Adding Colour

When flicking through my sketchbook I found myself to be sad about the lack of colour. I want to introduce colour before I start using the sound to create drawings. I decided to line up all my colours inks and paints and then freely pick up the colours I felt were relevant to the music. I have narrowed down my choice of music to two songs now, Boom Bip and Daft Punk. I want to compare these two songs to see how colour, line, tone and shape will differ with different music.

I produced these sketches as a starting point for including colour

Left - Daft Punk, The Game Has Changed

I find the Daft Punk song to be very dark and scary. I wanted to use colour to create a mood as well as tell the story of the song. I found that using long brush strokes and blending the colours created the right effect.

Right - Boom Bip, Roads Must Roll

This song is more static, I see lots of negative space within the song as well as bright tones and harsh movements.

I have also produced some larger sketches to help me get out of my sketchbook.

Boom Bip. I am happy with this sketch, I like a mixture of tones within the piece. This is the colour pallet that I want to take forward for this song.

Daft Punk. I think the colour pallet for this one needs more work, the yellow is too strong here.

I am happy with these results so far. I want to experiment further using the photocopier at enlarging the images and creating compositions from the areas I like the most. I feel like this method is helping reduce   and consolidate my ideas. 

First Tutorial

Feedback from todays tutorial,

• Think about using 3D, make things bigger - work out of the sketchbook
• Put paper on walls?
• Incorporate the music to create the drawings?
• Don't forget to document everything 
• Film and photograph all stages of development

I really like the idea of actually using the music to create to visuals. In the summer I watched a documentary 'When Bjork Met Attenborough' via Channel 4. In this Bjork was investigating different ways in which she could use nature to create sound. I like this idea of using a certain methodology in which to create the drawings. I want to play around with using vibrations from sound to draw with. This will help me develop larger drawings, 3D and progress my research. 

I really like this video and how the sound creates an image through the vibrations. I want to investigate this method of working and see how I can experiment with making the sound into a visual.

I have also watched this music video by Bjork. She used nature to create the music and then used the music to inspire the video. I love the crazy visual element to this that move in time to the song.

Photocopying

I begun to experiment with my initial sketches by using the photocopier to enlarge sections. I hoped that this would encourage a variation of lines and help me visualise an image as opposed to a page of scribbles. I am really pleased with what happened next, especially when something went wrong causing the image to distort or miss the page. Here are some examples of what happened...

I really like these two images. In the first image I can see how this could progress to inspire a composition. Whilst in the second image, I'm not sure what happened here but the effect is beautiful. It reminds me of a landscape. The distortion is something that I feel like I can use going forward. It disrupts the original document of the music but still represents areas of sound.

Visions of Sound

Selecting the Brief

I read through all of the briefs for this project before selecting the Visions of Sound brief. It didn't take me long to decide that is was the brief I want to follow. I love the idea of using sound to create drawing and felt like this project will allow me to be as experimental and expressive as possible. I can see less boundaries with this brief and want to explore how sound can become something visual.

Starting Out

I begun by listening to all of the possible songs. Initially I found merits within all of the songs so i began to visually respond to each of the songs individually to help me make an informed choice about which one I wanted to pick. I begun by simply using charcoal, paint and ink. I closed my eyes and used my hand to make the marks of the songs. I repeated this with all 4 songs and played around with using my left hand as well as my right to create loose marks and take away my natural movements. I enjoyed the raw qualities that came out of the initial sketches. I retained myself to monochrome initially so that I could focus more upon the marks I make.

    

Road must Roll by Boom Bip           The Game has Changed by Daft Punk

    

Nimrod by Sir Edward Elgar         Gantz Graf by Autechre

I intend to play around with my initial sketches to see where the imagery can go. I imagine using a wide variety of colours, enlarging sections, putting things on wall. Scale is something that I am also keen to play with.

Water Drawings

I am really interested in the texture and shapes that appeared through my underwater camera. I wanted to try and draw these shapes out and experiment with materials. I used acrylic, ink, gouache and water. I paid particular attention to colour and trying to take away my ideas about what water looks like. These drawings are a starting point, but I feel that once uni starts up again, I can further this project and think about what are the different ways water can be represented. I am also interested in how I can incorporate embroidery through these preliminary ideas.

Swimming With Manatees

During my summer holiday, i was lucky enough to visit Florida with my family. During our stay we opted for an excursion where we spent a morning swimming with Manatees! This was an amazing experiance to get up close and personal with these wild giants. I was slightly afraid at first but once I was more comfortable in the water, I really enjoyed the experiance and came to understand how calm and harmless these creatures look although they are big and scary at first.
To document the experience I took an underwater camera with me. As I expected a lot of the photographs came out badly from the point of view of documenting my day out, but some of the colours and shapes and tones that came through were fascinating.

I love the light and reflection of the water in these images

This is the best photo that I got of what I was trying to photograph. Makes me smile every time. 

Cartoon Museum - Ralf Steadman

I visited the Cartoon Museum just off Russell Square in London for the Ralf Steadman exhibition. I didn't know much about Steadman's work before but was fascinated by the vast drawings and detail to his paintings. His approach to drawing involved accuracy and photorealism until he met Hunter S Thompson. The two of them partied and experimented with a life of hallucinogenic substances. This gave a new dimension to Steadman's drawings which allowed him to be much more expressive. I love the splatters of paint, the creepy figures and inconsistency of reality. I feel like the expression and loose nature of these drawings is something that I can use for inspiration. 

White Rabbit & Steadman on Thompson.

Both images courtesy of Google Images.