Sketchbook Inspiration - David Doran

David Doran's ability to distill scenes and objects into his sketchbooks as beautifully simple shapes and forms in brilliant compositions is really inspiring to look at and study.

I think what he does so effectively is find the perfect balance between detail and simplicity. The overall images can be quite complex in their layout and what they depict i.e. full places and scenes, yet they still retain simplicity and order and somehow never come close to being overwhelming or overcomplicated. 

The bold black and white lines are very strong in all his drawings and portray a great confidence and harmony in the pages; clean, orderly, structured, this more graphic way of creating drawings I think would work beautifully among looser lines and gestures. 

Creative Strategy - Aim for Practice, Edward Hopper

Thinking about myself, my life and current practice in more detail has really helped to start to build up an idea of where I want my work to go and what I want my practice to become. As mentioned in pervious posts, I am very interested in life and the human condition and also the comfort of looking in on other's lives from the outside. I feel like this is greatly going to inform my practice to come.

- I want people to look at my work and 'feel' something; whether that is comforted, understood, part of something bigger than themselves, intrigued, curious, empathetic etc.

- I want to try and communicate the complexities and confusions of life in my work, I want it to speak to people of the human condition and of the narrative and experience of living life as we know it.

- I would love to tell people's stories through my work, to portray other's experiences and struggles empathetically and do them justice. I want unheard people to feel heard through my work.

- Above all I want to bring value to other people and to this world, no matter how small that is. If I inspire one person, brighten one person's day, comfort one person or guide one person through this existence then I will have succeeded.

I would love people to feel looking at my work how I feel when looking at the work of Edward Hopper. His paintings are so comforting and awe-inspiring and melancholy and deep with emotion and feeling, I could get lost in them forever.

Commonly featuring glimpses of life, little scenes and occurrences often overlooked by most, they speak of life and that feeling of being an outsider looking in; they are ingrained so deeply and sensitively with narrative. The idea of self was also very important to him, saying 'Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.'

Creative Strategy - Benjamin JeanJean, Storytelling

True Stories | Benjamin JeanJean from RVCA on Vimeo.

"The essence of my art didn’t change though. I want people to look closer. This is when their imagination kicks in and the unconscious takes over. Skulls, for example, are only skulls at first glance. But in fact, they represent any human: blacks, whites, Syrians, Austrians, Americans, good people, bad people, workers, doctors, politicians, you, me. We all have a skull, we all are human beings. There is a story behind each human, and each story is worth being told." -- Benjamin JeanJean.

This series of work really jumped out at me after watching this RVCA video the other day.

The way Benjamin has employed really detailed and intricate work to tell the stories of refugees is really interesting. They are beautiful images in themselves but they also have deeper stories and symbolism within them to communicate human struggle and a current affairs issue. Aesthetically they are evocative of old tarot cards or etching, which often are also weaved with meaning and symbols and stories.

I have always believed that there is immense value in detail and precise, meditative work. Yes the stories of these refugees could have been told in a few lines or a much simpler image, but Jeanjean has had to sit for hours drawing over each of these and there's something very important about that process and the time spent with the work. The thoughts that he would have had when drawing, the difficulty of the process, the struggle, the effort and the time put in are all reflective of the story he is trying to convey.

The Illustrated Self - Gary TAXAli, Self Portrait

https://wowxwow.com/artist-profile/gary-taxali-ap

I love the way that Taxali explains his art as a self portrait, saying 'Everything I love and what I want to say is in my art'. 

I think it is very true that everything a creative person produces is in someway a self portrait, whether subconsciously or unintentionally. Their characters are inherently reflected or imbued in what they create simply because they themselves have made it. The ideas and thoughts that have gone into the process of making have passed though their consciousness and then their hand has laid them down and translated them onto paper, the whole time their being has influenced and in term translated itself onto the page in the image. 

Plus Gary's work is always so stunning and inspiring. It is so tangible and textured and beautifully analogue, and I love his use of repetition of characters and symbols throughout. 

Creative Strategy - Journey of First Year/Things Learnt

EARLY DAYS

- Set working style; obsessive, intricate, detailed, usually spot drawings but all with little meaning/function. (Started to move away from this in foundation but still quite fixed)
- Ambitious to develop work especially in regard to meaning and ideas but very NERVOUS.
- Lots of self-pressure and expectations of myself to prove myself (mostly to myself) and to assure myself that I was meant to be here.

MIDWAY THROUGH

- Gained some sort of momentum and flow with work, started to gain a little confidence with good feedback and acknowledging it's meant to be fun and not as hard as I was making it for myself.
- Still getting very stuck with work though with not living up to expectations of myself, lots of doubts and anxious about practice and work ethic and ability etc.
- However being in uni became comfortable and settled into the course and living away.

LATER STAGES & NOW

- Still get stuck with work in my own head, still get anxious about practice and commitment etc.
- Not too sure where my practice lies or consists of.
- Pleased with my work so far and can see where I have challenged my previous working style, but as a result feel a bit in no man's land with how to progress.
- Have a vague idea of where my practice will go or where I want it to go at least.

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THINGS LEARNT

• Ideas are hard, execution is harder
• Stories and ideas and concepts can be told through image without the use of drawing
• Thinking and doing are separate processes
• Being good at drawing and being a good illustrator are two wildly different things
• I STILL HAVE SO MUCH LEARNING TO DO.

The Illustrated Self - further reflections on myself & practice

Completing the word map about myself really got me thinking about everything I consume, everything that makes up my time and my life and me as a person, and I have been trying to analyse these into some kind of theme or order.

One thing that became very apparent from the map and my wondering was that I am very interested in LIFE. The nature of life, the story of it, the journey that we all experience; these are things that are always on my mind and are more often than not reflected in what I consume daily and what I am passionate and interested in:

Some examples:

- Interviews - reading/watching interviews of people I look up to, listening to their stories and ideas and opinions and their lives.

- Day in the life/Slice of life videos - these are usually of skateboarders but also there are some good ones out their about creative people. I'm very interested in other people's daily routines and how specific people spend their time.

- Podcasts - Similar to interviews but also NPR's This American Life podcast is wonderful, hosted by Ira Glass. It picks a topic for each episode and they have experts, the public, famous people etc telling stories and information regarding the topic. Also Blackbox radio on soundcloud is amazing, which is a similar idea but infinitely more diy and rough and homemade.

- Films/Series - The films I love are usually very character and narrative driven, usually realistic in their settings and situations and style. Such as; Drive, No Country for Old Men, The Place Beyond The Pines, Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, Mad Men etc. I am very aware as well that they are all very escapist, depicting lives and situations that I would not get into, such as the crime and violence orientated ones, yet they are still driven on the quality of the film making and writing.

- Vlogs - Watching other people's lives, usually ones that I aspire to live similarly to. Casey Neistat, Caleb Babcock, The Lowes are among the few I regularly watch. Again, there has to be some merit to the film making for me to fully enjoy and get into them though.

- Advice/Guidance - Along with the self-improvement side of my life, I find a lot of value in seeking out guidance and ideas about how to live life and how to develop our character's as people. Websites such as The Art of Manliness and people like Elliott Hulse have provided me with a lot of value in the past and I always end up coming back to these two specifically in times of need.

I don't really know where all this speculation is leading as of yet, but so far it is one of the most apparent and grounded discoveries about my self so far in this project.
Hopefully I can try to make sense of this all visually as an option for my poster or material for the presentation.

Sketchbooks, New ways of seeing

Visual Language and the developments in my ways of seeing and translating have found their way into my personal sketchbooks. Using minimal shapes and lines, I set about trying to depict objects in my room in their most basic forms.

Beyond simplification, I love trying to make them more abstract, taking a physical object and making it a different image, taking it's form and shape but distorting it, overlapping elements to create something new. 

I want to carry on this idea and do more similar exercises to keep image making exciting and different. 

The Illustrated Self - Initial Word Map & Thoughts

What makes up me as a person? What is my character? What influences my work and my life? How do I see myself? How do I want others to see me? What contributes to my life and my practice in meaningful ways?

These are among some of the questions that begin the process of analysing myself and getting to know my 'self', my life and my practice in a more conscious, thorough way. I am inherently a very thoughtful and reflective person, inside and outside of my practice, which is something which is constantly picked up and reiterated to me from those around me in regard to my life and my work. However I have found it very invaluable and fascinating to sit down and really consider this idea of self and really try and evaluate and draw conclusions and links between the aspects of my life that make me Ehren Barnard. 

And there are links, many of them, between everything that I do and I think about and I consume and I make. Naturally, everybody's lives are interconnected webs of associations, ideas, views, perspectives, actions, reactions, thoughts, feelings etc, just as our bodies are of nerves and veins and muscles and so on. And the deeper you inquire about this and ask questions and reflect and write down the different elements and pieces of 'you' the clearer the links become and the more informed your interpretation of self is. One thing leads to a couple of other things which link to something else and it can be a endless maze of hobbies and interests and character traits.

I am yet to consolidate this all into some kind of order and to then apply it to my practice and allow it to inform how I am going to go forward, but this as a start was so interesting and enjoyable and somewhat difficult also. Consciously trying to decipher your life is a challenge, especially when a lot of it is not always at the forefront of your mind. Also be vulnerable is a massive part of it, which I believe to be of great importance also. 

Sketchbook, Snake

A sketchbook is a place to play, to explore and refine and have fun. I took a lot of pleasure in going back to my old way of working in my personal sketchbook and once again getting lost in a process of intricate and obsessive detail.

It has no meaning or purpose, other than to exist as a drawing and serve me as a release and a break and a pass-time. 

Sketchbooks, Isle of Skye

I recently went on a family trip to Skye, a lovely annual get away filled with mountains, beaches, walking, whiskey and plenty of drawing.

Its so valuable to have a break from uni work and the stresses of deadlines and projects and ideas to just draw for pleasure, for no particular reason other than capturing what is around you. It is also invaluable to look back over these pages and recall the holiday and also the specific situation which the drawings were created in.

Something about sitting down for 10-20 mins in one place at one time, focussing on putting pen to paper translating what is in front of you that allows you to remember those moments in more detail; the time where no drawing took place more readily slip to the back of your mind and more often than not fade out altogether.

Study Task 7 - Self

PRACTITIONER

5 Strengths

- Very reflective, constantly critical of practice
- Ambitious with my work and always expect the best of myself
- Obsessive and perfectionist
- Attention to detail
- Willing to get lost in work and process

5 Weaknesses

- Perhaps too critical, which can hinder my creativity or experimentation
- Not always willing to try new techniques and varied approaches, tend to stick to my own habits and ways of creating images e.g. shying away from colour
- Haven't yet found a way to separate thinking from doing, could instead be more spontaneous and confident with my creative process
- Need to spend more time developing my actual drawing/image making ability to then implement when my ideas follow
- Could do with reflecting on my intentions more and consolidating a tone of voice and intention that I want my practice to become, to keep coming back to this and aligning my work thereafter.

STUDENT

5 Strengths

- Ambitious with this course, the desire to succeed as a student of the discipline and to make something of it
- Try to look after myself as much as possible, very rarely over-do the party side of being a student
- Good attendance and engagement with discussions and seminars, want to be involved with course
- Fairly organised with lists and to-dos and constant diary usage, never leave anything last minute or too late
- Interests outside of practice and uni which help inform what I do with my work and also act as a break from uni

5 Weaknesses

- Procrastination can be a problem, can be easily distracted with internet, food etc.
- Not always the most outgoing, may have missed some possible friendships that could've arose had I been more sociable
- Perhaps haven't fell totally in love with Leeds as a place due to missing Manchester and all that it contains
- Can put work off till tomorrow (or the day after), need to implement a more defined pattern of working, more hours into work, less distraction
- INTERNET