December Christmas Craft Fair

For the past few months the art and design department has been working on ceramic Christmas decorations and jewellery to sell in the colleges annual craft fair. We have been glazing moulding sewing and badging. Our outcomes were lovely and I'm proud to say we raised over £200 and all our proceeds have gone to The Kenya Fund which is an organisation by one of the staff in photography. So it was a success :). 

Random but very relevent post!

As you know I really enjoy art and I am always in my element when I am planning, designing or creating something but I haven't told you one of my biggest influences. My main creative influence is music. I know this may sound silly, but hear me out. I don't think I have gone a day where I haven't listened to music. It is a necessity to me. I have quite an open mind, I like a lot of things. Music to me helps me open up, and I can relate to the lyrics and tone of the sound. Music combined with art sounds like heaven to me. I can express how I feel through movement of a paintbrush and passionate lyrics.

 

Canterbury November 2012

 

Recently my friends and I went to see a band play live, I love being in an environment such as a gig because everyone is there because of a mutual love of music. You all express your love through movement, singing/screaming and just jumping.
Another really enjoyable gig was The midnight beast, quirky band with a funny take on music.



 

The Midnight Beast October 2012

So as you can tell music means so much to me. It can change my mood at any time, Influence me to be creative and go crazy with paints and it also tells a story which is always nice to use as an escape from reality!

3D Pewter lion

In our 3D lessons recently we have been working with pewter. For our first attempt at this process we chose our favourite animal and drew the outline onto a very small section of MDF wood. On the band saw be cut around it and was left with our small version of that particular animal. I chose to make a lion!

 

I then grabbed a pre-made wooden box to place our MDF animals in. Then using a hand saw we made a funnel so the pewter could be poured in through.

 

 

 Once we were ready we mixed up rubber with a hardener so the latex would set to form our mould.

Once we had poured enough we left it to harden for a week or so.

 

We were ready to pour our pewter moulds in. We pealed our plastic mould away from our MDF template and box. We also started heating up the pewter on a portable hob. The pewter was extremely hot so we made sure to wear protection like gloves and glasses. we carefully removed the unwanted layer of purities in the pewter and poured into our mould pressed against wood.

 

We left the pewter to cool for a few minutes and pealed it away from the mould and after we removed the unwanted edges with a saw we was left with a final piece.

 

 

The only thing left to do was to sand wet and dry and polish to get the pewter looking its best. I really like this process. The outcomes look very high spec. We will be creating a letter for our homage to books project! So keep your eyes pealed! 

Homage to books Photographs.

I have been recently been scouting around my house and the charity shops for some old books I could use or incorporate in my work. I have been successful in finding beautiful hardback vintage books but I didn't want to rip them apart and recreate them. They were so beautiful I  just wanted to photograph them, copy them and explore through them.

When looking through my attic I found old books which has been passed through generations, there were some Welsh Bibles signed by my ancestors which I found interesting because me and my mum had never noticed these before.

 

Homage To Books

Our recent project is homage to books. In this project I will be limited to 3 colours, 3 A1 sheets, 3 drawing materials, 3 photographs, 3 materials and 3 outcomes. I have started to research artists that use books in their work. I used ThisIsColossal.com I typed in books and so many professional outcomes came up. Below are a few I found really interesting and eye catching.

                                                                 Meg Hitchcock
I really fell in love with Meg Hitchcock's work. I liked the use of taking already written words, cutting them up, adjusting the shapes to create a beautiful pattern with text. I have taken a page from an old book and I have rewritten the passage by cutting up the text and creating a poem from that certain page.

The Satanic Verses: “Repentance” from the Koran (detail); letters cut from “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, 21 x 19 in, 2012

                                       Throne: The Book of Revelation; letters cut from the Koran, 44.5 x 30 in, 2012

Throne: The Book of Revelation (detail); letters cut from the Koran, 44.5 x 30 in, 2012

This next artist is Alexander Korzer-Robinson. He uses a book as a starting point and removes all the text leaving the images. The images combined create an image as a whole. I want to try this! The results look lovely!

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My Abstract Digital Photography

In photography we have been working on our abstract project. I found abstract in photography very interesting, it was quite hard to produce a photo based around abstraction because most photographs are shot with a purpose. I found out different techniques to help create a more natural abstract image through the use of a camera.

I found out that the best outcomes were taking photos of spider webs which created a layer of geometric lines of light.

I really love this image above. It is of the water surface in a garden water container. I felt the flash helped create a 3D effect.

I then started to photograph different water scenarios, the images above are of my bubble bath. I really like the combined circles to form a random floating shape.

And finally I found this creepy spider web with created a mist in the corner of my garden shed. I felt this created an eerie atmosphere.

University thoughts

Lately we have be speaking a lot about what we want to do next. There are a range of university courses which I find interesting. Although in these courses you can only specialize in one area eg.fine art,ceramics, illustration and so on. Me being me I find it very difficult to decide so I'm looking to find a course which has the range all in one. I would love to stay at home because of money issues and it will generally be more easier. So I will be going to open days in Cardiff University and asking some tutors about the courses available on the next level up. Stay tuned! :D