So I have finally finished my essay/research poster on William Blake after much wrestling with Photoshop and in Design (I’m an amateur!!!). I focused on the reasons why Blake and his work weren’t well accepted during his life, I titled it ‘Misunderstood’ as I have found that one of the reasons was that people just didn’t understand him. Here’s the final poster, I tried to reflect what Blake’s works look like.
We have just completed a small block of printmaking. We just did it over four days to get a wee taster of screen printing, lithography, mono printing and etching. I really enjoyed it and can see myself spending a lot more time up in the printmaking studios, in particular screen printing and etching. Here’s a small selection of some of my prints…….
Screen printing:
Etching:
Lithography:
Mono printing:
……in music and literature!
The other day we learnt about the avante-garde which is generally used to refer to folk who are quite experimental in their art, as well as writing and music!
Under the topic of music we were shown various examples of musicians who were seen to fit under the avante-garde heading. Firstly we listened to a Gregorian Chant. These were used back in the day in the catholic church but had a resurfacing in the 19th century. These may have been the start of the avante-garde as it was’nt common to have these chants in church. Have a listen here. you may fall asleep though!
After listening to a few others from the Baroque period, we jumped to 1913 where Stravinsky produced ‘The rite of spring’, listen! It kind of reminds me of an angry swarm of bees!
One composer which really stood out to me though was John Cage. He was very radical, just look at this piece, ‘ 4:33′ (1952), here he made the audience sit and listen to the ambiance of the room, people coughing, sneezing, breathing, opposed to music.
We also learnt about avante-garde literature. We looked at the way these people were experimenting with the layouts of the text on the page. For example pattern poems. This one is by Apollinaire. It’s raining. Where the text can relate to its content by the way its been placed on the page.
Jillian Tamaki is a Canadian Illustrator living in New York. I’ve admired her work for sometime now, and especially love these three embroidered book covers she did for Penguin Books. Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ is my favourite, mainly because I love the story!
Take a look at her website: http://www.jilliantamaki.com/
Philosophy…………..it’s over my head.
We had a lecture from Sheena Calvert who was visiting from London.She spoke about the key periods in western philosophy. These being Ancient, Medieval, Modern and contemporary.
Now, I’m not the brightest crayon in the box,and to be honest never really gave a thought to looking into philosophy, so found this hard to follow and lost attention after a while as it went on a bit.
She spoke alot about Plato and what he thought, how we perceive what we are perceiving, dualism and idealism, thought people have a directing force – the soul which is guided by the body and mind.
Talked a bit also about the Enlightenment and what it meant. Based on a belief in human capability, the scientific method and the certitude of knowledge. Issac Newton was a big name at this time.
fin.
My friend recently got me onto a group of artists called ‘This is it collective’. Based in London, they are made up of illustrators, designers and animators.
My favourite piece of work from them is ‘Don’t hug me i’m scared’
here’s their website. check it out!
” The representation of at least two real or fictional events or situations in a time sequence, neither of which presupposes or entails the other”
(Gerald Prince, 1982)
Narratives began as an oral transmission of cultural traditions. These stories or folk tales were told many times and formed a non-linear structure in the sense that they had a familiar structure but the storyteller would changes bits of the story to suit the audience.
Generally narratives have a linear structure, they follow a certain path. Vladimir Propp analysed how stories and folk tales were structured. He found that they are basically made up of 31 steps that take place in a story and that there are 8 main characters. Tom Gauld illustrates this idea in ‘Characters for an epic tale.’
Modern narratives seem to stray away from the general linear structure and become more fragmented. For example, a story can begin in the middle and show different parts of the story from there, shown here in the beginning of ‘Kill Bill Vol 1.’ by Quentin Tarantino :
And also can show a narrative in reverse so you can see whats going to happen, but find out where it all began. For example the trailer for the video game ‘Dead Island’ from IGNentertainment:
I recently stumbled upon an illustrator called Tilly who has amazing work! I just love her style, the colours and the subject matter she uses.
We recently had a lecture on early motion film, animation and stop motion. I found it quite interesting to see how the films change through the years, we were shown video clips from the early 1900s to the 1970s.
My favourite video was ‘The Cameraman’s revenge’ by Wladislaw Starewicz in 1912.
In this stop motion film real samples of insects were used.Wire skeletons were inserted into the insects so that they could be animated easily.
Another video which interested me was ‘Love on the wing’ by Len Lye in 1938.
Inspired by abstract and surreal artists, this clip shows how music can work alongside the moving images, they are in sync.The music is represented by movement and colour. Len Lye created the moving images by scratching into the actual film onto the background which he created previously.
Today in our lecture we learnt about image and how it’s formed over the centuries, from the Early middle ages to the early 20th century. The lecture mainly stayed in the periods of 500-1500 where we learnt about the great changes happening at that time, the fall of the roman empire and how that affected the production of arts and crafts and then the startings of the pre-renaissance.
Something which interested me was this image of a Hellmouth.
‘Damned are swallowed by a Hellmouth’ 1200s Cotton Nero
It shows people basically all squeezed into hell with an angel locking the door. This reflects the great amount of death that was going on during the middle ages due to disease and fighting. It also shows the interest in monsters, myths and fables at the time.
It was probably quite an unusual style for the time. The colour of the people, green, suggest that it’s quite a putrid place, full of disease and death.
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rachel nesbitt 