of the music.

I felt as though the example on the right was a more successful attempt because it looks less busy. The drawing on the left was done by drawing first and then playing with my fingers on top, but the right sample was done the opposite way around, so I drew around the finger prints, which I think looks simpler. A close up is shown below.

Play with the idea of repetition.
Use sentences and words to do with Phases to create art.

I felt that playing with repetition was very important this week because the track is made up of a 12 note sequence that is repeated over and over, so it is a big part of the piece which I haven't yet got across in my work. The piece I did to represent this was also based on a descriptive sentence, describing the piece of music: 'Creating rhythmic pulses that are surprising and uncharacteristic'. I tried to represent this by doing a drawing in 1 minute. I then repeated this, each time getting quicker and quicker (as the notes in the track are being played faster and faster). Eventually the last drawing was done in 3 seconds.

I then put these into photoshop to see if I could layer them up, again being inspired by the layering in the piece. I wasn't too happy with the results of my experiments because I feel that I dont have much experience on photoshop. However I feel like my most sucesful samples are shown below, which were where I tried to layer the drawings on top of each other.

I think my experiments became unsuccessful when I started to make them into patterns that could be used for digital prints. I think it was worthwhile doing them, as I always learn every time I go on photoshop, but I feel like with more experience, they could be stronger. 

After completing the task, it made me realise that I wanted to play with repetition, and use sentences to inspire my work more often: especially because repetition is such an important part in the piece of music.

Look into transferring the track on to an App that can turn the sound into waves

I bought an App called Audacity this week, and I loved looking into the results that it produced. When zooming into the details, it was interesting to see the different tones and the linear qualities of the sound waves. 

After examining the results I tried to represent them using gouache.

I also tried to take a more stylised approach, using the triangles as well as the line drawing on the right which I thought was really effective.

Investigate minimal artists

This was the last target this week, and the results are shown in the post above.

Representing music visually.

This week I feel as though I have really pushed myself and explored lots of different ways to represent Piano Phase visually.

As the different layers of music in the piece are being manipulated, I decided to start off this week by replicating this quality with some of my summer photos. For example, slowly twisting the layers or gradually making the photo bigger (like the piece gets faster). I love the results of these, especially the twisting that I created with the photo of Seals.

After listening to the music so many times, I realised that my ears were getting tired, and lazy: they couldn't be bothered to pay attention to all the notes for 18 minutes solid. My ears naturally picked out certain notes, sequences and beats so I tried to replicate what I could hear by listening to the piece and mark making whatever my ears heard. I like the result especially the light and shade created by different  sounds, and the spontaneous mark making.

I decided to take my research in another direction by learning how to play the 12 note sequence of notes on the piano. It is this sequence that is repeated over and over so I decided to do the same. I played the sequence with my fingers dipped in black paint on different pieces of tracing paper and turned them around and layered them up. I also represented the shapes in my results by painting different shades of grey in gouache.

I was really interested by the results, as I have never used a technique like this before. I decided to pick a colour palette, inspired by my summer work, to use for this sample, in an attempt to take my findings one step further. I represented the pattern created by my fingers, and then listened to the music and made marks on top of the pattern created. I really like the result, and I think I like it because of the processes that I used to get to it. I liked mixing different ideas that I had gathered throughout my research and adding in some colour as well.

I took all of the work that I had done so far to my first group tutorial and it was a really productive session that I gained lots of ideas from. Most of the feedback was more ideas about how to develop my work further. Below are some of the points mentioned, which I intend to investigate further during this coming week:

• Combine some digital/photographic ideas with my mark making. One example that came to mind was scanning in some of my work and manipulating it in the same way that I did with my photos.
• Mixing ideas together (even if they may not work... just try it out). For example, combining the linear qualities of my pen drawings with the spontaneous paintings that I did last week.
• Play with the idea of repetition more. I could draw the same thing more than once in different conditions, and possibly layer these on top of each other?
• Use sentences and words to do with Phases to create art, to give myself some more inspiration. I can then mix these with the above tasks.
• Look into transferring the track on to an App that can turn the sound into waves that might give me some interesting visual results
• Investigate minimalist artists

Hopefully these targets will help me to develop my work and give me some more food for thought for the rest of my project. 

This weeks findings.

After receiving my brief this week I have started to experiment with some different ideas that I have had, inspired by 'Piano Phase'. Below are some of the results.

I started off by simply looking at the sheet music. As Phases is made up of different layers that become distorted I tried to replicate this effect by tracing different elements in the sheet music and rearranging them in a different way, to create a new, distorted image.

I then used Peggy Gyulai as my inspiration, by listening to Piano Phase, and picking up different medias and letting the music tell my hands what to do.

I used both hands for these experiments, and even used my fingers in paint to add more character. I like the layering effect, and I feel that the chaotic feel of the music comes across well in some of the samples.

I decided to take this idea further, by creating more of these samples on a bigger scale. I started to struggle to decide which colours to use so I used the colour scheme from my seal photos from summer as well as the music to inspire these spontaneous drawings.

I thought the 3D effect of the gouache worked really well and I enjoyed letting myself loose, and becoming inspired by the music without any idea about what I am going to paint or draw. The results always vary and surprise me. 

Peggy Gyulai

Peggy Gyulai creates oil paintings interpreting the lyrical qualities of music. She listens over and over to understand the essense of each sound, and tries to feel its beauty, emotion and character. And then she puts it all onto canvas. Below is a link to a really interesting video showing her creating one of her peices whilst the orchestra is playing in her studio.

Link to video of Peggy Gyulai in action 

Its interesting to see how she responds to the music, and I love the large scale in which she works. I would love to try and interpret Piano Phase in the same way, and let myself feel the music, without planing or having any ideas about what my hands are going to create. 

Visions of sound: Piano Phase, Steve Reich.

After starting university again this week, my first task was to chose a brief out of the five given to us for this unit, Intentions. When reading through the briefs, 'Future past' was one that stood out to me as being 'my kinda thing' but I decided to go completely against this gut instinct and try something new. The 'visions of sound' brief really interested me but also scared me. I really want to push myself and take risks, and not worry about the outcome of my work as much, which is why I decided to go for this brief.

My next decision was to choose a song to base my project on. As previously posted on my blog, I went to a concert at the Bridgewater hall during summer which featured Phases by Steve Reich, so I thought it fitting to use this as my starting point for this project. 

I have started to think about the inspiration that I can take from the track, such as repetition, distortion, and layering. I have also considered the history of the piece, as it was created in the minimalist movement, so I could look at minimal artists from that period too. With all these ideas I'm looking forward to seeing what I can create this week, seeing where the song takes me.

(Refer to post below for a link to Piano Phase)

Bridgewater Hall

Music has always played a big part in my life, but I have never thought about linking my passion for music to my art before. When visiting the bridgewater hall last week there was a percussion concert in the foyer and one piece in particular gave me some artistic inspiration. The original piece of music was written for the piano and is shown below. It is called Phases, and was written by Steve Reich.

The piece is played by 2 or more musicians who play exactly the same piece of music: whilst one remains at a constant speed, the other gradually speeds up until the bars of the music eventually overlap.  I thought I could incorporate this in some way to my artwork, for example drawing the same thing with two hands, one acting faster than the other? Or stretching or compressing my work to make them have different 'speeds'.

Developing Doodles

For the past few days I've been doing a daily doodle, inspired by Alyn Carlsons sketchbooks. I therefore decided to create a doodle based on the Norfolk Sunsets and the surrounding grassy plain, using soluble felt tips and watercolour to bring some vibrance to it afterwards.

Patterns

When looking through my holiday photos, I realised that the qualities I liked in lots of my photos were the colour and texture. I therefore decided to enlarge and print out my favourite pictures and cut snippets of textures and colours that caught my eye and arrange them randomly.

I enjoyed this task because the photos no longer looked like an object anymore, they became a pattern which has given me much more to think about when developing my work further.

Patterned Seals.

After seeing the gorgeous patterns on the Seals fur, I tried to represent them abstractly using watercolour, fineliner and pencil.

I created a base in watercolour and added pattern over the top. I felt as though the result illustrated what I loved about the seals fur and I might try to do another similar study, adding more abstract patterns.

I decided to paint a big A2 size seal to experiment with the texture further. I was planning to add patterned detail but I thought it looked complete with the water colour.

I therefore created some studies in my sketchbook with the watercolour patterns, and combined it with my doodling style inspired by Alyn Carlson.

Marimekko

Marimekko is a Finnish textile and clothing design company renowned for its original prints and colours. The company designs and manufactures high-quality interior decoration items ranging from furnishing fabrics to tableware as well as clothing, bags and other accessories. 

When Marimekko was founded in 1951, its unparalleled printed fabrics gave it a strong and unique identity. Marimekko products are sold in approximately 40 countries. The number of Marimekko stores totaled 108 in 2012.

 I aspire to work for such a company creating a range of fabrics and patterns to be applied to a wide range of products all over the world.

One collection that I particularly like of theirs is their weather collection. It’s nice to see that the project processes of a large scale company are the same as what I go through. 

I enjoyed seeing how their ideas generated from brief to final idea.

The actual design process took several months. In her workspace, Aino-Maija made a large number of drawings and paintings, each more impressive than the last. The design team met at Marimekko at regular intervals to discuss the process. 

After various phases, much pondering and shared insights, the end result was a bold collection of fabrics, tableware, home textiles and posters inspired by weather phenomena. 

She started by putting together a collage of moods using photographs and samples of her pattern sketches. The collage became the basis for thedesign process. I love how although some of their patterns of digital, they still keep the hand drawn element to them as well.