Blog entry 26:
A
Critical Evaluation of my Concept Project:
Images
of the Human Hand: A Gesture to Humanity?
Towards the end of last semester during
Personal Practice and Methodologies module, my project pointed me toward hand
gesture or positioning used in imagery to convey the idea of experiencing the
divine. I decided for this semester in my Concept module, to open this topic
out in order to give me more scope, by choosing to focus on researching the
hand as an entity, which in the visual world can be a powerful tool to comment
on the human condition.
Last
semester, I made the decision to break my project down into separate areas in
order to give myself clarity, I found I did not do this as successfully as I
had hoped; however I found that some elements worked well. It taught me that I
could refine this methodology for this semester and make it work better. I
decided to break my project down into several areas: Research, making visuals,
blog and drawing from life. My research book allowed me to take a wide variety
of ideas and research them more closely to understand how much potential they
might have for my Realisation project. I selected my preferred ideas and worked
them up to different extents in my main sketchbook in order to understand
further whether these ideas were viable choices to take forward. This book was
also used to experiment with my chosen media and materials. I used my blog to
research the work of others in order to find out more about how mediums,
materials and topics have already been addressed, I also conducted this
research to find out more about what is current in my field of study. My
drawing from life book was a place where I was able to purely practice drawing
the form of the hand along with using the time to understand how to visually
represent the capabilities of movement of the hand, and consider gesture.
Due to my research into paint last
semester, I had found a particular paint and process that I preferred, however
over the summer I found that working in stitch created interesting visual
results. I did not want to disregard a medium that could possibly give me
interesting results, especially when stitch had potential to add a tactile
aspect to my imagery and convey the hand’s capability to ‘feel’. I made the
decision to combine my preferred paint method with stitch. I tried a number of
hand and machine stitch methods, starting with cross-stitch. I found a way of
convert my paintings into cross-stitch patterns online, but quickly found a
number of issues with this process. I found that the time taken to complete
even a single pattern would be far to long to refine progress in the time
allocated for the Concept module. I also found that the converted patterns,
when finished did not always fully represent the original image they had been
taken from, for example the black and white painting I created a pattern from,
instructed me to use purple threads. Once I had tried a number of stitch
methods, I found that a process called free machine embroidery, which I had
used before at college worked best, not only as it was a faster process, but
also I was able to use this stitch method on fabric, which I could also paint
on with gouache.
Whilst studying my stitch and paint
combination, I found that through my research, there were a number of ideas,
which would be difficult to take forward due to their being pre-existing
connotations or potential difficulty in understanding a potential message as
certain aspects such as gesture are easily lost in translation. My dissertation
on how the hand can act as a semiotic or political signifier to comment on the
human condition, was most helpful in the elimination process due to the
research for my essay teaching me about how the hand has been used in different
points throughout history to convey emotion, cultural hierarchy and even
concepts such as femininity. A number of my original concepts to research felt
like they could possibly have potential, however when I researched them further
I found that it would be difficult to base a whole project on them. For example
I researched the concept of being unable to use the hand due to accident or
injury, this interested me and I was able to obtain a set of Christmas cards,
which had been painted by members of the Mouth and Foot Painters Association.
These artists had lost the use of their hands from injury or birth defect and I
felt that a topic such as this might have a lot of scope. When I attempted to
create visuals for this idea in my main sketchbook, I found that to visually
represent this in the best way possible had already been done by the
association’s paintings themselves.
With the aid of my critical analysis of who
I wanted to be as a practitioner through my blog, I was able to consider how my
realisation project could echo my plans for the future. Although I was to some
extent aware of the face that my work has both fine art and illustration
connections, I have been considering where I am place within the art world. I
feel that after my research I do not want to box myself in, to creating only
one outcome, which would only reflect one part of my artistic journey. I have found
a number of artists, whom both exhibit their fine art pieces and use them in illustration;
this is something I intend to look more closely at during my Realisation
project.
In my main sketchbook, I was able to
develop and eliminate further concepts about the hand in a number of ways. As
the Concept project developed, I found that a small number of ideas stood out
in significance to me, the most prominent of which being stories attached to or
about the hand. The face we as humans attach myth and folklore to the hand as
well as use the hand to tell stories is representative of how prominent the
hand is in everyday life for many people. Another idea, which to me held significance,
was the concept of left-handedness and the connotations this subject has held
throughout history. It might be possible to merge my ideas together next
semester more research has been done.
In conclusion, I have decided to further
develop my preferred method of paint and free machine embroidery to create
visual imagery on my topic of stories about the human hand. I intend to use my findings
from this semester to inform
my practice for the Realisation module and
examine my topic further I order to develop my outcomes.
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