Tag: Workshop

Museum of the Ordinary

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The study of Semiotics suggests that who is reading the image, is important in determining the message. Semiosis is the process of How we take meaning from a sign. Roland Barthes was a French literary critic and philosopher. He felt that the meaning of words as well as images are dependent on the viewer.

Denotation= The literal or primary meaning of an image.

Connotation= This is the meaning of a sign depending on our interpretations. This means the connotation is something that always changes.

Ways of Seeing- John Berger

As mentioned in a previous blog post, Writing & Research Skills. John Berger wrote a book and BBC documentary entitled Ways of Seeing, in which he discusses semiotics:

‘We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.’

‘The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.’

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

‘The photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter’s way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper.’

In this quote, he is saying that a photographer is selecting and bringing attention to an element. He/she is showing something about their perception within this photo. A photo cannot be objective if a person is behind the lens.

An example Berger gives in his book is the painting Venus and Mars by Boticelli.


Sandro Botticelli | Venus and Mars | NG915 | National Gallery, London

Isolating a part of the image means you see something differently by the way it is framed.

If we frame just Venus’ face, the image looks like a portrait painting of a young lady. We need to see the painting as a whole to understand the context.

Open work- Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco Was an Italian philosopher, social commentator, and novelist. In his work, he speaks about the Ideal reader. This is someone who is aware of the possibilities of interpretation in a work.

From Visual Signs by David Crow:

  • ‘Eco prefers the term “encyclopedia,” rather than the more common term “code,” to describe the transfer of meaning through the use of signs. For Eco, a code implies a one-to-one transfer of meaning like a dictionary definition, whereas encyclopedia suggests that there are a number of interrelated interpretations and readers must negotiate their own path through the network of possibilities.’
  • ‘It is important to note that he sees information as something different from meaning or message. He suggests that the amount of information contained in a message depends on the probability of the reader’s already knowing the content of the message before it is received.’
  • ‘Eco argues that contemporary art contains much higher amounts of information, though not necessarily more meaning, by virtue of its radical nature. More conventional forms of communication—such as the road sign, for example, or figurative painting— may carry more distinct meaning but much less information.’
  • ‘If a newsflash tells me that tomorrow the sun will rise, I have been given very little information as I could have worked this out for myself. If, however, the newsflash tells me that the sun will not rise, then I have a lot of information as this is a highly improbable event.’
  • ‘Eco also points out that the amount of information contained in a message is affected by another factor: our confidence in the source of the message.’
  • ‘If a landlord were to tell me an apartment had damp problems before I rented it, I would be more inclined to believe him because he has nothing to gain by fabricating this message.’
  • ‘The amount of information is greater when the content or the source is improbable.’
  • ‘”Christmas is an annual festival.” This has a very clear and direct meaning with no ambiguity, yet it doesn’t add to our existing knowledge. In other words, although the communicative value is high, the amount of information is low.’

A piece of discarded material can become an artifact once it has been framed.

Umberto Eco

Framing brings attention to something e.g. cracks in the road spray painted to mark for repair. At this location, they have marked areas for drilling into, on the asphalt. This makes us aware of areas and focus on areas we otherwise would not notice.


Ground Penetrating Radar Utility Scanning – East Handover, NJ (gp-radar.com)
Frames within frames

In this week’s workshop, we were taking photographs around campus. I experimented with using a photo frame to draw attention to certain areas and then taking a picture of the same area without the use of a frame. I wanted to see what difference the frame would make.

Before the workshop, I wrote down a collection of words that related to my object, The Raincoat Girl. I then wrote words that did not describe the object.

I used these words as inspiration when taking photos around campus. It was challenging to find subjects and locations in a short space of time. (We had around 40 minutes for this task.) It was harder than I thought to find objects I was happy with.

I used the frame to draw the focus to the entrance of the building.

I placed the frame in a place that highlighted the fragmentation of the pieces of glass. I was relating this subject to the word ‘fragile’, since my object is fragile. I chose the blue and green area because my object is blue and green was one of the words I wrote to describe what my object was not.

I took this photo in the Richard Hamilton Building on campus. Two objects here are used for communication: a telephone and a fire alarm. Both objects are useful and even essential. I found that this contrasted with my object which is purely decorative and does not serve any vital or important purpose.

I chose to focus in on one object. I found it interesting that the phone looks old fashioned and would look at home beside my object. even though their functions are very different.

There is a lot going on in the design of this post at the exterior of Headington Hill Hall. It is old fashioned and decorative, like my object.

Framing one area of the pillar helps to focus in one one element of the design.

After taking the photos, we needed to place the photos in an InDesign document. InDesign was suitable because we needed to then add labels next to each photo. The label resembled the caption placed next to an artwork in a museum or gallery. It was fun to see the photos presented in this way. I liked the addition of the word next to the image as a title because it added more meaning to the image and helped present the message I had in mind when taking the photo.

InDesign process

I selected File>document set up. This gave me the option of choosing the number of pages in the document. In the same window, I could also unselect facing pages. This meant that I could view one page at a time.

I could use the page tool to change the page’s orientation, if one of my photos happened to be in a landscape orientation for example. This option is located at top of the page.

(The document needs to be on essentials classics for me to complete these steps.)

If this is not switched on, I can change this by selecting Window>workspace>essentials classic.

File> place to place an image in InDesign.

Gained in Translation

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palimpsest

[ˈpalɪm(p)sɛst]

NOUN

a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.

something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

(Definition from Google.com)


The Gatekeeper’s Lodge: architectural palimpsest (thegatekeeperslodge.blogspot.com)

In the times before paper, people would use a writing surface made of wood, stone or wax. These palettes needed to be used and re-used. As a result, marks were left behind from the previous person’s writing. This is what is known as Palimpsest. Palimpsest could also apply to architecture, when it is possible to see old and new structure simultaneously. Old words or structures look ghostly, the new is often bolder.

The combination of these layers can create new meanings within a piece of artwork.

A famous, historical example of palimpsest in the last century, is the Berlin wall. The Berlin wall was a concrete structure built in 1961 to separate the people of West Berlin from East Germany and East Berlin. The Communist Bloc used the wall as a way to block out the fascist influence of the western world from the people inside West Berlin. The wall was in place from 1961 to 1989. During this time, the West side of the wall was graffitied over by people with opinions to express. The East side of the wall remained bare because people were not permitted to get close enough to this side. From the parts of the wall that still remain, it is possible to see remains of the older markings left from the past and newer graffiti layered over the old graffiti.


East vs West – Berlin – madness | Ana ADI | Flickr       

The Berlin Wall – Construction, history and fall of the Berlin Wall (historytodayonline.blogspot.com)
Dave McKean

Dave McKean is an illustrator known best for illustrating the book Coraline and comic book Sandman by Neil Gaiman. His work has a palimpsest style, as he layers up the visual elements.


Images from illustrations – Dave Mckean , The Decade 1990-2000 – Illustration History

He uses a computer in his process but will always draw on physical paper and create art traditionally. He then scans the images onto the computer and works with them further. Sometimes he will simply clean up the images and correct the density so that a picture is ready for print. Other times, he needs to use more digital tools, for example collaging elements together and reworking them digitally.

His favourite medium to work with is pencil and paper because of the ability to express emotions with pencil and the range of markings that can be achieved. However, he also works with paint, collage and photography. McKean will use whichever media is appropriate for a particular image.

As a young artist, he was inspired by album covers, book covers, comic books, pop culture, fantasy and science fiction. After having written his own book, he learnt the importance of words. ‘Good pictures can’t replace what isn’t in the words.’ He says, when talking about book/comic illustration.

Information sourced from: Through the comic keyhole with… Dave McKean  and

Virtual Memories #250 – Dave McKean

 on YouTube.com

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns is an American artist. He specialises in painting, printmaking and sculpture. He is most famous for his paintings of the American flag in the 1950’s.

Racing Thoughts & Ventriloquist include the image of objects. It is interesting to see how he has combined these objects within a piece and what objects he has chosen. In both pieces, we appear to be shown the wall of his studio or a room in his house. The clues to this are paintings on the walls, ceramics and a basket furniture. In the 2 paintings, each of the objects are treated differently. There is a question of believable, we are not totally sure what we are looking at. There is an optical illusion quality to these paintings, that I think makes them particularly interesting to look at.

Let’s first look at Ventriloquist:

This oil painting features pots floating in space on the left side of the image.

The image of flag paintings taped on top of the pots, do not make sense logically. Because of the object’s lack of interaction with the background, we must assume that they are not existing in the same place at the same time. Maybe they belong to 2 different times, like the graffiti on the Berlin wall, the background maybe simply be a memory of what was on the wall before.

The 2-dimensional impression of the vase on the right-hand side is an example that even within the same painting, the ceramics are treated differently. The objects on the left have form.

Placing the image of the hinge suggests a door or cupboard, even if the surface it is placed on has no illusion of depth. We make mental associations to objects. Hinges are only useful in connection to another object and have no use on their own.

Racing Thoughts:

The wall on the left is quite textured but the basket in the foreground looks more flat, for example.

The yellow trousers hanging up, lack detail. This makes them appear unimportant compared to their surroundings, due to how the artist has treated them.

The paint drips of the red wall, unrealistically drip onto the basket in the foreground. This makes the painting appear like a painting, but the poster of the Mona Lisa looks more realistic in comparison and confuses the viewer by the contrasting effect.

In this piece, Johns used ‘Encaustic, screen print and wax crayon on collaged cotton and linen’. The use of different techniques helped to create the contradictory treatment of the different elements within the piece. (Encaustic is a technique where pigment is mixed with hot wax)

In Souvenir, the 3 objects: torch, mirror and plate serve only to guide our eye around the painting. This happens because we know the function of each object. We expect light to pour from the torch and we expect a mirror to reflect this light. These associations are what help us to read the image. The plate can never be used to eat from, but it is instead decorative.

All Jasper Johns images from Jasper Johns: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts

Drawing Exercises

Within this week’s workshop, we completed a drawing exercise, working in pairs. We were asked to describe our object to a classmate, without looking at our object. Sitting back-to-back also meant that we couldn’t use our hands to describe the object. We then swapped over. I found it easier to draw from a description compared to having to explain an object that I couldn’t see.

The next task was to draw my own object from memory. I found the proportions difficult to capture.

The next task was to draw our own object, this time was able to view my object. I used a pencil for this task. I then needed to draw my classmate’s object over carbon paper over my first drawing. This meant that the second drawing was super-imposed over the top of the first drawing and the images combined together. I felt that both objects were an interesting match because there is a feminine character and a male character . The nutcracker is reminiscent of a toy soldier from previous centuries, and my object is also old-fashioned. They have this in common. I thought immediately of the fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson, called The Steadfast Tin Soldier, where a toy soldier falls in love with a paper ballerina.

I then wanted to extend this exercise further. I combined the image of my figurine with the image of an umbrella, using the same piece of carbon paper to transfer the umbrella drawing.

I drew the figurine again with pencil, as I liked the soft quality of the image.

I drew the umbrella onto paper so I could see what I was drawing. I could have drawn straight onto the carbon paper, but this would have made it hard to see the lines against the black of the paper.

There was an element of spontaneity, because I did not plan where the umbrella would be placed. I like the image of both an open and close umbrella in the image.
For this drawing, I used a red fine liner pen to first draw the face of my figurine.

I also used the red fine liner pen to draw the arm and umbrella , as I wanted to see how a fine liner pen would create markings through the carbon paper. The resulting drawing was sharper than using the paper for the copy.

Inspired by the markings on the Berlin Wall, I wanted to experiment with words.

I wrote the words with a pencil on paper and made sure I was using a soft book cover to lean the paper on. This meant that my markings would create an impression in the paper. I layered the word ‘Unbreakable’ onto the page.

I then rubbed out this layer of words and wrote over the top.

I repeated this process until I had a busy surface of text. I then used a pen to create bolder markings over the top. For the last step, I took the carbon paper and rubbed it over the surface of the paper. This helped the letters to show up more clearly.

Even when I turned the paper over, I could still see visible markings of the text. The pen markings had bled through and the pencil markings were embossed on the surface of the paper.

Intro to Adobe Illustrator

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This week in our digital workshop, we were introduced to Adobe Illustrator.

My understanding of the program, before we even opened it up, is that this is a very useful tool for illustrators. This immediately grabbed my interest as drawing was my first love even before I knew what graphic design was.

However, in this workshop I struggled. Maybe I was just tired? I felt confused at every step. However, seeing my classmates work, I am convinced that Illustrator has lots of creative potential!

Our first step in Illustrator is the same as in InDesign. Make sure ‘Essentials Classic’ is switched on to make life easier:

We were introduced to the idea of vectors. A vectographic image is not restricted to a particular size. (It could be printed the size of a bus without effecting the quality of the image.) It uses a series of anchor points. Whereas a JPEG image is made up of a mosaic of pixels.

We began by drawing squares using the rectangle tool. Holding down shift kept the proportions from changing, which was familiar from InDesign.

Selecting the direct selection tool and anchor option allowed me to stretch the shape and distort the rectangle into different shapes. I could add and delete anchor points.

We drew a chequer board pattern. To create this, I drew a square 10×10. I used the black arrow to to click on the square, pressed the option key and dragged to duplicate it. Pressing Command + D doubled it up. I then could add and remove fill and make the outline pale.

To make it a vector, I needed to click Object> Expand.

Object> Lock, locks the shapes.

Today we were using Illustrator to re-design a number. We were using numbers because they are a widely recognised shape which indicates a sign. I chose the letter 6 and typed it on the page using the Type tool.

I enlarged the 6 and placed it over the chequer board pattern. If I wanted to keep the enlarged 6 with the same proportions, I could have held down the shift key while making it bigger. In this instance, I wanted to distort the 6 slightly to give it a wider shape.

I changed the colour of the 6 to orange so that it would stand out against the background. I then had the option of choosing the opacity. Using transparency tool in the window on the right, I decreased the opacity so that I could see the outline of the 6 and the squares through it.

I locked the squares in as part of the grid.

I added and removed sections of my ‘6’. I rounded edges as well.

I then added in areas of colour to help shape the number. I used orange again, as the opposite to blue and create contrast.

We then tried a different method of designing numbers. For this exercise I chose a ‘5’. I began by creating a second grid and placing the 5 on top. I made this letter into a vector and enlarged it in size to cover most of the grid.

This method involved placing several 5’s on top of each other but slightly unaligned.

With the pathfinder tool, I could group the shapes together and ungroup them. To do this I selected Pathfinder>divide> (ungroup) = shift+ command+ G (see the window on the right in the above image)

Un grouping the letters gave me broken up pieces. I made numbers from the pieces.

After this workshop, I felt that I needed a lot more practice in Illustrator! I followed the steps we were told to do, but I didn’t always understand why I was clicking what I was clicking.