Online Presence

Part of the Summer Project Brief was to start to create an online presence.  This I have begun to do, as you wouldn’t be reading this, but I needed to set up a website and get my work on to some other sites, so it was more visible.  Didn’t really know where to start setting up a website but most of the Web Hosting Sites are very easy to use.  The only thing you have to check are the prices.  It is well worth shopping around for deals as some of them are a lot more expensive than others.

This is the link to the start of my website:

http://www.artalley.co.uk/

I have also set up a LinkedIn profile and started accounts on Deviantart.com, Behance.net, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.  Takes more time than you realise.

My website

Summer Project

Summer project brief is to fill an A4 or A5 sketchbook that explores your own interpretation of two of the following themes.

Beginning           North           Lights            Echo                   Fragment            Inside Out            Isolate
Stretch                Wild             Equal            Upside Down      Emerging            Established          Hidden
South                  End

I chose ‘Hidden’ and ‘fragment’ as I felt this gave the most scope for experimentation and I wanted to explore ‘hidden fragments’ of nature, things we normally pass by, don’t notice or take for granted.

I wanted to use this project to further my experimentation and use of different media, especially unusual media that you would not normally use.  I felt that I could utilise found items, household chemicals etc, use traditional drawing, collage, painting, photography, printing in fact go as diverse as I could.

My final sketchbook is almost finished (just need to scan and add the last few pages, so i will put an updated link when I have done this) and can be found here:

Reference: Issuu.com

Happy :)

All my work was submitted on time and extremely happy to say that it got me 75% which earned me a ‘First’ – did not expect that!!! Definitely makes all the effort worthwhile, so happy!

Learned this term that it is really helpful to experiment (a lot!) and it is fun too.  Have also realised that I needed to up my game presentation wise as it makes all the difference.  Buy good quality sketch books and presentation folders.

Looking forward to the summer break and the summer project (not sure what that is going to be yet) and year 2 of uni. I may be older but I’m still in the game 🙂

Decisions, decisions!

I was quite lost trying to decide what my final piece was going to be.  Although I had completed lots of research and experimentation I had yet to tie it together.  However, just when you think you are lost, something falls in your lap by way of inspiration.  This happened to be a book one of my lecturers happened to show me in passing, which was, Drawn to Drawing by John Vernon Lord, which I highly recommend buying.  I loved his style of drawing so much that it just seemed a natural progression to combine all the elements I had experimented with into one drawing.  This was completed in fineliner but I also combined some collage too so that all my work so far tied together.

This was my final piece:  Media: Fine liner and collage Size:  A3

As you see I used elements from previous work and added extra details to link with the poem and the Romany way of life.

Reference:  Drawn to Drawing – John Vernon Lord published by Nobrow Press

Collage

Decided that a good way of incorporating the story in the Poem was to use collage.  I tried to imagine how the (now grown up) child felt about his upbringing, how his mother never got to see him (as she was blind) and how they were treated.  I tried to signify these feeling within the collage and also incorporate elements of research and work I had completed earlier.

Romany fabrics and colours were used and the collage was sewn together using thread.