Visual Exploration 1 - Paige Wheeler

 Week 8 RISO Print For my RISO print, I chose a chair I have at home that I love dearly, that has now become my dogs favourite chair. I chose the same colours as the chair as I liked the contrast as it was, and it was different to many of the other prints I had seen beforehand.  When starting this, I took into account alot of the smaller details of the images (alike each individual line on the chair), and which parts I would leave white, as to have a 'knockout' effect. With these things in mind, I drew out each page with the appropriate shades of grey, colouring it in with markers. Although I did find ensuring each page matches the other difficult, I'm very happy with how it came out, a strong foundation for my Riso. When actually putting my pieces through the machine, the red inks (or main piece) went through first, printing a few times. After this, the dark blue went through and overlayed the red, creating my finished piece. I love how they turned out, even if it smudge...

Week 6/7 'London/Local Folk' For this project, we were asked to choose a person in a crowd whilst walking around, and to draw and write about them. Splitting the page into 4, I drew someone that caught my eye, my impressions of this person, where I saw them and the atmosphere, and drew the area I saw this person. We were asked to do this with 10 different people, (of which I have 8 so far). For this task, I went into my local town at home as I unfortunately couldn't go to the London trip with everyone else. I decided to do this task loosely, wandering around slowly and capturing the essence of a person and place rather than seriously focusing on minor details. At first, I was unsure and far too serious about the task, but as I went along my confidence grew and I found it fun to do (as seen through the series of drawings).      My two favourites I created are 'Kaitlyn' and 'Spencer', as I feel I really captured these people simply, but with enough motion as t...

Week Five 'On/Off' For this day brief, we were tasked with creating multiple thumbnail ideas for two images that correspond together with the theme 'On/Off'. We were then told to create the two images, based off of our best thumbnail. It took me a few goes to choose which thumbnails I liked, having to make a mind-map to help me generate ideas. In the end, I decided to go with my diver idea, as it is very colourful and different to other ideas. I created the final piece with my iPad on Procreate, using multiple brushes and colours to get two very different images. (Sketch up for my final piece ideas)

 Week Four 'Composition' For this week, we were given a set of three words (a person, an animal, and an object), and to create multiple compositional images with only these three words. I was given Dancer, Dragonfly, and Magnifying Glass. I decided to take this task in a minimal way, exploring a variety of different details and abstract ideas without using many colours. Although I could have darkened the pencil drawings more so they're easier to see, I really love how it all turned out. The colours are all on a similar palette and all tie together, whilst the variety of different materials (inks, acrylics etc.) push the differences and gain multiple different finishes. This task was really fun to experiment with, although I did find it hard at first to mix the three words together to create nice images.

Week Three 'This is not a tree' For this week, we were tasked to choose and research about a tree and make multiple different outcomes with a variety of materials and techniques. I chose the Pine Tree as my tree, as it is by far my favourite tree species put there. Between its beautiful aesthetic and structure, to its symbolism for Christmas, I think the Pine tree is the perfect pick. For my first page, I chose to start with the simple shapes and significant pieces of a Pine tree. The needles are easily the most noticeable identifying feature, along with their pyramid-like shape, seed bearing pinecones, and their reddish-brown, or gray bark.  I chose to show these features with a mix of soft charcoal, HB pencil and a graphite pencil. These are some of the materials I am most comfortable with, so I chose these to start as a warmup, and to also give deep details to the images. I then chose to move onto colour with water colours, focusing on softer images and colour rather than an...

Week two 'Cathedral' Part 1 In the first few tasks, we were asked to create multiple different works based on a cathedral, using three mark making techniques we used on our sheets last week, and with no reference photos to help us.  2 1  4 3 Putting all of these pieces in order of creation, I can definitely see the growth in confidence as I tried more materials and enjoyed creating rather than worrying if my work would be accurate or not. Having not been in a Cathedral for a long time, I found this task difficult without reference photos. However, I quickly began warming up as I allowed myself freedom to create rather than being picky and precious with my work. I like my last three pages, as one shows a deeper, potentially spiritual symbolism, whilst the other two were loose and fun to create and look at compared to the first two. In my mind, cathedrals are very beautifully created architecture, as I am not religious it doesn't mean to me much in any other way, so if I were...