Printmaking-lesson 1

Last weeks lesson I started a new workshop-Printmaking. I will be doing this one for another four weeks, like sculpture.
My initiative thoughts on the subject were slightly more possitive to the ones I had in Sculpture. I had had a bit more experience in the subject, and more positive experience at that.
Because of the short amount of time we have in the lessons, I didnt get round to actually doing any printmaking this week. Im hoping next lesson will be more practical and hands-on. But for now, we learnt about the tools available, as well as the presses, and what different materials we can use. Then we looked at some previous students work, to get a gasp on what different techniques can be achieved in printmaking. It ws very impressive stuff, not to mention slightly intimidating. But I think everyone is pretty much fairly equal in our group, and it will be a learning curve for us all.
We have been told to come in for next lesson with a vauge idea of what we might like to start on e.g. some initial ideas. I know that it has been hinted that it is always good for students to carry on with their ideas from the previous workshops we have been in, and to carry the ideas through into all the workshops. The only problem is I am finding that quite hard to do. I dont really want to make prints of guns, and I have actually come up with a new idea already of what I might like to do, which is further than I got in the previous workshop. I have decided to take some portrait pictures of my family and if possible, perhaps start some lino prints in the next lesson, working from the pictures I take. So thats my plan, hopefully its a good one!

Week 4

After last week in class I went away with three nice, detailed moulds of the toy gun I brought in. In the meantime between my final class, I was thinking on something I could pour into the mould. I came to the idea of chocolate. I felt there was quite a strong contradiction between a gun and chocolate. Guns are obviously very imposing and threatening objects, whereas chocolate is seen as a rather more innocent option. Again it could be argued that chocolate kills just as many people as guns could, but I decided to take a more naive approach. I brought two large bars of chocolate, melted them and poured them into the cast to set.

After a few hours they were ready, and it was after this that I realised that my final piece for this project was not nessessarily the final cast, but rather the documenting of what I did with the cast.

I started to wonder how I could use the chocolate gun in pictures, bearing in mind that it couldnt be held for too long before it would start to melt! So I started off by getting people to pose with it. I used my boyfriend to begin with, asking him to hold it in a fairly menacing way, as if threatening himself:

After this I wanted to create a scene almost, so I used both my boyfriend again and my dad to act with the gun. Sam (the boyfriend), probably didnt enjoy this too much, as it involved him being threatened with the gun by my dad. I didnt get too many good shots here, as most comprised of them laughing, but I feel the perspective of a couple of them arent too bad:

Week 3

Throughout the week before my third session of sculpture, I decided it would be an idea to purchase some cheap toy guns, so that I had something to play around with in the lesson instead of working freehand with the clay, and moulding them would always be an option. I brought a couple of them and brought them into class.
One of them was made of very flimsy plastic, and so to begin with I unscrewed it so that it was then in two halves. Each half look fairly secure, and with a little bit of clay I filled in any holes there were, and then poured some plaster into one of the halves. However, after letting it set I discovered my plan had not gone down so well. I couldnt get the set plaster mould out of its shell, and it ended up breaking in the process of coming out.
I repeated the process again, however this time I decided to focus on the mould I could create, and so put the toy gun with the set plaster in it into the vacuum mould forming machine, and this gave me a very intricate and detailed mould, which I was extremely pleased with. I repeated this and made several more moulds, so that they could be used for other things. I filled one up with plaster, and just as id hoped I got an extemely detailed plaster cast.
Later on in the session, I experimented with algenate, which I was informed is the same stuff used when dentists want to make casts of peoples teeth when braces are needed. The powder is mixed together with water to create a solution, then it is poured into the mould and left to set for half an hour or so. I did this, and found the algenate facinating stuff, which waas gel like when it had set. I got another brilliant mould out of it, and made another plaster cast from it.
At the end of the day I took home my plaster moulds of my gun, which I knew I could use at home....

Week 2

Second week back and I came back into class with the very vauge idea of perhaps wanting to create some sort of weaponry, perhaps a gun, after looking at the artist Wim Delvoye. I felt this was going to look pretty inadequate compared to some other peoples ideas. But I just could rush an idea, and one will never come into my head when I feel pressurised. (Unfortunately). So I spent most of this weeks lesson playing around with the materials we had been introduced to late in last weeks lesson/this morning. I played around with the clay to come up with the basic form of a handgun and work from there. After I did that, I got to use the vacuum forming machine which made a plastic cast of my gun. I then could pour some plaster into the cast to get a solid shape.
It was fun getting to use the plaster, which I hadnt had a play with for a while now. I cant say my gun turned out spectacularly, but it sure was a start. I felt by looking at the plaster gun that I would stick to this subject. It was quite striking and imposing, and I definately felt it was worth a shot over the next few weeks.
I went away at the end of this week with the idea in my mind to look at some other shapes of guns and get more of an idea of what I would be sculpting, instead of using guess work.

Week 1 Term 1

Week 1 term 1 of Art and my first workshop for the next 4 weeks is Sculpture. In the end I will have gotten round to doing all four of the workshops. They contain Sculpture, Printmaking, Drawing and Painting.
I will admit, I was slightly apprehenisve about the sculpture workshop. After all, I hadnt had much experience in that field, and what little I did have, I hadnt taken away a very positive attitude from the subject. But everything is worth a shot, right?
We were introduced to Angie, who would be tutoring us for the next four weeks in Sculpture. She gave us a worksheet which had a brief on it for us to organise for the week after. To summarise the brief was basically to think of a theme or subject that you would focus on for the next three weeks and base your work around. It was quite open, and I have to admitt when I first read it my mind went blank. I had absolutely no idea what I could think of as a basis for my work. Although in the back of my mind I knew the reason for this: all my educational life I have been told what to do. Or at least given some sort of an idea to get me off the ground. Now I was completely on my own, and it was/still is pretty scary. Although I know some people love the freedom of not being told, sometimes I just enjoyed the safety of it.
Anyway, so I began by researching some of the listed artists on the breif, such as Ed Ruscha, David Shrigley, Jack Pierson and Wim Delvoye, to try and inspire myself. I found most of their work interesting, mainly because I was new to them and their work. I found the work of Wim Delvoye rather interesting. Lots of his work is focused on the body, and although he is quite a controversial and sometimes shocking artist, there was a strange beauty to his work e.g: his machinary constructions, which are made out of laser cut steel. They are monsterous, yet rather beautiful.

Although I found most the artists suggested on the brief interesting, nothing was really grabbing my attention. Maybe it was because I still felt a little bit intimdated by the subject. Im not sure. I began to worry, thinking I was running out of time for an ideato appear, and that it would be too late to develop it if it did at this stage.
After this I came across Tom Sachs when I was researching the listed artists. His work seemed quite bold and structural. If there was anything I could say I was thinking of basing a project on at this stage, I would probably say it would be something structural. It sounds vauge, but it made a bit of sense in my head. What caught my eye about him was the sculptures he did of guns.

I didnt quite know where something along the weaponry lines would lead, but by then this was the one thing that had got me interested.
So I decided to make this my idea for when we came back next week.