Central Saint Martins, UAL

Less than two weeks left to finish work. Yikes!

I have 4 paintings left to do and then I need to decide which ones, if any need re-doing or further work on them.

I have decided to re-paint the very 1st painting of the set – ‘Magda’, as I was using a different palette range at the start (no white) and now it stands out as a misfit.

With the rest, there are about three that I am not so happy with for one reason or another. What I can’t decide is

(a) whether to totally re-do, probably quicker than option (b) as I have spare canvases built and ready to go

(b) try an re-work the parts I am concerned about, possible blending issues

(c) leave alone as they signpost the journey I have been on

While I finish off the last few I will mull over these options. I guess neither decision is wrong as long as its all documented in my supporting work.

I’ve been wandering around the studios looking a bit of a loony with my sound machine – headphones and mic, recording sound. I started by trying to engage people in a specific conversation about the journey they’ve been on throughout the duration of the course, but we all found that quite hard – becoming shy about being recorded. So I resorted to just setting the recorder up to record natural chatter. I have yet to edit any of it, but I have been and got advice about how to do this. Next weeks job me thinks – to play around with the 6 or 7 conversations I have recorded. I plan to overlay all the conversations, my aim being to create ‘babble’ rather than coherent identifiable conversations.

Tomorrow is our last ever tutorial, when voiced by my friend Ruth it felt a bit sad; little reminders that the whole experience is soon coming to an end :O(

I won’t even be there for the whole tutorial. I’m going along to the Q-art convener at the Slade in the afternoon. Put to the tutor that I had the opportunity to go as an invited party by Richard, to talk about my blogging experience, he totally encouraged me to go to that. So a busy and exciting day tomorrow.

Our tutorial is to explore documentation ideas and ensure we all know whats expected of us there. Hopefully I’ll have enough time to print out some stuff to take in examples of what I plan to do here.

Thought I’d posted this on Sunday, just realised it was sat unpublished on my mac. Doh!!!

The week didn’t calm down much and I found I wasn’t as productive as I have been. Lots of distractions – more people about to catch up with after the holidays; anxiety (I guess) about the imminent final 1-2-1 tutorial before the show and dissertation marks pick-up.

As punishment – harsh! – necessity really, I went in yesterday (Saturday) to paint and try and get back on track.

The tutorial was a bit odd but positive in its outcome. I have since started recording experimentally for my sound piece accompaniment, so thats a goer hopefully.

Am getting a bit tired now and can’t seem to shake it off. We all are, but the thing thats keeping us going is that the end is in sight… albeit that in itself brings on panic, of a different kind, panic that we won’t make the deadline, panic that we won’t quite finish our work,…. We’re doing a good job of reassuring each other and helping each other stay calm though, which helps.

So I got it wrong! I have tried and I have tried to write my blog and upload it directly from my iphone, but I still haven’t succeeded :O( I can write it in the notes and send it to myself be email to upload, but I can’t copy and paste the note into this box on my phone or write directly into it.. if anyone else knows how to please help.

As for the Twitter advice, thanks Rachel, I’ll look into it.

A few more people in on Monday than have been during the holidays but not so’s you’d notice. Our first meeting was yesterday, and there were tutorials so much more busy. Been asked continuously about when we are getting our dissertations back – it’s not on the timetable and there’s no notices up so I’m as clueless as the next person, but I guess everyone is getting a bit anxious as we were told at some point it would be this week… I don’t know how I feel, I’m not really worrying about it, haven’t got time and there’s nothing we can do about the mark now anyway. Getting it now could just prove a distraction to getting the degree show work completed, especially if its not what you’d hoped for.

Someone asked, apparently it’s Friday we pick up the marks.

As for the painting so far this week, Monday I struggled with one, and Tuesday I erased half of it and re-did it. The nose and mouth were all wrong and it was not at all satisfactory. The painting technician was in and I had a word with her. She made a big deal about me mixing my solvent and oil into my paint directly and said that I should have a pot of just mediums mixed to use as I go. I guess I get that but what I am doing works for me right now and at some point these decisions have been made (probably out of ignorance you understand) that have enabled me to progress as I have and I’m loathed to change my routine this close to the finish line. What I did do was make up a pot of medium anyway to help with the part dried surface I was now trying to work with. It did help a bit. I am now ok with the painting.

The meeting was admin really, about deadlines, cluster groups for hanging the show, procedures, things to watch out for, PV, etc.. Even though a lot of it has been mentioned before its now more imminent and a few people are now a bit freaked out.

Hmm.. how to ‘stay calm and carry on’ ….

New week, and a new term. Everyone should be back today, providing they weren’t out of the country and are therefore caught up in all this flight-grounding business due to the volcanic ash from Iceland. It seems a great idea, go on holiday and often wish you got stranded and couldn’t get back…. but I bet anyone off the course affected by it is probably freaking out right now as there’s not long left till our deadline and there’s no obvious end to this air crisis. It’s affected quite a few of my friends, some on holiday, some on business trips. Thinking of you all.

I got down to my teens last week, I’m going into this week with 16 paintings left to do. Bar the few I want to re-do, I don’t think thats a bad place to be at all, considering we have 3 weeks studio time left. But as I said last time there’s so much more ‘stuff’ to get done. I did write a list (no particular order yet):

*update website

*artist statement

*book/catalogue of paintings

*documentation – diary; internet research; gallery visits; painting processes; bibliography; a-n update…

*dissertation ‘recording’- promised myself I’d get this done during this unit of work, its not being marked, just for self satisfaction really. The dissertation should already be marked and we should get marks back this week if rumours hold true. Yikes!

*soundpiece?

*animation?

*postcards/business cards

On the most part I have till the 4th June when the assessment starts to get through this little lot. But before then I have to finish my piece and hang it in the space, after preparing that.

So, as I said a lot to get done!!!

Been pretty busy again this last week. Painting yes, how did you guess. But also, I have at last worked out a system for posting updates more frequently on my phone.

I’m also investigating Twitter, yes Twitter. I’ve been ignoring it for forever, I do Facebook and have done for about 4 years now but haven’t really understood the advantage of Twitter over Facebook. Still don’t as yet. But, thanks to Richard’s invite, I now have a Twitter name “BeNice4” and will try and get my head around it this week during my commute time. Any tips will be most gratefully received, or should I say tweets??? Q: Can you update your blog via twitter? Is that a step too far? I guess thats the next logical stage, isn’t it? Maybe when I know more about it I’ll be able to answer that question myself. It does look like it could be a useful info bank.

Anyway, paintings. I had my second record week last week. Put in the hours mind you, but it paid off. Nice and refreshed from my holiday I guess. A couple of them were a bit daunting: “Kaysha’s” skin colour I was worried about and the fact her glasses split one of her eyes in two; “Roger’s” rimless glasses and I guess with him being that much older, then there was his moustache; “Tom’s” (we have two) moustache too, I’d applied the latex all wrong on this one and feared it would cause me some issues, it was at the wrong angle.