Identities project

As I only started my blog about halfway through the identities project I realise that there may have been key areas that I have missed. This post will fill in any gaps from that project.
After working with drawings from my head I decided to move to people who exist and are recognisable. The thing which made me realise I could more fully explore identities if I worked with famous recognisable faces was this list.http://www.buzzfeed.com/paulaersly/glorious-illustrations-of-pop-cultures-favorite-baldies. The list features only the top of the head of 15 bald pop culture icons as drawn by the artist Mr. Peruca (website:http://www.mrperuca.com/). I liked how each character was easily recognisable despite only seeing one part of them and wanted to do something similar with my work. I then thought of a similar poster I'd seen that shows musicians iconic hairstyles. I originally

used the hairstyles from this poster to draw the same head but with the hair of iconic musicians to show how much identity can be shown through hair. I then thought that if identity can be shown through hair so easily can it be shown without it. This is how my bald musician project started.






















I also want to talk about a systematic way to make a range of identities. I came up with 9 sections to make a face: head shape, mouth, eyes, nose, hair, ears, eyebrows, wrinkles and skin oddities. For each of these features I came up with 10 different versions. These features can be mixed and matched to create a variety of different identifiable faces. I also created a system where you could take someones phone number and assign each digit to a feature to create another completely separate identity for that person. This series of work reminds me of a kind

of analog identikit as you could combine certain versions of each feature to try and create an actual person. Here is a good website to experiment with identikit that I've looked at http://flashface.ctapt.de/.
This series of work was useful but challenging because coming up with 10 versions of each feature was difficult and meant I had to come up with ways of drawing some features that I'm not used to or have never done before. This would hopefully allow me to be able to draw more of a range of faces and styles in the future.








 I found a video that I thought was useful and could be seen to do with identities. The Paper Kites, Young video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF8PSGl-aIY) is made of over 4000 photos and over 350 faces. Despite these 350 separate identities most of them get lost in the speed of the photos changing or appear to create new identities as your brain tries to keep up with the change of photos and merges the photos together.

Here are pieces I have been doing by using gouache straight on paper instead of sketching out the figure first. I quite like the looseness and freedom appearance of the figures but this comes at the cost of intensity and control which leads to the figures being out of proportion and not having the impact they would have if there was pen or ink lines. I still like this technique however and think that those who don't value boldness and intensity as much as I do could event prefer these to my usual style.
As these are done without using pen to give them structure I've had to use the gouache more than I usually would to shape and shade. If I use this painting technique alongside my drawing style I may get a happy medium between the two.

Yesterday I went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. Although both of these were mainly sculpture orientated, which don't usually interest me I did find some pieces that interested and influenced me. I'm going to post a fuller account of this later as there's quite a lot to go through and to organise.

Here's a piece I've been working on recently. I've tried my different methods of mark making on it. The figure I've decided to leave black and white as I liked it's effect. It's kind of ghost like and to me creates the impression of a memory, like the girls was once their but isn't anymore.

I've been experimenting with different marks making techniques as a way of showing different textures, distances and boldness. With pens I've tried different solidarity of lines and intensity. With ink I'm trying different tones and brush sizes. I'm making a variety of marks and feel I'm making more contrasts between the different layers of images but I'm finding it more challenging than i anticipated. This new approach to my drawing style is going to take some getting used too and time to fully develop.
I'm thinking of mixing pen and ink to get more variety of marks and hopefully add more depth to my drawings. I could also do something with colour, colouring some elements of the drawing and leaving others black and white.

This image has two figures in it as apposed to the one I've been using so far. I've mainly only been using a single figure as it creates a sense of loneliness, space, distance and solitariness. I'd thought that by adding another figure into my work these effects would be decreased. I accidentally made the second figure small though. This gives a sense of detachment between the two figures which just amplifies the sense of loneliness and seclusion of these people. I think that the difference of size also makes it appear that the two figures are in the same place but at different times. Jo also sees this as the case. I like this effect as it adds more of a sense of narrative to the piece.

Today I talked with Jill and Jo about my project and my work at the moment. There were two key areas that came up in both conversations. The first was one I was thinking about and exploring already which was the way I use similar marks to represent everything in my drawings. We all agree I need to use different types of marks, thicknesses, tone, to differentiate between the figure in my work and the background and to give a sense of distance. The marks in the foreground of the background should be different to the marks in the distance so the piece gains more of a sense of depth. Jo also talked about using different marks in the way I use colour. At the moment I'm using the same basic technique for everything but I could easily vary the way I use brush strokes to present a variety of textures.

Jill also talked about the dystopian/ post-apocalyptic feel of my recent work which I had noticed ever since I started merging figures and landscapes. This sense is created by the space and distance in my work which creates a sense of loneliness in the lone figure, as if they're the only person in the world. I think the landscapes themselves add to this as they are all to do with travel which is a major theme in a lot of post-apocalyptic texts for example an obvious one that comes to mind is 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy. Jill advised I look at William Burroughs, a writer who's had many of his books turned into films, like 'Naked Lunch'. Although not familiar with his work Jill tells me that it will fit in with the developing Utopia/Dystopia theme in my work and will add some background context to it. She also suggested looking at the book 'America' by Boudrillard which by the sound of it is a lot like Jeff Brouwes 'Approaching Nowhere' and has photos of America akin to the photos I've been doing work from.
Jo also saw the dystopian relation but also thought the work was like scenes from an American road trip movie but a bit more British.