Alginate Hand Cast

We had a quick go casting using alginate just to see what kind of outcomes it produced. This was the cast I did of my hand. it isn't as detailed as it should be because I left it a little late to put my hand in the alginate and I moved it a little when I put it in. I think the final outcome is good, I like the detail you can get with the material. 

Miss World Cartoons

http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/
As I have chosen Britain as the theme for my Alternative miss world one of the things that I have looked into British cartoons to give me an idea of some stereotypical characters that I could pull out to use as inspiration. 
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/browse/cartoon_item/anytext=miss%20world?subjects_text[]=Miss%20World%20beauty%20contest&page=5

Stanley Franklin, Daily Mirror, November 7th 1963

Stanley Franklin, Daily Mirror, November 9th 1964

Stanley Franklin, Daily Mirror, November 15th 1966

Paper wig; Finished

I have eventually finished the paper wig which I started well before christmas. I just need tophotograph it properly so that I can use it as part of my portfolio.

Andrew Logan; Guardian interview

Talks about how the Alternative Miss World got started, how he feels about it, the criteria of the show and what the whole things about. I think it was interesting to watch this because it has different footage of the shows to what 'The Britich Guide to Showing Off'had in it.

Wool structue; Session 2

This is where I am up to with this experimentation. I think that, as it is not a complete finished piece, it is near enough finished. It might just need a few more strands around the skirt to strengthen it. I think that it will look good once it comes off the mannequin and the box.

Wool structure

I am taking the idea of the plaster dress structure I made, as part of a Rake's Progress, into our Alternative Miss World project. I like the fact that it is a self supporting piece, not having to have undergarments to help it hold its shape. The plaster though was not wearable so I am going to play about with fabrics and materials to see which have the strength but are wearable. Alongside my research and designing for the AMW project the choices of materials and the structures I create are also key so experimenting with things like this means that I will have strong end designs and garments.

This is where I am up to yet with the structure. Up to yet I think that it is looking okay. The main problem with it is that it doesn't hold its own weight yet. It needs more layers of wool and PVA on it to make it stronger.

Life drawing; Session 6

First session back after the Christmas break

These are four of the drawings that I did during this session. I don't think that they were to bad to say that I have had three weeks off from life drawing sessions.

This was the final piece that I did of the session, Instead of looking at the detail I looked at the angles of the body. The proportions of it aren't brilliant but I think it's interesting just to look at the basic block figure.

This is my favourite of all the drawings that I did in this session. Its one of very few that I have actually managed to get the whole of the figure in. 

Finished newspaper cover

This is my final design for the front cover of my newspaper. I think that overall it look good, might be better if I had put a few adverts on it just to make it more realistic. I think the colours I have used work okay in each image and as a whole. The main thing that I struggled with was the type, fitting it into the boxes. I managed to get it all to fit by tweaking small parts. I took some of the colour out of the background as well, I thought it was overpowering, it looks much better as it is now.

The Harlot; Second costume; Final design

This was the first design I came to that I thought would be my final design. I looked at it though and thought that it was a bit to clean cut for a harlot. It needed to be more unfinished, more tears, rips and patches on it.

 This is my final design for the second outfit for the Harlot, in a harlots progress. 

Newspaper Cover Evaluation; Session 2

For this session we now have to use the three colours, from the paintings that we did yesterday, to transfer the digital imagery into tritones. It defiantly needs a lot of work doing to it. I don't think that the background colour works very well, I think that It would look better if the colour wasn't as strong as it detracts from the images in the articles. I think that there need to be more contrast with some of the pictures also as you loose some of the detail in them. I need to make room within each of the article spaces for the headlines as well, which I haven't done at the moment.

I think I am going in the right direction with is all though. I have made the whole thing slightly wider as well so that everything would fit in it better, I think that this is the final template that I will slick with.

Box and Mannequin; Session 2

In this session I finished covering the mannequin and the box ready for my to cover them in scrim and plaster.   I covered the box in black bin liners because it was easier than using cling film. The picture below shows the whole thing before I started putting plaster on it. 

This shows how far I got with the plaster and the scrim in that one session. I got the main shape created on these two side but on the other sides I need to add more  scrim and plaster to make a better shape. I like unfinished effect that using this material has created at the bottom, as I had the character of the harlot in mind so wanted to created something that look worn. I think that when I finish the other side it will look really good.

 

I could also use this technique with different materials such as newspaper with pva and water and fabric with pva and water. Using these would stiffen the material so could help me create more of a structured piece.

Newspaper Cover Evaluation

This is my newspaper front cover after the first week of doing it. Obviously its only the very basic start to this project for me to build on next week.

Overall I think that the layout works well, its just a case of dropping all my pictures and text into the boxes to see where they would work best. I think the background colour needs changing slightly, having a little more of a brown tone to it. I think I should lay the back ground image over the whole of the piece as well so that the whole cover looks a bit more realistic. I also have the life drawing piece that we did today to slot into it somewhere so might have to rejig or take something out of the layout. I will also have to change images to tritones as that is what we have now been told to do to restrict us a bit more.

Life Drawing; Session 5

I am founding it easier to draw the male figure now. I think that my drawings are getting quicker but I need to try and get the whole figure in as I, on most of my drawings, don't seem to get the legs in place so the body looks like its floating. These are my drawings from this weeks session. 

This is a similar pose to the last one last week so it was nice to be able to compare the two and see how I have improved from last week to this. I think that my measuring has got better and the shaping of the body and the legs is better but it is still not 100% right. I am defiantly going in the right direction though. 

London Brief- Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

I have chosen this as the other piece of work for me to look at because I loved this character in the film and I love the costume Meryl Streep wears as Aunt  Josephine. I think that it is really interesting how they have managed to create an eccentric costume for the character even though the colours of the fabric are dark.

These show the sketch and the costume featured in the film.

Hollywood Costume, edited by Deborah Nadoolman Landis

Information about the costume 

http://www.costumersguide.com/lemony1.shtml

High neck gown with leg-o'-mutton sleeves, 88 functional button and loop closures. The dress features 2 layers - an underdress made of different colors in alternating princess panels of light blue satin, black satin, and black crackle print taffeta. Each color panel shows through the top layer to create different backgrounds for the sheer top layers created with smocked organza and black bobbinet. There are 14 vertical rows of black punched ribbon hand painted with blue pearlized paint. The stand collar features soutache sewn into horizontal stripes."

Fluxus Manifesto

http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/index2.html

Absurdist Manifesto

http://amr.obook.org/manifesto.php]
The New Absurdist Manifesto

New absurdism has come to mean chaos, anti-style, anti-genre. This is quite a difficult foundation to build a movement on and is more in line with the principles of Dada than anything else. While the TNA site will forever remain an open writing experiment, free of editors or any kind of guiding hand as far as content or structure is concerned, the Absurdist Monthly Review's goal is to work to define absurdism both historically and in its growing modern form.

Absurdism lacks the manifestos of Dadaism and Surrealism and has had little popularity outside of the theatre community until recent years. Media now refers to any over-the-top or crude comedy as absurdist, completely diluting the term until it's become descriptively useless. Even those working in absurdism today tend to rely on vague, philosophical definitions or merely use analogies to previous authors. No one has come up with a compact, concrete description similar to surrealism's dream metaphor; so, I will try:

Stuckist Manifesto

http://www.stuckism.com/stuckistmanifesto.html
Link lists the points on the stuckist manifesto.
Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist.


http://www.stuckism.com/info.html
Stuckism is a radical art movement founded in London in 1999 to advance new figurative painting with ideas as the most vital artistic means of addressing contemporary issues.

Stuckism is a rebuttal of the twentieth century development of Modernism, which has resulted in an increasingly fragmented, isolated, material-obsessed and stultifying academia, existing not by virtue of the work but institutional and financial power, flattered by critical acquiescence.

Stuckism regards the foundation of Modernism in art as an opportunity for vision, integrity and communication which has never been fulfilled.

The Stuckists are, therefore, opposed to the current pretensions of so-called Brit Art, Performance Art, Installation Art, Video Art, Conceptual Art, Minimal Art, Body Art, Digital Art and anything claiming to be art which incorporates dead animals or beds - mainly because they are unremarkable and boring.

The name Stuckism was derived, in the best art historical tradition, from an insult, in this case from 1999 Turner Prize Nominee, Tracey Emin, to ex-boyfriend, Billy Childish: "Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!"

Manifesto Definition

Definition
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/manifesto
-A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature.
-To issue such a declaration.
- a public declaration of intent, policy, aims, etc., as issued by a political party, government, or movement
-a public usually written announcement of policies and intentions

Art Manifesto
A public declaration of intentions, motives and views.

Box and Mannequin

As a final sort of experimentation thing at the end of this term we have to use the techniques that we have learnt and put into practice, from the last few weeks, to create work that is more structured towards our subject area. I had a quick flick through my costume ideas to get an idea of where to go with my work. We had to take a element of a Rake's Progress also, I thought that a good thing to do would be to look at the structure of the women dresses focusing mainly on the skirt of the dress.

I took a few quick photos of where I am up to with it now. I came across a few problems with the length of the mannequin so I had to drop it into the box and support it with a chair and some bricks so that it was the right height for the mannequin to sit on. The bottom photo shows the model ready for casting, I am going to use scrim and plaster to create the casts, I will just have to see how that turns out next week.

Life Drawing, Session 4

This is my first life drawing session drawing the male figure rather than the female. I have defiantly found it difficult to change from drawing a women to a man as the figures are obviously different. I think that its good though because its good  for us to have a challenge. Some of the drawings I did were really bad but some were okay for a first attempt.

This shows the final pose that we did today. Again I had to deal with a lot of foreshortening like in the previous two weeks. I did find this pose difficult but stuck with it and I don't think that the final thing I came to was too bad. Its far from perfect as some of my measurement are off so the figure doesn't sit correctly but not bad for my first session drawing a man.