FMP Week 1

Tuesday we had a mini meeting about how its the FMP and how people have not handed in their proposal beside 6 including me. which is really annoying because i worked really hard to create my proposal and now because of all the slackers the whole group is a week behind and i still haven't heard any feedback. it is sad how people ruin it for everyone. but any how i am going to work hard i need this / i want this!!!

so i decided to plan my blog post and my research and how i am going to do things because organization is key. we were given new sketchbooks for our FMP they are brilliant quality almost to nice to work in. i don't want to spoil it.

i think sketchbooks should be full of sketches and experiments and they should be a piece of art in themselves. so i hate sticking in pictures and having all my formal research in them i think its vile an detracts from the actual work. a sketchbook would depict big ideas and be plans of bigger things and research should be separate. so i am grateful for having a blog which gives me freedom to work in a sketchbook like an artist should, just work.

so i have planned pages in my book, i am wanting to have pages depicting my symbols and about them and then go on into my architectural theme an sketch my building an restore it. using my symbols an so on an at the same time on the side creating prints and art objects. so i m all organized now the time is to just go for it and experiment. this is the fun bit!

we were given these massive planning timetables so i decided to use it n write all my work plans down. its now hung up on my bedroom wall, ready to motivate me!

so after spending Tuesday and Wednesday planning and sorting on Thursday i just went with the flow and started my symbol pages. i began with my alchemy page. i like incorporating the symbols and creating a piece of art which i can them expand an create a full blown larger finished piece from. so i had my alchemy circles printed, photocopied and blown up.then i arranged them on the page and wrote the inscriptions repeatedly to create a background that i can work on.i am going to transfer my fob watch photographs  i have printed, onto fabric with image maker; as well as acetate. then i might add paint or ink to add color to outline finishing the image.

 i shall be finishing the page and re-post about it.

i have not got as far as the colour and transferring images, but its on my to do list, i don't want to rush an ruin it. i like coming back to pages iv worked a lot on with a fresh set of eyes and improving as i work.

then on Thursday i decided to create my idea of making a circular art object by connecting dream catchers to create a sphere (of awesomeness!). i made the dream catcher webs as per usual by wrapping faux suede around a bangle and then weaving a web in the middle with string. i then used a glue gun to hold it together but i don't think it worked well because you could obviously see the glue and it looked rough and ready. but this is just an experiment a machette its called in the art world. when i recreate it but in a larger form i m going to use sting to stick the circles together because it was hard to control with glue an i kept burning myself with the hot glue gun. and i think the final product would look better if it was done with string, and i could shape it easily which out the restricting fast drying glue.

despite not turning out as well as i thought it actually photographed well, i used two different colours as just an experiment i thing i will be using one colour in the future. check out my skills!

i then stayed till 6 o clock in college to sit in a life drawing class, which was a first, but you cant do art without life drawing so i just went for it. the class was open to everyone but was originally for the general public who have paid for the class. so i stayed back at this point i was exhausted  i was really nervous i didn't know how i would react and  was actually embarrassed but the model was a lovely women an she was so confident and comfortable set me at ease. there were loads of people who stayed back and it was hard to find a place to sit with a clear view so i sat on a table craning. for my first attempt i was really impressed with myself. my drawings are quite expressive and angry anyway and Richard (the fine art tutor) liked my line technique or something.

my work is angry because when i draw i take out all my frustrations and tension, art is my therapy. that's why my work is always detailed and frustrating looking i think it gives it emotion. plus most of the time when i am creating my work i am listening to rock! and i feel this influences my work to.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Jackson Pollock & Damian Hurst

Charles Rennie Mackintosh 
was born in 1868 and was known to be Scotland's last great Victorian Designer.

image found http://www.gsa.ac.uk/visit-gsa/mackintosh-building-tours/charles-rennie-mackintosh/

hes so quirky looking! i love that in people. its nice when beings have a bit of  substance to them. image found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles-Rennie-Mackintosh.jpg

Despite his work being over  century old, it has still stood the test of time and his innovations stand out; making it instantly memorable and a product of lasting freshness.
Aiming to become an architect, mackintosh joined a well known practice in Glasgow, after his teenage Apprenticeship. He later became a partner of the practice due to his design of a New Art School for the city when he was thirty, but by the time he reached 40 his career was over. Instead of his hope of being at the center of an architectural machine, he was falling from a respectable life.
His mercurial artistic personality and his inspiring designs had fallen out of fashion as quickly as they had become popular. his architectural career had also dried up and he decided t change careers all together. his brief international reputation had evaporated and he was now lost. in 1914 he packed his bags with his artist wife Margret and lived in exile, almost penniless until his death in 1928.

However despite the sad story of his life when he was working as an artist, interior designer and architect he had some fantastic and inspiring work, making him one of the best. His genius, when it came to his interior designs, was brilliant. Not because of his individual items, even tho they were amazing, but how he created ensembles of exquisite forms, arranged with great spatial skill.

i was given this tiny book as a gift an at first i really didn't appreciate it. i totally judged a book by  its cover but it helped me appreciate Mackintosh. 

One of my favorite buildings is Mackintosh's only church. At first glance it appears traditional in form and by the materials used. But if you look at it closer you see how its asymmetric slightly and its loaded with symbolic meanings. i love this about his church and i want the building i am going to restore to have this concept, i want it to be loaded with meaning and symbols but yet still look traditional.

this is why  have incorporated this artist one because it was sad how he was cast out and forgotten an id like people to appreciate him more. its sad how people are forgotten despite being so great. and secondly because his church has all this mystery and special artistry which incorporates into my ideas, its like he understands. i didn't realize his church would be so perfect in helping me explain my idea, its as if he had already had the ideas i am having. well they do say great minds think a like!

i don't like most of his modern art objects but his architectural ability is interesting to me and he use of nature.

Paul Jackson pollack


Was born on January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956, and is commonly known as Jackson Pollock. He was an influential American painter and played a big part during the Abstract Expressionist movement. He was known for his unique style of drip painting, which is why I find him interesting. Even though I find his work to lazy art he is still an interesting person to look at. I like his use of colours and his expressive pieces, even though personally I feel he is over rated because his style was knew to his time I understand why he was seen to be so different and brilliant.

During his lifetime he became quite famous and achieved stardom as a major artist from his generation. Seen by many to be a shy man he was actually quite volatile, and was struggling with alcoholism for most of his life. In he married the artist Lee Krasner in 1945, who then became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.

He died at the age of 44 in a drink driving accident he caused. During December 1956, a couple months after he passed, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. In 1967 a more wide ranging exhibition of his work was held there. In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London. In 2000, Pollock was the subject of the film Pollock, directed by and starring Ed Harris, which won an Academy Award.

I chose Pollack as I said I liked the fact he used a drip technique, which is similar to mine and sometimes as intricate. His work is quite interesting, because when you look at it your brain tries to create an image of something familiar and I want my final piece to have this effect.

 Damian Hurst

“The movement sort of implies life".
despite Hurst annoying the hell out of me i like his quote about his work!

i have researched Damien Hurst Spin paintings because whilst researching i found this work of his and i like the colours and movement of it as well as the way it was created. even tho it would be too messy to recreate i like how it looks like scraped paint which i have previously created. and his work would look soo much better and less immature if it was outlined.

Hurst first experimented with spin art in 1992 at his studio in Brixton, London. The following year, he set up a spin art stall with fellow artist Angus Fairhurst at Joshua Compston’s artist led street fair, ‘A Féte Worse than Death’. Made up as clowns by performance artist Leigh Bowery, Fairhurst and Hurst invited visitors to pay £1 to create their own spin paintings to be signed by the pair.

The series began in earnest in 1994, when Hurst had a spin machine made whilst living in Berlin. A series of his machine-made spin drawings were subsequently exhibited at Bruno Brunnet Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, later that year. 

The works are described by the artist as “childish … in the positive sense of the word”. Whilst the chance spontaneity of the spin paintings stands in stark contrast to the formulaic spot series, both explore the idea of an imaginary mechanical painter. The results of the spins are controlled purely by the artist’s colour choices and the motion of the machine. Hurst explains the simplicity of their appeal: “I really like making them. And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one.”

Some of his exhibits included work that rotated on the wall, which was Hurst’s response to being repeatedly asked which way up they should be installed. The rotating spins also provided a solution to Hurst’s feeling that the implied movement is essential to the success of the works, noting: “The moment they stop, they start to rot and stink.” (this is funny)

this is my favorite piece because i love how the yellow stands out (yellow is my favorite colour)

Pamela Colman Smith and Tarot Card Inspiration.

Since i am wanting to use my symbols as inspiration to reconstruct an old building on a design level, i am not going to even consider the technical aspects of creating this building. its going to be purely a design and therefore this gives me the freedom to use my imagination and take it as far as designing a building that could never be created.

How are the symbols going to help?
well the alchemist circles are really versatile in ta design sense, i can use the circle as a foundation and build a circular building. an go on to use the lines and pentagrams to create the rooms inside the possibilities are endless. the symbols could be used to create doorways, windows, rooms or just be plainly for aesthetic reasons. i can create aspects of the building using a symbol as the basic shape and build upon it. but first i need to experiment an find the perfect building i can do this to.

i love Gaudis idea of facades with a scene!
in stead of them being inspired by biblical story's like Gaudi i am going to use the original Rider Waite Tarot Deck imagery to depict a scene. i want to use aspects of these cards and incorporate my symbols and create an esoteric scene, to fit into a facade that my building will have.

i initially thought i could use tarot cards and create stain glass windows which is quite boring an predictable but then i remembered how Gaudi used his facades to depict his religions scenes an realised this is what i wanted to do ! my building is going to have an allegory of facades. 

Pamela Colman Smith

image found http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pamela%20colman%20smith?before=19

there is something about this quirky looking women that i love and find so fascinating. i love the way she dresses and the way she was is just so mystical. she reminds me of a Romany gypsy and i love there style its so bohemian.

image found http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/the-art-of-pamela-colman-smith/

my favorite painting in the Blackburn Museum/Gallery i of what looks like a young Romany gypsy girl probably in France or Spain, and she has collected the spring flowers and is sitting in a stone ruin and bunching he flowers ready to sell in the market to make some money. well that's what i see any way and it reminds me of Smith.

its not  very god photo of my favorite painting but it was hard to take a photo of it was really high up i am going to try an buy a postcard of it. 

she was born February 16, 1878, in Middlesex, England (so may commas!) to American parents. She spent most of her childhood travelling between London, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica.
During her teens, she had traveled throughout England with theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. After that she took formal art training at the Pratt institute of Brooklyn, Graduating in 1897.
Even tho she was American by birth she preferred to live in England; where she became a theatrical designer for miniature theatre and an illustrator mainly for books, pamphlets and posters.
Around about the time of 1903 she joined the order of the Golden Dawn and began to paint visions that came to her whilst listening to music.
In 1909, she undertook a series of 78 allegorical paintings described by Arthur Edward Waite as a rectified tarot pack, including full scenes of every card. the designs that were eventually published by William Rider and son, are said to exemplify the mysticism, ritual imagination, fantasy and deep emotions of the artist, (which i think is brilliant and i want people to think of my work in this way).
Despite Occasional art shows and favorable reviews by critics, the continued low sales of her work and constant rejection by commercial publishers; left he deeply disappointed, as it would have.
Smith never married, she had no known heirs except an elderly female companion who shared her flat. she died on September 18, 1951 (my birthdays on the 19th!), penniless ans obscure. Most of her work has never been found.
Pamela Colman Smith would have been forgotten if it wasn't for her 78 tarot paintings she left behind, known as the Rider Waite Tarot pack. i think she would be astonished and extremely happy to know that today after all this time her art / deck touches so many peoples hearts. this is another reason i want to incorporate her and her art work into my work because i love it and believe it should be appreciated more.

i have a Rider Waite Tarot Deck!

22 cards in the Major Arcana

the court cards (page, knight, king and queen) an minor arcana (1 to 10) are a total of  66 cards. there are 4 suits, these the wands

cups

swords

pentacles

my favorite suits are the wands and pentacles; my favorite court cards are the queen and knights.
i don't have a favorite major arcana card because i love all of the but i had to chose they would be the moon, star, sun and high priestess.

i have another deck of tarot cards but i don't like the imagery at all i only bought the deck for the book that came with it so i cold learn to read tarot. i have a couple of books on tarot cards and reading them.

so this imagery will be used as inspiration to create a scene for a facade in the building i am going to restore, simple!

Antonio Gaudi Research and How He Inspires Me

Antonio Gaudi was a Spanish Catalan Architect (25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926).

the great man himself!!! All pictures are from Wikipedia

 his work was influenced by his passion in life were architecture, art and religion; i feel like we have this in common.Gaudi studied every detail of his creations; he integrated into his architecture a series of crafts he was skilled in, such as: ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging and carpentry.He introduced a new techniques in which he would  use waste ceramic piece to create art, called trencadis, basically mosaics. his earlier work was influenced by neo-gothic art and oriental techniques but then went on to use nature as an inspiration and his works became organic and modern for the time. you don't understand how much i love this quirky man!

The four-armed cross, one of the most typical features of Gaudí's wor

Interior of the Casa Vicens

The salamander in Park Güell has become a symbol of Gaudí's work.

Tortoise at the base of column

Gaudí's model of the completed church

 Gaudi rarely drew detail models of his work; he preferred to make the 3D model and molds and added the detail as  he went along. but when he did they were amazing! i create my work in a similar way i never really plan what i do down to the t i go with the flow and add and take away as i work. i feel the freedom of art is taken away when you cant experiment and have to follow instructions. its nice having a broad idea but you shouldn't stick to it but improvise as you go along. take a risk because there is nothing to lose you can always do it again if you have done it once!

Quay-side building (1876

Fountain in Plaça Catalunya (1877)

University assembly hall (1877)

Cemetery gate (1875)

His work has been appreciated by people all over the world as well as by other architects and the public who are lucky enough to see his work first hand.there have been many studies devoted to understand his architecture. his master which is still incomplete the great Sagrada Familea is the most monumental cathedral in Spain. Between 1984 and 2005, seven of his works were declared World heritage Sites by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) which is a massive compliment and achievement for an architect.

Nativity façade

Newly constructed stonework at the Sagrada Família is clearly visible against the stained and weathered older sections.

The façade

Detail of the roof in the nave. Gaudí designed the columns to mirror trees and branches.

Gaudis Roman Catholic faith became stronger the older he became and he has incorporated religious images into his works; (which is what im interested in). This devotion to his faith earned him the nickname "Gods Architect" and this led to people wanting his Beatification (ie blessed).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SMqERP-J2tQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SagradaFamilia.ogg

Antonio Gaudi is the great Architect in my world he is the best an always will be an i dream of being as great as him. i especially wanted to incorporate him into my project as one of my influences and inspirations and also because he was EPIC! im going to be using his idea of creating a narrative through imagery on my building. he used influences from the bible and religion an im going to use my symbols and im wanting to look at the art of the original Rider Waite tarot deck, because i love the imagery and it has a couple of my symbols illustrated perfectly.

i want to create a scene of some sort or a pattern and add it to my building like Gaudi did with biblical scenes.