Test Your Boundaries

Session outline.      (Week 7)

Have you found your boundaries?

A session to examine your progress with Testing your Boundaries. 

Bring to the session an example of where you have come across a boundary and what you have done to work with this to overcome it. Be prepared to discuss this and share your account reflectively. 

So, during this week reflect and examine your work, think about the shifts and discoveries that are occurring in your practice, and how and in what ways that has happened, and why this might have enabled you to step outside your comfort zone to take creative risks. 

Task

Take a look at next week’s reading/writing task on the VLE. Respond to this in your journal and bring it with you for Week 10.

Make notes about moving beyond your boundaries.

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For me my boundaries were (1) bad technique in painting; (2) moving my editing partially from Photoshop to the physical world. I wanted go from purely digital composites to some form of physical collages; (3) writing.

Painting

My problem is that I’m very poor at drawing and painting. I went to a (very unstructured) workshop 2 weeks ago and you can see my effort!

Flower arrangement in Acrylic Painting workshop at Stone Row Artisans
Flower arrangement in Acrylic Painting workshop at Stone Row Artisans

My impressionist version in 90 mins
My impressionist version in 90 mins

Gel plate transfer

I needed to find another way to make my marks with paint and, during our intermission between MA modules, I chose to try rolling acrylic paint on gel plates,  making marks with various artefacts, and transferring the result on to paper or canvas.

The easy way would have been to stick with the PhotoShop digital method, but in this course we were given the freedom to try out anything and I’ve been enjoying doing this. I’m getting some good results with single layers of paint, but I’d like to explore further, using multiple layers, acrylic ink and tissue paper mixed with digital  layers for a hybrid composite or for extraction/erasure poetry.

Single paint layer of red yellow, pink and gold paint. Marks made with a hairbrush, bubble-wrap and other packaging material.
Single paint layer of red yellow, pink and gold paint. Marks made with a hairbrush, bubble-wrap and other packaging material.

More layers

This image has a couple of layers from the gel plate, with the final one being a thin layer of gold paint. It's not too visible here
This image has a couple of layers from the gel plate, with the final one being a thin layer of gold paint. It’s not too visible here
You can see the gold layer easier on this image, at the bottom. It brings an interesting texture too.
You can see the gold layer easier on this image, at the bottom. It brings an interesting texture too.

Erasure/Extraction Poetry

This is a page from my MSc thesis, where the unwanted text was selected with a highlighter, the selected text covered with protective cardboard strips, and paint rolled over the gel plate and transferred to the page. Some painted tissue collage was added, not very successfully!
This is a page from my MSc thesis, where the unwanted text was selected with a highlighter, the selected text covered with protective cardboard strips, and paint rolled over the gel plate and transferred to the page. Some painted tissue collage was added, not very successfully – yet! I’ll probably take this image into Photoshop to make the selected text clearer.

Writing

I am used to writing factual stuff such as scientific papers, student notes and lectures, but I’d like to extend my range into the arts world. I took a creative writing course with the OU some years ago, but never went further. With the journal writing, the floodgates have opened and I’m trying to find my voice again.

By Dave

A retired research scientist, a photographer and a Fine Art student

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