W1 - Final Fine Art

Friday was our last day on fine art, which I found a bit of a shame as I was enjoying the free, loose working style, which was such a break after A-Level Fine Art in which everything had to have a relation to your project.

In this session we had to combine the loose working style and techniques that we had picked up, together with metaphors to make at least 2 final pieces in 2D, incorporating 3D elements as well.

I began with the Fleet Foxes White Winter Hymnal metaphor as a starting point, focusing on the elements of walking and travel in the song, which are quite outmoded when you consider them. Why walk through the snow when you can take a car or another easier mode of transport?

I'd brought with me a Tron Lightcycle toy and so I thought I could use this to signify travel. I thought of creating a pattern with it and so began to trace around it onto paper. The plan was to cover the paper and then fold it up so that the yellow back of the paper would create a glowing centre of this folding object, signifying how we aim to protect ourselves with objects in various ways, again and again aiming for protection or warmth in the song's case. But this changed as I progressed with the piece. I started to think about manufacturing and the process of tracing the Lightcycle and then painting them all in blue. It was taking forever and the results were inconsistent, much like hand made manufactured products. But machinery allows a much quicker process. I replicated this process by creating a stencil and repeated the pattern. Admittedly the stencil wasn't very good, but the colour was far more consistent and the process incredibly quick.

The Hand Drawn Pattern

As I applied the paint it started to fade, which I liked, it added more meaning to the piece, so I decided to consciously make the paint fade as the pattern went on.

The Stencil Pattern

The stencil print didn't turn out as clear as I wanted it, but the process seemed more important than the actual print in a way.

The finished stencil print

Final Piece (1)

The metaphor for the piece was related to manufacturing, of by hand vs by machine. By hand is now old fashioned, it's fading into the past and is slow. While machine manufacturing is quicker and more efficient and is more prominent then ever. Hand manufacturing is being lost and people can be sentimental over this but both processes are still just manufacturing (hand made goods are usually a lot more expensive as well) and as shown by the colour, both are just as cold.

Object Envelope

I began by thinking about the White Winter Hymnal lyrics again and how there is a strong emphasis on being warm, of using scarves to warm and protect ourselves. I thought about our use of objects - that probably one of the most basic uses of man-made objects is to keep us warm, yet this message has become muddled over time as we focus more on owning more objects, not their practicality for survival as such. These objects have little substance yet they appear useful (colourful), so I thought a good way to show this would be to use outlines of objects like I'd used before.

The flat image

But then I thought to bend the paper to represent our still present need for warmth that we try to fill with these objects. The paper bends to try and be warm, but it still has jagged cold edges - these objects can't help.

The final image bent into shape

 A pleasant side effect of the piece was that because the outlines were drawn with pastel, they smudged when the paper was folded. I liked the idea that their message has become distorted.

Overall, I enjoyed Fine Art this week as after the structured approach at A-Level, it was nice to be able to just experiment without having to worry as much about an end result. Mixing this with the conceptual, metaphor side of things provided a working style that I imagine a lot of Fine Artists use where accidental pieces and effects are created and where the process is just as important as the final image. For the first week it was a great introduction to moving from A-Level, which the thought process of the project did remind me of, to the experimental exploratory stage.