Something New

I am already finding the process of writing this journal helpful although I need to get more diligent with actually doing the writing. I am sat on a train looking at my blog and yet again I am shocked that it is more than a week since my last post.

I am not always the best at documenting my practice and keeping this journal reminds me of how helpful it was when I was an undergraduate. I have never been the sort of person that uses sketchbooks or notebooks, tending instead to either work digitally or just on any scrap of paper that I can lay my hands on. Inevitably this does mean that my documentation/ record keeping is often partial as the scraps of paper etc. only survive a bit haphazardly. I was a bit surprised this week to find that I seem to have deleted the preparatory work that I did for an exhibition last year. This is most unlike me as my digital records are usually pretty good, and it was a bit annoying as I had spent ages making transparency guides for my OHP. Unfortunately, I am probably too old to completely change those habits but perhaps I could try. I was interested by the fact that some people have continued their journals after finishing the course.

On Saturday I did a really enjoyable one-day workshop on stop-motion animation. I have dabbled with filmmaking on and off over the last few years. I often use the films as source material for other work and as such don’t really think of the films as things in their own right, they are more an alternative to taking photos or drawing.

The exception to this is a couple of films that I made during the COVID lockdown. I was in the second year of my undergraduate degree at GSA, and we were unable to go into the studios for a whole year. I was one of the lucky ones who had enough room at home to make a studio space and for a while I tried to carry on with the paintings that I had been making prior to the lockdown. However, I became dissatisfied with the work that I was making and (encouraged by my tutor) decided to do something radically different. A bit inspired by the work of Thomas Demand I started to make paper models which I photographed. This led me to the idea of filmmaking, and I ended up submitting a film for my second-year summative assessment. This is an edited version:

At the time I wasn’t particularly enamoured with the outcome. I somehow thought that it was going to be better than it turned out to be. It did the most important job of getting me a pass at the end of second year and come September, when we were allowed back in the studios, I forgot about it and went back to painting.

It was only when I started making a portfolio to apply for this course that I looked at the film again. I wanted to show a variety of work, and I wondered if the film was usable. I was pleasantly surprised when I watched it back. It’s not great but it’s a lot better than I remembered. I used it in the portfolio and thought that I should revisit the paper models and the film making.

Again, it went on the backburner as I was offered the opportunity of the exhibition that I am currently working towards. Then, in the summer, I saw some amazing animations at a gallery in Gothenburg, and I realized that what I was probably reaching for with my film without knowing, was animation. I downloaded a couple of animation apps and played around a bit, but without much purpose.

Which leads me to the workshop that I did at the weekend. It was at the art school where I work (staff freebie/ OPD) and was run by one of the technicians who is an animator by trade.  I have to say that it was quite revelatory. I’ve always thought of stop-motion animation as being laborious and time-consuming, and this workshop showed me that that needn’t be the case. We learnt the basics really quickly and the free app that we used (Stop Motion Studio) was really good. We then made quick puppets that were held together with blu-tack and got on with making a little film. Whilst I am probably not going to be holding out for an Oscar, I was really pleased with what I could do in one take, in 90 minutes:

Realistically, the next six weeks are going to be about finishing the paintings for the exhibition but once that’s done I want to start playing with stop-motion animation. I would like to think that I could make something for the interim exhibition. What I can do now is use my commute time to start thinking about things like storyboarding and doing some drawing.