Monday 29 June 2020

Plinths, Foam, Blind Embossing, Sherlock Holmes



Been making some very slow progress with the missing sculpture plinth. Got another few layers of different colours of paint on and it’s looking a bit better. Still plenty of progress to be made but also just getting to grips with what works best in terms of colours and masking options. It’s definitely going to be a slow burner to be chipped away at when possible. 



Got some quotes back for making the fictional gun foam insert. Some were surprisingly expensive but the more I looked the better it got. The other thing was that the price was significantly reduced when buying a few at a time. Looks like they’re going to be additions of 3 or 4 depending on the size. 


We’ve been thinking more about the display of them and initially be thought they would be good in the Perspex boxes we’ve been making for others works. However, after discussing it a bit further we thought that an aluminium tray frame would be more consistent with the idea. It would also be powder coated to match the grey of a Peli case. We’ve also landed on a title for this series of works; every work will be The Division of Perspective and then in brackets there will be the name of the weapon or tool. Dividing perspective is a method of showing a 3 dimensional object in 2 dimensional space. This addition of a dimension is exactly what we’re attempting to do with these fictional objects; give them a life beyond the screen, another perspective. 
There have been some open calls we’ve been finding and today we saw one for paper artworks to be exhibited at Manchester library and it made us think about a work we’ve had on the list for a while. It’s all to do with writing indentation clues in films; when people write a letter or a note, it's possible that the pressure of their pen or pencil will create indentations not just on the paper they're writing on, but on any paper that's underneath it, too. In some sorts of story (particularly Mystery Fiction, though not exclusively), making use of this fact is a well-established investigative technique. If you want to know what someone wrote on a notepad but the note is no longer there, just look at the next piece, possibly shading it with a pencil to bring out the contrast. 

Writing Indentation Clue - TV Tropes

It’s the invisibility and discovery aspects that really interested us and it reminded us of blind embossing/debossing; a printing technique that doesn't use ink, where you stamp a mark of something into a material, leaving an indentation. We wanted to create a work where a small scrap of paper had something blind embossed onto it but wasn’t scribbled over like in films, it’s still invisible, still waiting to be discovered. After researching further into it, we found that it was mentioned by Sherlock Holmes when telling Watson how he got his information as "a fact that has dissolved many a happy marriage". However, in this case, he uses the blotting paper to obtain the reverse message, as the writer had used a pen. We then decided that we would both use the quote and blotting paper for the piece. In terms of display, the scrap is going to be shown in a white frame, and within a wonkily angled mount. The idea here was that we’re continually adding elements to the piece but since they’re all of the same colour they’re not actually enabling the note to be seen more directly. Usually a frame and a mount are used to point out the object within, but these ones don’t manage that. We’re going to call it You see, but you do not observe, which is another Sherlock Holmes quote.


Tuesday 16 June 2020

Painting the Aphrodite of Knidos plinth, new photos of old works, improved matte painting, new cucoloris work

The green paint arrived for the empty plinth work! The first attempt hasn’t gone too well at all but we’re revising our method and we’re going to prime it with a thin layer of grey so hopefully it’ll stick more to the edges. I don’t think I ever explained the significance of the Aphrodite of Knidos to the work. The artwork itself is a recreation of the plinth for the lost artwork, Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles. The original sculpture was destroyed but hundreds of versions and replicas of it were made across the ancient world, in full size and miniature, even appearing as the design on coins. The sculpture lived on even though its initial form was gone, which is exactly what we’re trying to do here, the footprint enables the statue to keep being remade in people’s minds. 



Re-photographed the blue sign with the new production method. Initially, we produced the piece using a vinyl film which was stuck onto the front of the aluminium. Now, we get it sprayed on top and it has a different feeling; much more tactile with the layer of paint. 


The better matte painting has arrived and it really is better in every way; the painting is more accurate; the canvas is proper fabric instead of a plastic-y texture. We’ll definitely be using this company for future jobs. Thinking more about getting the Sim paintings fabricated, it would be a lovely grid or line depicting the progress. They would all be made the same size (20 x 25cm) to convey the uniformity of the painting process, both within Sims and in the physical painting process. It’ll be fairly expensive since there’s 10 paintings but it’s just another one of those works that can be put into production once the money is there.


A new idea that’s just at the beginning of being formulated is to do with a device in film-making called a cucoloris. It’s used in lighting for film, theatre and still photography, and it’s a template for casting shadows or silhouettes to produce patterned illumination. They come in a variety of different styles but the objects themselves look almost like abstract artworks. Our initial idea is to make custom cucolorises which would have been used in particular scenes with unique shadows and display them as wall mounted sculptural works. Maybe the scenes will be imaginary or they’ll be ones from actual films, still plenty to think about. They would be laser cut out of wood and we’re still in the process of thinking about how to convey more of the idea of casting shadows.


Monday 1 June 2020

Artists and Friends Podcast, Matte paintings, and the point of view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

And another week just slips by scarily quickly…The podcast is continuing to take up a lot of my time but I’m really enjoying it! And I would prefer to be over prepared than under prepared. And I’m especially enjoying it now that we’ve got people coming on to be interviewed and we get to talk to them about their process and particular work; that really makes it very fulfilling and so different to just discuss people without them being there. We’ve got an episode coming out tomorrow with Robyn Nichol who’s an artist we’ve really enjoyed for some time and have actually bought some of her work previously. We’re also doing an episode on Channel 4 Random Acts videos and interviewing a couple of really great artists, Zaiba Jabbar & Cath Shayler, who have previously produced films with them. 



But things are still slowly progressing with our own work. We’ve decided which fictional weapon will be the first to be cut out of foam; it’s going to be the point of view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The way the gun works in the film is that when fired at someone it makes them see things from the person that fired it’s point of view. And this feels like the most appropriate one we’ve found so far, considering it’s very similar to what writers, or set designers, or directors are doing when they produce a film, or a book, or a play; enabling people to see your point of view, building a story or item from your mind and putting it into the physical world so an audience can see it too. We’ve decided that all the foam pieces are going to be black on the top layer and then colour beneath is going reference the colour of the original weapon or tool, in this case yellow. I’ve included an outline and reference image to both the weapon and the foam example below. 


The first matte painting test arrived! It looks really great on the wall and it’s lovely to see one of these in the flesh! I’ve been living with it in the house and it hasn’t felt too dark and dingy to have up which is something I was worried about. A slightly strange turn of events is that another company that I asked for a quote has accidentally completed another painting of the same scene. This painting actually looks a bit better than the one we already have; the detailing is just that little bit more defined and it’s an overall more accurate copy of the original image. We’re getting sent that one as well and we’re potentially just going to give the first one away to someone as an undocumented piece – or perhaps it’ll be an edition of 1 with 1 artist proof, who knows! I've linked both paintings below, I feel like you can definitely tell which is better.