This is how my sculpture turned out.

In yesterday's workshop with our instructor Deborah, we began working with clay. Deborah first went through all the rules with us and how she expected us to behave whilst in her lesson. Once we knew all the rules about health and safety like, not making too much dust as if we breathe it in, it could harm our lungs, and where all the equipment went,  we started drawing some designs to make for our individual piece, and then learnt how to role clay and how to check if there were any air bubbles trapped in the clay by using a method called wiring, which meant kneeding the clay inwards, forming the clay into a square, and then using a tool called a cheese cutter, to cut it into slices so you can see whether or not there are any air bubbles that need covering. After this, we then used  a rolling pin and two sticks at either side of the clay, to role the clay evenly; so that we could cut out two hands ready for the group task at the end of the day.
After break, we started making our individual pieces, which I quite enjoyed. I got a new piece of clay so that it was fresher and easier to mold, rolled it out evenly and then rolled this round a long tube to make the arm. Once the clay had set a little, I took the clay away from the tube, and rolled out More new clay to cut out a shape of a hand which I attached towards the top of the arm using slit so that it would stay on securely.
Then, after dinner we had 45 minutes to finish off our final piece before we started our group piece, so to finish it off I cut out a new hand, shaped it into the right position and once again used slit to attach it to the top of the wrist; however, I found this quite difficult as the hand didn't have much support so it kept falling out of place. Due to this, I had to apply more slit and clay to help strengthen it. Finally I used a brush and water to help neaten the sculpture up and now all I have to do is wait for it to set in the kiln.
After we'd finished, the rest of the group and I, used the hands we made at the beggining of class to create a class piece. We took it in turns to place the hands in a bowl to help mold them into that shape. However, we weren't shown any other group pieces, as Deborah wanted us to come up with something on our own.
 I enjoyed this workshop as it was a challenge  and I wanted to see what I could do.

These are some of the images of my work during Claire's class on Thursday and some of the images that I used to draw and mono print with.

In Thursday's art class with Claire, I continued creating our glossary pages; that shall be marked at the end of our assignment.

I started creating glossary pages for the key words, pattern and proportion. It took me quite sometime to finish my first drawing, because I couldn't draw just one hand; as I had to show a variety of sizes, due to this I continued throughout dinner. I decided to use coloured pencils for these two drawings, as I wanted to show a lot of detail. Also, Because the drawing was so detailed, I made the background simple so that the drawing would stand out more. Now that they are finished I think that maybe having a detailed background would have made them look even better. I prefer my drawing for proportion as it contains a lot more detail and took me a lot longer to create.

After dinner, I started doing some mono printing, which I had never done before and found it quite simple. However, this depended on which paint I had been using as some, once it had came out, became very patchy and looked asif it may have contained oil as it wouldn't lay.

I first had to cellotape a plastic wallet to the table so that it was secure, I then had to put some paint at the top of the plastic wallet and roll it down evenly however, the first few times it didn't work correctly so I had to start again. Once I had done this, I then had to place a plain piece of paper over the top of the paint, and choose an image that I wanted to use; which I had printed off earlier and place that over the piece of paper, making sure they were in line and had to draw over the image with a pencil, so that it would engrave the paint underneath and print onto the plain piece of paper.

The first one or two didn't really work very well, as the paper kept moving slightly out of place, but the more I did the better they came out.

I enjoyed doing these activities throughout the day and the mono prints that I created will also be marked at the end of our assignment.

Olivia Grain

23/9/15

In yesterday’s workshop with our instructor Victoria, a photographer who has had her work published in magazines, newspapers and even vogue. We started learning about photography, and how to use cameras correctly. We learnt keywords such as;

 Depth of field; meaning the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects giving a focused image, which means that the background is blurred out.

 High key lighting; meaning that more light is being let into the camera.

 Low key lighting; meaning that the image will be more dull as there isn’t as much light being let in.

Exposure; how dark or light image/ photo is after being taken, however if you are wanting to make the image lighter you can use equipment such as Reflectors or if you want to capture a darker image, you can lower the settings on the lighting equipment.

Aperture; meaning the hole/ opening in the camera. For example, F20 the aperture would be quite small, however if the camera was set to F10 the aperture would be quite wide, so the image taken would be very bright.

ISO; meaning the intensity and the quality of light. The sensitivity depends on how high the ISO is; if it is quite high, the photo will be brighter, however if the ISO is low, then the image will be darker.

In our first activity, after we learnt how to use the camera’s correctly and learning some keywords on a PowerPoint, we got put in to pairs and started experimenting with some photos. Eve and I went outside into the corridor, where it was brighter, changed the settings on the camera to Monochrome and tried taking some images to see how they turned out. I quite enjoyed this as it we were able to try different things out on our own. Whilst doing this, we took turns in taking photos of each other’s hands, then after about half an hour we had our first break.

After our first break, we started using different materials around the class room and had interpret them into an image to try and show what kind of person we were. However, I found this quite hard as I couldn’t come up with any ideas to create the images with. We then got showed how to use all the equipment after dinner and started experimenting in the studio with the lighting. We started testing out low and high key lighting, and we all took turns on different equipment; I was first to use the camera, whilst Eve modelled, Amy jo did lighting and Nick was in charge of how everything was set out. I found this quite difficult as I couldn’t figure out how to move the camera correctly, as it was attached to a tripod, however I did enjoy it. We also tried using long exposure, which meant we could merge two different images together, I had to sit in front of the camera for 30 seconds without moving and after 12 seconds place my hands over my eyes to see what would happen, and it worked quite well. After this, we then did light writing when Eve and Amy jo held their hands in front of the camera whilst I stood behind them moving around my torch so that it looked like a ball of light was behind them.

Finally, after we cleared all equipment away in the studio, we went onto the computers and started working on photo shop. This I enjoyed as I thought my work turned out really well. We had to choose 2 images, an image we had taken during the day to use as the main photo, and a background image from the internet, which we used to merge into the first image. This was quite hard at first, but I found it easier as I went along. I had to change different properties of the images such as saturation, hue and the brightness to see what would happen to the image. We did this a few times to see which worked the best. This has been my favourite activity so far.

 

 

These are some of the photos that I have taken of my work

In todays class with Claire, we first went over what we were going to do for our first assessment"hands" we then started creating our glossary of keywords. For every keyword such as; colour, texture, value, we had to interperate it into a drawing to do with hands. I decided to start my glossary on space and colour, as I thought they would be quite interesting. For my first drawing "space" I used black ink to create positive and negative space, the hands were painted black and the background is purely white with the definition written at the top, however I think this could have turned out better, if I had used a matter image or made the definition a part of the art work itself . Then for the second drawing "colour" I used coloured pencils and paint to create two different effects. I enjoyed doing this activity as I was able to include a lot of detail and drawing hands isn't my strongest point so I wanted to challenge myself. In my opinion this drawing came out quite well, and this particular one was from my primary research, which I had taken myself.

Summary on art critics: contextual studies

The role of an art critic, is to interpret, respond and to make critical judgements on others art work, and they tend to focus more on modern and contemporary art. This helps other viewers to perceive and judge the art work, as they are able to understand it more. Art critics also tend to study work in cultures that are more distant in time, as this gives them something a little more different to work with.

Art critics can be anyone. A newspaper reporter assigned to the art beat, an artist writing about another artist, or even a scholar writing for professional journals or text. Some examples of Art critics are; Matthew Collings, Jonathon Jones and Alistair Sooke.  
The earliest use of art criticism was by the English painter, Jonathon Richardson in 1719. One of the greatest Critics in the 19^th century was John Ruskin. The history of art criticism is likely, critiques of art originated with origins of art itself.
There are 2 different types of Criticism, Journalist and Scholarly art criticism.
Journalist Criticism is written for the general public, which includes reviews of art exhibitions in galleries and museums.
Scholarly art Criticism is written for a more specialized art audience, and appears in art journals.

Today's workshop photos,

Using the heat presss

Using the puff binder

Printing images using procion dye 

Heating up the puff binder 

More procion dye printing 



In Today's workshop with Kat, we learnt how to do a range of activities.We have been using Batik, which is a method of using hot wax as a resist to protect fabrics from dye. The materials we have been using are, cotton, calico which is made from wax, a tjanting and hot wax. Whilst doing this we had to make sure that we didn't touch the hot wax for health and safety reasons and to make sure that we always wore an apron. Kat first went through health and safety regulations, on what to do and what not to do, like how to use the wax and Tjanting correctly. Kat then showed us some examples of what kind of patterns we could create and set us off on the task at hand. Later on in the work shop  Kat also showed us how to use a tool called a Squeezy to print patterns onto different materials using procion dye. We then chose what patterned board we wanted to use and place the procion dye at the top of the board, so that we could use the squeezy to scrape the dye up and down, so that the colour would go through to paper on the other side, which I quite enjoyed.  We also used this method to print patterns on to materials using puff binder, which you later on heat up and it becomes raised, making sure that we were wearing gloves so that dye didn't stain our hands, if we were using coloured buff binder. We used heat to print images onto calico by using a heat press, that heats up the image and calico for 20 seconds, which you have to lock into place, making sure you don't catch your self on the machine. Once it had stopped we could take the image out and peel it away from the calico however, you had to do this quick other wise the photo wouldn't print properly. Finally, we did some embroidery, Kat first showed us some videos and examples of what kind of stitching we could use, and then we started adding details to some photos. This is what I enjoyed doing the most through out the workshop as I found it quite tranquil, so I continued this till the end of the class.

these are some of the photos that id taken of our work.