According to my own work schedule I’m vastly overdue with this assignment and I’m getting a little panicky as this will have a knock-on effect as I continue to the next part of the course.
So I have a couple of choices: produce a linocut from some fairly reasonable sketches in my workbook, add my expressive marks and finish this part OR continue with the ideas that have been swirling in my head for the past week, try to do an exceptional piece of work and blow my timing completely. My head says “Take option one and move on”. My instinct says “Don’t be so shortsighted. What’s the point of the course if you choose the easy option?”
So here I am, panicked but determined. My start to this printing course was rocky and very challenging. I’ve finally come to terms with the products and feel I’m using them to good effect. It’s time now to concentrate on well designed, thoughtful processes and outcomes, no matter the time it takes. I am, after all, trying to learn and get as much as possible out of the education I’m receiving.
Project 10 – Working on the design.
The course manual has a few good suggestions for this project design. It talks about scale and repetition, perhaps making a larger print from several smaller ones printed together, or taking a small print block and repeating it several times (which was a concept I explored in project 8).
The personal goals I’ve set myself for this section are as follows:
- Pick a theme previously explored and push the design further. I’m continuing to use the lotus plant idea I started in project 9.
- Add perspective to the design as explored in Perspective in printing blog post.
- Produce a unified design concentrating on how the eye travels around an art work as discussed in the Research point of project 8. This new design will encompass several individual components grouped into a visual story or study.
Sketchbook start-point. I made some initial drawings in a group, then photocopied the page, cut them out and started moving them around into different arrangements. As I went I marked how my eye seemed to travel around each configuration.
Wow, hard to decide but I think I like the first and last marked arrangements best.
The next step is to resize and improve the drawings whilst I consider my print options. Am I going to do a reduction print, a multiblock print, a single print with a pre-coloured background perhaps, print from different surfaces (lino or foam + another), cut each section from the same block or multiple blocks so I can reposition as I wish?
Interesting. I agree about the first and last marked versions. In particular the square seed pod (?) closeup with strong diagonal lines works well for me in either of the bottom corners. It holds my eye in the picture around the curve. In the top corners it pushes me off, while second left from the top it gives me a little jerk instead of flow.
Yes, that’s exactly my feeling. Even if I make the close-up seed pod smaller it is still too dominant and ‘out of the flow’ unless it is in one of the bottom cormers. In those positions it moves the eye around the edging quite well.
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