Mrs Norman

Mrs Norman's Guide to Housekeeping and Etiquette

Drawing Conclusions

I've been banging on long enough about my experiences with drawing, but due to a technical error (also known as 'carelessly formatting memory card') I lost the pictures I wanted to include and, as such, delayed putting fingers to keyboard to write the post to go with them. I should also admit that I haven't minded the procrastination: this isn't gong to be a pretty story, but sometimes brutal honesty is the only option.

-- What's This All About, Then? --

Perhaps I need to recap the context in which this recent preoccupation with drawing has developed... Back in Week 1 of the Central Saint Martins course, the Seed of Fear was sown by the promise of a drawing brief a couple of weeks down the line. Being someone who gave up on the formal pursuit of art (creation, not critique) at the age of 14 specifically because I clearly had no aptitude for this skill - and have ever since been troubled by this failing - I was not looking forward to it. No, not one bit of me felt comfortable with the prospect of creating my own pictures using my own hands. Nevertheless, I steeled myself. I tried to temper the normative cognition I cannot draw with the more rational thought It doesn't matter, just relax, it'll be fine!   

So one Saturday morning, I set off to meet most of my fellow classmates just outside Borough Market, ready to take on the challenge of connecting eye to hand and coming up with something usable for the next week's magazine layout brief. My pencils were sharpened, my sketchbook was ready and, most importantly, I had a goddamn smile on my face. I was going to beat this demon with my newly found confidence - I might even reveal a hitherto unknown style that would wow my fellow students with its raw genius! Well I had to bolster myself *somehow* didn't I?

Over the course of the next few hours we drew and drew and drew: sketch something for 1 minute -- sketch the ugliest thing you can find -- sketch something in minute detail -- sketch something at three times its real size -- sketch everything you see so it fills one page -- sketch some scenes form interesting angles -- sketch sketch sketch!

With each task my confidence drained away: if anything, my drawing became worse than ever. I began to feel the familiar feeling of frustration at not being immediately able to do something perfectly. And then I saw the other's work. Oh my goodness. Not one of them was outwardly displaying the same inner conflict that I found myself unable to hide. Their pictures looked like stuff, not just oddly placed lines awkwardly marked, but actual real things that you could recognise. I sighed, inwardly and outwardly. I'm not proud of myself, but I could feel the emotion rising up and bubbling quite literally out of me. I had to turn around to hide the last bit of my confidence drop out of my eyes as I kept my sketchbook tight to myself to prevent the humiliation that would no doubt ensue.

It was not one of my finest moments. And what's worse is the sense of injustice I felt - Suck it up, Jenny! It's not everyone else's fault that you never put in the hours to develop your drawing skills!

Tsk.

-- What Happened Next -- 

Aside from spending the best part of fifty quid on delicious treats, inlcuding enough olives to see you through a nuclear apocalypse, in the typical shopping-cures-all-emotional-problems, I decided that enough was enough. In the short term, I needed some illustrations for the next week's brief, but beyond that I felt like I had to face this drawing demon once and for all.

I made my way to Waterstone's just before closing and headed for the kids section where, while bent with my bottom in the air - elegant as ever - tying my needlessly long shoelaces up, I asked the eager-to-get-home shop assistant if there were any good books to help develop drawing skills. She immediately picked out the one I'd secretly hoped I could one day justify buying for myself - Quentin Blake's Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered. At the till she asked me how old the child I was buying it for was. Muttering the 'twenty' I said the 'eight' unnecessarily loudly. Perfect, she said as she smiled through the slightly troubled look on her face. Let's hope so, I thought.

 -- How the Story Ends (Part One) --


I'd love to tell you that I've now conquered all my drawing fears, that I'm now most relaxed with a pencil in my hand and can render almost recognisable forms. Unfortunately this is a little way off yet. Nevertheless, the Quentin Blake book has been a real help to me, and gave me the boost I needed to get my shit togther to go and draw some new pictures. I didn't end up with many, but you can see the fruits of my labours below. Not all were taken from life - I admit that I'd naughtily taken some snappers of the market while I was there - but I did try to salvage some of the sketches I'd taken on the day. (Though I've kept some of these for my..private collection.)

I've also decided to submerge myself in the world of drawing for a solid 5 days. It may turn out to be a form of self inflicted torture, may drive me over the edge once and for all, but I figured it was worth a shot. I'm going to spend next week under the tutelage of Guy Noble as I'm taking the Introduction to Drawing course offered as part of the CSM Christmas School. Well, at what other time of year are you allowed to be so (potentially) miserable?!

One thing's for sure - I am improving. Wish me and my confidence luck.

         

When I was 17 _ _ _ #2

Wow, that last post was a bit long. I'll keep this one short: here's the second idea I had for the brief.

I'm missing a picture of the final piece, but it's basically trimmed down to the just one girl in her pants protruding from the other's head. Much prefer this one, but I'm still left wondering: where are my fancy pants techniques? I'll err on the side of simplicity for now.

   

When I was 17 _ _ _ #1

Before I get to recalling the horrors of embarrassing myself last weekend at Borough Market, here's what I've been up to this week for the illustration brief.

-- Context --

At our first class together, we were all given a photocopied piece of paper with When I was Seventeen _ _ _ written on it.  

We were asked to complete the sentence as these would be used for an illustration brief. Anonymity was assured. I failed to catch on to the fact that this would be *our* brief, but I should have put two and two together. If I had, I may have chosen to write something a little less..telling. Anyway, two weeks ago these sentences were pulled out again, and handed out amongst us.

-- The Brief --

I doubt you've guessed this part, but the instructions were: Illustrate your sentence.

My sentence: When I was 17 I had a Saturday job in a lingerie shop.

-- What I've Done --

As usual, we were told to come up with ten ideas for how we could illustrate our sentences before we left the class. I find this a really hard task, as I'm not used to having to be so formal about creative endeavours. Ideas sort of crop up as I'm doing other things, not generally while I'm sat staring at my notebook. But as I've never studied anything like this formally - I gave up art at school because I can't draw (a topic I'll return to..) - I think it's great that I'm being forced to do this, because I normally set about a task and end up changing my mind over and over again. Maybe if I adopted this approach I'd save myself a lot of time and effort (thinking of the bits I make at work)?

Having said that, though, I have to admit that I haven't yet managed to combine these planned ideas with what I end up producing. Sure, elements remain, but invariably once I start doing something it takes on a life of its own, short as that life may eventually be. I think this is something I need to avoid doing quite so much in future projects - or rather, I should at least attempt to follow the process through to its conclusion once.

Anyway, last week was a bit of a write-off as far as doing work on this brief was concerned. I also didn't feel that that pressured as we technically had two weeks, and I did spend time thinking about what I could do. I ended up going on a lingerie catalogue mission, visiting every lingerie shop on Oxford Street and round Soho. In the end, it was a Bravissimo catalogue sent through the post that proved to be the best source of girls not wearing much. At least my mission round Soho wasn't in vain - I picked up a great frill and some suspender clips. not as fancy as I may have liked, but still.

So, the lingerie part of the sentence seemed fairly easy to illustrate - colours, materials, catalogues to cut up.. I wanted to find an edge that wasn't so obvious, but unfortunately I don't think I've achieved this. Perhaps lateral thinking isn't my strong point - any ideas how to cultivate this skill?

The other element I wanted to capture was that of being 17. In this first example, I tried to intimate it with the background and beads - though I'm kind of thinking that this might not be quite right, maybe it's a bit young - as well as with a section from the 'Smart Girl' 1964 Annual. There was such a brilliant article about the journey from girl to woman via sensible undergarments it seemed churlish to ignore it.

As is often the case, I've since had (what I think is) a better idea, but time is against me and I haven't yet produced it. That would have dealt with the 17 *and* Saturday part, so perhaps (during this mythical free time I often invoke) I'll get round to producing it sometime soon.

Here's a few pictures from Tuesday night, when I finally broke out the Pritt Stick and got going.

         

That wasn't so bad, was it?

Last week I was morose and full of fear and self loathing. How things can change! Before I'd even got to the class I had sternly reminded myself that this is really just something I'm doing *for fun* and to stop taking myself so seriously. Yes, it could well become someting more serious in my life, but right now no one is expecting me to be the next David Carson or Kate Moross or Chrissie Abbott (I wish. Incidentally, I can't take the credit for the illustration above, that's by Chrissie Abbott. Pretty nice, isn't it?).

This mindset has worked wonders, but I have to say the icing on the cake came when I got to the class. Guess what? Not everyone else is a fucking genius after all! Yes, there ARE lots of good ideas floating around but at the end of the day, the irksome issues facing me are also facing others - even those with seemingly more time on their hands. 

I'll hopefully be taking some pictures of my projects and uploading these at a later stage, but here's a brief run down. the fonts were chosen from a book I already had in my bookshelf and have used repeatedly, especially for embroidery projects like the panel I sewed for the insert of Piney Gir's 'Hold yer Horses' album, but I can't find any reference to the book online and it doesn't give font names.. I'll fill in the details when I can.

-- Idea One --

Done the lazy girl's way. Quite frankly my backwards approach to the brief was a main reason behind why I was so annoyed with myself. I spelt the word toast using the medium of..toast. But it seemed to do the trick, as people had questions and Ruth broke out her camera to take a couple of snaps of the results.

After researching high tech materials that wouldn't catch fire, then discovering the cost involved, I was struck by the realisation that the answer had been there staring me in the face all along: cardboard covered in aluminium foil. Thus ensued an evening of careful cutting out and covering of stencils in foil, followed by the buring of almost an entire loaf of the cheapest bread known to Budgens.

-- Idea Two --

Another simple one that I would really love to have made larger than life: letters built of lego. I was able to replicate the font exactly using these handy bricks, but it would have been so much more fun to have made them ten times the size. As it was they were about 30cm tall, but even at this size they used an incredible number of the tiny plastic bricks. I had intended to made a lego base for them to appear out of, rather than just be free standing letters, but in the end this was beyond my resources. The word I'd chosen was puzzle, so I wanted to build a labyrinthine lego structure to reflect this. When I see things like this I wonder - aside from the sheer amazing funness of it - how much it cost. Lego love is an expensive business. Can I have a house like this for Christmas, though?

-- Idea Three --

This is the one I really put the most thought behind (though the idea developed as I was working on it), and the one I'll make sure I finish beyond it's current prototype stage. It's the word propaganda hung as bunting, constucted out of two tone foam (glued together with my own fair pritt stick) and canvas printed with pages of celebrity gossip magazines on one side, archive newspapers on the other. When I've finally finished, I'll post it with it's full intellectual (!) reasoning. I'm lacking a nice bit of string at the moment.

Next week we're off to Borough Market for some drawing. Feeling the fear but not going to rely on a camera. I will develop and hone my own lopsided style, and I WILL be proud of it!

Getting Out of My Brain


I am worried. After the initial excitement - which I do still have, of course! It's fun to have a focussed creative outlet - I am now overwhelmed with the competitive edge/I'm-no-good-at-being-creative dialogue that constantly wracks my brain.

I have just seen photos of one of the other student's font project and I feel sick (well, that may be an exaggeration). They're amazing.

The brief this week? Choose a font. Asess your reaction to it and collate a list of adjectives that describe how it makes you feel. Choose a word that embodies these and illustrate that word using your chosen font. But make it 3D. I'm not short of ideas..but whether they are believable (whether it's not just bullshit created after the fact), whether they will pass the test (there is no test), whether they are skillfully executed enough (we're not learning technicques) is driving me mad.

I want to be good.

But maybe this is the problem. I am, yet again, my own worst enemy.

Photo Brief [Idea 2]

In case the execution of my first idea fails to live up to what I have in mind, I've also prepared a simpler set reflecting the food we eat and dispose of without much thought at all. 

These 6 were taken in one ten minute walk along a short stretch of Parks Road in Oxford, meandering along from one meeting to another. Would be great to take more than the requisite twelve to be able to choose the better shots. Fingers crossed for some more sunshine over the next couple of days.

           

Photo Brief [Idea 1]

-- Home Grown --

*As a measure of quality control, I've deleted the pictures. Flickr will have some remnants..*

Hectic day, full of meetings and relatively little work of any substance (just more ideas to develop..) followed by a rush to try and catch people before the light disappeared. These are the digital shots that start the set for my primary idea. Don't judge the photography too much - it's an exercise in idea rather than whether I'm going to be the next Diane Arbus*.

Having said that, I have been irked by two camera related issues. 

First, the trusty SLR didn't appreciate the brand new film I put in it, and it let me take the sum total of 3 snaps before winding the film on. Lucky it was a 24 and not a 36. 

Secondly, for some reason my tiny Olympus mju 1060 is setting a resolution of 72dpi instead of 300dpi. The camera is set to 10MP, fine compression and image quality 'shooting large-print quality' so what the hell else I need to do, I've no idea. This is the same camera that lost hundreds of memories from Australia earlier this year. I blamed the memory card (and still do, rationally) but now I feel it has a vendetta against me. Any ideas - even those that intimate I am a moron - would be greatly appreciated.

* I'm not.

Photography Brief: The Way We Live Now

Saturday saw my first class at Central St Martins. Quite frankly it feel like it's going to be the best thing I've done all year - I feel (re)-inspired and like things might actually be possible after all.. 

It may only be week one, but the format of the classes and the topics we're going to cover (more detail later) fill me with complete confidence. Short courses can sometimes seem a bit suspect, but here I get the impression I am going to be taken seriously and that there is a level of mutual respect. Above all, the tutor knows what the fuck she's talking about. My only concern is that dastardly work and other such inflexible commitments (mainly sleeping) will get in the way of me dedicating as much time as I'd like to this. I suspect I shall start burning the candle at both ends, but that I'll be more than happy to do so. Cutting and sticking, after all, has always been my most hallowed pursuit.

A fair portion of the session on Saturday was given over to coming up with ideas for the first brief. I really enjoyed this (I'd even go so far as to say that it was revelatory) because it's the first time I've ever been in a space completely dedicated to creative thinking. More than anything, knowing that you are now only limited by yourself is at once both terrifying and incredibly exciting. "You mean I don't have to use Gill Sans if I don't want to? Awesome! But cripes! What font *should* I use..?" Flippant example, but I hope it makes the point. 

And you know what else? It feels like it's going to be incredibly supportive, too. One of things I found entirely disagreeable about the MA at Bristol was the fact that I had no peer discussion about my subject, because  no one else was taking the course except for me. Working by myself has never been a problem for me, but I really think I would have benefited from figuring things out with people who hadn't been experts in their field for the past 60 years. Besides, I think its good for me and my only-child ways to be forced into group situations, so I'm really looking forward to hearing what other people have done, what they think about my work, and how I deal with criticism that comes my way. It should be revealing, to say the least.

All in all Saturday made me very happy. I left feeling stupidly excited and grinning from ear to ear. Not a bad start, not at all.

-----------------

Brief 1: Sign of the Times: The Way We Live Now

I've had lots of ideas for this, some extremely time consuming and others not. 

Even though there are only a couple of days to get this done in, I've set myself a challenge because I think it's one of the better ideas. Thanks to the support of friends I've found almost enough people to take part; I now just have to orchestrate fitting everyone in at the right time. I'll be updating my progress online as soon as things are underway...wish me luck.