Coming into this brief was tricky, as i had done minimal reading over the summer and was constantly comparing myself to others and getting myself all down. I started off in a negative headspace- the reading i had done had been mainly essays from my chosen author Zadie Smith- someone i am not overwhelmingly drawn to, and just picked off a list. Her works are political and deep- beautifully written however, whereas i wanted to begin on the right foot in second year and start creating work that i found exciting visually, basically more beautiful and refined work than what i produced last year. I cannot wrap my head around politics, and am still learning how to think laterally and create work with subversive meanings- it's not really my cup of tea right now.
However, after a brief discussion and a lot of sketchbook pages filled with developing ideas that i found quite hard to look at as they were messy and uninformed, i came to the conclusion that i would focus on Zadie Smith's life and the sense of place her imagery writing gave to me.
The zine was very fun to produce as i got into a flow and kept a consistent theme of buildings and style of gouache and coloured pencil throughout- it felt safe and easy and lovely to work in. When i had finished it, edited it, put it through photoshop and bound it neatly, i found that my work suddenly had a new precious quality to it- i valued it and had spent time making work i loved- i have FINALLY made something i am so proud of and unashamed to show! Very proud of myself!
Wanting to keep this positive beginning up, i was thrown by the workshop in which we had to do things laterally- i find symbols and motifs cringe-y and obvious, and don't associate them with something i want to be making- i feel that my future is not really as an editorial artist at all. so i spent a lot of time struggling through motifs i hardly knew from work i wasn't enthusiastic about. After a lot of moaning, i decided to take it back to a quote i found in 'White Teeth', which linked all the work i found successful previously to the new ideas i was generating.
'and then he gave her a kiss on the forehead which felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby'
This changed everything! I had a new vision of the kind of work i wanted to create- some kind of chapel window/goddess statue combination of a powerful, weeping woman. It began to feel like i was in control again! generating some finalised images from here began to feel easy, as i had some imagery to work with, instead of just hurtling from one unformed idea to the next.
From my sketches and initial ideas I narrowed it down to nine final images and struggled to categorise and sum them up into just three sequential images that would represent what i wanted to produce finally.
I used these as a starting point to begin processing them into something i wanted to make more visually, despite taking it further away from the author's very city based metropolitan life and into a more medieval spiritual realm. The images i was making i really enjoyed and wanted to try and take it further- i wanted to develop the idea of women and spirituality a bit more, and started thinking along the lines of Mucha and Tarot card readings- a tradition predominantly enjoyed by women, and similar to the refined beautiful work i wanted to begin making. This is an idea i want to develop a lot more as i think it has a lot of potential to follow and would be interesting to see how my style suits it. I do however recognise that this is a far stretch from Zadie Smith's work and although is my interpretation of a small aspect of her writing, it may seem to others a very far reach and that i'm gong off on a tangent. I will do my best to keep it all relevant, whilst making work that i will enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment