Costume? Me? I can't sew!

After the primer task, which I should have posted before the post I am creating now and which I would love to post anyway later (however, we know how disorganised I am - probably will never post that in my life), we got briefed today on our new project - we are supposed to create a costume. 

Non-human representation of our primary needs, the summary of ourselves, streamlined into wearable 3D form. 

Alright! I can't use the needle - that's not the problem! As I am highly motived since we started new term, I want to blow up everyone's mind with my project this time.

This post is the starter pack. An organisation of ideas! 

Aims:

- simple form, not overdone by mindlessly creation in the heat of a deadline

- combination between the sculpture and the costume

- using physical effects, such as smoke, reflection
- being proud of your work, this time!

I try not to get attracted by the tons of inspiration which we were loaded in at today's brief - as my general love for creation absorb too much and too quickly - I try to streamline myself into specific path of thinking.

Inspiration:

Hussein Chalayan:

Visual chunks I find useful: hellium, costume absorbing the space, simplicity of form

Oskar Schlemmer and his Ballet:

Visual chunks I find useful: light as the medium, shade as the outcome

Visual chunks I find useful: geometric forms, beautiful in their simplicity, minimalistic forms with a massive expression

(on the left Schlemmer's design - on the right David Bowie in Kansai Yamamoto's design apparently inspired by Bauhaus - good to know)

Visual chunks I find useful: again, simplicity of the geometric form, but also blown up form of the leggins - making them larger gave them expression of which I look foward to as well!

Visual chunks I find useful: geometry, geometry, geometry - let's stay simple, but beautifully creative!

Michał Smandek:

Visual chunks I find useful: simple form, untold story of a mirror, dissorted reflection, texture

Visual chunks I find useful: interpretation of a smoke, brilliant yet simple idea, colour

Visual chunks I find useful: simple form, yet unrealistic, black contrasting with white, 

The last artist did not design any costumes - although, I am highly attracted by the physical phenomenons appearing in his work - it is not just the still form, made of medium which you can touch - but I am an idiot and I did not post any of his work, where you can actually see the physic working - therefore I will sent you here, as Michał Smandek is definitely an artist you should look up to. 

Final thoughts:
I already started designing my costume and despite the fact I do not have much projects, I managed to find more or less the aesthetique I want to dig into. 

Mirror, smoke, simple forms, lack of plastic feeling and colour. 

My best designs so far:

I want to use the mirror as I symbol of myself - having a mirror is one of my primary needs, but on the other hand, I wish I could not look into it at all - basically, as I have complexes, I want to use the mirror in the reverse meaning - as it is the part of the 'face' of the costume, it could never reflect me, but what I am surrounded with - people who I love, for example. I want my costume to be twice as big as average height of a human, with the mirror 'looking down' on people below. They could look up and see themselves - it is connected with myself feeling always a bit apart from reality, as my mom says: head always twenty feet above the ground. I wish that smoke would appear there too - it would steal the space around the costume. It is also symbol of evanescence to me - as I constantly feel how the moments slip out of my hands. 

Obviously, I need to develop my idea more. Collect materials.
Not get stressed!


Keep myself creative. 

Stop-frame animation - first attempt!

Yesterday I had a great opportunity to attempt the Stop-Frame Animation Workshops, along with Maya and Anna.
The really nice gentleman who name I obviously forgot, gave us 20 minutes to play with the software (called DRAGON! - sounds almighty, doesn't it?), this is what we came up with in a panicking rush of a creative cloud of inspiration.

Well, the plotline is easy - there is a white fox, sparkly one, taking a walk, falling down, sun becomes a snitch, it is hard to choose love's colour, everything blows up and hand of God wipes this miserable World out.
No, it's not really a plotline - the action in our animation is pure creation on its own, being just the decisions made quickly which we documented on the go, without hestitation. Anyway, we had fun.
Afterall, we posted the movie all over our social media.


I really hope I would use this techique someday in my future projects - the simplicity of it appeals to me strongly.

Assessment tomorrow.

As the assessment is tomorrow and I am on the verge of sanity, I decided to create the post, summing up my frustration. 

Yes.

This is a tyrannosaurus singing in the shower (digital media workshops, oh yes).

Well, wish me good luck.

Subject/Object - final poster - The Death of a Sex Goddess.

On Tuesday, we had to manage to get through alive the next crit, this time for the Subject/Object final piece - a poster about our favourite bit of news from the '28 Days News Drawing Project'. 

As I am the most depoliticised person, probably here, on Camberwell, I did not choose a topic about anything having even the smallest connection with politics. Following my unhealthy obsession with celebrities and their lives, I have chosen the death of Anita Ekberg - former sex goddess, fallen star of 'La Dolce Vita' movie. 

I was attracted by the bitter aspect of actresses, whose only talent is their beauty, and as it goes away, they lose their popularity.

 Although I was interested most by her lost popularity, I decided to show my respect for Anita at the end. The poster does not show the comparison between her as a beauty goddess and old, tired lady she became. I used the motive of 'vanitas', the motive of evanescence. As I looked on this topic closer, I found out that one of the symbols of 'vanitas' is hourglass - which is also a symbol of a perfect female body. Therefore, I streamlined both of the ideas and shaped Anita into almost finished hourglass. 

Am I pleased with the final outcome? Not really. I feel I somehow got lost in the process, as I desired my poster to be more like one of the beautiful, polish posters from the '60 or '70. I was focused too much on playing with Photoshop than the visual values of my posters. It is a lesson for me anyway - now I know, that I have to give my full commitment to any project I am working on.

Printmaking!

Last Monday (yes, I know, it's Friday today - and it was a very bad Friday for me indeed) I managed to finally got through two out of three (unfortunately only two!) of the printmaking processes we are able to make in our workshops. 

They are on the third floor, which is not very good for people running late. 

Nevertheless - I managed to learn how to create etching and a screen print - both of them were beyond my expectations of the final effect I am quite sure I would like to squeeze those processes in my future projects.

Messy, messy colours. Many colours. I am kind of a magpie for colours.

This is my screen-print, inspired by sneaking foxes I used to meet everyday on my way to work. Although they were definitely skinnier. 

Etching! I do that very rarely, but this time I managed to document a bit of a different stages in this amazing process. Probably I did it only because I wanted to post them on Instagram (shame on me).

Copying my drawing onto the zinc plate covered with a paint stopping the acid getting through the metal. The scratched places are the only ones which will be endangered to acid, which makes the drawing carved into the plate.

After acid treatment, plate is inked and ready to print! Looks cool.

One of the prints, with collage included. 

I absolutely loved the workshops (and tutors!). I look forward to squeeze myself in next free slots.

3rd drawing workshop - FILM!

This time, as the Halloween was just in few days from our Drawing Workshop Monday, George and the King of Illustration (I mean, Darryl Clifton), prepared for us quite unusual tasks. 

They presented to us two horror films - Suspiria and Kwaidan.

We were supposed to draw stills from the movies in many different, creative, non-obvious ways, like, for example, reversing colours or by line contrast the most important element of composition.

Those are my best attempts on interpretating the Suspiria moments:

Here you can see the Kwaidan stills:

As I were told, my way of creating is very 'exhausting to look at', because I work very quickly and spontaneously - yet I sometimes cannot find the perfect moment to stop and leave the drawing at its finest. Nevertheless, I realised that I can think in a completely new way, when the time is limited and my media are unpredictable, behaving in very organic way - and I am going to use that more often in my future creating. 

ROOM - 2nd Drawing Workshop.

My Outlook says, that our next experimental drawing workshop was on 27th of October, which means it was one thousand and three days ago. 

This time, we were meant to create the enviroment, the ROOM, thinking not only in a terms of creating a visual composition of lines and spills, which you consider during creating a drawing, but also in terms of filling the space, objects influencing each other, bringing the mood and the atmosphere to the place absorbed, place you want to change, rule on your own.

We did that in groups, which I always find diffcult yet useful. This is how the final outcome of artsy minds working together look like:

Copyrights go to Mathilda and her amazing iPhone

What we hopefully achieved, was the feeling of the forest at night, slightly lightened by the Moon, the atmosphere of a mystery, where the shadows play games with your mind. Nevertheless, we certainly created a lovely, vibrating chiaroscuro on the walls, simply by using the branches found outside and single lamp hidden behind the house (which we actually stole from the first, ice-braking project - is it being lazy or genious?).

After all the groups finished their ROOMS, we were meant to draw them, to re-interpete our own enviroments and approach other groups attempts.

I particulary got interested in portraying the branches and their relationshop with the strings, as they were braking their vertical repetition with horizontal accent.