Sketch book reflection (500 words)

Visual

I would say that my sketch book is visually pleasing. In my sketch book so far I have decided to write in ink to mimic Gaskell, also using a sketch book with slightly discoloured paper, to reflect the pollution in the Victorian era. This was also useful for me as I have a huge fear of bright white paper; I am always terrified about how I am going to fill it. I started my sketch book with a mind map of Elizabeth Gaskell so it is clear who my project is on, however from looking at other peoples sketch books I realised I should have not just used facts about her but colours, textures and places that represent her. These elements are really lacking in my sketchbook. I feel I have focused too much on the research side trying to investigate Gaskell and have not supported my facts visually enough especially with textiles. I found it incredibly useful looking at my peers work because I realised how much my sketch book was lacking in flow.

Content

I have not included a lot of my research in my sketch book as I have been reflecting on it in my blog and notebook I carry around with me. However, I can’t have a sketch book with very little writing in it. This will affect the flow and how I can move further and develop my ideas. In addition, I need to link it more heavily to the workshops I have done (Digital image making and Hand processing). Observational drawing is hard for me because my subject was around in the 19th century. However I have got a huge amount from her house in Plymouth Grove and the letters Charles Dickens wrote to her. These are my main sources that I can use for a colour palette and textures. My next development is going to be using letters in a textiles based way using stamps, wax, ink and envelops and manipulating these materials with fabrics and experimenting.

Context

One of the most interesting parts of this project has been the research/investigation into these objects, people and places. It is not that I have not done so on other projects but that I feel I need to seek out as much information on Gaskell as possible. One fact that I have increasingly found interesting is the life of her brother John who mysteriously went missing on a voyage to India. I still need to continue with my historical research and discover as much information as possible because that is one of the major aspects of the project, investigating your title as if you were a detective. One huge element that I lack in my sketch book is connections to others artist and textiles designers or even writers. This would not only further my research but also inform my whole project as looking at different techniques and skills is so useful. I definitely have a clear idea of how I can further and improve not just my sketchbook but my project as well.

Example of other people sketch book pages that I really admired 

Lecture ( preconceptions:the uses of time )

Exhibition Cornerhouse- Rashid Rana

'The scale and status of the photographic object is transformed through the use of sculpture, installation, film and a vast palette of smaller image that allow for both micro and macro interpretation, opening up its potential to represent cultural, social and physical realities. '


I had not visited the Cornerhouse yet and fell in love with the great atmosphere, lovely cafe and restaurant and amazing free exhibition. Rashid has this amazing ability to product these photographic images that from a far look like a lovely mosaic piece but up close startle the viewer by the controversy of his topics. An example of this is in the piece seen below of 5 women wearing burkas but up close they are pornographic images of women, taking the contrast between the two images too extremes. I really admire the way he pushes boundaries in a artist way and in a topically way also.

This exhibition really influenced how I wanted to develop my project by looking at repetition to create a bigger image, similarly to the style of textile in the 19th century. I would may be not push the boundaries as much as Rashid, but focus on how he creates an image from loads of little images.

Big drawing

We had a drawing task to create a 1 meter by 1 meter drawing, inspired by our project and only using a black and white media. I found this really challenging as I have never worked on such a great scale before and did not know how to start. A small white piece of paper is daunting but the fact that it was a huge piece made it even more terrifying. I felt I should link it to the letters from Dickens to Gaskell as they are my main resource. I decided to use one of the letters that I had edited on Photoshop by combing one of  the letters and one of the envelopes. I choose the ones that I really felt would compliment one another and enhanced the colours and zoomed in on a particularly interesting area as shown below. 

Here is the image that I decided to base my big scale drawing on. However I need to use a black and white media. I decided to use ink as that is what all letters where written in 19th century. To add a little different to the drawing I wanted the writing to really standout and be accentuate. So I used a glue gun over my first sketch to make the words more of a relief piece and go over the top of the glue with black ink. This was very successful, as shown below. 

I then added white and black chalk in the areas that had more shading and the different marks to really recreate the image. However our next drawing task we had to use different words to deconstruct our drawing so some people drew over the top added elements to theirs etc. I used the word 'multiply' and decided to use a scalp to cut around each letter to accentuate it. As if the words are popping up at you and also look like a multiple of themselves. Then I decided to use newspaper behind these areas that had been cut out to emphasis them and words in general because it is a key factor in my project.  

I felt my drawing was really successful and was very proud of the final product and it really compliments my project. 

Hand processing

My second work shop I decided to do was Hand processing because I felt i had a real lack of textiles in my work and wanted to incorporate some of the simple skills that are easily forgotten but always very useful. hand processing is the underlying principle of land stitch which offers a range of different surface techniques. You can transform a simple piece of work by just adding a different type of stitch. The type of thread you use also has a big impact on the final product. You can push the boundaries by using a material that you would not necessarily use.

Here is an example of experimentation with all the different types of stitch, which I can find in my technical file

Lecture (Materials)

Working with Photoshop and the letters

I looked at combining my skills from Photoshop with the photos I took of the dickens letter. One of the elements that really caught my eye was the stamp and how it has evolved so I wanted to highlight that. I even looked at making a continual pattern with the stamp by using the cloning tool.

This continual pattern I created links to the style of textile is the 19^th century around the time of Gaskell. It was often a pattern repeated usually a floral or natural pattern. Therefore, I was experimenting with creating my own 19^th century repetitive textile pattern using the stamps they used.

Here is an example of one of the 9th century textiles piece, would have been used as wallpaper in Upper class family because of the gold colour used in the leaves. I have altered it a bit on Photoshop brings in my paint brush marks I created in the workshop.

Letters from Charles Dickens to Gaskell

I went to look at the letters that Dickens wrote to Gaskell in the 19th century. The first letter he wrote to her was inquiring whether she wanted to be a part of his, 'journal of general literature' I could make out from that particular letter that he continued to write, ' whether you can give me any hope that you will write a short tale, or any number of tales, for the project paper.' Dickens though highly of Gaskells writing and often praised her work he particularly liked her ghost tales.

After studying these very old letters, it made me really think about letters nowadays and how little people write to one another. We are in an era of technology where nothing can be slow moving everything has to be instant with messaging like texting and e-mailing. People are in continual communication with one another and do not have the patience to wait for a letter. Meaning very few people write, they usually will type them. It is shocking looking at people’s handwriting today because often adults have a similar style to writing as a child, that is just learning because they never write they always type.

Writing letters used to be such an art, using ink on a page and gliding the nip on a crisp piece of paper forming beautiful letters making it look more like a piece of art then a letter. It also makes the writing look more fluid then regimented which you find when tying a letter. It used to give people a different sense of identity though how they created their letters. Now you cannot tell anyone apart from one another because everyone writes in Times New Roman. It was not just the letters but envelops and how they would bind them with a wax seal, usually of their family crest.

(I could not turn the images around the right way)

It has really awoke the anti technological side of me not wanting people to always move forward but to still used crafts that our grandparents continually relied on like letters. I really want to start writing more letters myself to other people it makes it that more special and thoughtful when you write and receive a letters because the whole process takes a lot longer.

Lecture (thinking and theory of creativity)

                            

Photoshop ( first work shop )

I decided to do Photoshop (digital photography) for my first workshop becaues it is a very useful form of visual research and experimentation. You can manipulate your own work or images as you like in a digital way. I learnt a bit about how to use Photoshop at my old school but had no iead of the extent of what you can do to images, by layering them and even creating your own paint brushes from your own drawings.

Here is an example of one of the things I was able to create on Photoshop. I used three images linked to Elizabeth Gaskell and manipulated the colour, structure, shapes and shading to create a whole new image which reminds me of a sort of collage dedicated to her

  

The John Rylands University Library

I have found out the Gaskell's manuscripts, letters to dickens etc and portrait can be found in The John Rylands University Library which I visited to further my  investigation into her life and how she wrote to others, not just in her novels.

It is such a beautiful gothic building near Manchester's town hall, it looks slightly out of place from the more modern buildings that surrond it. However it made me feel like I was really going back in time, while I was looking at these 19th century letters. The whole experience felt unreal.

John Stevenson

I had not found any further information about her brother John; he seems to have been no existent. I am going to try and contact some people who look after Gaskells house and see if they have any information about him, if not I might create a biography about what I think he would be like creating a character similarly to Gaskell, one of her characters could be based on him.

I created this image using Photoshop from a painting of Elizabeth, as there are no images of John. If I continually find no information on him, I feel I could create my own version of what I perceive as John.  

82 Plymouth Grove

I went to visit Gaskells house number 82 Plymouth Grove and discovered that it is being renovated so was unable to look inside however did some sketches and took some photos of the outside. I was disappointed by the fact that I would not be able to see where Gaskell worked and got a lot of her inspiration from while writing her novels. It has obviously changed a lot since then. It has a main road right in front of it and is a bit out of place contrasting with the modern buildings around it. However was not a journey wasted as I experiment with the drawing with different media and edited them in Photoshop experimenting with the knowledge i had learnt in the digital workshop. 

My notes from our lecture on What is making?



Sleuth, Spies and Lies

We have been doing this project for 2 weeks and I decided to 'investigate' Elizabeth Gaskell. I started with research looking at what, why, where and how finding out as much as I could about Gaskell for a base to the project. Certain facts about her life really interested me such as how she was not brought up by her parents (father, mother died in soon after giving birth to her) but her aunt who lived in Chester.

How she wrote even though it was similarly to other Victorian writers she set herself apart from them by emphasising women’s roles in her novels and having a continual theme of Unitarianism. She was the last of 8 children but only she and her brother John survived however he went missing while on a voyage to India.

When her son William died, it inspired her to write, Mary Barton. It seems as though Gaskell went through a lot of hardship though out her life being abandoned by her father when she was younger, losing her only sibling with no explanation and even suffering losing more than one of her own children.

I feel the next step for me to further my project is to visit her house on Plymouth grove, investigate further into her brother’s disappearance, read more of her work to get a real feel for the way she writes and always backing it up with observation drawing.

Dog project

I decided to create a 2-d dog because I prefer working in that media. I sewed into a piece of paper with no needle to create a brail effect giving the piece of paper more texture. It almost looks like a dot-to-dot drawing. I went over the outline of the dog face with black ink to separate it from the background. I feel quite pleased with the result because it reflects the way I work in a free and messy way. I am excited to start the next project and challenge myself skills wise.