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Part of the Whitechapel Art Gallery DOWNLOAD project


Krishna • Patrick • Rosaleen

PAPER DIARY AND DOWNLOAD
This student used her diary and was able to develop some ideas from it in a larger notebook.

KEY IMAGES

drawing of her front door, partly open

"I liked this image because it makes you think of what's behind the door or who is in front of the door. Is it a door leading into a room or a house?"

     
  pencil shavings stuck to the page
     
 

She combined these two images, so that the pencil shavings were bursting out of the open door.

"It's like my mind, the door, and the contents of my mind coming out."

     
 

drawing of reflections

"I was intrigued by the way the kettle's reflective material transformed the characteristics of nearby objects - objects appearing the same colour as the mug's surface, and objects becoming distorted to fit the shape of the kettle. I wanted to have a scene of my daily life actually reflected in an object."

     
  "I don't usually work as fast as that. I found it hard to find the time. But I liked some of the images that came out of the diary."

ELECTRONIC DIARY

keywords:

reflection, door, light, film noir, shadows + reflections, room interiors + lighting, room paintings, Vermeer paintings, fabrics + interiors, flower fabrics, chiaroscuro.

Pathways

1. 'formal elements' keywords led to a picture by artist Larionov. She liked the energy of the piece and the way he created energy without a realistic image. Used parts of the image for the steps in one of the final pieces. [IMAGE from journal]

   
 

2. 'Chiaroscuro' keyword. Led to Caravaggio's 'Calling of St. Matthew', because it had light and shadow in an interior.

"I wanted to see how he created dramatic lighting so I could do it myself."

Also led to Betty Nash (modern artist who uses chiaroscuro in still life)

   
 

3. 'interiors' and 'light' led to a Kodak website and a photo of a dark room and the inside of a church

   
   
Development  
   
 

The student l ooked at wallpaper patterns, to link the colours of the door with the wallpaper next to it. She experimented with textures and colour combinations for the wood of the door.

     
Then she looked at Edvard Munch's work "because he's got a creative energy in how he uses lines" She planned to use the wooden bridge in Munch's 'Scream' as a model for her door image. Later she dropped this idea but retained a feeling for the way Munch weaves colours from the surroundings into each object and figure.
 

She ended up with a purple-violet colour system, arrived at by looking at chromatic greys. She liked these because they gave a sense of otherwordliness.

"I didn't want it to look too real."

Working up to the final piece
 
The student decided to make a final piece from 6 individual panels, painted in acrylic on board, and hung in space rather than mounted on a wall. At first she thought she'd include the kettle, the door and the umbrella, but later changed this to focus on a sequence of door images.
Preparatory drawings

"At first the door is in the distance, because I'm a quiet person, hidden. Then it's as if you're walking toward the door. As you get closer, light comes into the room. As you get even closer, thoughts start spilling out. The last panel will have a mirror with an image of my face in it."

The student wants to include words in the final piece, replacing parts of the image with words, for example the bannister rail might be made out of a sentence which has to do with some of the ideas in the work. "I want to leave some words out, so the viewer can make their own interpretation."

Possible text to integrate into image:
come come in come into the blinding light a simple door nothing but a simple door wooden on the outside like all what's that light intensifying light where does it come from this is not like th usual light we see as we open the door so powerful powerful light what creation is this

Suggestions

Look at Rembrandt paintings for shadows and light.
Van Eyck's 'Arnolfini Marriage' for reflections and detail.

Outcome

The Diary project affected this student's work directly in many ways.

  1. The original idea came from making a simple observational drawing of a door - probably from Simon Granger's instructions 'if you're stuck, draw what's in your line of vision'.
  2. The preparatory drawings for the final piece are reminiscent of Toba Khedoori's spare architectural drawings. Rosaleen said she "liked the way the architecture faded into the background in those drawings."
  3. The final piece is a sequence in which time passes - one of the exercises set in the project for developing diary ideas.
  4. The net was used to strengthen the work formally.
  5. Words are part of the final piece. The diary project encouraged the use of words. Each page in this student's journal is a meticulous piece of graphic design, where the blocks and lines of words are not placed arbitrarily, but function as part of the composition of the page. A natural outcome of this, encouraged in the project, is for words to become an integral part of the final piece, functioning both as visual pattern and tone, and as written signs with meanings.