Complementary Colours

An Image Diary

'The Road is Wider Than Long' us an image diary of a journey made across the Balkans from July to August 1938. The journey was made by two artists; 'Roland Penrose', who was a painter and writer, and 'Lee Miller', who was a fine art photographer. Penrose made the first edition of this book for Miller, drawn from his photographs and notes.


The photographs are accompanied by surrealist poetry and occasional illustrations and embellishments on some of the letters. I spent a lot of time looking through this book. As professional as the photography is, and the poetry complex, it feels very personal and elements of it reminded me almost of a school exercise book belonging to a young girl containing declarations of love in a day-dreaming doodle fashion. The composition is very simplistic by seems as though it is very well considered and thought out.

After researching more about Penrose and Miller, I have found that Lee Miller was most importantly A WOMAN, a model and successful photographer who worked for Vogue at one point in her career. Roland Penrose was her second husband, a British surrealist painter and curator. Miller became bored of her first marriage and life in Cairo, and returned to Paris in 1937 and met Penrose. This book is about their journey in 1938, which makes them a couple who had only known each other a year. This completely explains why the whole book feels so intimate and charming.


I like the little drawings and splashing of colour which make this book so beautiful. I think that my Visual Digital Diary could benefit from some photos being substituted by a drawing. This enables a lot more freedom about the message it's giving and makes it more personal.

Illustration as Documentation

Searched the library for work on diaries. I was drawn towards a section of the illustrational books which seemed to be presentations of observations made on a journey or more specifically, objects seen along that journey.


The first book I looked at is 'An Inward Bird Sets Out On A Journey Of Drawing' by Tsukiyama Ikuyo (who is the writer and the artist throughout).


In a gallery, she exhibited a card which said "I would go to your place to do drawing. Anywhere you want. Best to see it by yourself, but it's OK to see in couples." with her address. She was inspired by dancers, performers and musicians who do their work with their bodies, ignoring time and space and she was fascinated by their detachment about preserving forms. (Tsukiyama 2002: 2)


She then travelled to perform to 20 people at 16 different places in Japan. The intention was to do something she could only do with her body, such as drawing the air. "Drawing of air is not actually drawing on a canvas or paper, but listening quietly to the feeling, or sensations that can't be tasted anywhere else. It's the time to see subtle variety of atmosphere between me and my spectator." (Tsukiyama 2002: 2)


Although really intriguing, it seems clear that there is a huge contradiction just by the existence of a book about these performances. It says 'This is a book based on these performances and their records.' Surely then these performances have a form as they are represented in this physical book with photos and text.

Here is documentation of the date, time and location of the performance. It shows a photo of the artist's arm holding a stone on string, the angle of which implies a swinging movement which presumably featured in the performance. The sky is blue, of which it could be assumed that it is a sunny day which has connotations of happiness and relaxation. Also, the composition of the images on this page are very simple, clean cut with an angular line forming at the bottom of each. It has a very limited cool colour palette.
All these things give the viewer clues about the performance, which I find a really interesting concept. But I can't help feel that in documenting and illustrating the performances, this creates a physical form for something which is apparently formless.


I find this interesting as it reminds me of my visual diary. I am also documenting actions and emotions, which are formless. I have so far found that my Visual Digital Diary works best when it is summed up and presented in a simplistic format containing only the most important elements from each day. From this book, I feel I can take the simplistic layout and later use the interesting composition on the page to inspire mine (if I decide to create a book from it, which I am now considering).


The Next book I studied is 'Now to Touch What' by Eve Sonneman and Lawrence Weiner. Lawrence Weiner is a conceptual artist whose work is usually typographical. From researching him, I have absorbed many quote from him about art which I find inspiring and thought-provoking.


In this book, he collaborates with the photographer Eve Sonneman by marrying together his text stamps and her photographs.

As they are each presented in pairs, I instantly began to try and observed the comparison between them. In addition to this, I pondered over the relation of each photo to the text it has been stamped with. Some were immediately connected, like the one above, but all the photos use their text to give the viewer another thing to think about in connection with the picture.

This left page, a medium shot of the back of a man walking down a street, which is stamped with 'PARKING &', makes me closer inspect the man's number jumper and relate this to his location on what looks like a reasonably quiet  city street. 'PACKING', on the next page, is a panned out full length shot of the man which brought my attention to the bags he is carrying and wonder about what's in them and where he's taking them with this apparent stroll of his.


I'm really interested by the placement of text upon these photos, which give them a new dimension to consider and can change how the viewer feels about the photo. I like how these can be ambiguous and only suggestive. I shall consider using text like this within my work to suggest to the viewer more about my feelings about the day's events.

Digital Visual Diary Organisation

Finally begun my Digital Visual Diary. I need to buy a notebook to write my thought process behind each image and edit for each day. This will act as a key for viewers to work out what's going on. I also need to buy a small journal that I can keep notes in explaining how to do things in Photoshop, as I am learning it for the first time. 


Each element (e.g. photo, drawing, filter, fading edit) needs to be carefully thought out and analysed in terms of what messages it is giving.


From Day 1, I have found that I will need to record each  throughout the day, but present it in photoshop the following day. So essentially, I will have to be always working on presenting the events that happened yesterday. This is because if I created the image on the same day that it was titled, and included all the important events that unfolded in the whole day, I would have to create the photoshopped image at midnight. Because I need to do it in the studio, due to the software, this isn't possible. Therefore, I must make notes like a traditional diary during the day and then interpret and create the image from them the next day, whilst recording everything.


Visual Diary Drawing


I'm also finding the same problem, being that when I'm doing a drawing of an object that i feels represents the day at 7pm,  I don't know that an event might happen which changes my life at 8pm (and therefore would be much more worthy of a drawing). However, I can't do the sketch the day after, as the object may have gone or changed.

Colour paint

Just experimented with colour today. I'm going to begin with some canvas paintings of colours such as the jars I animated recently. Getting pure, vibrant colours is more difficult than it seems. They all seem to dull down once the paint dries.

Technical Nonsense

Spent most of today trying to get the Showreel of my animations to work. Had to convert files from .avi and .mp4 to .mov which took most of the day alone. I've added fading to black transition slides of 1second, which allows the viewer to comprehend each short animation before the next appears. Also edited a few other animations using iMovie. Happy with the end result. It looks professional and I think it shows everything the Unis are looking for.


Digital Visual Diary


After alot of thought, I've finally come up with an object I feel represents one of the most important people in my life for my digital visual diary (which I will begin for 3 weeks very soon). Because I hope this person will continue to be around me quite a lot, I had to choose something that I have almost constant accessibility to so I can take new photos all the time. I chose a mug of tea... for these reasons:

• I very very much like tea and would find it difficult to be without it
• It's relaxing
• It makes me feel better
• It's almost always around me, or not very far away from arriving
• It contains a drug.

Visual Diary Drawing

I have drawn a mug (aka, my loved one).

The Ideal Home Show and Saatchi Gallery

Visited the Ideal Home Show and also the Saatchi Gallery and got some inspiration.

The first was the use of mixed media by the artist Arif Ozakca. I love the use of traditional oil painting with screen prints and pattern. It's combining fine art painting in parts with simplistic child-like figures. It's also impossible to predict the time of the painting because there are figures dressed in robes suggesting biblical themes in front of 20th century streets and men in orange jumpsuits. I'd like to use the combination of mixed media in my work; especially tight fine art painting and possibly pattern.

This piece '409'  by Caragh Thuring is oil and gesso and ink on linen. I'm interested by how the elements are very different mediums, yet they work together to reveal a landscape. Only the most essential elements of the landscape are suggested by the lines and very little colour is present. The layering of white wash (subtly adding depth to the subject) and dominant black line reminds me of some of my previous pieces and it would be interesting to try representing a few images in a simplistic drawing style that could possibly be animated.

Another piece by Thuring is titled 'General Scenes of Unloading' and is again Oil on Linen. This instantly reminded me of my fascination with the dockyards in Falmouth. This made me wonder why particular elements of something cannot be animated solely to illustrate it's movement. I like how none of the elements are within a background, yet their composition makes them seem together and I could instantly imagine them animating together; separate unique parts but moving together to create the feel of a busy shipyard.




Visual Diary Drawing


Although I saw many inspirational sights today, I decided to draw the most beautiful rather than practical. A man in Covent Gardens playing chinese pipes that made a wonderful sound. I could not capture the sound, but I hope I have captured the passion for his music in the man's face.

Crystal colour clarity

Today I made a stop motion animation using jars, an old telephone and some water dyed different shades of blue and green. It's a pretty unemotionally attached group of objects I think. Although the jars did remind me of old chemists or science experiments. But I'm not sure this animation is suitable for the sound experiments as I feel the colour steals the attention, more than the sound would.


I really love vibrance of colours I can achieve using dyes and then editing the saturation and contrast afterwards. I hope that I can find software to edit the entire animation, rather than frame at a time, which would take forever.


I'm very tempted to explore colour within this project as well. I feel very drawn to this particular still; especially the jar in the centre because of it's strong, pure colours and crystal clarity (above).


Visual Diary Drawing


I feel todays drawing especially needs explaining. I spent the day behind a camera creating an animation... I also spent the day being indirectly behind many cameras capturing footage of the terrible earthquake and tsunami disaster happening in Japan. I felt on the 'safe' side of the camera, but felt such emotion for these people because of the intervention of this technology.

Staffordshire University

Sorry Blog, you may feel a little neglected already. I've been preparing my portfolio for the Staffordshire interview which I then had to travel 2 days to get to. I was the first one to be interviewed at 14:00 on wednesday. I had applied to the 'Stop Motion and Puppet Making' course but during the interview they persuaded me to change my application to the Animation course because of my 'drawing and photography strengths' and I can still specialise in stop motion or switch to the stop motion course if I want. I've been given a conditional offer for either course.


I need to:
Find software to add sound to animation
Learn how to use Flash
Learn how to use Photoshop


Visual Diary Drawing


Observation of the contrast between my life in halls at uni, and my home in Surrey. Typical example being the salt and pepper dispensers.

Project beginnings...

Hello world. Ok, so the plan was to create a short animation of something completely void of stirring up any emotion for the viewer when watching it, then to add sound and experiment with how it alters the mood of the scene. I knew that finding something with no emotional attachment would not be easy, as the world is surrounded by symbols and hidden meanings for people. But I'm now wondering if anything at all is completely void of emotion, and if there is such a thing, I'm not sure how much sound could change that. I wonder if it needs to be something of interest that dependant on the sound added, changes its meaning. Such as if I animated a panning shot of a tabletop with dirty dishes and added, say, Gary Jules' 'Mad World'- it would create an uneasy atmosphere and make the viewer wonder what had happened previously in this scene, or as though this kitchen is belonging to a dysfunctional group. Or if I added a piece of music such as 'Henrietta' by The Fratellis, it would seem as though about to introduce you to a flat of stay-up-all-night students, living in mess because of their care-free lifestyle. However, with this image, I'm not sure how many other emotions I could create. I'd like to animate something with more possibilities.

Another thought... If I animated a person, I could not show their face as this would very quickly give it a mood. Body language also gives alot away but can be controlled I think. Needs more thought.

Also, for this part of my project, I'm focusing on the relationship between sound and image. Therefore, the image I use doesn't need to be made using animation - it could just be filmed and still produce to same effect. Need to research into buying a video camera. However, for now, I will test my theory out on still photographs.

Test

Hello. My first post. Don't know how it all works yet. We'll see.