ITAP Lecture 4: Research and inspiration (Principle 1: Research)

Researching is an important process for any artists, looking at all my other post, especially the one about inspiration we should be aware that through research we are able to collect and find many great and inspiring pieces of art work. I  personally try to research things constantly, I can learn different techniques photographers use, especially if I come across someone’s blog when they talk about their own experiences. This is a good problem solver for anyone.
In the process of making my magazine I had to research many information which would possibly interest my targeted audience. I found out that books and magazines as well as internet are not the only source of research. I actually went out and spoke to some people, which provided me with “first hand” information. Investigating others people’s work and the subject gives us wider knowledge about it. There are some examples of my work showing how I contribute to my research.

I have researched some information about Birmingham at the very start of the project, so I would have an overall idea about Birmingham and what possible themes for a magazine I could use. I found out few things about history of a city, population, area, education and many more. Walking around and exploring the city as also as much helpful.

Other way I do research is, regarding photography, is that I collect other photographers and artists’ work and try to explore it and influence my work with similar techniques or ideas. This came across really helpful especially when I was stuck during creation of my work.

Here you can see two pages from my journal showing that.

ITAP Lecture 3: Connections (Principle 3: Relationships developed from existing forms of historical culture)

My previous post about Marilyn Monroe was actually linked to this principle as well. Here I will look more at art movements, in order to understand some of the historical culture.

ITAP Lecture 3: Connectivity (Principle 1: Notions of originality)

According to Oxford dictionary to be original means to create the earliest form of something, from copies can be made. Within contemporary artists not many people are original, many artist take inspiration from some other great work created by someone else in history.

Obviously work cannot be copied by other artists due to the copyright law established in early 17^th century, which only applied to books but later in time it applied to other range of works such as arts and music. By taking inspiration, a artist do not copy other’s work, however in many examples we can see clear connections to previous versions of similar art pieces.

 Let’s have a look at the photograph created by one of the MPTV photographers of Marilyn Monroe and her famous blowing dress from 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch”.

Since then the idea of fan being used in photography spread more. There is most probably more history for the fan, but this was the first photograph I have seen that someone was using it and this photograph has been “copied” plenty of times.

Looking at other examples we can clearly see the link between one and another. Marilyn Monroe inspired many contemporary photographers. Some even used similar costumes. The pose all these models are using while holding their dresses down, clearly links to Marilyn’s photograph.

This is a contemporary piece by Jason Stitt

This is another work created by the same photographer.

This is work created by unknown photographer, however there is a clear link to Marilyn's photograph, the pose, the costume. The use of the similar looking white dress, makes it look like it is a contemporary remake of the original MPTV photograph.

Lastly I would like to mention that the pose of the Monroe in the photograph inspired the creators of “Betty Boop” to sell the statutes of the famous cartoon character looking similarly to Marilyn Monoroe.

As I said before in the post about the managing creative environment that it is important to be inspired. For me to be creative, means to be inspired. 
I took inspiration from many artists before (in my A2 level) like Magritte and Salvador Dali or Jerry Uelsmann, all of them are surrealist artist I have linked all of their work ideas with mine and came across quite interesting results. In my journal for this year of studies I have looked at ways other photographers work in order to gain some ideas of how to create my own work.

Martin Parr

My photograph

This is a piece I took in response to Martin Parr's photograph. I thought I could improve this photograph by adding some inspiration from other artist. In this case I looked at Uta Barth, who I took inspiration before following my whole project.

Uta Barth

Uta Barth uses out of focus photograph to create unconventional pieces of art. I really enjoy looking at her work and therefore I decided to make my above photograph into unconventional piece using technique I learnt by looking at Uta's work.

This is a piece I came out with. Having an idea for the subject inspired by Martin Parr and Style by Uta Barth.

ITAP Lecture 2: Development of Creative Thought and Structure in Illustration and Graphic Art (Principle 5: Managing creative environment)

This principle is really important to understand. The environment we work in an huge factor affecting our creativity. Different people are interested in different things, collections and hobbies. For an artist, it is really important to keep themselves inspired and having a inspiring environment is a key to the success. Many people work in different ways so having a place which would suit their working needs will keep them going. It is good to change the furniture etc around in order to figure out new ways of keeping yourself inspired.


Even some artists include their work place in their work. This is an example of work of an artist called Piyali Sen Dasgupta.
He shows here the way his own workplace looks like, which can be an inspirational piece for other people. This is a contemporary piece called “Artist Workplace” which has been drawn in year 2000. I think such a work can tell us quite a lot about an artist, show the way they work “behind the scenes”, some of the work may seem perfect but the environment they work in definitively isn’t perfect, just needs to suit an individual needs.

I was looking throughout the web for some more inspirational pieces and I actually came across an article about a part of gallery being turned into an artist workplace, which allowed the visitors to see artist working and seeing how his environments suits him.

Niels Ellmoos was an artist who gave a Gatakers Artspace’ visitors, in Maryborough, opportunity to see the way he works in.

Looking at other artists I started to wonder how I can manage my own environment to make sure it is suitable for me to work it. I have some factors which stop me from creating a perfect place, due to having to live with my parents. However I am slowly improving on what my room looks like, as I am still learning I haven’t figured out a way I like to work in best. I am sure this will come over time. So far best move I did towards creating my own environment was to change my walls colour and get a corkboard. Having one of my favourite colour surrounding me makes me feel cosy and focused. Also the corkboard helps me to be more organised and remember all the tasks I need to do. As a photographer I don't need many materials, which is that’s why I am going to set a computer in my room.

I never try to keep my workplace tidy, because during work I produce I will always leave a mess, and to be honest I seem to know where everything is then. If I tidy up it doesn’t seem as personal and interesting. I think we shouldn’t judge people on what their environment is, as it should suit only them personally.


In the lecture collections have been mentioned. This helps to use sorting and organising skills. I collect business cards, where I look at their designs and shapes. It’s quite interesting to see how people advertise themselves. When collecting things it makes you feel passionate about something and this is what I am about photography. I have lots of old photographs which are important to me hung and set around my room, so whenever I feel down or out of inspiration I look at them and try to bring back some memories. Sometimes I might have done something interesting which would be an idea for a project.

ITAP Lecture 2: Development of Creative Thought and Structure in Illustration and Graphic Art (Principle 4: Developing Ideational Fluency)

In the process of creating ideas the lecture about Developing Ideational Fluency came in quite handy. It showed me that it doesn’t matter whether my ideas are good or useless or impossible to create in the very first stage my project. What matters is that I note down all the ideas I have, whether they are good or silly. They can be separated and thought about later. The fact that I would create many ideas is important as later I can evaluate them and see which ones can be used. Having many ideas helps me to make sure that I always have a “plan B” in case something doesn’t work out. Ideational fluency is about quantity and diversity of ideas, the quality doesn’t matter at this stage.

At the very beginning I have sat down and wrote down all the ideas for my magazine I could think off, having a little brainstorm wasn’t hard at all. Here is the page from my journal showing that:

There are only few ideas I thought of during the initial process of creating my magazine. Many of those ideas weren’t used, but nothing stopped me of noting them down. I could later pick the ideas I liked and explore them further.

During my ideas exploration I have found out the way I am working, and kept layouts similar for some of the pages in my journal because this was the way I like to keep myself organised. Photography is my chosen route within Visual Communication, my journal was mainly focused on it. I have stuck in photographs and wrote little annotation about them. I also looked at other artists’ work for some inspiration. Here’s the example of my journal pages. My journal have similar layout throughout, but it doesn’t mean it’s all the same, as I used some other pages towards exploration of materials and other ideas. There is a example of my work:

ITAP Lecture 1 : Reflective Visual Journal (Principle 2: Utilise your creative brain)

Principle 5.
Utilise your creative brain
I was really interested and intrigued by the lecture about brain functions. It is amazing how one part of our brain can work differently to the other. As been told on the lecture that one can let us develop creative actions, and explorations through "play and fun". The other one is the thinking and evaluating part. Using them both together as "one" can help us create an creative as well as intellectual piece.

As the image here is showing the left part of the brain is like accountancy office, which means there is a lot of evaluating, question asking and problem solving in this part, which seems to be just straightforward thinking. The colourful and joyful looking part of the brain, which is left hand side, is the experimenting part. It has been described as child at play during the lecture. We need both of those brain functions in order to be creative and realistic. The parts of the brain seem to be separate, because of the jobs they do, however they are still connected as “playful” part does its task, while the “accountancy” part will evaluate whole process of doing. Using both of the brain functions effectively will affect our creativity and improve it. I tried to apply the whole process in my journal, firstly to play with the materials and ideas I had and then I tried to think critically about it, and see whether the idea will work. Here is the page of my journal showing this method being applied:

This is the page I have used towards the ideas of my “dummy” books, which were set to do during the illustration. I decided to do a sample of a pop-up book and then see how will it work as a magazine. I have done it double spread so I had two pages which I would write little annotations in. I have used one as “yes” and the other as “no”. This helped me to visually see positives and negatives about the work.

This is another page from my journal, showing another “play time”. I was exploring different ways of spray painting and using ink, felt pens and charcoal in order to find out a title for a magazine. None of the ideas really worked, but this actually allowed me to see why they didn’t work. I also added some evaluative annotations.







I tried to apply this principle in my journal as much as I could, as it helps so explore my ideas in better depth and helps to figure out the ways things might work or might not work.

ITAP Lecture 1 : Reflective Visual Journal (Principle 1: Draw. Work by hand)

On Tuesday 27th of September I have attended an informative lecture about creation and development of Reflective Visual Journal (RVJ). We started off with a quotation of Pablo Picasso words which are quite intrigue. “I began with an idea and then it becomes something else”, this proves to us that over time, we can achieve something completely different than we originally planned to; hence we need RVJs to help us throughout the journey of developing and creating new ideas.

There were five principles during the lecture, I have pick two which mostly interested me and decided to write about them.

Principle 1: Draw. Work by hand

Before in my studies I was sure not everyone can visualise their ideas through drawing, and you have to be especially talented to do this. I learned that this is not true. Everyone can draw in a way it suits them as an individual. Replacing text by drawings is much more visually appealing and lets us explore ourselves more as text can be limited and our imagination isn’t. 

In my RVJ I have used both drawings and text to make my ideas appeal to me and others more effectively:

 

All drawings in my RVJ have and will have their purpose; they won’t be just random doodles so my Journal looks attractive. Drawing can be easier changed than a text and also imagination works on higher level if we look at the visualised idea we have created. Ever get stuck on the idea exploration, one move of the rubber and the whole image can be changed, however in text we have to read, imagine and rewrite, which can be hard, seeming as not everyone is literate. Therefore drawing and sketching the ideas out is better problem solver than describing those using words which are limited.

Using hand helps us to explore our creativity better. I am aware that now days, computers, are developed onto quite high standard, letting us change, edit or even remove things with one click of the mouse, however this is still not the same as using traditional methods. Using the computer doesn’t give you a feeling of satisfaction you get when you achieve something good, because this was done by a machine not your own hand. Computers are and always will be limited compared to what human’s imagination and brain can achieve. We cannot play with different materials while using digital methods and this makes us loose on the fun, play and exploration aspects.