A Print For Your Thoughts?

Dear Readers, I apologise for my sudden AWOL, I have had exams and crazy deadlines for the last few weeks and as a result I haven't had much time to dedicate to a set blog post. But I have returned now... And I actually have some new work to share!

So, at the University of Witwatersrand (In Johannesburg, South Africa, for those of you abroad), I am currently doing a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts as a second year student. For the practical elements of the course (where you should hypothetically make stuff), we have two "classes". The first one is FINE ARTS and the second one is DESIGN AND DRAWING.  So for the second half of this semester, we did Printmaking and Sculpture,,, Let's just say it was a messy and time consuming... And exhausting...

But now at the end of it I have new skills and new work to share... So enjoy dear readers!

PRINTMAKING

INTAGLIO ETCHING

So this was the first technique we learnt: Drypoint etching
In a nutshell, you use a sharp metal instrument, like a nail, to scratch lines into a metal sheet like copper or zinc, you then put ink on the plate so it goes into all the lines you've carved into the metal, and you wipe off the rest of the ink. You print the plate and voila! 

Hardground Etching
So this is a technique I preferred to drypoint. So basically, you put a layer of this stuff called Hardground onto your metal plate. It is acid-resistant and water-proof. Using a sharp metal implement, you draw your image into the plate. The areas where you scratch the hardground reveal the metal underneath. Once you're done drawing, you submerge the plate into a bath of acid, which etches (or digs) into the metal plate. You take off the hardground layer, clean your plate and ink up.

Aquatint 
This was by far my favourite technique and is quite like painting in its final effect. You put a light layer of aquatint, which is made up of either rosin particles (or spray-paint for us art students) onto your metal plate. This layer resists the acid for an amount of time and allows you to work in layers. Using what is called stop-out, you cover up areas of tone on your plate, one tone at a time. For example, all the areas you want to stay white will be covered first. Then you etch the plate. Then you put another layer of stop-out, then you etch again... building up the tones with each layer. 

Combination Print: Aquatint and hardground
By far the most successful print, this was completed mostly in aquatint with some refined detail added in hardground.

So dear readers, those were the outcomes of my printmaking course. I will share my sculpture work soon, I just need to sort out all of the imagery.

Until we meet again

Talia

A Little Guide to Art School

How Not To Make Art 101

During the last few weeks of varsity, I've learnt a lot about how not to make art, and how not to be an artist. It's surprisingly easy to fall into this trap in Art School, so I thought I'd share a little bit of naive wisdom that I've figured out.

Apparently no lecturer can tell you "how to make art", but there are a lot of unwritten laws about things you shouldn't do when you're making art: Here is the technically-unwritten-but-typed list of things you shouldn't do.... Unless you're an avant-garde artist who's already made a name for themselves. 

1. Compose your image or work centrally. Seriously, apparently its "too perfect".
2. Use anything cliched... so butterflies, wolves, arrows, the globe, watches, hourglasses, dogs, cats, dream catchers, skeletons, naked people.... the list goes on
3. Leave a lot of empty spaces... Unless you are really good at understanding negative spaces.
4. Paint from photographs... draw from photographs... referencing photographs unless you're doing photography
5. Only use grey tones or mid tones. This one I do agree with, having a deep dark tone and an almost white tone is a good way to create depth and contrast in an image. 
6. Forget about preparatory work... This one varies from artist to artist, because people see planning in different ways. For me, writing and thumbnail sketches in ink are a perfect means of organising an image, for other people full scale perfect sketches work for them. It all depends on what works for you.
7. Comparing your work to other artists work, This is a sure fire way to stop feeling inspired and to give up art entirely. Rather all yourself to be inspired and learn from others instead of putting yourself down.
8. Leave all your prep work and current work in a mess. Trust me after two weeks of working in a messy pile of papers, trying to find one prep drawing is a bit of a nightmare.
9. Take criticism badly. Yes some people are honestly just rude and unhelpful, but most of the time criticism, both positive and negative can be really useful and help you to see your work in a slightly more neutral way.
10. Give up. No matter what happens, never ever give up on what you love to make. That's a good way to never become an artist

So dear readers, a little advice for those of you studying art or know someone who is.... Make what you love doing and you should be okay. 

Until we meet again

Talia

And So The June Countdown Begins...

Happy Mother's Day dear readers! If you forgot it was Mother's day then shame on you! Yes, I know it's only been 35 minutes (in South African time) but that's no excuse. Today is the day you take a moment to appreciate all the things your mother does for you everyday, not to mention the nine months she had to haul you around before that.

Now... I know it's late and yes I should probably be in bed by now... But unfortunately my workload seemed to magically pile itself up in one week to have all the time consuming elements take place in uncomfortably close proximity to one another. There always seems to be a million things to do when you seem to get one huge deadline out of the way... The list is constantly growing and changing... Kind of like life I guess. If things stopped changing and we didn't have to adapt, I think we would all get bored eventually.

But the frustrating thing about the workload now... especially for sculpture and printmaking, is that it takes so long to produce a single piece of work. After so many weeks of being back, I only have two final etching prints, a sculpture drying in the sculpture studio and a complete set of photos that still need to be made into a book. That's not much considering how much work and time has gone into everything...

I'm just itching to draw or paint something that I can look at when I'm done... But the saddest thing is that time won't allow me to do that until June... and that's still another month away before I can breathe normally again. But the show must go on, and no mental breakdowns can be allowed near the etching equipment. For now I don't have many pictures of work to share, but I promise I will post them all as soon as I can.

Happy Mothers Day dear readers!

Until we meet again
Talia

That Confusing Question

"Is being consistently inconsistent the same as being inconsistently consistent?" Chances are your brain just froze a little bit trying to decipher that question. Mine does the same thing even though I've thought about this question more than once. Whilst you're probably picking your brain trying to figure it out... I thought I'd pick my brain a bit on consistency and persistence.

Throughout my life, the one thing I've always been consistently good at is throwing myself into my art and putting in so much effort that what was required. I was so consistent at it that I made it a habit for myself. And last year when I was going through an especially rough phase in my life, my work and my art became my reason for existence for several months. Metaphorically my art became my significant other.

This is a good strategy when you're going through a rough time and feeling quite alone in the world. But for me, I suffered for a while and then the suffering stopped. I picked myself up and started living life again. I found someone I could actually talk to and touch and be held when I was feeling upset. Someone who makes me feel special, and someone who I can care about. I remember for a while when I was single I would actually miss caring for someone, but then I would distract myself by drawing and painting.

Now I have realised a flaw in my past strategy for beating loneliness through art. When you apply consistency to only one area of your life, and you apply a lot of it, chances are the consistency everywhere else in your life diminishes. There's the flaw you don't really see until other people point it out to you, and I realise that I have been a guilty party for quite a while. I guess you could say I'm both consistently inconsistent and inconsistently consistent in many other aspects of my life.

As various self-help books will probably tell you, admitting you have a problem is the first step to fixing it. Now my goal is to be consistently consistent in every other area of my life. I think posting once a week every week on this blog is a good motivation to be consistent.

Until we meet again dear readers
Talia
P.S. Being consistently inconsistent isn't the same as inconstantly consistent, just in case you were wondering. It took me an hour to figure it out, but I have an answer now at least!

The Work In Progress You Don't Always See

So Dear Readers, the end of April is almost upon us... and that means that one third of this year is already over. It still feels like the year is off to an extremely slow start, but I think that the reason is because we haven't been doing much work where the process can be seen.

At the moment, we're working on various forms of etching and sculpture  in clay... which is messy work almost all the time... but the process that goes into both is really difficult to see. You can't really show all the work that went into drawing into the copper or all the clay you've put on and taken off. All you really see is the final outcome of a slow process, Which isn't a bad thing, it just feels like a lot less work to show at the end.

I feel like not being able to see the process also relates to a lot of things in life, you can't see all the effort it takes to build a relationship with someone, all you can actually see is the current work in progress. You can't see how much time it takes for someone to become the person that they currently are.

If you're lucky, in art, you may get to watch someone work and see how a work transforms from a blank page or an empty space into something more tangible. Life is very much the same, you only get to see the slow transformation when someone lets you get incredibly close to them. That comfort and trust is a privilege, not a right. It is earned by trust and care, But the thing to remember about works in progress is that they have ups and downs, and the negatives are just as important as the positives to see how things turn out. I guess that you have to remember that the bad parts about progress are sometimes more meaningful than the good, because they teach you so much more than reinforcing what you think you already know.

So dear readers, if someone you know or something you may be creating has hit a bit of a rough patch, that's okay. Just remember that sometimes you have to have a patch of darkness to understand the light.

Until we meet again
Talia

Who Needs That Many Fireworks Anyway?

Do you ever feel like there's so many things to do, so many things you want to experience, that your mind actually tells you it's impossible to achieve them all? I do that a lot... I can focus on the present for a certain amount of time, then my brain decides it wants to think about things that would be fun to do... Only this time it was different.

I started thinking about all the things I'd been wanting to do, achieve, accomplish... Whatever you'd like to call it. There's a million thoughts buzzing through my head, crashing and bursting... I guess you could say like fireworks on a perfectly clear night... You know the stars that stay constant and shine in the distance, but the fireworks are so loud and bright that they distract you from the things that stay constantly beautiful... Even if they're light years away. I would say that all the fireworks are thoughts about today, tomorrow, next week even. My mind is so drawn to those that I've forgotten the stars in my mind, visible only on a clear night, the thoughts that are about things relatively far away.

The all knowing They say that right at this moment, time is a gift, and that's why it's called The Present... But the little clause they tend to leave out is that the present only means something when there's a future ahead... A goal you could say. I think I've been good with the present, but all those fireworks have made me forget that the present is always leading to the future. Once the bright colours and noises have faded away, the stars are what remain there no matter what.

Mental stars are different for everyone, some people focus on one constellation, others a single star... Some chase after a shooting star (only to figure out it was a plane). Some spend their whole lives searching for the star no one else has found. For me, I can say I've focused on one constellation my whole life... the one that kind of looks like an artist. But I had a moment of clarity... and there's a sky full of other stars out there... Ones that make you realise there is so much more to life than a single constellation. I guess you can say that from now on, there will always be a set of stars that shine brighter for me than all the others, the ones that will shine clearer even through the fireworks on a mental New Year's Eve.

Oh and dear readers, I know I talk about the sky a lot. It helps to think about the universe out there, that there is so much more to life than the little things that bug us every day. The one thing I love about load shedding (scheduled power outages due to strain on the grid, for those overseas), is that when the lights go out, if you stand outside, you can see the stars clearer than on any night in Johannesburg. I guess now I don't need the lights to go out or even for it to be night time to see my own stars.

When in doubt, find your own stars dear readers.

Until we meet again

Talia

To Speak or Not To Speak, That Is The Question

Art History Class
10h15
Its cold outside, and its cold inside too. The cold helps me stay awake... mostly. We're talking about the art of the Mende People, and more specifically the Sowo Wei mask they use as part of a ritual that celebrates a girl becoming a woman.

To sum it up, the mask represents the features and characteristics of a woman that the women in this society see as ideal. One of those qualities that intrigued me was the idea of reserved speech. And considerate conversation. How interesting that one of the ideal qualities so long ago was consideration of what you say before you say it. It got me thinking about how this ideal should still be part of our lives now, even though its almost 200 years later.

If you think about it, in this day and age, freedom of expression has been taken to an almost extreme level of "I'll say whatever I want because I have the right to say it anyway". You can see it in the way people speak, in the way they act, but most clearly through social media. What happened to thinking before you speak? What happened to actually considering other people in conversation? I read a saying once that just about perfectly sums it up:

"The ability to speak many languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless" 

I think it's easy to talk a lot... babble and go off on a tangent. But I think being considerate when you speak is a skill to be taught alongside being able to speak. Because sometimes, things are better left unsaid, sometimes you need to be able to listen instead of speak and sometimes... just once in a while, silence isn't a bad thing. 

So dear readers, think twice before saying something to someone because you can, silence can be golden once in a while.

Until we meet again

Talia