It's all about the Making...

After treating myself to the wonderful book Making and Drawing I feel inspired to update on some of my recent making.

Making for me in very much a part of the drawing process, in fact, it could be seen as an exploration of line and mark itself. 

Surface, texture, form and conversations.

Let's have a look at what's been going on...

Exploring the relationship between size, weight, line and clay body 

these two objects have an interesting dialogue:

I have taken a cast of the inside and reverse of the same mould here 

and the surface quality is again interesting..

The way it picks up the stitch is magical:

And the depth of the line draws you in further still:

I then stopped to think about what has been happening during the whole process of the making....

> During slip-casting you are always left with waste slip. 

> Reusing the flexible moulds pushes them to their limits. 

They begin to disintegrate and become unusable, but surely this is not the end of their use?

I started to consider how I could utilise all of this....

and through a process of composing with the waste cloth:

...using the excess slip to take a cast or in this case 'print':

I have been presented with some interesting results:

Taking this further into the positioning of stitch, line and altered surface - 

 you are offered a whole new line of enquiry still!

I'm quite excited by this process and see lots of potential in its capabilities longer term.... 

I wonder how this might work in to my current degree show set up however, 

could this become part of / a canopy in itself?

and what about these forms:

They are starting to take shape a bit more too...

It's not that long away now, when this work will be up on show

I can't wait to see it!!!

But for now, it's on with the making...

Sketchcrawls and Burlesque Balls

This week has been full of some really lovely drawing experiences - yay! 

First of all I took part in another sketchcrawl around nottingham. We started off in The Exchange Arcade:

and I was very taken with the ceiling:

It started getting chilly so we packed up tools and head off to the Malt Cross, 

on our way we passed this picture perfect pigeon parade...

 Inside the ever so beautiful Malt Cross were some very welcome armchairs: 

delightfully hung bunting: 

compositional glassware: 

and almighty hot chocolates!

 After re-fuelling, it was time for the next venue: 

Nottingham Contemporary for the exhibitions Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Tala Mandani

There was a participatory performance happening in the main gallery, 

aptly encouraging you to draw! 

Here's Laura taking part:

and my drawing of the drawing 'happening' :

Members of the crawl drawing from inside the Cat Bus:

and a quick detailing of some of the costumes on display:

Then, on Saturday, I went along to my first dr sketchy event! Yes!

I've been wanting to go to one for ages and after hearing they held one in Nottingham 

(plus a nudge from Laura) it finally happened! 

This ended up being their first date of the year so there was a real buzz about the crowd (a good 20 strong I'd say). I wasn't too sure what to expect, or what I needed to have with me so I loaded up like and art shop pack horse and took far too much material with me (surprise surprise!) Heavy-weight sketchpad in hand however I got started...

The poses were really quick, 5 min warm-ups to begin with:

With fantastic costumes to consider, fab music playing and all that difficult life drawing proportion stuff running around your head it made for a really interesting (albeit stressful at points) experience!

The poses got a little longer (10 mins) and there was talk of prizes...

Each 'round' of drawings from then on was judged by the model, and prizes were distributed to their favourites - what a great incentive for creating good mark-making!

I really enjoyed this longer pose (20 mins) and was rather taken by the feathery bustle 

(as you can probably tell!):

A half hour comfort break then back to some 5 minutes:

A few performances from the models plus a longer pose, where I wanted to get down some of the contrasting colours in the room:

More short studies with the alternating models:

And a final combination pose:

 that actually won me some prizes! 
(it's definitely not my strongest drawing of the day but hey, who's complaining!?!)

Here's my tote bag and zine win:

The bag's designed by Dr Sketchy organizer Charlotte Thompson 

and the zine by Sketchcrawl North contributor Andrea Joseph - wow!! Dead chuffed :)

I'm definitely going to try and make the next one (12th April) and will be recommending it to the now formed uni sketchcrawl crew! It was such a fun day out whilst making some interesting and alternative work in the progress - win-win!!

Developing a dialogue

It has been an age since I've updated on here and as we're entering mid term review, are nearly through with January and I haven't even said * Happy New Year * yet, it's about the right time to reflect on what's been going on...

Last term was very busy. I co-curated an exhibition at uni which was fun, although a little stressful at points. The outcome was great though and it was well received across the board. We created an online archive of the exhibition, which you can see here. 

In terms of my work, I was a little distracted with organising the show so development has been slow, however, there have been some interesting things happening so...let's reacquaint ourselves and get back up to date!

Right, you remember that cloth that absorbed all the slip? Well, here it is after it got fired:

 It's an interesting texture but I'm not that keen on the overall look. 

I feel like this technique has been done to death a bit so I'd like to develop something new...

I tried out some different cloths and sponges to varying successes

And although this leaked to begin with, the outcome of the sponge was quite fantastic 

- like giving birth to some coral!

The natural movement in the pieces gives the work some real energy and personality

And when placed side by side there's an interesting dialogue going on between them all

I wanted to consider the re-usability of the moulds and wondered about adding a zip?

It was very successful indeed! 

More forms took shape 

(and even alluded to functionality - could this be a jug?)

Development drawings

And a thinking through how to reuse those redundant moulds....could they become sculptures themselves?

More zips and twisted forms

And inspiration from the strangest of sources!

Continuing the dialogue with some plaster forms

And developing some shapes out of the finer more flexible cloths

There's a real question about the value of material and object beginning to appear....

Arranging the objects to consider how they might work together in a collection:

And a happy accident from the kiln where the glaze caused a crack in one of the vessels and split it in half. 

The splitting created a problem and the solution lay in the newly developed cloth samples and so the beginnings of a hybrid ceramic collection have been born!

It's now time for mid term review and some time away from the studio to write up my dissertation. Then hopefully after that I can be a bit more regular with my updates. 

That said however, it's really not that long now til it's all finished!? 

Where did those 3 years go...?

Pretty Dandy Flea

I helped out at the Pretty Dandy Flea today. It stayed busy from the off with lots of quality vintage, design and food stalls, great music too and a really good atmosphere for shopping and browsing.

In between voluntary duties I had some time to do some drawings. I was going to try and get the whole space in but as I was looking I realised that it was the people moving around the space that made it what it was so I drew them instead. With my new range of coloured pens, I had quite and energetic response and feel that these could work well in an animated format: