Print

Gavin Worth
'And light fell on her face through heavy darkness'.

I finished off my wire drawings of the head and brain. I looked at Alexander Calder and Gavin Worth, both famous for their wire sculptures. Anyway I went ahead with my wire drawings, I got about 6 or 7 layers. I'll upload photos once I'm back in college because they are on my wall. I'm going to ask Kieran for some advice on them next week, about where to go from here. I was thinking of hanging them somewhere because they make really nice shadows.

Alexander Calder

I just played around with
the photo quality here to
 see how it looked.

 I approached Des during the week about starting a print but I wasn't sure how to go about it, so he came up to my studio today and had a look through my work.
 We took all my wire drawings of the head and brain and photocopied them downstairs, layering them up, inverting the colour and moving them around into different positions. They really gave the effect of the X-rays and the MRI's, especially the inverted colour because the wire is white and the background is black. The layering up gave a nice perception of depth in the X-ray. The further away wire drawing blurs quite nicely and the more the wire overlaps and crosses gives deeper and darker lines which gave the drawing great definition.
  I'm going to the print workshop on Monday and I'm going to do a mono print of the photocopies from today.

  When I got home to Galway today, I played around with my photocopier and acetates because I'm not sure we're allowed use acetates on the ones in college. First of all I made multiple copies of my abstract brain matter patterns. It took a whole thingy of ink to paint 6 and it was so tedious sooooo I took a shortcut :) I now have about 20 sheets, so next week I'm going to ask Mike Fox if there is a free window somewhere I can display these sheets to make a stained glass window, like the wire drawings, I think these will create some really sweet shadows.

Ceramics II

I went to another ceramics workshop this week, where I continued on with my mini brain scans. I got a large slab of clay sliced them up into separate forms. Unlike last week when I pushed the pencils and sticks through, I decided to make this a cleaner more polished version of the idea from last week. So I developed from that and just cut out individual shapes in each of the slices. I gave each piece a smooth finish and I fixed them up a bit so they looked more ornamental than last weeks prototypes. At the moment they are in the kiln so on Tuesday I'll head down and glaze them. I glazed the smaller pieces just to see how they turned out as a rough draft and they've been in the kiln since Monday so I can collect them on Tuesday as well.

A week or two ago I painted with stick and ink onto acetates in the design of the brain. Once I have finished with my wire drawings I want to create multiple sheets of the acetate pattern and place them all on a window. My tutor said it would be possible for me to put them on one of the college main window panels, I think this will look really cool once it's done, like a stained glass window. I bought 30 acetate sheets but they're the smudge resistant ones and aren't fully see through so I'll see how it goes.

Ceramics

This week I attended the ceramics workshop. I really enjoyed working with clay. My tutor Kieran had suggested awhile back that I experiment with x rays through clay, by making holes and marks through a lump of clay and then slicing it up to show the patterns of movement. I made a small prototype just to see how it would turn out. I was pretty pleased with it, its very rough and quite small, so next week I want to go back to the ceramics department and create the same idea but on a larger scale and more refined. Kieran mentioned that he would be giving a talk on glazing also. So I look forward to moving on with this ceramics idea of movement through the brain.

Unfortunately I broke my camera on Halloween so I have no photos to upload for the moment, but in a week or so I should be able to sort that out. So since I've updated last I continued on with the scans and MRI and how I felt movement and motion was conveyed through these scans. The acetate box I made was just a rough draft, the wooden frame is quite crude and the acetates are quite opaque. So moving forward with this I made substituted the acetates for wire drawings, this week I have been making wire drawings of the head and brain that when they are put together show a 3-d head, of sorts. I'm still getting used to using wire so its a little messy at the moment. Ill update photos later.

          


Back to the idea of conveying movement through the brain by layering, like X-rays and MRI's.
 I found an artist called Angela Palmer who etched markings onto sheets of glass and when they were put together as a block it formed a 3d image. She also got this idea from MRI's and X-rays.

Link to Angela Palmer's gallery:

http://www.angelaspalmer.com/nggallery/page-577/album-2/gallery-3/




I liked the idea of the movement being shown by layering and scribbles. If you follow these scribbles and markings it brings you through the path of movement in the brain/body.

  For a few days, i made observational drawings of people and objects around me, by layering up markings and lines to build up the image.


 I went to the materials room and asked one of the technicians if it was possible to get a box made out of 22cm x 30cm small spars.

 Once I had that I began my observational drawings on sheets of acetate using ink with a stick. I made about ten sheets of mark making, which when layered up together form a 3d image.

I liked this concept and now that I know how it turns out once layered together I would like to continue with it and perfect the mark makings and the drawings themselves.

 I am thinking of getting a bigger box and using A3 acetates and creating a much more detailed drawing. 

Brain matter

I really like using ink with a stick, In my previous post I inked on a large sheet of wrapping paper and I really liked how it turned out. I did the same but on a smaller scale on a sheet of acetate.

 Then I tried marbelling ink on acetate sheets, two days later they're still a little damp so the photos aren't very good but hopefully once they're fully dry I can place the Indian inked acetate over the marbelled acetates.