Civitella

We went to Civitella Italy for a week. It was a great great experience.

The point of the trip was to do drawing but I also managed to improve my german and learned a lot of cool new 'slang' words and a touch of italian (spoken with an awful english accent).

We drove up on the 27th April and the journey lasted from 5:30- like 8pm. It was long but nice to go through all the different places and be on the road. Left on sat and arrived back in Darm sunday morning.

When we got there it was really nothing like I expected. It's a really old rustic town on a hill which was pretty much deserted other than the visiting students with lots of vast landscape views over short windy brick walls.

On the first full day we all met up in the studio and discussed our plans for the week. My plan was to draw lots and lots and just somehow fit everything together at the end.

I started drawing focussing on perspectives and then tried to be a bit more looser using ink and oil pastels and experimenting a bit with colour. I also kept another small sketchbook doing simple line drawings. I had some feedback from my tutor suggesting to continue this and using small squared paper format and just make lots of these sketches to fill up the wall space so this is what I did for the entire week.

Although I usually enjoy using a more experimental approach it was good for me to do be able to do something with a kind of predictable outcome because it was really good for me to be able to focus and develop this style of drawing and manipulate specifics like where I filled in shadows and the layout etc. This way of working really worked for me and I was able to work really solidly, almost obsessively. I think I feel like it has been a good development because i've found it hard to be able to express what I want to communicate and get distracted by the main concept, but this week really proved to me the importance of basic drawing and the what interests me/ the way I see.

It was also good, as always, to see the way that other people were working. I really like working in a studio in close proximity of other people but also being able to have my own space.

Pics can be found on my tumblr http://thestuffclub.tumblr.com/

WELCOME poster for New Zealand

For one of my projjs for this semester I am designing a welcome poster to welcome New Zealand to Frankfurt (book fair).

This was my first try. It is of a Maori man. They have a traditional dance that they do where they over emphasize their facial expressions...



Feedback from crit: The most known image of someone sticking their tongue out is Einstein, what has Einstein got to do with NZ/Frankfurt/bookfair?

I also did this. It's Frankfurt and New Zealand skylines back to back.



Feedback was that nobody really knows the NZ skyline, it's not very distinguishable. I agree, I had trouble remembering which was which. I still like the image though.

Unorganised proj

Organisation of material a black hole in getting my work together and on time. I do things and it floats around and then I redo things and nothing links together. I loose things and it's really time consuming to finish projects because I have to organise a mass of stuffs.

START OF SEMESTER 2

I started my block photography course.

It made me realize- photography is HARD.

the tips I got from chatting to my tute today:

core elements

look for clean not busy background

If it's not 'clean' then scrap it, it's not a good photo.

do photoshop editing (I usually use iphoto?)

Focus + put thought into it (as a general rule).

I thought it would be quite effortless to get something good to be honest but actually it's really hard to meet the daily brief and do something that's coffee table book worthy (we're using these pics for the editorial course).

DAY 1:

take pic of unmade bed

10X pic without looking

Portrait of friend without face

What u eat

3X self portrait reflection

3X pic of something u wouldn't take a pic of

DAY 2:

(we were looking at Eggleston pics)

'Every element in the photograph counts'

All must be in the style of Eggleston:

Take pics of

tree

bin

shop window

woman

man

blossom

graffiti

'private' object

light

pic within pic

DAY 3

(learning about semiotics)

'we read signs all the time- even when dreaming'

find a personal context that represents femininity/masculinity

make 20 images that represent the vulva and 20 images that represent the phallus

DAY 4

Watched a documentary with Rowan Atkinson about ways to show humour

Watched a documentary about photographer Martin Parr who did photography with humour. Photos of boring in Boring.

Make 5 images of each phrase

'Aber hier und überhaupt, kommt es anders als man glaubt...'- Willhelm Busch

No matter what u expect, it will turn out differently anyway.

'Menschen mit Phantasie langweilen sich nie.' - Jakob Boshart

People with imagination are never bored.

Tomorrow we are going to Frankfurt.

Overall my natural instinct was to argue because I think that some of the things that we had to do kind of contradict the 'clean cut style'--- like taking photos without looking, it seemed like he wanted us to focus more about the concept rather than the editing so I haven't been focussing that much on creating 'good' photographs but then I realised that I need to gain this eye in my work in general (for example my surrealism publication) as sometimes I don't think of how everything fits together and I am not very purposeful when considering how everything fits together as a whole, instead I have been 'experimenting' and kind of sticking it all together. Good to be able to reflect on that.

So now I will take on the criticism and battle on..............

2nd semester

HALLO,

I've chosen my new courses for this semester. I will be taking:

A block photography course

In which the material I will make will be used on an

Editorial design course (we will be making coffee table book style books)

A freestyle typography course

and going on a trip to Civitella Italy to do drawing. Which is also a block course at the end of April.

I'm really looking forward to all of this and can't wait to get started (tomorrow).

LYFLYFLYF

It occurred to me that I haven't done a general post about LYF for a while.

This is a good thing, as I have actually been doing real living as it's been substantially cultural.

I have gone through a few obstacles in the past weeks since winter hols ended, Cambers Liv left so 'the English girls' became 1, Deadlines, finding a new place to live but i've come through strong and i'm alive and living on.

I went to a good 'diploma' (basically- finishing) party on the weekend which was really really great, was loving life and speaking german and meeting people and dancing. Lots of people that I met are leaving to do work placements/go elsewhere on Erasmus which is really sad! I only hope that there will be great new people to meet. Cool.

Me and my flatmates are getting on really well and i'm super sad to be moving out. They are also in the design department and it's fun to get another point of view because they are all doing exciting things and have been studying longer than me and know what they're doing.

I'm enjoying work a lot more now since actually finishing my projects. The Entwurf (publication-movements) proj was really challenging but talking to other people on the course it seems like everyone thought the same and I don't think anyone was entirely satisfied with themselves, which I think is kind of a good thing (I think?!) coz it makes you think of how you could have done better. The main thing I learned from that course was how to research and that you should be doing something you believe in so you can justify it no matter what anyone else says.

Frank said at the start of Erasmus that it was good to be unsure, I don't know if this was part of a learning strategy? Because we were SO unsure and then after the holidays we were so lost.

Then he said if you believe in what you are doing, you can argue the brief.

I have about a week left until I go back to England for a couple of weeks. Today I am going to Muenster for the weekend we also might drop by in Koeln for the CaRnIvAl. Then next week I have to move and i'm gonna apply for a job and go to the architecture museum! I'm also trying to sketchbook and keep on making stuff. Lots of fun things.

Danke.

MM Storytelling VID

MM Storytelling from Kate Bailey-Neale on Vimeo.

This is my vid that I made with the illustrations from the compact course that we did in the first few weeks.

I accepted the challenge of learning new programs and I am really happy with how it's all come out! Defs gonna do more vids now i've learned some AE skills.