Triune brain, more anatomy!

 

Much pleased with how this has turned out. Almost a commission, really a suggestion by a teacher friend who has to explain these things to children. Of course it's me in the middle, possibly it's not quite cartoony enough, but it's a process I want to continue exploring. It relates to my Proposal and it engages drawing/illustration and graphic design. I await a formal critique with interest. When I have a collection of these I shall put them up for purchase for a small amount. (like you, I have to eat!)

Be interesting to see some feedback below.

Anatomy Lessons?

 

My digestive system. A first version. Anatomy, or rather artistic interpretations of it have fascinated me for years. As a kid I was heavily into biology and even had a brief idea I might be a surgeon - I liked dissection. The careers teacher rapidly put that one to rest! However, the attraction has stayed and discovering Fritz Kahn (more about him in a separate post) and other people who have drawn analogies of human workings have re-kindled that interest. Others have taken a more liberal approach such as Basil Woolverton, but I have yet to track down a link to the images I want to show.

This is my first effort. It's wrong on man counts. The background and body filling are wrong. Arm should have been behind body and probably it should be a front view. I'll have another go this week, but leave this here for the record. 

Monday's crits and the Serenedipitous cube

Our tutor is off for a bit, so we had a substitute: Mariele Neudecker. (http://www.marieleneudecker.co.uk/) What an inspiration she is! (Talked through my work at length, she appeared to be particularly taken with the small interactive I made in response to last week's challenge. 

As usual I talked too much and gave people a run down of everything. I can be a bit of a bore sometimes... 

The interactive you can see below. It's the word 'serendipitous' which I was given embedded in resin with 36 neons. There's an exciter below and when you put a finger on it they light up.

Serendipity is a word that I have associated with ever since as a teenager of 13, I attended repeatedly the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the ICA. (https://monoskop.org/Cybernetic_Serendipity) This showed that you could mix art and science together ways that hadn't been seen much at that point. Of course that's almost old hat today, but it was revolutionary then. 

CAP Year 3 Negotiated Self Directed Work Proposal

So a bit late to this party, as most people had done this weeks ago. But I have thought through and written a proposal which I was hoping to discuss today. Sadly tutor is ill, but I have decided to put it out in any case as I hope that will hope me to focus on work - or more specifically, work that matters; something I find tricky sometimes. Haven't done the 'negotiated' bit yet. Having read it again, I find it a bit pompous. Probably I'll reword it.

Inktober Illustration, prompt was 'gears'. Inside my head..

 Back to learning.

Life changes and I find myself reviving this blog. Having toyed with other blogging platforms, there's no doubt that this ticks the "Make it easy" box.

So what has happened?

Due to various reasons, I had to take some time off in 2021, I was due to return Feb 2022 full time and repeat a year. Unfortunately the university made time-table changes which made that difficult and resulted in me going part time. My last semester in Fine art was also less than spectacular. I had discovered a grow chasm between what I wanted to achieve and what was (rightly) expected. At the end of the day I look towards how I can provide for myself from what I do; probably that is "to commercial" an expression I heard more than once.

So I have transferred to CAP - Contemporary Arts Practice, where I have found a first class tutor in Matthew Robertson. He's also been a graphic designer and we share backgrounds in common. 

Currently I'm still finding my feet here, but the future looks promising, and with Ruth studying our lives look good, if hard.

Additional things that will be here

For my CAP tutors, there will be several pages to help you navigate:

CAP_context_folder

CAP_sketchbook

CAP_research

CAP_reflection

Using these tags will take you to the right pages for assessment.

A test...

 

Progress on the tree painting...

Progress on the tree painting. I have the main shapes in. After a false start and several experiments, I finally started using #liquin fine detail to get the consistency I wanted from oil paints. Not perfect, but that may be some very old tubes of paint that are very stiff anyway. Second photo shows detailing. 

Will be unified with a glaze like final snapshot.

Whole image, it's 100cm x 100cm on canvas. Have painted about 25% of detail. Really taking ages, about a week now. Manage around 3 hours a day. But not every day. Arm aches after that!

Close up of detailing. First layer, will need light/dark/underpaint in-between lines. Then glase with overall wash.

Test glaze. Needs bit more work. Struck me I could use a gold underneath or even gold leaf in a future project.