Non-Places: Day Two

Non-Places: Day Two

Yesterday was the second taught day of our graphics project.

The morning consisted of printing off our pictures and collaging them into potential abstract book cover designs. As (and hopefully WHEN) I make it into university today, I’ll take and attach a photo of the worksheet I created full of collaged designs.

In the afternoon, we had a photoshop tutorial with Neil. I’m not going to lie, the fact that I didn’t have a mac to work on because the class sizes aren’t correctly managed did make me angry. I had about an hour at the end of the day to get my practical work done, though, and I’m really pleased with what came of it!

What was successful about the day? I would say that, after a lot of moping, my morning collages came out really well. I’ll be using them as inspiration in my photoshop endeavours. It was Danny, continually encouraging us to be quick and not to think too hard, that allowed me to create the work I did. He kept saying “it’s an instinctive exercise, not an intellectual one.” After about the fifth time, I was coming up on exasperation because I do everything the intellectual way. But he was right, of course.

I also think that in my limited time (and incredibly limited temper), creating the book jacket draft that I did was impressive. I had to create the word “PLACES” in Photoshop with the pink branches as a clipping mask, then import it into InDesign and flip it.

Interestingly, my reading the book Type and Typography has actually influenced the way I’m thinking about type.

What still needs to be done? I need to go in for a little while longer and spend some time mocking up other drafts of book jackets. I’d also quite like to write a blog on what I’ve been learning in Type and Typography.

Photography and Darkroom Reflective

Photography and Darkroom Reflective

Yesterday, my group was inducted into the Darkroom to learn how to create photograms.

To create a photogram, you must learn how to use an Enlarger. For our intents and purposes, the enlargers are just projectors of light. (However, they also enlarge film strip negatives, hence their name.)

To set these up properly, you have to check three things: Height, Focus and Aperture. I immediately logged this into my brain files with the mnemonic Hairy Fat Arse. I’m not happy about this either, but it cannot be changed and is incredibly helpful.

Height: Make sure the enlarger is high enough that the rectangle of light it produces is generous. You don’t want to accidentally place photosensitive paper outside its edge, because you’ll expose it incorrectly and bugger up your photo. The large handle on the side of the enlarger allows you to first unlock, and then change, the height.

Focus: There’s a knob to change the focus on the side of the enlarger. When the edges of the light are crisp, you know it’s focused.

Aperture: A twisty circle inside the enlarger allows you to change the aperture. We were recommended that we move to the highest brightness, then down three settings, as our default aperture.

Creating the photograms is easy: place objects over the photosensitive paper and expose them to light for anything between one and, say, ten seconds. Light doesn’t pass through solid objects and you end up with some exposed areas and some protected areas.

Pass the paper through three chemical baths: Developer, Stopper and Fixative. There are instructions about timings above each bath.

Here is my final print along with two test strips! (I got a little avant-garde with my developing in the top strip and needless to say it didn’t work at all. Oops.)

How can I take this further? The photograms were really fun. I will look online to see if I can get reasonably priced photosensitive paper, but I have a bad feeling that wherever I look they’ll be really expensive. If I invested in another pack for myself, I’d see if I could expand the work into an illustrative style. Maybe use card cutouts and more found objects, or work collages into my illustrations.

Yesterday’s Pictures

Yesterday’s Pictures

This isn’t a particularly interesting blog post. Yesterday I saw these nice shaped spiky things on the way back from the library.

They remind me of soot sprites a bit… I might work their shape into my art somehow, sometime.

The U5 bus from the Uni to the dorms, circa. 7pm last night.

I had pretty bad cramps (out of NOWHERE, but I suspect it might be coffee related) last night. On the bus I was all alone on that floor and I suddenly felt very peaceful, albiet in a lot of pain. I’ve just saved the picture because it’s attached to a feeling now.