I thought I would put it all together at this stage just to keep a record of how it develops from here. I think my thought processes can be closely followed as my ideas have progressed with this, now just to make the shapes!
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Magnetic Canvas
The magnetic canvas took 4 coats of magnetic paint to definitely make it strong enough for people to re-arrange shapes on it. It could have been less, but I wanted to make absoloutly sure that it would perform to the standard I would expect.
How they look now...
This is how the canvases turned out - very happy with my background choice and patterning.
Method Continued
Using the cling film on the watercolour pigment when it was still wet also gave me the opportunity to play around with shaping if I desired. As my project is about random chance I didn't take this opportunity and just left it as it fell.
Backgrounds
Watercolour on canvas.
Acrylic on canvas.
I needed a way of producing an effective background texture for my surrounding canvases, so I experimented with 2 medias. One is watercolour pigment and the other acrylic paint. From this test I decided straight away that I would use the watercolour pigment as it's not as bold and a lot nicer to look at. a downside to this is that it's not very bright, however I don't really need it to be.
To get the pattern effect over the top I covered them both in cling film and let them dry, then removed it. I was certainly happier with the watercolour result, it turned out a lot better that the acrylic attempt so this will be my method of choice for my backgrounds.
Magnetic Paint
After the first experiment with magnetic paint failing, I decided to try again but with a different brand which I know to be very good.
This was my first test swatch using the 'Marabu' magnetic paint and even after one coat it was clear that this would be the best method to achieve the results that I want.
First Test
Interactivity
I decided to back to an earlier experiment for my idea here, which was dropping card onto white paper and seeing what patterns formed in the shapes after they fell.
My idea is to conduct this experiment again, but over the canvases and pick out patterns that I think would work well. These patterns would then be painted on the surrounding canvases in white, and I would have coloured shapes made out of acetate or foamboard with magnets attached to the back so that these can be arranged on the magnetic panel at the viewers will.
My main aim here is to have a piece of work that is interactive with a wide audience and that is fun to interact with.
Pro's and Con's (different materials)
I came up with a lot of ideas about how to make my main canvas interactive, and the pro's and con's of these. My favourite idea by far is using magnets in some way, so I will experiment to make this work.
Planning
This sketch was to work out what colours I want to use for background and also pattern. I had the idea of using opposing colours for the background and the patterning (colour wheel) and also ideas of what I could do with the middle panel.
Ongoing thoughts.
Final output decisions
To solidify my ideas about what I am going to produce for my final piece - I started to sketch out ideas of what I thought may work best. They are all based around the same idea, just different variations seeing what would look best. I want to produce the pieces on canvas so that they stand out and they are separated because of a previous idea that was the piece could be viewed as a whole, or as 7 stand-alone pieces.
After feedback from friends I have decided to go with the simple design of having one big canvas in the middle with the other 6 surrounding.
Kandinsky
After more feedback it was mentioned to me that I should look at the work of Kandinsky as another experimental practitioner as my project has turned very much towards patterns. I took this on board and looked at a few videos showing his work to look at any similarities my work may have, and to see how he has formed his patterns.
I also watched the first part of a Bauhaus documentary which I found interesting. The interviews conducted gave me a good insight into what was practiced and even emphasis on techniques taught and used.
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Ryoma Okamoto Filmstrip
As you can see, it's very similar to the effect that I achieved with my photography, but also some characters are in focus. This is also an idea I can play with within my final design ideas. Also, the use of colour I want to explore more, as I think something like this would look really good with different hues and saturation's applied, but through my own means, not using software (for me this makes it more experimental).
At the moment my thoughts are I want a series of designs that can work as a singular piece, or as a two or three or more as a whole when the viewer stands back from it.
This could possibly even stretch to these designs working on book sleeves, double page spreads or even mousemats to bring my influence of Graphic Design back into it, but for now I just want to focus on getting different patterns and exploring colour to create a truly interesting piece of work.
My Results
Initially my thoughts of these were no I can't use these as they're so out of focus. This was because the characters were just so small and my camera wasn't good enough to get my desired effect.
However, after feedback and a very useful tutorial I haven't discarded them as a book called Applied Typography 8, a book about Japanese typography, had an example of a filmstrip in there by a designer called Ryoma Okamoto, which was very similar to what I have done here.
After a discussion about where I should go next, I want to produce a few final pieces which can either be viewed as singular pieces, or can be put together to make a whole using my photography and discoveries as an influence in doing this.
A different perspective
My experiments so far have all been about using paint on paper, cutting up card and twisting paper, so I decided to take a fresh look at what I had done and what I could do to better, and came up with making Chinese Characters out of Fimo (crafting clay that you can bake to become solid).
This was a method that I have never introduced to any part of my work before now, and as this module is all about experimentation I thought why not.
I started off by making several different characters, with plans to photograph them to use later on.
Prayer loop
This was another paper loop that I tried using a Chinese prayer, with the idea that prayers are never ending. I didn't like this experiment much and after trying this method again, I don't think i'll continue with this as a valid response to my experimentation.
Paper loops
This was another experiment I conducted working with the idea of paper loops, and how I could be experimental with language, making a sentence read continuously. This particular one read ' This is not a continuous loop but it never ends even though this is not a continuous loop' etc.
This idea came about whilst talking through my ideas with friends, and they suggested using this method to experiment further.
I'm not sure as of yet whether this was worth doing, or if there's anything in this that I can use for my work.
Random Chance
This was an exercise I conducted by cutting up strips of card in orange and red (most prominent colours in China) and dropping them from a height to see if I could create patterns that looked similar to Chinese characters. By having no control over where the card landed, I had fun repeating this several times to see how many different patterns were formed.
I felt that I needed to be more specific with what I thought looked like characters/ interesting patterns, so I removed some pieces of card and kept which pattern I thought was most effective. I found that this exercise helped me a lot to have less control and leave pattern up to chance, and to experiment more with this random chance factor which I have never done before.
Going back to my idea of weird landscapes, I used calligraphy ink to produce something bigger using more characters. I didn't really see where else I could go with this at this point apart from recognizing pattern.
After looking at Chinese art, the calligrapher always uses red on one character or symbol as a signature, so I implemented this into my piece to add colour in a way that would be true if it was an authentic piece of art. For me, I feel that this didn't work too well, so time to explore other means of producing a good piece of work.
These I came across whilst looking through old Art portfolios. These were not done by me, but I have put them here because to me they had a Chinese feel about them, and I love the patterns made. I particularly like the subtle background and the use of negative space in areas.
This was also a piece I found, not done by me, but again I feel it's relevant due to the patterns made. Also, it's made me consider different types of backgrounds, not necessarily randomly cut up and placed, but different ways I could make a background random, using different tools or methods - such as folding, using external materials such as baking paper over paint, or just using a completely different media that would be appropriate to my work.
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