Visual Research

This week I began my research for my chosen area; Urban Influences. In our first tutorial, we were taken to the top of a multi-storey car park to make us think about different perspectives i.e. having a birds eye view over a large area. From this I took a trip around Manchester city center and the Northern Quarter, looking for parts of this urban environment that caught my eye. I particularly liked the older more quirky looking buildings that had a bit of character, but I was also drawn to the more modern simplistic buildings with clean lines. Contrasting with this I also took an interest in looking close up. I was drawn to looking at surfaces and marks in this environment e.g. on drain covers and pavement layouts. I took a number of photos to capture the areas I liked best. Below are couple I found the most inspiring.

I then started looking back at my summer work and picked out parts of it that I liked best. From the 'Present and Reflect' presentations I learnt that my work using ink and water was some of my strongest, and I would like to explore the ways of incorporating these faded qualities to my future work.

Over the summer I researched the artist Cecile Dachary. I found some of her work to be quite similar to mine where I have used water to disturb the the solid ink lines. I particularly liked her series of 9 samples where her work looks quite similar to this; all with a different outcome . This is something I love about working with ink and water - the unpredictability and uncertainty of what the final outcome will be. Although Cecile predominantly works with yarns making small 3D sculptural pieces, this particularly piece of hers I felt linked in well with my own work. Photographed below is an image of the series of 9 samples that I found similar to my work.

Unknown title, Cecile Dachary

So as a starting point I began experimenting with the ways I could create different marks on a page. I worked with glue, crayons, charcoal, ink and water to explore the effects and outcomes these give. I found adding water on top of charcoal gave the drawings/marks a painted quality which I liked. Combining charcoal, water and white ink also gave a really nice effect. These small drawings reminded me of the old black and white photographs I had also included in my summer work. This is where I began looking and focusing on buildings and other building structures.