In one of my lectures yesterday we looked at some of the artist group AES+F's video 'The Feast of Trimalchio' which is a part of their 'Liminal Space Trilogy'  Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3MgDS5Jetk

In simple terms the video is about the Travel and Holiday businesses and can be seen to say that the purpose of travel for those doing it for luxury is to get to space as detached as possible from where they come from. This is one of the reasons this video is part of the 'Liminal Space Trilogy' and just goes to clarify that the themes I'm looking at correspond with others ideas of liminal. The video also looks at the type of people who travel, those who do it for leisure and those who travel for work as well as the wealth of different cultures and people you find when traveling.

I found an artist called Sunga Park who has a reires of work called 'Daily Metro Sketches'. These are a series of drawings that Park has done of her fellow metro riders on her way to work each morning.
This is a lot like some of the work I'm currently doing so I can easily draw influence from her, especially when it comes to drawing from life. For instance she focuses only on the parts of the person that seem necessary to capture whatever it is she is trying to capture about them like their posture or what they're doing. This leaves gaps in the figure but you can still tell what's going on. Her work has also made me realise that my work from life could benefit from going bigger as to make things clearer like her work. I also like how she goes back to the drawings later to add colour, this makes the sketches seem more like complete illustrations.

Source:  http://www.behance.net/gallery/daily-metro-sketches-female-1/11168855

My idea of drawing people waiting at traffic lights reminded me of a George Segal piece I've seen. The piece is called 'Walk, Don't Walk' and is a sculpture that depicts several life size people waiting to cross a street.
Source:http://whitney.org/Collection/GeorgeSegal/

When looking for this piece I realised a lot of Segal's work can link into my work in this project. as he has also done sculptures of people waiting in line or on a bench and on the bus.
Source: http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/kostabi/kostabi4-4-9.asp
 Source: http://www.1fmediaproject.net/2011/09/11/moma-ps1-announces-major-exhibition-looking-at-art-from-the-past-50-years-from-a-post-911-perspective/

I like Segal's work because it deals with every day things, little moments that go unnoticed but are now frozen for us to appreciate. I think this is one of the reasons I'm interested in looking in looking at people in this project, because it's natural and normal stuff that anyone can understand as they live it.

I went into Huddersfield today to take some photos of liminal spaces that fit into my project. I wanted to take some good photos of roads as I didn't have any that I liked. I realised that what I liked about Jeff Brouws' photos of roads, the emptiness and sense of distance, would be hard to get as we don't really have large roads that are completely empty in Britain (Brouws' work is set in America). I took a few photos of roads but either couldn't get that sense of perspective and distance that makes the image interesting or there were too many cars which distracted from the liminal zone of the road itself.
I did however like any of my photos in which a road stretches under a bridge. I like how the bridge brings in another element of liminality to the picture as you have the empty space between the bridge and the road.

My project at the moment is kind of split in two. I'm looking at liminal zones themselves such as roads, railways and other environments but next to that I'm also looking at people who are waiting and thus are in the liminal zone of being between doing things. These two sections can't really cross at the moment since one of the main thongs I like about the zones themselves are a lack of people. When I was in town I drew a sketch of a road, trying to figure out how to make the composition interesting if I couldn't get a stretching perspective angle on it. The bit I was drawing had many traffic lights and I soon got a lot more interested in the people waiting to cross the road (like when I drew the bus stop). This lead to me doing a series of drawings from life of people waiting at traffic lights.

I was drawing the train tracks from one of my photos. I noticed that due to the strong perspective of the photos the drawing became a long triangle shape that started with the vanishing point and stretched out with the tracks to the edge of the page. This got me thinking that if I do a few of these drawings I can put them next to each other like slices of pizza so each drawing shares the same vanishing point in the middle. These pieces can build next to each other until a whole circle is formed. This idea partly came about when I was looking at the space around my drawing and wondering how I could fill it.

After looking at Jeff Brouws work I thought about his photos that I liked and why I liked them. I then took some photos of my own that I thought reflected these reasons. Here is a selection of them. All of them are liminal in some way.

The other day I came across the book 'Approaching Nowhere' by  Jeff Brouws. This is a book of photos by Brouws depicting a series of landscapes in America. Many of these are desolate roads and train tracks. Obviously these link in with the areas of liminal zones that I'm interested in. What I really like about his photos though is a sense of vastness and forgotten-es that comes with the lack of people in his work.   This has got me torn between wanting to draw figuratively and being interested in spaces devoid of people.

Examples of Brouws work from 'Approaching Nowhere'
Source: http://www.getaddictedto.com/approaching-nowhere-jeff-brouws/
 Sourcex2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-fox/americas-inner-cities-in-photos_b_1160915.html

My new project is on liminal zones. Liminal zones are are between spaces, either literally or in a more abstract way. It can also mean threshold  as on where one space stops and another starts or a space of transition.
To start exploring this subject I went to the University bus stop and started a making a series of drawings of it. I chose the bus stop because it's a liminal zone in several ways. The whole purpose of any transport is to act in a liminal space, to take people between one space and another. The bus stop itself is where people wait between the two spaces. The bus stop at university is also where the University meets the rest of the town.
After a while of drawing I realised I was more interested in the people waiting at the bus stop than the space itself. This got me interested in people and how they behave when in a liminal zone where they have to wait. This could be things like train stations and bus stops, but also waiting rooms and even people in queues.
I want to explore this while also looking at ideas of travel and the liminal spaces themselves.

Unfortunately I can't do much more for my current project as I have lectures all tomorrow then I'm going home later that day so will be away for Friday. I've handed a selection of my work to my group which should cover all bases for any eventuality. I've also made it clear that they can phone me if they have any questions about the work or want my opinion on something. I've already given my views on the layout of the book and how it should be put together but it is up to the rest of the group now to get it done. We can also have a quick meeting tomorrow if need be.

I've decided just to have a quick look at some of my work with colour, just in case it looks substantially better. I painted some pieces in a normal copied way with gouache but didn't think it improved the pieces. I did end up with two techniques I liked though.


Here I used gouache almost as I normally would but didn't use the lines to contain myself, this led to giving the two figures a sort of aura. I thought this added a depth to my work which has largely been missing until now. Unfortunately for this piece I don't want there to be depth as the two characters aren't talking about anything particularly important or meaningful, they are just having a casual conversation. For this reason I don't think this piece reflects the content of the writing well enough to use.


For this picture I've just added some red gouache a t the bottom of the figures as they fade out. I think this could be particularly effective if refined a bit. I like this because the red has connotations of blood and violence, especially if you know who the characters are (Vincent and Jules for Pulp Fiction). This reminds you or makes you think that these two aren't normal people even though the dialogue is just a normal conversation. The only problem with this plan is that I need to put writing over their legs as they fade and with red there it might get to chaotic and become awkward to read.
Also I don't know if the rest of the group wants to do the whole booklet on black and white, which is an idea I asked to the members who were there at our last meeting. As I don't know what the others have done I don't know if all black and white would work or not.

The other day the members of our group who were in decided that we should title each of our sections, sort of like chapter style subheadings. This would make it clear where one section starts and finishes and prepare whoever is reading for the change in style and subject. It would work in conjunction with the continuous dialogue that will flow throughout the booklet. We decided it would be best if the titles were done by hand as then it would fit in with the art style and ease the readers transition from one style to the next.

As for this project I'm creating a 'zine I decided to look at the art in other zines.

 Devon Smith, Imaginary Lovers
(http://flavorwire.com/224258/amazing-illustrated-zines-for-every-mood-and-obsession/)

30 illustrators, Wash your hands and repeat (http://flavorwire.com/224258/amazing-illustrated-zines-for-every-mood-and-obsession/4/)
 Kseniya Yarosh, Fuck You
(http://flavorwire.com/224258/amazing-illustrated-zines-for-every-mood-and-obsession/14/)
 Mel Stringer, Borrowed Suitcase
 (http://flavorwire.com/224258/amazing-illustrated-zines-for-every-mood-and-obsession/12/)

Something I noticed when looking at zines is that there's an amateurish rawness to the work. Everything seems to be done by hand. This is probably because zines have a large background in the DIY punk scene and a lot of the values of imperfections and almost anti-professionalism have traces in the zines of today. I like the look and feel of this style and want my pages of the zine to reflect this. I'll try to do this by doing a lot of the writing by hand and keeping the pictures as untreated as possible.
I also noticed a lack of colour in a lot of the zines I've looked at. I would guess this is to do with saving money on printing costs. This is something my group could think about when printing and I think I may keep my pages in black and white to try and get that zine authentic zine look that I'm aiming for.

Today are group had another meeting and spoke with Ian about our project. We thought it would be best if we linked all our work together somehow rather than have each of our sections completely separate. It's hard to think of a way to do this however when most of the group aren't around or don't have any work so you can''t figure out how to  connect your work to theirs. I did have an idea though that would hopefully still link our work together even if I don't see a member of the group until we finalise the booklet. The idea is to have an ongoing dialogue throughout the booklet that explains which each one of us are doing and links each section to the next through a continuous narration that makes up the dialogue. Some members are skeptical about this idea thinking the theme is enough of  a link and this would just be adding pointless dialogue.

I should mention that my group changed the theme of our booklet from awkward dialogue to normal/everyday dialogue. I picked my movie conversations with that in mind and think that the dialogue I have chosen reflects the attempt of films to depict normal conversation. The conversations I've chosen are all about normal things you would discuss with a friend: food, dreams, Star Wars etc. None really carry much importance or seriousness in them but instead give us an insight into the characters themselves and allow the audience to connect or relate with the characters.

In my last post I mentioned the way the page is set out in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. (Source: http://valerievisual.wordpress.com/tag/sandman/). As you can see the panels are less rigid and more flexible, even chaotic, than Burns' Black Hole. I like this style more as it give you more freedom with the your drawings and can allow for a more interesting interplay between the art and speech. I also like how each panel seems to lead into the next which allows the reading of them to feel a lot more natural and fluid. I'm not going to lay my panels out exactly like this but I do want it to have the same looseness to it and for my panels to lead into each other in a similar way.

One of the artists I've been looking at  for inspiration for my Clerks comic is Charles Burns, Artist and Writer of Black Hole.

(Source: http://pantheonbooks.tumblr.com/post/22814168102/from-black-hole-by-charles-burns)

I like the way that Burns uses a lot of black in his work to show tone and shadow but also to bring out the white in his work. While the reason that Burns uses this effect is to add a sinister hopeless sort of tone of despair I think that I could make this way of shading work in my drawings if I use it in a subtler way and have it as less of an overwhelming presence in the background. While I'll probably do the speech in a similar way to Burns I think I'll set the panels up in less of a rigid way and have them more loose like they often are in The Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman.

Lately I've been finalising my ideas for the publication. I'm going to be looking at conversations from Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994), Clerks (Smith, 1994) and Dazed and Confused (Linklater,1993). I plan to present  these conversations in different ways. Pulp Fiction will be done in a Robert Shaw influenced way with a drawing of the characters and dialogue written around them. For Clerks I'm thinking of doing a more typical comic set up with a few drawings and speech bubbles. I'm cuurently looking at artists from comics and graphic novels I like for ideas. For Dazed and Confused I was thinking of doing something between the two, maybe one picture but with more of a sense of narrative to it than the Pulp Fiction idea.

Source: http://iamrobertshaw.co.uk/119112/1417279/illustration/reading-between-the-lines
August Diehl, Inglourious Basterds. 2009, Robert Shaw, Reading Between  the Lines.

Here is one of the pieces from Robert Shaw's book Reading between the Lines. I like how although he puts the quote next to the character the two parts stay distinct. This stops the piece from seeming like a cartoon and makes it more original. This is done by drawing of the character at a different time to when they say the quote. This means the quote works more as a mini description of the character than as something like a cartoon This is something I may explore in my own work as it would demonstrate how dialogue can be used to describe the relationship between two people rather than just show us what they're saying.
I don't particularly like Shaw's illustrations however as I find they lack definition and could do with more varied line work. I do think the simplicity of the drawing works well with the rest of the piece however which is something I need to think about for my own work.

My group had a meeting the other day to discuss our ideas. The rest of the group thought we needed to make each of our sections have a connection in some way, be about the same theme, something narrower than dialogues. I thought however that having four completely different unconnected perspectives all exploring the theme of dialogue would be more interesting and more fully explore the topic.
In the end we decided to narrow the theme of our publication down to awkward moments and conversations. To prevent all my previous work and research being in vain I'm going to look at awkward dialogue from movies and possibly TV and literature as well.

The new project is on dialogues. This is a group project where with a group I'll have to make a publication of some sort that explores the theme of dialogue. I started this project by trying to think of iconic or famous dialogue from movies, TV or books. I could only think of one example of this though. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Vincent: And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it a Royale with cheese.
Jules: A Royale with cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent: Well, a Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it le Big-Mac.
Jules: Le Big-Mac. Ha ha ha ha. What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King.
(source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu)

After working with this dialogue I decided to continue working with any dialogue from movies that interested me. This includes extracts from movies like: Forrest Gump, Little Miss sunshine, In bruges and more. I mainly turned these into a variety of little cartoons and played around with the way i presented them.

This idea was influenced by Robert Shaw's 'Reading between the lines' on which Shaw takes quotes, mainly from movies, and illustrates them in some way.

My Identities project finished a few weeks ago. At the end of the project I was looking at musicians with iconic hairstyles without their hairstyles and seeing if they were still identifiable. To a lesser extent I was also looking at the clothing they wear as well since a lot of musicians clothes are quite unique or extreme. I came to the conclusion that while you could sometimes identify the musician without their hair it did become a lot harder especially if their hair was originally quite extreme.
 Another factor that i didn't originally think about was the pictures of the musicians I was copying. As these are largely iconic musicians I'm working with: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley etc, they have a lot of well known photos so may be identifiable as they are in the same position as in these iconic pictures of them. Clothing wise I found you could identify the musician if they were in different clothes but still had their iconic hair. Without hair the clothing could sometimes be used on it's own to identify the musician depending on how iconic the clothing is. For example  The Beatles in their sergeant pepper clothing is relatively easy to identify, while Bob Dylan in more normal clothes is harder to identify.

I was also looking at a variety of artists drawings lie Da Vinci  and Schiele. Specifically I looked at four artist's style of drawing and found it interesting what elements of drawing each artist seemed to prioritise. Da Vinci seemed to like defining the muscles  and bone structure of the face while El Greco was more into getting the basic shape down and defining the dark from the light. Schiele was more into using line work to get all the information down and to purely record composition. Le Brun used a lot of black to define faces and make them appear more 3d.