Eureka Moment: Visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Photographs: 

Risograph Outcomes

Lino Outcomes

Collaborative Lino

I like the prospect of "experiential art" much more than I initially thought I would. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park was a beautiful location to just enjoy making and creating in different ways that I wouldn't have associated with my practice a number of years ago! Responding to sound, texture and my own words, rather than the visual, really pushed me out of my comfort zone but it was rewarding to find I can still make art with other processes. My initial worry was that this was going be an observational drawing exercise and, as someone who has lost the majority of their sight this past year, the trip filled me with slight terror. Learning more about experiential art, logging my personal journey and my own responses made this so much more individual and integral to my self-growth as a person and an illustrator. Being outside and amongst nature, rather than in the studio, was extremely therapeutic and advantageous for my outcomes and my mental health showing a positive effect in my work. To be working with constraints of particular colours, sizes and within a certain time frame helped me not to overthink these aspects, as I often do. I found the collaboration part of the brief difficult as it is hard to relinquish control of my work but I was surprised by the outcomes of the risograph prints and how well my pieces work well with someone else's in terms of the composition. The lino collaboration was a struggle as someone had printed twice instead of leaving a space for me and when we tried to redo it, not everyone reprinted. This has soured my feelings of collaboration and furthering thoughts that mistakes are made in groups, rather than working solitary, and not everyone is mindful of others and their abilities. To be made aware of a collaborative booklet with my peers, putting my work into a printed context, conveying visual language of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a delight. We all went to the same place but experienced different things!

I didn't have as much time in the print room with lino as I'd like, with having a small group of people also using the facilities and a limited amount of time for demos on cutting, inking, using the press, hand printing and cleaning up the inks and tools. It took me a little while to carve out my lino stamp just how I wanted it, with limited vision and no sighted assistance, which I am very proud of! I was able to complete one hand print, one Albion press print and one ghost print along with one red and blue print for the group collage. As soon as those were done it was time to clean and out things away.

I would have loved to experiment with lino printing more as I was really getting into it! I mocked up a few things in Photoshop that I would have done if I had more time:

 

I love how playful these are, adding another dimension to my sculpture park experience, mixing colours, angles and ghost prints, and filling the canvas in different ways. 

EXPERIMENTING MAKES ME EXCITED!

Lunchtime Lecture Series - Matthew Hodson

• Improvisation and drawing as performance

• My research is about drawing. Where drawing is used as primary image making for illustrator

• Interested in the common themes of drawing practices. carrying hand and voice of the maker

• Authorship, de-masking, truth, manifestation

• Always enjoyed the looseness of Quentin Blake, there's a performance and movement to his illustrations that is distinctive and immediately recognisable as a Roald Dahl book

• Drawing is simplest way of establishing vocabulary, instant personal declaration of what's important

• Drawing over and over and over. Repeating. Iterating. Mystery comes from practice. Playful, compulsive, experimenting, wonder, practice to unconscious skills, trading between conscious and unconscious.

• Identity, establish, incubate, stain, evolve

• Authenticity. Play, taking risks, experimenting, improvisation, experience and skill

• Style is not a trend, not a fixed outcome, not a tool. It's an emerging practice, organic, relationship

• Emerging from the unconscious. Improvisation is generative. Forms of culture. Accord. Relational, response certain duration. The thrill of making it up

• Creativity comes from interaction containing framework, containing rules of the symbolic domain, individual who innovates brings novelty to symbolic domain.

• We are born with two sets of contradicting instructions - conservative instincts, self-preservation, saving energy, solving rational problems that have a correct answer. Expansive tendency exploring, enjoying risks and novelty. Divergent thinking with no solution, generation of great quality of ideas, switching perspectives, unusual association of ideas.

• We can be whatever we want to be!

• Quality of the experience, do not worry about the end point. Novelty and discovery. Gets rid of challenging activities.

• Immediate feedback and clear goals every step of the way, balanced challenge and skills, action and awareness, no distractions, no worry of failure, distorts time.

• Intrinsic motivation feels good

• Technique is boring, permanent, solid. Become used to knowing and set in our ways. Dangerous! Loses playful spirit, rigid forms of professionalism.

• Galumphing, play energy. Activity in young animals, children, communities. Your practice. It's exaggerated and excessive. Teeming. Drawing and performance. 

Contextual Research for LAUIL503

The Printed Peanut / Louise Lockhart

Louise Lockhart was a visiting lecturer in my first year of degree 3 years ago and I've been fascinated and has followed her practice ever since. I especially really like her handmade approach and combining that with digital (scanning and overlaying with textures( with give a more modern and contemporary aesthetic white still retaining a vintage and evocative tone of voice. Her process is one that I would like to adopt more as , from my COP research, the element of the hand-made retains a sense of "aura" and ownership of the artist / illustrator. I too would like to mix vintage aesthetics, synonymous with Christie, with a more modern and contemporary execution.

 

Japanese Notan Art

Japanese Notan art aims to balance light and dark to create harmony within an image and often uses positive and negative images and shapes through paper cutting. With minimal / no colour and texture involved there is no distraction. While I will be using two colours plus stock as part of the brief, I want to be able to create a sense of balance and harmony in my zine composition pages for the most part - or do I? I could turn this completely on its head and create something chaotic. Reverse-Notan for a chaotic train journey!

 

Este McLoed 

Unlike the first two parts of my contextual research, Este is not a college or cut shape artist or illustrator - however these works could easily be translated to that process. There is a sense of balance to these illustrations and I am particularly drawn to the green and blue tones... would I want to use these in my own zine to reflect poisons? The textures give a sense of he old and the vintage. I particularly like the use of repeated pattern and motif and draw home that sense of balance and harmony within the composition. I could create could shapes and repeat them digitally.

OUIL402: End of Module Evaluation

OUIL402: PPP Presentation

I will be using using cues from my iPad so that I know the things I would like to mention during the presentation.

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Cues / Points to Consider:
• Slide 1: Welcome • Slide 2: Visual Narratives - why was it successful? What skills did I learn? How will this transfer over to Level 5? How will these determine the outcomes in my professional career? Research driven, success in the breadth of research. Is this something i want to continue with to inform my future projects? Process of paper cut, collage and digital textures taken from The Printed Peanut. • Slide 3: Visual Language - successes in experimentation of line quality, texture and collage. Observational drawing was a struggle but rewarding and taught me the value of manipulating how I want the audience to read an image from my lens and perspective rather than the reality of what is there. • Slide 4: Visual Communication - most successful module reflected in the amount of learning and the grade I received. Challenged my intentions as an illustrator. What work do I want to produce? How do I want to make my audience feel? Adopting someone else's perspective of creating (Zaha Hadid) gave me a fresh outlook to creating deconstructionist and fragmented outcomes - much more design-based than I thought I could create! Really surprised myself. • Slide 5: Studentship - Student Exec officer, Student Governor, regular meetings with the Board of Governors, Learning Teaching and Enhancement Committee and student Union. Giving a voice to students at all decision-making processes, being a positive role-model for disability, providing equality and inclusion, helping to shape the events at college; particular he Meet the Guide Dogs event. Enabled me to experience a 'behind the scenes' of the institution which I love and gain a better understanding of how it is run. Winning Student of the Year 2016. • Slide 6: Difficulties - had lots of them this year! Severe visual impairment, obstacles, accidents, mobility, group crits, COP and isolation. • Slide 7: Discoveries - new artists, new reading materials, new ventures. Violin and Faith synthesising with iterating, repeating and improving a motif that marries with my illustrative work. • Slide 8: Op-Art movement. Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley. High contrast of black and white, varying frequencies of information, interlocking shapes - challenging and interesting. • Slide 9: Future Prospects - Guide Dog Awards, Davina McCall and This Time Next Year, creating my first children's book, Loogabarooga festival to give a seminar and workshop - all extending my network of contacts in the creative industries. • Slide 10: Fundraising and volunteering feeds into my practice of having a deeper understanding of trial, tribulation and hardship and wanting to reach out and help others in many forms. Guide Dogs, East African Playgrounds, teaching children the importance of creativity, importance of play and friendship. Will keep a reportage sketchbook of people I meet and places I go rather than photographs. • Slide 11: Level 5 and the future. Challenge of combining my love of Op-Art with children's illustration. What experimentation and process can be done? What new discoveries will be made to further my practice and understanding over the visual? COP2 and investigating Gestalt theory. Working on my first picture book.
Even though I won't be working from a script, I have an idea in mind of how I would like the presentation to flow from the above points and suggestions. I've typed out a possible outcome so that I can read it back, time myself, and get a clearer idea of how I want to present myself. I want to be quite honest and personal - but still professional at the same time.

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Transcript:

Hi there, I’m Kimberley Burrows of Level 4 and this is my PPP presentation reflecting on my first year of degree and looking on towards the upcoming one - the challenges I’ve faced and will face, my successes, my future prospects at the college and beyond on television and in published works, and my fundraising and volunteering and how that has fed into my strong work ethic and illustrative outcomes. More on that later!

Slide 1: I wanted to start by looking at my strengths and the interesting discoveries I’ve made this year that have impacted positively on my emerging practice.

• Making a picture book in the Visual Narratives module

• Letting go of my perfectionist mentality in Visual Language and adopting a bigger sense of playfulness, quirkiness and charm reflecting my personality and developing my own individual tone of voice

• Trying new things in Visual Communication, purposely going against what I originally would have picked for a music piece and for a person of note and challenging myself with new things to push myself and my outcomes, exhaustive blogging reflecting on my own work, the thought process and crafting process and analysing contextually and visually to better understand my practice and the practice of others

• My strong sense of studentship

Slide 2: The final outcome of my Pearly Kings and Queens book in Visual Narratives was something I was really, really proud of. As a research driven module, I was able to look at a variety of research methods from going on trip and having personal first-hand experiences, talking to key figures integral to what I wanted to research and find out, recording audio responses and soundscapes, drawing sound maps, photography, collecting ephemera - all telling a different story to what I would have learned if I’d just researched through websites and books. It became a very personal project because of the emotions and experiences attached to it and I think that really comes through in the final work. Roughs and storyboarding, making multiples and considering different ways to frame and compose the same image, helped to drive forward my understanding of images and how different narratives a told through how the visual is presented. Learning new skills in InDesign - a piece of software I had never used before - combining with photoshop collage and transferring my wide breadth of research into the visual were all challenges but eventual successes and my First reflects that. Contextual research was of high importance influencing and inspiring the aesthetic and tone of voice in my illustrations. Emulating Louise Lockhart, The Printed Peanut, who visited us during this time changed the way I make pictures and gave ma feeling of renewed excitement for picture books. I want to be able to take the foundation of knowledge from this successful module and transfer it to the work I make next year in response to more complex and thorough modules.

Slide 3: Visual Language was successful for me in terms of allowing me to look at my current practice to take apart in a diagnostic fashion - rebuilding it again from the very basics. Particular sessions that inspired me were the line quality, texture and collage sessions - giving me the space to let go of the perfectionist approach I had before of drawing very realistic-looking work which was very representational and had little to do with my own experiences or my own tone of voice. Observational drawing was, as you can image, extremely difficult but this allowed me to have artistic license and learn, personally, the difference between illustration and fine art. I can omit information and keep in the things I see or think are important.This shows my distorted lens, it tells a narrative, and captures an audience much more.

Slide 4: Visual Communication was my most successful module. Both in terms of grade (at 75%) and in terms of learning. As the final module for the year, I really fought to question and challenge my intentions as an illustration and ask myself what work do I want to make and why? What do I want to communicate to someone looking at my work? I chose the opposite to what I would have picked on first glance to get some interesting results which were very professional and very design-based. Totally unexpected of me! I gained many new skills including how to make GIFs in 3 ways, creating vectors in Illustrator, photograms and photography which was totally foreign to me but something I wanted to pursue independently, and vac forms of clay models I made. All embodied a new perspective of seeing and making through the work of architect Zaha Hadid - important to me as a trailblazing woman in the architectural field but also her perception of how forms should work in her deconstructionist and fragmented way. Her own life experiences as a child living in Iraq influenced her to apply interesting ‘skins’ to buildings and looking towards nature for organic forms.

Slide 5: I am very proud of what I have achieved through my studentship this year. As part of the student union as an exec officer, I have helped to shape the events we have at college as well as present a voice for disabled students and provide a platform for equality and accessibility. As student governor I have ensure the students are at the heart of all decision making processes and learned more about an institution I love. And winning student of the Year in November really celebrated the hard work and incredible journey I have had over the past 2 academic years in Access to HE and first year of degree - allowing me to reflect and project forward.

Slide 6: This year hasn’t been without its difficulties, however, both academic and personal. My severe visual impairment means that life is never going to be easy and I have struggled with studio space and obstacles left around such as bags and chairs, accidents I’ve had in my student accommodation, my guide dog having conjunctivitis earlier in the academic year, large class crits being difficult in terms of mobility, people walking into me, leaving feedback on the wrong pieces of paper, not being able to read my own feedback. Context of Practice was difficult for me in terms of group work and often times being alone with Pete spotlighting me and the fact I was alone - making it even more embarrassing and awkward for my peers who clearly don’t want to work with me and that should be respected.

Slide 7: I have surprised myself with some of the discoveries I’ve made this year; from new artists to new reading materials and elements in my personal life. I decided to take up the violin earlier this year, synthesising with my creative flair and my problem solving skills. I’m not able to read sheet music due to low vision but have learned to play by ear and the process of iterating and repeating notes and songs until they are professional sounding - and can then be improvised - marries with that of my illustration process. I have rediscovered my faith which has been a comfort through the rollercoaster of highs and lows, allowing me to keep being charitable, helpful and with a feeling of purpose.

Slide 8: Op-Art is the biggest discovery I have made through a gallery visit where I happened across the work of Victor Vasarely. The strong contrast of black and white, varying frequencies of information and the interlocking shapes create a fascinating but also challenging experience for me and is something i want to learn more about. It begs the question of how we perceive imagery through our different lenses and what is read first. Is there a complex narrative? I want to uncover more next year.

Slide 9: In terms of future prospects, I have a number of things lined up. At the time of writing my presentation I had the Guide Dog Awards to look forward nowhere tami and I had been nominated for the Life Changing Partnership Award. I can now say that we won and just like the student of the year award it feels like such a celebration of all the hard work we put into our partnership and our university life. Tami has truly changed my life for the better and I wouldn’t be here without her. I was very kindly contacted by Davina McCall and ITV for their show ‘This Time Next Year’ where I will be undertaking a year-long journey of publishing my first children’s book - a dream I have had since a little girl where picture books were my only comfort in the months I spent at hospital in London having various operations and procedures. I want to be able to create an accessible book for all going beyond the sense of just sight - through tactile illustrations and Braille, audio CD, a hand-made toy that smells of ginger, and large print and beautiful images for sight children. Why can’t we all have the same book and the same package to enjoy together? I have also been invited to the Loogabraooga festival in October, in Loughborough, to give a seminar and workshop on how to create pictures with limited sight and through that have been out in touch with David Williams, Michael Murpurgo andd Michael Rosen - extending my network of contacts in the professional field.

Slide 10: Fundraising and volunteering really feels into my practice but also my personal life and the sense of helping others facing hardship and tribulation helps me to feel more fulfilled. This then influences the work I make through my personal experiences of giving and receiving compassion. I’ll be visiting Uganda this summer with East African Playgrounds helping to give creative plays sessions to disadvantaged children and teach them the value of play, art and creativity which I am really looking forward to. We are encouraged to take photographs and diaries when we are there but I will be recording a reportage sketchbook of the places I visit and people I meet to have a more unique and personal end result.

Slide 11: Moving onto level 5 and looking toward the future, I have the challenge of combining my new found love for op art with my core love of children’s books. What experiments and processes can I play with and what will be the final outcomes? What discoveries will I make? How can I embed my learning from visual narratives, visual language and visual communication? I will be working on my first children’s book alongside all of this learning which will feed into the end result shown on This Time Next Year. And in COP 2 I wanted to look more contextually at the relationship between shapes through Gestalt theory, analysing framing, grounding and out personal experiences and how those things affects the imagery we see.

Thank you for listening. Any questions!

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My presentation clocks in at 8 minutes and 30 seconds! Again, this is just a possible outcome but I'm glad it fits within the time limit somewhat and that there is plenty of room for improv and additional thoughts and comments on the day with a window of time leeway on either side of the 8 minute mark.

Now I'm itching to get this presented!

Guide Dog Awards 2017

Well, I feel truly humbled and honoured! Tami and I won the Life Changing Partnership Award at Wednesday night's ceremony and I just simply cannot believe it! We have come so far this year and this is such a celebration of everything we have achieved together in our 2 and a half years of partnership. It was wonderful to be able to finally hear what Matt and Simone said about me during the filming in February! Thank you so much for the kind words, guys! :) Such a wonderful event with lots of incredible dogs who change lives every day, and full of inspirational Guide Dog owners who I can proudly call my friends.

I just feel so happy, so blessed with the gift that is Tami and so motivated to keep going in my journey!

OUIL402: Tutorial

Today I had my final tutorial with my tutor which was very bittersweet! We discussed the end of the year, my presentation ideas and my final A2 poster.

Here are things for me to consider:

• Picture books - context

• Visual language - letting go

• Research - real life experiences

• Intent

• Authenticity and voice

• Challenging and surprising myself

• Contextual research of other practitioners

• Criticality

• Op Art, colour theory, gestalt theory and how to marry that with children's books

• New ways of seeing

• Value of studying Zaha Hadid

• Next year: Davina McCall and This Time Next Year

• Uganda trip with East African Playgrounds

• Loogabarooga festival in October

• talk about success

• Focus more on the future - what excites me, successes in current work and what can be taken forward

• See beyond signs and symbols to more non-representational work

• Scrapes of grey and black are successful in being suggestive in my poster

Study Task 7: Self

Now that 4 out of 6 modules are handed in, and there is only a month and a half left in my first year, it's time for a reflection on how far I've come in Level 4 and the strengths and struggles I have encountered along the way...

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As a Practitioner

5 STRENGTHS:

• Adaptive; I'm willing to explore a range of briefs, develop multiple ideas, push myself away from what feels comfortable and safe, and work with an array of materials - as I'm wanting to learn as much as possible in these early stages of being a professional artist, designer and illustrator.

• Critical reflection; I am very critical of my own and others' work, reflecting often on each stage of the process and questioning what could be done better to improve the aesthetic or learning of skills, and considering the next steps to take. I regularly undertake contextual research regarding contemporary practitioners who have a similar practice or have used a similar process to what I am exploring and reflect on what they have achieved and how I can imbed that in my own outcomes.

• Good time management; I often plan ahead and make schedules and timetables for myself in my academic planner to ensure I have enough time to complete tasks and research, juggling multiple projects and responsibilities at once. A lot of my personal time is dedicated to Tami, my Guide Dog, making sure she is happy, healthy and has a good amount of work to do partnered with play time - so I have to be as effective as I can in completing my work to a good standard in good time so I can play and enjoy myself too (going on long walks, taking Tami for weekly free runs to burn off extra energy, regular vet visits, monthly flea and worm treatments, booster vaccinations, body and teeth checks, etc.) It isn't easy being a student with 100% responsibility of a full grown 26kg Lab x Retriever! As Student Governor I have regular 2 hour meetings on a Wednesday afternoon after my lecture, so I ensure I am up-to-date on my COP blog with my lecture notes so I can engage fully with Board of Governors' and / or Learning Teaching Enhancement meetings in the Boardroom afterwards. I also have to make sure I can fit my weekly violin lessons around my busy schedule!

• Strong work ethic; As discussed in a previous blog post, I come from a working class Irish family in Salford and from an early age I learned about the benefits of grafting, hard labour and strong dedication - keeping on top of work and keeping the momentum going to ensure I am not burned out and continue to have a love of the work I do. I am willing to put the extra effort in, going above and beyond what is required, to see results in everything I do - whether that is illustration, playing the violin, undertaking charity work, and so on. Having little possessions or opportunities growing up, I take absolutely nothing for granted and am humbled and grateful for any and all opportunities that come my way and want to ensure I do my absolute best to make my family, and myself, proud.

• Resourceful and good problem solver; As someone with a big disadvantage in life, I have learned to have a different perspective and to not accept any problem or misfortune as a finality. There is always a way around an obstacle with courage, determination and imagination! With my own hoard of materials and books, knowledge and experience partnered with the facilities at the college and the wisdom of my tutors - there is nothing that can stop me from being ambitious at art school.

5 STRUGGLES:

• Over-complication: As someone who has faced adversity and a daily struggle, I have a natural tendency to overthink even the simple tasks and make things much harder for myself when they don't need to be. I am getting better at just doing something and then leaving it alone, giving it space to settle and then coming back to reconsider the outcome. As I have learned over the course - to simplify is to amplify!

• Research: I absolutely love researching and finding out new information but I can get far too caught up in the research process, long after the timeframe has elapsed, rather than spending time on developing work and experimenting. I have learned to reel it in for the Visual Communication briefs though, due to them being only 2 weeks long, - instead, pushing myself to fill sketchbooks with just playing and experimenting with ideas, motifs and materials.

• Experimentation; Following on from this, I need to be more exhaustive in my experimentation! I have experienced the benefits of creating roughs, multiples, iterations, media and materials swatches and test pieces through my 2 years of being at Leeds College of Art and need to continue down this route as my practice develops. I usually have a mental image in my mind of how I want the final outcome to be executed and tend to skip the testing stage so I can spend as much time as possible on the final outcome.

• Collaboration; I am so, so, so independent and can be a bit of a control freak. Partner this with being a perfectionist and the idea of collaboration is just totally off the cards... Things have to be done in a certain way and I cannot deal with people not doing work on time, not being decisive enough on ideas and not having a clear channel of communication. I have collaborated with the UK Scouts magazine and various charities when producing illustrations for printed work - but was given a lot of creative freedom. Any adjustments I needed to do were made very clear to me and I did them quickly and successfully. If I am to collaborate in the future, I expect the same level of punctuality, commitment and dedication that I give to a project.

• Disability; I cannot deny that my severe visual impairment (blind in my right eye and only 8% central vision in my left) creates a humungous about of obstacles and barriers on such a demanding and visual course. I have struggled with observational drawing in life drawing classes and on location, getting headaches and eye strain by spending a long amount of time focusing on peers' work during crits (I much prefer smaller group crits) and being on the computer too long, using the lightbox which completely floods my useful field of vision with bright light, using the facilities where there are lots of people, students attempting to distract my Guide Dog when she is working, difficulty reading books for COP using the knfbReader on my iPhone which is massively time consuming and sometimes inaccurate.

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As a Student:

5 STRENGTHS:

• Punctuality; I have good attendance and I'm always on time unless something gets in the way of me travelling to uni. I had 100% attendance last year on the Access to HE course and was there before everyone else - and usually one of the last to leave at 7pm every evening. This year, I've had a few more struggles in terms of Tami getting conjunctivitis, me having multiple falls and accidents as I get used to my student accommodation, an incident with a taxi driver, etc. but I have always made the effort to complete my work, come into the studio when it's necessary and work at home when I'm unable to attend.

• Positive role model; I have been told many times that I am a positive role model for fellow students, not succumbing to my disadvantages and taking education back into my own hands. Despite having no support at primary school or high school from 1992 - 2005 -relying on friends to read out the blackboard and whiteboard and help to guide me around the building - and being bullied when I went to college as I was no longer in my safe place, I still never let go of the dream of one day having my art degree. After a long journey of losing even more of my sight, accepting and embracing my disability, learning how to cook, clean, use technology, read Braille, use a long cane and a Guide Dog for mobility, I made the decision to get my degree before my sight deteriorates any further. I do hope I encourage and inspire those around me to keep pushing on and achieving their goals despite any setbacks as life is too short.

• Engagement; I involve myself fully with each and every session - whether that is group discussions, peer crits, asking and answering questions, providing suggestions, completing practical tasks, group work, going out of the studio and into the workshops, getting to know my tutors and the resources well. This is evident in my blogs through regular session notes, reflections, evaluations and learning outcomes.

• Organisation: I'm extremely organised in terms of my work space in the studio and at home, always bring my books back to the library on time, attend lectures, sessions, Governor meetings and Exec Officer meetings on time, ensure to do my general admin each day of responding to e-mails and answering phone calls, carrying out tasks for Tami's health and well-being, arranging weekly violin lessons, and so on. I have both an academic and personal planner and religiously log into eStudio to plan ahead for sessions. I have my iPad and bluetooth keyboard fully charged and ready to type up notes on and always have my trusty rucksack packed with essential media and materials for working in the studio.

• Student Union; I actively participate in LCA's Student Union as an Exec Officer and Student Governor - attending Board of Governors meetings, Learning Teaching Enhancement meetings and Exec Officer meetings with the rest of the union - sometimes travelling to different cities to attend conferences with other SU's across the country and attending attends to represent the college. I care deeply about LCA and love the institution, and everyone involved behind the scenes, a lot.

5 STRUGGLES:

• Crits; I tend to lose focus and concentration during the lengthy crit sessions... With 60 peers to look at and evaluate the work of I start to feel eye strain, headaches, disorientation, boredom and lethargy at moving around a huge space with lots of people crammed into it. I constantly walk into people, chairs and bags and find the whole thing entirely uncomfortable. I can't read my feedback and have no way of knowing whether mine is neat enough for others to read!

• Studio space; I often cannot concentrate in the studio during independent study days because of others' loud banter and conversations, losing focus my work and instead melting into a pot of 'lit', 'fam' and 'safe'. I tend to just go home or stay in the library so I can really anchor my energy and drive into my work. I don't always want to listen to music so have no other option, which is a shame as the studio is a shared space and should be a hub of creation and excitement. The small space, obstacles of people standing around, chairs pulled out at all angles and bags creeping out from under tables also disheartens me a lot and I like to go home where I know I have everything organised and in its place.

• Context of Practice; I hate to say it, but I don't enjoy COP as much as I'd like to... which is a huge shame as I absolutely adored Contextual Studies last year on the Access to HE course. I love attending lectures, learning new aspects of art and design that were unknown to me previously, discovering new theories and practitioners that ignite my creativity to try something new - but I just do not enjoy the COP sessions. Point blank. I think because I have the very first slot of 9:30 in the morning and not many people turn up, partnered with a clunky schedule of just having peer crits week-in-week-out on our learning journal, just really bores me and becomes a monotonous pattern. I'd love to be able to do more presentations, work with new people, have opportunities to go into workshops and the library to undertake tasks rather than sitting around filling out a sheet of paper... Last year, I knew everyone on the Access course and we had fruitful debates on modernism vs. postmodernism, masculinity and the male gaze, objectification in advertisements, colonialism and imperialism and the stealing of artefacts to put into museums... I just don't know anyone in my group well enough, rarely have anyone who wants to work with me - because I'm uncool or something - and just keep myself to myself, wasting the 2 hours of the session and feeling like I have achieved absolutely nothing.

• Self doubt; As an artist and practitioner with a disability, and very high standards, my self-doubt is truly amplified and I often criticise and pick apart the work I make and question my intentions, processes and outcomes religiously. Am I good enough? Is what I am making any good? Does it have merit, start a conversation? Is it funny, charming, evocative? I need to let go of these feelings and just make and do.

• Mature student; Right from the get-go, I found it hard as a mature student to fit into the overall group - by my opinions, interests and overall life experience. Everyone seems to have formed their own cliques and circles now and it is impossible to get to know anyone. Being back in education after so long was my main concern last year but being on the Access course, with such a small group of fellow mature students, all from different walks of life and occupations, was such a fantastic and inspiring environment to be in every day. There was a Doctor who decided that he just wanted to paint, a mother of two from Bulgaria who was a breath of fresh air and turned up to sessions when it suited her independent and care-free lifestyle, a computer technician who was over 60, and my close-knit group of friends were all over 25 and decided to get back into art full-time. One has moved onto Chelsea School of Art, another at Sheffield Hallam, and two at Leeds Beckett. We were all on the same page and the same path and that is what made Access truly unique - any hang-ups were left at the door and we all had a mutual understanding and respect for each other. I don't feel that on this course, I feel like people are incredibly uncomfortable around me and don't know how to interact with me. I only stay with the other mature students for fear of being seen as trying to relive my youth and acting younger than I am, and feel worlds apart from everyone else. It was extremely difficult to get my head around it at first, but I have just had to accept that this is the way it is and carry on... I'm a very social person so this is something I am working on! I still keep in touch with the mature students who progressed onto a degree course at LCA: one on animation, one on surface pattern, two on visual communication, three on fine art and one who will start the masters course later this year.

Study Task 6: Interdisciplinary

Playing the Violin

This year I made the decision to learn how to play the violin. It has been a life-long dream to be able to do so but, as I have very little sight, I was always worried about not being able to read sheet music. It was a silly hang-up to have as I create my drawings with only 8% vision in one eye and this year I realised I was just making excuses for fear of more trials and tribulations. However, living in a new city with only a few friends left from the Access course who moved onto LCA, I found that since the started of the degree course I have only been focusing on my Guide Dog and her personal care (grooming, playing, walking, free runs) and my module work. Not good! I needed something else in my life to ensure that I didn't burn out my visual creativity! With my grandad passing away in the summer, a good sum of money meant I was able to research properly into YouTube videos, website reviews and music shops to find a good model that works best for me - looking beyond a standard student grade model that would squeak, produce a flat sound with no personality or individuality and eventually need to be upgraded in the future.

Such exhaustive research links very much with the researching process I found I had enjoyed during the Visual Narratives module. I was able to go beyond just going to Amazon and searching for a violin (though that was a good starting point) just as I was able to go beyond visiting the library or websites for convenience sake when making my picture book. Visting music shops in Leeds and talking with professional musicians, playing on second-hand models, reaching out to a violin tutor on YouTube who posts regular reviews and demonstrations and contacting a manufacturer all meant I had a range of options to choose from and exemplified my problem solving skills quite nicely!
 Now that I have my violin, a beautiful Fiddlerman Artist Violin made from maple and spruce and fitted with ebony accents, mother of pearl inlays and a carbon fibre bow, and researched a local violin tutor in Leeds - I am truly well on my way to realising one of my life-long dreams. It was finding that confidence and (monetary) support that catapulted this, just as with the brave decision to go back into education and get my art degree.

In my illustrative outcomes it takes iteration and roughs for a foundation to be built on which to develop a deeper understanding of a motif to perfect an outcome... much like with the violin. Practice and experimentation allows for a 'motif' of notes to be understood enough so that it can be made individual and interesting. That process of repetition allows me to think things over in my mind, have some time to myself and make sense of things happening in my life at the moment allowing for personal development. Translating sheet music to sound interplays with the ability to translate a thought in the mind's eye as a physical interpretation on the page of a sketchbook and I play by ear by following what my tutor plays to make this work for me. It is difficult, as is creating illustrations, but it's a challenge I feel I get a lot of benefit from and something I hope continues to strengthen my personal life and my practice as an illustrator - reassuring me to not give up, keep trying and experimenting and finding new ways to approach a piece, or a brief, in my work.

Contextual Research: Visual Communication

Raphaël Garnier

Raphaël Garnier was suggested to me by my tutor and is someone who was previously mentioned in a Visual Language presentation. His weird and wonderful shapes and forms express narrative, perhaps thoughts of a new or alien ecosystem. Visual language of mark-making at varying frequencies is used to convey texture, surface area, pattern and material - which is quite free form and illustrative that also has a graphic design edge to it. Garnier works in textile design which can be seen in his use of pattern, mark making and simplicity - possibly informed by composing textile patterns and the properties of thread, yarn or wool?

Garnier likes to explore worlds that don't exist yet and continues experimentation with string and rope-like forms, exhausting combinations, referencing DNA - an ongoing symbol woven through many of his works. Garnier likes the process of turning an illustration into something more three-dimensional like a ceramic piece - something I am considering doing in this project. Using black and white unifies his work, identifying links between them just like the rope. In an interview I read previously, he mentioned Stereotonomy and the art of cutting down volumes for assembly. Is this what he also refers to in his work? Cross sections of natural volumes? Interesting and something to consider... I could look into cross-sections of Zaha Hadid's buildings, perhaps.

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Victor Vasarely

Victor Vasarely was highly regarded as the Grandfather and leader of the Op-Art (Optical Illusion Art) movement. His work can be described as geometric abstract art using very limited forms and colours of varying spacing and frequencies, working primarily in acrylic on canvas. I first discovered Varasely and Op-Art on a PPP visit to Leeds University's open gallery and fell in love with the high contrast, simplification and grand scale of his work.

These are some of my favourite pieces of his. The first, especially, reminds me of blueprints and schematics of architectural propositions and this is something I could try to recreate in illustrator? The aesthetic of white lines of varying widths and heights against a black background is different to anything I have ever liked or attempted to make - and shows the departure of my previous thinking and responses to illustration, influenced by Visual Language and Visual Narratives. The first painting, especially, would work so well if it was incorporated somehow into my final piece. Could I overlay illustrator lines onto more organic drawings? collages? Do I want to try acrylic on paper or canvas or stick with digital for a more accurate representation?

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Hannah Duncan

Hannah Duncan is a BA (Hons) Jewellery Design student who is inspired by both architecture and design. She is particularly drawn to linear patterns, geometric shapes and contrasting surfaces in the natural environment. She works with brass, copper, enamels and fragmented surfaces, creating textures, patterns and atmosphere of the coast - immersing wearers and viewers in memories and the experience of an unreachable environment. She finds inspiration in beaches and coasts, telephone pylons, shadows and distorted reflections.

I am fascinated by Hannah's responses to the natural world around us, much like Zaha Hadid did with her practice, looking to organic forms and shapes as well as fragmentation and how that can effect a surface. In particular I really like these pieces of jewellery (a necklace and an earring) using acetate, and how that can be reflected onto a wall to create shadows and different perspectives - all by interacting with an object. Her work reminds me of Zaha Hadid's use of faceted triangles. Acetate is an interesting medium to use... it works especially well with the black, printed areas. I used acetate for the front cover of my Pearly Kings and Queens picture book and was happy with the results. Is acetate something to consider for my final pieces?