Golden Week Workload :P

So in the main self initiated project, I'm working with the image of the Sacred Hearts that I found in a shop.  I decided to use this image for the three tone screen print.  Basically this process involves a lot of Photoshop which, seeing as it involves technology, is not my strong point.  The image has to be separated into three tones: light, mid, and dark tone.  

Everything black will be the lightest colour when printed

Mid tones of the print

This will be the final colour, so everything black will be the darkest colour

For my lightest colour I chose a golden colour, midtone was a brown colour and then I finished with a black.

I lost quite a lot of the mid tone brown, the print itself actually looked a lot better before the final colour of the black went on.  There was also a lot of white so I decided to add text to get rid of some of the white.

Since a lot of people say they've left the church, no longer go to mass etc. and even the Pope himself deciding to leave, I decided to make it look almost like there's a sale on and add the words "75% Reduction".

Half tone prints to be done next, perhaps the Pope will make a final appearance?

Photoshoppy Stuff :]

For second semester Photoshop class, we were given a brief in which we had to pick a site/place associated with our main studio practice and document the space, with the aim of creating prints that would then be placed in the chosen space.  Because my main studio practice is on religion, I didnt fancy having to spend hours in a church, drawing, taking photos etc as I'd been doing that already.  So I decided for this project to still use religion but in a different way.

I started to look at routine in someone's life, the things they do religiously.  For this, I chose a hairdressers because there are those women who go every single saturday without fail.  So the lovely Kathleen O' Keeffe of Trendy Locks Salon, Abbeyfeale, kindly let me use her salon as my chosen space.  Having gone to the salon for years and having worked there, I knew the place pretty well but it was interesting to just sit there and watch everything.

I started with doing simple sketches of the salon and taking photos of everything there.

 

 

Once the documenting stage was done I started to question why people go and enjoy going to the hairdressers so regularly.  It couldnt be just because they get their hair done or its done out of necessity.  For some customers, especially elderly, you could see that it was the company they enjoyed, the human interaction, the chat over a cut of tea.  That chat with the hairdresser as they do your hair is quite poignant.  People do end up just opening up and telling things to someone who in a way is a stranger to them.  Its been proven that hairdressing is a cheap form of counselling.  Hairdressers in Austrailia have actually been trained to recognise signs of suicide or just plain unhappiness in customers and shown how to help them. 

 

So going with that thought I created some small posters showing how people open up to hairdressers and the counselling aspect of it.  I plan to place these around the salon and see people's reactions when/if they come across them.

 

 

 



Pope - Y U resign!

Soooooooo for Semester Two we have to work on a self-initiated project, where its ourselves who come up with the brief rather than being set one by our tutors.  I decided for my one to continue with the Religion theme seeing as I enjoyed it so much last time.  For this time around, I wanted to get other people's opinions about what religion means to them, what they think of the Catholic Church etc. seeing as my views are quite negative.

I got a group of 12 - 13year olds to fill out a questionaire of a few questions asking them their opinion on religion.  The results I got were really interesting to see.  The majority of them just seemed to accept religion in their lives with no real questioning of why they were believing in God or the church etc.  This really showed how great an influence parents and teachers have on them and how a young child's mind just accepts something because their Mam or Dad said it.  Their opinions of the Catholic Church were also quite innocent and somewhat sheltered.  To me, it seemed that they knew nothing of the controversies in the church as when asked for their opinion of the Church, quite a few said "Mass is a bit boring" and "The seats are too close together."

Aswel as that I started an online survey in which I asked two Questions:
(1) What does the word "Religion" mean to you?
(2) What is your opinion of the Catholic Church?

And the response I got was really good.  The majority of the people who answered showed that they had a very negative view of the church and of religion itself.  I also noticed that people seperated the two.  Religion meant something completely different to them than the Catholic Church did.  Children see these as the same thing whereas someone who is older and possibly would have actually questioned their faith at some point showed that the two werent related in their minds.  I also got a few positive answers, in which people stated a strong connection with God but a negative view of the church on a account of the scandals.  Some answers were a bit out there, others didnt go at all....to whoever answered "sex" to both questions...sound lads :P

So with that I could start to find my image.  On a casual stroll through town I came across a display of Sacred Heart pictures that for some reason I loved...I think I'm getting too into this whole religion craic.

I played around with compositions before deciding to just stick with this image.

And THEN the Pope goes and decides to resign...in the MIDDLE of my project...How inconsidereate of him :(  So i'm definitely going to have to get a Print done of him before the next lad comes in.  I doubt I'll get the same comic evilness out of the new one as I did from auld Ben himself.

 Dougal for Pope!

"Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my money in thee.."

Sticking with my theme of religion and the Catholic Church being corrupt and money hungry, I based my silk screen print on the idea of the Sacred Heart.  Its a traditional image that can be seen in most houses in Ireland, mine included so I decided to take it and alter it.

With silk screen, its a very fast method of printing and very easy to make an edition.  The only slow part of the process is applying the emulsion to the screen and the many times you have to wait for the screen to dry between colours, washing, applying emulsion etc.

After working out the layers and the colours, it was easy to get the image done in a short space of time.  I decided on a kind of turquoise colour for my background, followed by brown for the hair, skin colour and very bright yellow.

I then decided to also add text to really bring my idea across.

I then decided to replace the Scared Heart picture in my house with my print....purely for artistic purposes of course!

Decided I'm going to leave it there for the rest of the day and see how long it takes the family to notice I've switched them ;)

Xmas holidays now to finish the last few bits of the projects from semester one before the Assessments in January!

Photography :]

This is a collection of my photographs which I took for the photography project.  The aim of the project is to collect images from everyone in Print class, put them together and BOOM! we're making a book man ;)

I wanted to link this project in with my main studio project of religion.  So with that I decided to look at how religion is all around us, that people are influenced by it and of course how obsessed with wealth the Catholic church really is.

Careful Now!

I love that I decided I had to spend my time looking up Father Ted memes to go with my project, it just seemed so right! I can blame my years of addiction to the programme as the cause to my complete misunderstanding of the Catholic religion...nothing to do with the fact I decided it was cult years ago ;)

After some mishaps with paper for printing, I finally managed to get my woodcut edition printed with time to spare.  As I was doing what's known as a reduction cut, I had to print my lightest colour i.e. yellow before carving away more from my wood block.

Once this yellow layer was printed, I cut away what I wanted to keep yellow before printing a red colour over the existing yellow prints.

Before applying the last colour, black, I had to make sure that the red and yellow were completely dry.  So this gave me time to cut away everything that I wanted to keep red.  I then applied the black ink and tried my hardest to make sure the registration was as accurate as possible.

I was really happy with how my finished wood cut came out.  The registration of the black is a bit off in some but the effect they give is actually really cool.  It gives this almost 3D, dazzling effect...as if the pope is moving within the frame.

Sad to be finished woodblock as its an area of printmaking I really enjoy.  I really want to work on a bigger scale with this so hopefully I'll eventually get the chance to do this later on.

For now, I'm moving on to Silk Screen printing this week which I'm not the biggest fan of.  But on the upside, I have a vague idea of what I want my image for this part of the project to be.  Keeping with the theme of religion so plenty more blasphemy images to come!

Drawing Project :P

So on Fridays we have Drawing Class and were set a project about a month ago to have done for tomorrow...needless to say everyone left it to the last minute per usual :P

For the first part of this project, we had to pick both a contemporary artist and a dead one.  Once we had our choices made, we then had to study their works; take note of the types of markings they used; the materials; what they drew on etc.  Once thoroughly studied, we then had to create a drawing in their style.  Sounds fairly straight forward but drawing in someone elses style is not easy!

For my dead artist I chose Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.  I hadnt been that familiar with his work before this but on studying him for this, he has fast become one of my favourites.  His style is very different to mine, I do very literal art whereas with his he suggests more than literally saying something.

So with that, I practised his style before making my own creation.

I then took the subject matter of loneliness and homelessness from my first project to help with the composition of my finished piece.

I did the same with my contemporary artist.  i chose Fiona Banner for this as i was aware of her as a sculptor but not so much with drawing.  Fiona sees language as an art form and therefore worked a lot with words.

Again i did sketchbook work before creating my own image.

Fiona would write out every details of films on walls for her work so i decided to look at a life as a film and write out details of that.  Taking 4 events from my life that stand out for me, i covered a studio wall with it.

The final part of the project was to draw our interpretation of the word "blue"....art people are gas arent they :P

So i took it as an emotion and drew my own interpretation of the word blue.