Another day, another set of photos.

Just another set of photos I was working on with a fancy-pants camera I borrowed from the school.  The white balance and exposure turned out better than the last batch, and this time I had more control over the focus, since I was doing it manually. I also had a better idea of what it was I was trying to achieve, with the dark background, and attention to details.

I dig 'em. Do you?

Also, check out the fancy new side panel feature I added, a slideshow of some of my photography on Flickr. If you click it, it will take you somewhere magical! ... like Flickr!

Drawings of Photos of Ceramics

Last time, I mentioned that I was going to take a look at the possibility of drawing my ceramic figures, or drawing from my photos of the ceramic figures. Well, it turned out that the perfect starting point for this exploration was actually... painting. You see, it stemmed more out of a hit-two-birds-with-one-stone mentality than the actual desire to paint my ceramic figures. In my painting class, our next project was supposed to be about the concepts of space, using two canvases to bring together 2-D and 3-D space.

I'd mentioned to Scott, in that last so-serious meeting, about how I found it a little challenging that there is a completely different approach to life-sculpting than to life-drawing. Instead of examining and acknowledging areas of light and shadow, and the illusion of space and depth, the clay restricts you to form and volume. So this is where ideas of drawing, or painting, the ceramic pieces came into play.

So I set up my studio again, and got to work.

I was struggling with the scale of the work, and the brushstrokes (and my growing dislike of paint), but it made for a good starting point. With the drawings, I knew I had to work in much smaller scale, and I wanted to explore the potential mark-making of drawing media.

These two I drew directly from my still life setup using oil pastel. I started too large, the first being about 11 inches and the second about 10 inches, which is why they went unfinished. 

So I went in for the smaller scale, again from the still life setup (pictured). Both these drawings are also oil pastel. The first is about 7"x5", and the second is about 4"x5".

I found I wasn't quite achieving what I wanted to. The figures didn't stand out to me like ceramic figures. They could easily have been drawn from a real model (except for the missing limbs). So the next step was to draw from the photographs.

With these, I maintained the small scale (using my 8.5"x5.5" sketchbook) and I worked quickly. I think these were the key to keeping a similar temporal quality that the ceramics had. 

What do you think?

Also, how meta am I? Technically these are photos of drawings of photos of ceramics.... yeesh!

Art-dentity Crisis!

Last week, I was faced with a bit of an art-dentity crisis. I had a Directed Study meeting with Scott on Friday, so I set up my new pieces from Wednesday night's life drawing class to show him.

I hadn't been very inspired on Wednesday night. I'd been tired and easily distracted, and found it hard to focus on the pieces I was working on. A number of times they were incomplete because I thought the poses were going to be longer than they ended up being. Based on these things, I didn't have very much to say.

I think that my exasperation was evident, and so Scott did what he does best: he asked all the hard questions. He doesn't necessarily expect answers to them all, but still he asks to get you thinking. Not only thinking, but getting your brain reeling. I'm sure if he wanted to, he could make you question your own identity ten times over. Now, he was making me question my art-dentity.

He asked: What are you trying to achieve? Where do you go from here?

I thought I had come up with a beginning of an answer last week to at least one of these questions, but I was slowly coming to the realization that I had been researching ideas that were actually moving me further and further away from the point of what I'd started. The idea of working with the clay in a temporal and fleeting way was my focus, and if I were to move the pieces beyond that, through drying and glazing, I would lose all of the intended value of the initial process.

He asked: How are these relevant? What does it mean for these to be made by Melanie?

I'm in my fourth year of visual arts, and this is the first time I've been confronted with these kinds of questions. Next semester, I'm supposed to compile my graduating project, a comprehensive body of work that will be hung in the Nanaimo Art Gallery along with several other students' work. I'm wondering, why hasn't the issue of personal direction, beyond the mere satisfaction of project requirements, been acknowledged more before now? And because I've never really thought to ask myself these things... who am I as an artist, anyway?


So I did a bit of musing on this subject. How do I do art?

- I often find myself feeling creatively inspired, but I'm not always able to translate the feeling/the moment into something tangible. It's usually that an inner need to satisfy the moment gets fulfilled.

- I'm not a very big planner. I don't draw hundreds of sketches before starting something. Often, it's just one sketch, or just starting with just an an idea in my head.

- I enjoy photography when it's spontaneous, like travel photography. I enjoy using natural light, and am usually a little intimidated by studio lighting. Too technical!

- I like using my hands! I like for the medium to be tangible, and to feel close to what I'm doing.

So there seems to be this theme of spontaneity, the temporal, and working with my hands. But I've also come to the realization that working with one thing for too long allows me the chance to lose momentum.

Well, I got a second wind last night by moving into another medium: photography. Though I've already taken pictures of most of my pieces, I approached them again with more attention than mere documentation. I set up a little miniature studio with two small desk lamps and a black scarf as a backdrop. The idea was to capture the pieces in their wet state so that they retain the details from their creation, the temporal and spontaneous environment in which they were made. In this way, I hope to enhance as well as emphasize their value in this state.

These photos are just initial studies, and I hope to go into some more depth with this exploration. I would also like to do some drawings of the figures, or do drawings from the photographs, and perhaps then photograph those drawings... experimenting with the ways each medium can lend to the other.

I still don't know exactly where I'm going, but I'm gradually figuring out the how and the why in order to create more purpose within my work, so that I can take ownership of what I'm doing. Which means, more questions, more musings, and more self-exploration.