Tues 16.04.13

I found my tutorial with Claire yesterday really useful, but there were still a couple of thing which I was unsure about, that we didn’t cover during the 20 minutes. For this reason, and because I hadn’t seen Jane about my work since before Easter, I also booked a tutorial with her for today. I was a bit concerned about starting a final piece because in my original project timetable I had planned to begin work on the by the week of the 22^nd and so I felt that I was behind with my aims. I also wanted to better understand what constituted a final piece and how much time/work it has to reflect. I was also not sure about what processes I would choose to follow for both my development work and for my final piece. I didn’t whether to look at print or painting or a combination of the two along with drawing or collage as well. I would prefer painting but I am worried about how much work I will be able to produce in the time because I am a really slow painter.

When I spoke to Jane she told me that the project is more about producing a body of work rather than a final piece. I should therefore get underway with experimentation and making pieces and then simply select the strongest to go into the final show. I found this a bit of a difficult concept to understand at first, because during Part 2 (and with my previous work in art and textiles) for the textiles tutor group in particular there was quite a strong focus on going through a design and sampling process all with the ultimate aim of producing a final piece in the end. However, this did reassure me somewhat, as I felt that I had more freedom not to rush experimentation and development work.

 Jane also said that I could experiment with lots of different things, for example, exploring different colour ways within my work or trying to use a very limited palate in each design.  She suggested that I try putting colour down onto the paper first and yesterday Claire asked me if I ever painted free hand without drawing my image first. I find this really hard to do and my painting usually ends up being a mess (so Claire said to stick to what I am comfortable with to some extent) but I would like to experiment with a more expressive style of painting/working if I can. I mentioned to Jane about doing fine art printing on paper rather than fabric which screen printing (which I find really difficult) and she said I could try, but I might be better staying away from print all together as I may not find that I take any better to this process. I find it hard to accurately print large areas of repeat on fabric without smudging or misalignment, which shouldn't be a problem with single paper prints so I may give this a go.