Artist research

To get an even better understanding of the figure I went to visit Leonardo Di vinci exhibition 'Anatomical drawings' where Di vinci studies how the body works internally by cutting into bodies to study how certain thinks worked and how things effected one another. He was well ahead of anyone in his era with the understand of the body. However what stood out to me in the exhibition was how precise and beautifully done his drawings were. I am quite squeamish when it comes to the body and dissecting them. However he drew with a quill and ink and make the drawings have a romantic soft feel to them. What was also fascinating about him is he wrote in mirror hand because he was left handed. So he basically wrote everything backwards making even the writing on the pages look delicate and beautiful. 

Photography research

From the drawings and photos I had done, made me want to start looking at other artist work that I could work from and get different ideas of drawing the figure. 

A photographer that stood out whos images I though were beautiful is Sally Mann, I bought her book still time which has a combination of different topics but I focused at looking at the figure images. 

What I feel is so amazing about her work is she does not just do the figure in a form way she compliments it with something different. In the first image she has used a wet piece of silk or some sort of material to add a romantic tone to the picture which could be seen as vulgar. In the second image there is this sense of mystery not knowing why the arm is clasping the wall and how the fan like sleeve makes the hand look even more delicate. In the last image which is one of my favourite it is a child's figure with a flower of some kind acting as a large necklace. The white of the flower contrasts so well with the darkness of the skin. I feel all of these images are so simple yet enticing for the viewer. 

Another Photographer I found with researching Miroslow Tichy. His work has a vintage feel to it as if the images are very old and not quite in focus. What I find amazing about him is he makes his own cameras that is why his images have such an intriguing affect. Here are some examples below.

Here is a picture of one of his home made cameras, this could be a possible area I could go into, making my own camera to create intriguing affects.

Female Figure drawing

I feel I have spent so much time examining the male figure I wanted to look into the female figure. This made me go back to the pirelli Calendar where the photographer Mario Sorrenti take picture of the female models in their purest form no make up no clothes just a simple black and white image in the nude and having the light hit their bodies in an intriguing way. This is a drawing I did based on one of the images in the calendar. 

http://www.fashionologie.com/2012-Pirelli-Calendar-Mario-Sorrenti-Pictures-20749310

Above is a short video of Mario shotting the models and below that is a link to the final images for the calendar

Drawings of Male images

I also did some drawing of the male models figure to get some primary research. I did some blind drawing, just focusing on certain limbs for a short amount of time and then a long drawing to really look at the light and shadow on the figure. It was really good to practise drawing again as well I felt last year I didn't do as much drawing as I would have liked to. 

This is the drawing just focusing on body parts, examples shown below

I then went on to doing a more indepth drawing of the male figure

which I feel also shows how my drawing has progressed with in just a few days. I am very pleased with the out come of this drawing. Often I prefer shorter drawing because I can be quite impatient and feel if I spend more time on a drawing there is more ways of ruining it. 

Male figure- black and white photos

I wanted to start off just looking at certain body parts of the figure and how the light and shadow makes it look more 3 dimensional. I took some photos of a male model and did close ups of certain areas of the figure. 

Summer Project

Doing a summer project is quite daunting having no guidance from the teachers and being able to do anything you want. However, it gives you a real chance to see what gives you inspiration in the big wide world. 

I started looking at everyday thing. Something that would catch my eye or intrigue me. I started to look at peoples shoes and how someones shoes can often reflect their personality but sometimes end up surprising you into thinking something completely different. I was acting like a slight stalker taking photos of peoples shoes while they were unaware the best places were trains or the tube. However as i started with this topic shoes, i didn't feel it was going anywhere that i really like and something i wanted to start my second year with. 

I decided that I wanted to change my direction and do something that was broad and could be developed easily, what really stuck out for me was then landing in the UK coming from France at night seeing all the towns lit up making intriguing shapes really fascinated me. 

This made me think further into looking at light and how it affect many things. From a city to any object an its perception to the viewer. However light by itself it very broad, I felt I needed a real subject matter that I would be interested in and could develop into a project that I would enjoy to see grow as the year went on. As luck would have it I was flicking through a french magazine when I paused at this mesmerising image from the pirelli calendar 2012 done by the photographer Mario Sorrenti. It is a simple black and white image of a model positioned gracefully on a coach like sofa in the middle of the forest with the light shining on her body through the trees creating circular shapes of light on her body.

This was what I was going to look at in my project how the light and dark can affect the female/male figure in many different ways, from photography to fashion to cinematography to textiles to anything really. 

Personal Evaluation

Unit x has been very different from any other project I have done. I have never really been involved in a project that is so group based and has huge emphasis on collaborating with other people one our course. I was very lucky that I had such a good group who were very keen to do well on this project. There are pros and cons when working in a group. 
The pros I found were that you never run out of ideas because when one person says on thing that triggers some on else to come up with a different idea. We found this in our group,we had too many ideas to go from, so this can also be seen as a con too. when you have too many ideas it makes it hard for a group to decide on just one. One of the biggest pros I have found is that I worked a lot harder in a group. Working on my own I have a tendency of being more lazy and only having myself to blame if I do not it. However in a group if you don't turn up to group meeting, your not only letting your self down but others. This has given me the push I needed all year to get up earlier get more things done during the course of the project instead of doing everything really last minute. I can see this could be really positive for the projects to come. Another Pro is that no one has the same textiles skills and everyone has different strength so we had a wide range of samples through out our project. However one of the disadvantages our group had is that none of us are very experienced digitally and we had to have a digital outcome, which brought us all out of our comfort zone. 

When we found out our digital outcome was going to be shown at Museum of Science and Industry we wanted to really impress our audience so decided to make a short film, which none of us had any previous experience with. We rented out equipment from the AV store got a lighting induction and had a day tutorial session on how to use a camera. It was tough for us to know what to do and now look back at it i realise how we could have improved. When you are filming you really need to have a clear plan of what you are going to film, so a story border is key. We had so many different ideas we did not know which direction to go in and we wanted to include everyone's work in it. This was a something I have learnt from we should have homed in on the best pieces of film we had done and worked with that instead of trying to fit everything in. I have learnt a lot of different skills on imovie which i think i will use in more projects.

I feel our final film is successful and hopefully the audience will get a sense of what we are try to portray however I think we had better footage we could have worked with but it did not include everyones work. This is something i am going to take with me if i use film again.