Really useful feedback from my tutor. She asked:
What does (your) approach convey about your values and your creative practice?
I look for similarities, links, bridges. I want to make information accessible without diluting the message, to boil it down to the core concepts. Revisions help me to clarify what is important and investigate how it is best represented.
What impact do the colours have?
Colour completely changes the mood and the message. On reflection I like this pink version
because I'm not a pink woman so it reflects change and exploration of the other, of possibilities and difference.
How important is the quality of the line in your practice, and why?
Line is everything, its where I start, where I explore, I think in line not volume. In developed pieces the shape depth and strength of the line is how I try to direct my viewer and tell the story of the image.
What part does paper play in, in the timeline of events?
Paper is where I start (and where I would stay if I could satisfactorily manipulate the marks on it). I move to other media to preserve the energy of the original idea which gets lost if it is repeatedly redrawn, and to allow myself to rapidly experiment with different ideas.
I like her description of my evolving practice as "an observer and visual problem solver" and I'm reassured by her explanation "everything is transforming, it can be at times an uneasy experience." It certainly is, in contrast to earlier modules I am finding this part of the course quite unsettling and unnerving.
She observes that I haven't thoroughly experimented with different fonts and lettering, this is an area of weakness, as an indecisive person I find the enormous variety of fonts available overwhelming, I will persevere.The book, Type Tells Tales by Heller and Anderson looks really useful. It isn't in my local library or the UCA library so I'm investigating how to get a copy.
I don't like ISSUU or Flipsnack because publishers insist on using text that is too small to read on my small laptop screen so I can't just flip through their publications but have to zoom in and out to read then flip. That makes me sound like my gran complaining about the print on the comics she read to us. I could easily make the text bigger in my publication....
Pointers for research:
Oskar Holweck was a proponent Concrete Art which aims not to represent reality. He focussed on white paper using ink, collage, tearing and other methods of destruction to create his work. Working with limited materials and techniques he thoroughly explored their possibilities. In the same way that redrawing loses the energy of the original the website notes that his methods meant that "structures are obtained that are never mechanical and thus repeatable"
The big black book of colours is a really interesting concept I found the video link to get a feel for the idea as I haven’t been able to find the book. Some reviewers criticised it for the similarity of the ”illustrations” being all the same quality of raised lines and being a bit abstract in the shapes they form. It’s quite tricky to get a book of this sort published so I do feel some sympathy with the authors. It would be amazing to be able to sculpt something similar where the reader could feel the picture then turn the page to reveal the text. I didn’t realise that it was possible to publish something of this nature so it’s exciting to see what is possible, Amazon are currently listing it for £9.45 which seems remarkably cheap for something so complex.
https://www.designfortoday.co.uk/ is the website of a company publishing “ ephemera, objects of curiosity, books to read and touch” this could be an outlet for my story if it reaches print, although I don’t know if my style quite fits theirs, something to bear in mind anyway.
I have made concertina sketchbooks for Urbansketching though I haven’t been able to join any of the recent meetings because of work and family commitments. I follow #leporello on Instagram but I’ve never thought to use the concertina format to publish anything. This might work for my finished piece for assessment. Artists books and Leporello push the boundaries of what I believed a book to be, I like the idea of artists books so this is an area to investigate further.
In the same vein Sara Fanelli’s The Onions Great Escape is an interesting alternative format for a publication.
Kveta Pacovska is not an artist I had heard of before. She also uses alternative book formats, including concertinas, and uses colour in an original way. Although she uses a lot of red and green for the contrast she combines it with other colours so that her illustrations don’t just scream Christmas. The colours are bright but have a more sophisticated feel than is often found in children’s books, deeper, stronger colours which are bright and attractive but not childish. You can tell from her work that she trained in graphic design, the layouts are bold and attractive.
Meredith Hooper is also new to me. From what I have been able to discover she writes clearly and eloquently for children and is a refreshing change from a lot of the children’s books that I have been exposed to. Her choice of subjects vary between history (Tom Creans rabbit and stories about Shackletons expeditions)| to stores about how we get sugar (Sticky Jam) or wool. I like Chris Coady’s illustrations for A pebble in my pocket and A drop in my drink they a boldly colourful and textured but not garish. I can’t find much about him (his agent says that he’s a “classically trained artist”) but his illustrations remind me of Christian Birmingham
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