3rd April: I was supposed to do some collage work but instead of doing that first, I wanted to design it first in 2D before I attempted it in 3D.

I designed 4 of them that day. It took me the entire lesson to do that as it was hard coming up with ideas. I then thought it would be simpler if I just drew something that just popped out of my mind from the primary research I did going in and out of the museums to gather inspiration. I did this with most of them. I wanted to have a variety and not just a few. As soon as I finished designing, the class was already over. I then went over to the textiles are to grab some cloth for the collaging to do some work but truthfully, I never used the cloths that I took. Instead I used wire, thread, fake leaves. chicken wire plastics strips, paper, string and stapler bullets.

Most of my designs came from the Duxford War Museum where I was heavily inspired by new weapons I could play with in my designs incorporating wheels, missiles, guns and so much more.

My first design was inspired by planes and trenches and knives. I thought about all the different kinds of ways a person can harm themselves. I wanted to portray self harm with this. To emphasize my point I even added blood to the mesh.

The second design is a light one. I wanted to make use of a bow and arrow. Again, I wanted to show self harm through this. Arrows are sticking out of her feet. The crossbow is hanging in front of her, the arrow facing upwards to her throat. She has arrows on her back like an archer. This one was inspired by the movie Brave. I recently watched it and it was really empowering.

The last design is relied heavily on the Duxford War Museum. I looked through Land Warfare and saw camouflage helmets, wheels, machine guns and lots of barbed wires. Instead of self harm, I wanted to INFLICT harm. I added a helmet and a wheel as a shield for herself while I gave her machine gun wings as bullets fly out of them.

Overall, I liked the ideas of the collage but I don’t like sticking stuff onto them. I do not like collaging but I will make myself like it somehow as I need to be better as an art student learning. Throughout the collage, I know my laziness can be seen throughout this and it’s because I’m not good at it. I will learn to be better at it and be more productive.

24th April: I was on my way back to Cambridge from London. I was supposed to arrive earlier however, the jam in London was so bad, I missed out 3D class. I didn’t watch the video on the Kelpies and I didn’t know what a maquette was until Thursday which was the 25th of April.

Everyone in class had already started building their maquette so when I first came to class, I had no clue as to what a maquette was. As the lesson progressed, I then knew what a maquette was. It is a 3D prototype of the final design. At this point, we were supposed to have finished our collage but I didn’t as I had forgotten to bring my folio back to Malaysia with me. However, I did design a few body sculpture that my partner could wear. I pulled those designs out and started working.

At first, I wanted to follow the my designs as closely as I could. I wanted to make knives as wings that spread out in all directions. I could also manoeuvre it to move up and down. I also made a barbed wire headpiece but then as I progressed, I soon realised that I could not do that as I found many mistakes to my own designs I drew out. It wasn’t meaningful or practical. Yes I put in elements of Rachel Whiteread, Jean Tinguely and Rebecca Horn but I only thought about those elements instead of mine. I then thought about what I really wanted. I wanted to tell a story with my design. In a trench warfare, missiles fall out of the air and hit the trenches and explosions happen. I worked towards that. I changed my cardboard designed knives into an impact. I sprayed fake blood on it and added cardboard pieces to it but using hot glue gun.

To my dismay, I burned my fingers with the hot glue gun and it hindered the process of my work. I ran it in cold water for about 20 minutes but as soon as I took my finger out of the cold water, my finger immediately began to hurt again. I found a solution to this as I grabbed a plastic cup, filled it with cold water and dipped my finger to it and continued my work. I added red, yellow and white straw to the impact just to see what it would look like. I didn’t like it and I wasn’t going to do it for my final. I didn’t take it out cause it was already glued in place.

Next, I took a roll of wire and wrapped the mannequin with it. I wanted the effect of debris falling everywhere so I cut some paper into triangles and stuck it onto the wire using double sided tape. It looked pretty good but it was missing something. A missile. So I rolled up the paper into a cone and the other into a cylinder and stuck it together. I used hot glue gun and placed the missile right in the middle of the impact however, it did not seem to stick. I then thought of a solution. I ran to the Textiles cupboard and took out a needle and thread. At this point I knew I needed two hard to work so I took my finger out of the cold water and punctured the paper with the needle and tied it to the wire. I’m not going to lie, those5 minutes were the most crucial 5 minutes I’ve ever had but it was worth it as I saw the missile stay in place. I took photos of it and the lesson was over. It took my 6 hours to complete this and I was so bummed I burned my fingers because I reckon, I could have done a second one that day within the time limit but that did not stop me from progressing to do a second maquette.

I came to school on a Saturday and worked on the second maquette. I wanted to create a wire themed maquette. This idea came from WW1 when I studied about it. People heard loud noises in the trenches and made some of them go insane. With the wired headpiece from before, I wanted them to feel trapped in there. I also wanted to make screeching sounds because a lot of people can’t handle that sound. I created a body extension of a fingernail using chicken wire. I cut strips of chicken wire and earned some new fresh cuts on my hands but still worked anyways despite the pain. Once I did this, I folded the chicken wire in half, twisted it and pulled it to become longer. I then bended the chicken wire to make it seem like nails. When nails grow too long, the become curved. It did indeed made screeching noises when I ran it along a surface which was great.

Overall, I feel very accomplished with the maquettes I made. There were a few things I didn’t like. For example, getting injured and also the first maquette. I should have dismantled the cardboard and make something new instead of working it out further. I should have tried different options to see what worked best but in the end I’m quite glad with how it turned out. I hope to give my final design justice.

March 13 & 14: The first lesson I had was 3D design. It was a hectic lesson as we rushed to complete out body extentions after researching about Rebecca Horn. I considered elements of her work and applied it to my body extension for my partner. It didn’t go as well as I expected. For Fine Art, we made learnt about Rachel Whiteread and applied different techniques to our drawings that related to my topic; in this case, it was weapons used in wars.

I made CC wear 2 swords that acted as shoulder pads. This was to make her seem confident. This was inspired by Game of Thrones and Anchorwomen. The final season of Game of Thrones is fast approaching so I watched plenty of videos that helped me try to remember things for the new season to come. While watching the video, I was really fascinated with Lena Dunhams costume for Cersei Lannister. She had metal shoulder pads which I thought looked extremely cool. I was also inspired by Jon Snow’s cloak which was worn by Kit Harrington when he was on guard at the Nights Watch. The mesh isn’t that visible which was a shame as CC was wearing dark coloured clothing. I wish I would have wrapped 4-5 laters around it to emphasise the cloak however, I also did not want to waste the materials in the studio. Anchorwomen those days had shoulder pads to make them appear more confident as they had to speak up in front of the camera to deliver their news with dripping confidence.

The end result was quite disappointing as I had made a metal handle for the sword and a long blade made of straw on it to be tied to the head. I had also hope to make another to be placed onto her heart but due to time restraints, I could not finish it. In the end I had to improvise and make it seem like an unfinished armour for the hands.

If I had enough time, I would have improved on the quality by spray painting the card box grey or silver in colour. I did however like how the sword shoulder pads turned out. I didn’t budge as I attached them onto my model. I used tape to tape everything in place. I wanted my body extension to be as meaningful as Rebecca Horn. Initially I thought about giving her some confidence like the shoulder pads and the sword on her head was supposed to be stuck onto her head. The whole meaning of this would be my model has a swaggering confidence with all the ideas, creativity and the passion for what she wanted to do. But due to the war coming, she had to quit whatever she loved and was forced to join the army and go into war because of the governments irrational and naive decision to test out who is the more superior country. It was a shame I didn’t have much time to complete my work. I had half of it there which was better than nothing but my body extensions wasn’t all that good. It was a disappointing experience for me but I can’t be too hard on myself as this lesson was basically learning and understanding Rebecca Horn. I feel like I understood her loud and clear after watching videos about her as well as analyse her wearable art. I was even able to apply and give meaning to my work which is kind of a win.

Next in Fine Art, we researched about Rachel Whiteread which I have done before this lesson. I’ve written an individual blog for her as I felt she needed her own page for me to showcase her brilliance. Based on Rachel Whiteread’s many techniques and medias, I made 10 drawings of my weapons. I only managed to finish 2 drawings in class which were stippling and continuous line drawing on an ink painted background with white correction fluid. It was a bit of a shame I could not get more done in the lesson. I draw very slowly so it was very frustrating to see so many people finish it fast and having it look extremely good. In the end, while writing this blog, I feel like I shouldn’t compare myself to other people as I’m trying as hard as I can coming from an academic background. I never had really did anything artistic back in secondary school but I did have the passion for Art and Design so it was only fitting. I managed to complete 10 drawings with different medias. I decided to draw them all based on primary pictures I took at the FitzWilliam museum. This was because when I went there, the museum was crowded and overflowing with people with people to the point I got pushed while trying to draw there. It was a bit of a shame but I’m still content with the pictures I took and doing them at home with different medias.

Overall it was really nice to be able to research about the artist, gain some insight to their work and also gain some inspiration from them for my body sculpture I will build in this unit. There were some highs and lows but I’ll take them all into account and keep on improving my practicing more drawings with a level headed and humble mindset.

March 14: We studied about Rachel Whiteread and her artworks. I knew of Rachel Whiteread before the class as I did an artist research based on her however, as I did my artist research on her previously, I found that it was hard for me to understand her as I didn’t go too in depth about her. This lesson was a good chance to bring what I have learnt about her and learn more about her through the lesson.

Before looking into her artworks, we focused on what inspired her. She was inspired by everything around her especially her hometown. We watched a video of her talking about what she collected. It was fascinating to see her ranging collection of different objects. Whiteread didn’t have a specific place to collect her objects. She collected them everywhere all around the world. She even collected them from her house where her parents wanted to throw objects which seemed dull but she thought it was lovely with patterns on it so she kept them. She talked about collecting children’s toys, caskets, stick guns, swimming caps fossils, glass,rocks, a sculpture of a nose and so on and so forth. She didn’t necessarily pick the objects because it related to her next project. Whiteread genuinely thought the objects were interesting and just started collecting them and didn’t think too much about them. She had no reason to collect them yet whatever she collected, she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. She also thinks it was essential for her to collect things as a sculptor as it is useful she said. Whiteread said that whatever she kept and collected 20 years ago was useful to her in making her artworks. This also created more meaning in her artwork as she could recall the memory of her obtaining the object. It’s fascinating to see whatever she kept could be used someday. It was all about strike of inspiration she had. Once she had that, she could just open her vault of objects she collected to help her in creating them.

Rachel Whiteread didn’t focus on one media to draw on. She used a variety ranging from furniture, graph papers, canvas, plain papers, black paper and etc. In relations to my work, I stuck graph paper onto an A5 paper to show that I used the same media as her which was quite interesting. I drew my weapon atop it. The techniques she uses on her media are ink on paper, correction fluid, watercolour on paper, acrylics on graph paper, rubber and high density foam, collage, crushed pigments, laser cut drawing on wood, prints, handprints and tracing.

For her sculptures, she believes in building up layers. She doesn’t make studies on it but rather works her way through improvements. She often casts her sculptures. An example would be House. It captured the negative meaning the reverse of what it was supposed to be. In a way, she made something that people wouldn’t notice, stand out. It was as if she froze the absence of space as well. In this process with House, She first started with Photographs. Once the photographs were done, she immediately made drawings on how she envisioned it and finally removed the interior of the House and made a sculpture out of it. It was a controversial art and garnered lots of attention both positive and negative.

Looking at Rachel Whiteread made me feel inspired to make the unnoticeable, noticeable. I want to be able to show that through my body sculpture and make the dullness shine.

11 March: From what he had learnt last week, we finally started creating digital patterns on the macs using Photoshop. We did mirror repeats and offset repeats.

We started off with Mirror repeats.

I scanned my previous work that I did in the lesson before this. This was inspired by the artists in which I had researched and analysed previously. I went to the printer to scan my work. I had accidentally scanned it in A4 so I had to scan in twice. This cost me some time. I know myself better than anyone and I know I work very slowly in something that I’m not familiar with. As a result, I finished later than the rest but it was worth it in the end.

I then took the photo out of my email and dragged it to photoshop. I used the rectangle marquee tool to help me select the feathers that I wanted. I use the lasso tool to help me select my feathers if they were too close together. I then created new layers individual to what I selected with my tools. At first I was lost and asked everyone around me but I realised the handouts we were given greatly helped me overcome my problem. I found that listening in class definitely helped me visually with my repeat patterns.

With that settled, I created a new blank A3 file. I moved the images holding down Alt to the blank A3 and duplicated the layer. I then went onto edit>transform>flip horizontal to mirror the layer. I made sure they were in line before merging down together. However, I only did this for some of my mirror repeats as I forget to merge it down. I regret not checking it first but I did get it right in the end with my last mirror repeat which is the picture above. I do not like the way I designed my feathers however, it was successful so I can’t really complain. It is after all, a trial. I duplicated the layers until the page was full with no empty spaces. Once I finished, I printed it out. I did 3 mirror repeats.

I honestly wanted to do so much more as I found mirror repeats to be so much more fun. The next repeat was offset which we did not learn in Textiles. For block offset repeats, I had many mishaps. My repeats became way too small and I honestly did not know what went wrong as I went through the handout thoroughly. I even asked my friends who were really good at offset repeats to help me out and she did not know the problem as well. I decided to move onto another Mac next to me. I then got it through with ease.

This was my mistake.

So, first, I created a blank square file 100mm x 100mm.

Then, I moved the images I wanted with a move tool and moved it to the blank file. I arranged it and then I merged all the layers together into one layer only. Next, I applied the offset filter to change the horizontal and vertical axis to 590 and confirmed and double confirmed that every wrap around is ticked.

I did not use the clone tool to get rid of the lines across my patterns as I didn’t see the need to but looking back. I wish I had because I wanted to try it out and learn how to use it. It is a shame.

After this, I defined my pattern and saved it to Photoshop. Once this was done, I made a new blank A3 file so that I could fill up the entire page with my pattern. It wasn’t easy but I somehow managed to do a few of them which is quite an accomplishment for me.

All in all, it was a good experience for me. I liked some of my designs but which had its ups and downs. I will continue to practice making repeats with Photoshop and keep on improving.

March 5: To understand pattern. I had to learn how to do it and how it was made. Therefore, I learnt the theory of patterns.

Before I started making my own patterns, I first researched on different artists who made their own designs and patterns in Graphics and Illustration. My classmates and I analysed what was happening in their work which was printed and handed out to us.

We researched about Liberty which had large repeat patterns. They were also made to be flat and 2D. It was inspired by their English Heritage. This included many floral patterns. There is a variety of different patterns going on in there. There are also big motifs which are balanced out by the small ones. This doesn’t overpower the artwork at all. It doesn’t have much much emphasis but it does have balance which doesn’t overwhelm a person when they see this. In fact, it looks a pleasing to the eye. The artist used complimentary colours like red and green. They also used red, yellow and orange that makes it insipid.

Mouni Feddag’s patterns had something different compared to Liberty and that was texture. His work is also more abstract. Abstract in the sense where his designs are more simplistic. If we compared his artwork to a real life object, they would look completely different however, we do know that his designs are modelled after flowers and nature as it has petals and leaves on them. There are brush marks on this to create the type of texture. Another interesting this to this is that he has contrasts in this work. He used dark blue to create the deeper tones. He even used the colour indigo to help him create more of an effect by exciting his artwork than using just one colour. For the lighter contrasts, he used yellow and left the background white to not overpower his designs. There were many small motifs in his work. In comparison to Liberty, this has no large motifs. You would think that this is not good however, Feddag managed to balance this out using contrasts which was very smart.

We then moved onto Ona Honour. She used colours that related to each other which was an interesting concept which worked well together I thought. There is a limited colour palette onto this as she wanted to emphasise on her patterns. Instead of repeating motifs, she used lines to create blocks. This helped her create light and dark tones onto her designs. She even shaded the areas where there were shadows on the flowers. Her designs are very geometrical as she used different shapes to help her create this. In a way, its very detailed and I am amazed by the time and effort she put into this design. Honour arranged it in a random order. She did her designs with careful lines. But before she should ink it down with her pen, she pencilled her designs first. This just proves how much she actually cared about the details. There are lots of negative space which looks minimalistic.

This was very interesting at Helen Dardik’s work appears very childlike. It was nothing like the previous designs I analysed. Dardik appears to have used many lines, dots and dashes to create her work. Again, like the previous designs by the artists, this appears to have been abstract. People when they look at it, might not be able to tell what kind of flower she was inspired by. Maybe she created a new type of flower on the top of her head. The point is, she made it look interesting. With so many motifs of different sizes, there’s little room for any negative space as everything is filled up. SHe even used a variety of colour. There are about 8+ colours she used here and everything is very well balanced. This could not have been an easy task to do but she made it work.

The last artist we researched was Sue Jean Ko. She is a Korean artist who focuses on childlike designs. As can be seen with this, she did this digitally. Compared to Dardik’s work, this has lots of room for negative space. It’s naive and simplicity brings attention to children. She got really creative with this as she selected her motif and dragged it out of the background. She even made the background and her motif overlap each other, adding layers to where she dragged it out. I can make out the shapes of the design. It was very easy to interpret as she drew out hearts, plants and flowers. Another thing that was interesting is that she put a face on the flower where the eyes of the plant were also dragged out and it overlapped with this pink petals. The blue of the eyes and the pink of the petals turned the area where they overlapped each other became purple in colour. This had more room in but it didn’t feel that empty as the big plant in the middle filled the whole thing along with the smaller motifs around it.

The artist research made it clearer what I was to do. We were also asked to research about artist Bridget Riley which was an eye opener for me I feel. Her patterns played tricks on the mind which was baffling to me. The brain cannot interpret many continuous patterns as it is too much and confuses the brain. The fact that she could do this without confusing her own self is amazing. We did not only do this in Textiles. We also learnt different repeat patterns.

This was poorly done as this was just a practice. Next time I promise I will do better in my designs. However, I felt that this was a learning process as I was learning about the different patterns I can make with my design. I was just testing the waters to see if it worked out well or not. I kept it simple as I had to draw lots in Textiles. I learnt about block repeats, brick repeats, drop repeats, stripe repeats, dot repeats and check repeats. I managed do a few repeats on my own and that was Positive Negative repeats, Check repeats, Dot repeats, Rotation repeat, Brick/Half brick repeat and Block repeat. I used secondary research as well as primary for my designs. I even did some based on my own imagination which did not necessarily turn out alright.

Overall, I felt that this lesson greatly helped me understand the theory about patterns and how artists created their artwork. With this, I’ll be able to apply this on my next assignment. I didn’t necessarily do a good job with all the work I did however, I would like to think this as a learning process which I will greatly improve on with a bit of time and practice.

25 March: It was assessment week and I had not completed most of my work. This was mainly due to trip week. I came back to my room feeling all kinds of exhaustion. I did however take over 750+ pictures during trip week. It was a mixture of Units 5,6 and 7. Not only that, it also included pictures that I found interesting that could be used for other Units that have yet to come.

I didn’t finish my artist research however, I can safely say that I have finally completed it after the asssessment. I also did not write a blog for the previous weeks and I blame that on my laziness. I have no excuses for my incapabilities and I will do better next time with completing my work. While we were being assessed, we went on the computers to edit out pictures through Photoshop. We have been given a lesson in Graphics and Illustration on how to edit out pictures but we were once again reminded of that in photography which is greatly useful as we could remember what was being taught in class and it also improved out memory on how to use it. I used many types of tool and even learnt new techniques. To make sure the picture isn’t being damaged, we hold down the alt key when we are in levels. If the picture is damaged, the clear white or black will immediately be distorted.

I used the spot tool to get rid of any unwanted areas that I thought hindered and annoyed me. I also cropped my pictures to get rid of any unwanted areas, adjusted my pictures to make them levelled, changed the colours in hue saturation. We were told only to do one but I managed to do 6 in class. I thought the more the merrier. It was kind of relaxing to be editing my pictures as I could play around with the contrast to give my photos a deeper meaning when they look at it. I also used curves to adjust the contrast.

For moving images, we had to decide on our final character. I drew many characters as I tested out which one I liked best. I decided that I liked 2 as they were simple and also nice but I couldn’t pick one out of the 2 that I liked best so I kept drawing more of the 2 characters as I changed the eyebrows, mouth and eyes. I even changed the way they dressed. In the end I decided to merge the characters together and decided on a greyish purple hair. I referenced a new Disney character that hasn’t been released yet. She is an Indian character that Disney made up. I drew her out but she was extremely hard to draw. The character made me realise I needed to draw a simpler image that still relates to the Disney character. I have been to Indian weddings and their place of worship so everything was in the back of my mind when I go back to Malaysia. In a way, I was then inspired by my mood board which had the elements of Malaysia. I tried to make it as cartoon like as possible as I have a short project to complete. Not only that, there are units 5 and 6 which needs to be done as well.

I feel like my character was quite successful as I have her a dark skin tone. Not only that, I also gave her the signature Indian dot on the forehead to signify they were religious to their God. I also managed to give her a sari which is a traditional Indian dress. Although I felt my design was successful, I wish I had the ability to draw better and faster to produce better work. I will make sure I draw more and gain more experience drawing so that I can be better at making characters up. I also wish I could draw more emblems and designs onto the drawings to signify the Indian culture but I reckon I won’t have time to draw the details so I only drew a bit of it. I used Procreate to create my drawings. Procreate is a paid app that allows to to draw out my characters digitally. I feel like the quality of my work is bad even though an app helped me draw this out. I feel like drawing it could help me create rougher sketches so that my mind wasn’t biased towards a certain look.

I didn’t complete my rough story board however, I do have an idea for it. I planned it out during trip week when I was suddenly struck by inspiration on the bus ride to Margate. I didn’t have anything with me but a piece of foolscap paper. I wrote down the scenes I want to draw out in detail and I knew I wanted to draw roughly 25 scenes. I know I have to condense it a bit more so that is why I asked for another piece of paper in case anything goes wrong or overboard with the first draft.

We were also asked to show our blogs but I didn’t write any blogs. It was only after lesson, after an hour and a half that I finished writing all 3 blogs. I realise that writing blogs are important so that we don’t get caught behind. I will keep on top on my work and try not to procrastinate. I will also complete my storyboard.

Overall, the assessment made me realise I need to get myself together and improve myself to produce better work with more efficiency.

March 11: We we’re tasked with researching about artists to help us with our works. I’m no stranger to artist research. In fact, I enjoy it as it allows me to shine with writing. I have always liked artist research as it gives me the pleasure of learning about new artists and how their creative minds allowed viewers to see what kind of different content they produce. However, it got slightly stressful for me as I did this.

For Photography, I didn’t complete my artist research as I thought I had to compare all 4 pictures of the artists photos with mine. I didn’t realise I had to only compare 1. This is why I did not annotate anything yet. I took many pictures on trip week but I had not chosen them to be compared with the artist. It’s a good thing I didn’t. The artist I first researched is Sebastiao Salgado who is a famous Brazillian photographer who has published many books. I didn’t know who he was before I started researching about him. I found him out as I went through the library in the Photography room and I came across his book called ‘Africa’. It was by no means a light book. It has heavy and thick. I think this would have scared most people away but somehow it intrigued me and called my name. I flipped through the book and was moved by the photos he took in Africa. Out of the many photography books, I picked him because I felt ma deeper connection to him as Salgado understood the importance of people with lesser benefits. I regret not finishing this earlier as I am intrigued about him. I wanted to take his book with me to research further about him but unfortunately, I was denied the access so I had to make due.

I photocopied the pictures in his book which as not an easy thing to do. His photos were huge and I somehow has to make it smaller. The internet didn’t really help as I was finding the pictures as the pictures Salgado took were exclusive. Fortunately, I managed. His pictures were full of meaning and often included the people in Africa.

Next, I picked out a Photographer/Artist called Nobuyoshi Araki. I was baffled by his work. I came across him purely by accident as I accidentally dropped a book in the floor and when the book hit the floor, his page came out and I saw explicit pictures of women in them combined with something else. It was as it he tore the pictures out and pasted the naked women and some other aesthetic sensual topic with it. My morbid curious the best of me and I was well on my way to research about him. In the end I was glad I accidentally found him. It was through my thorough research that I found that he had an artistic mind and that he was not a pervert. He did it because it was empowering other women. His late wife passed away of Ovarian cancer and while she was still alive, he took photos of her naked and proud. He even associated pretty, sensual topics with bondages. I realised after some time that the bondage was ovarian cancer and the girls being naked was a way to express being bold and strong against cancer. He used aesthetic objects to signify that women are feminine but they are strong in their own way. The way he photographs pictures also greatly intrigued me as he used many bright colours. I was grateful to have stumbled across the book. It gave me a greater insight to photography once I sit down and sort my thoughts around the idea of the photos they have taken.

Overall, this was a great experience and I think it will help me with creating my booklet as I think about aspects of the pictures. It was a shame I counldn’t finish the artist research in time in class as there was much to think about and research.

For Moving Images, I based my research on a movie that related well to my topic. It was hard to find a topic that hard forced marriages without comedy added into it. I wanted the movie to be serious. I first thought Chennai Express with lead actress Deepika Padukone and lead actor Shah Rukh Khan would be the IT movie for me to research but after long consideration, I didn’t think it would be the best movie. There were not that many films about child’s marriages that I know of but I did know that Bollywood films had many as it is expected in their culture. The parents would arrange for the female to be married to a male and stay married. A divorce was not allowed.

Being in a multiracial country, Indians take up 1/3 of our population and arranged marriages still happens till this day. Not only Indians, this happens to everyone including the Chinese and the Malays. Most of the Chinese people have a rational mindset these days with wanting power and money. To obey family dynasties and their legacies, Chinese people feel the burden to uphold their title in the business. This mostly happens where Chinese people have money. However, the Chinese people do not believe in child marriages as they want their children to grow up and learn. This is directed to mainly the boys. Grandparents favour boys and disregard the girls. I personally resonate with this as my grandmother is biased towards men. She even asked my mom to give birth to another baby in hopes it was a man. Boy was she disappointed. Thankfully my parents raised me well and we were given equal rights. Sadly, this isn’t the case for Malays as they are often mistreated. Some of the parents do not care for their children’s welfare and take the easy way out of they are in poverty. The parents will marry their children off to a rich man who is old. This goes against the Islamic culture yet the government is too corrupt to care. I want to voice out my opinion against the corruption of my country and open up a new perspective like the people living in the UK. No matter how small it is, I want to do my part to better my country.

So, with this in mind, I finally stumbled across a movie called Night of Henna. It is about a girl who was born and raised in Pakistan to learn about how to be a good Pakistani girl. This was to prepare her for her marriage in the years to come when she was ready to be married at the age of 18. This really proved my point. I related to it so much and was really enthusiastic about the synopsis. Although it had aspects of comedy in it, I was really happy with the layout of the story as it gave me a sense of what I wanted to do but not copy the entire story.

This was inspired by a picture I took from google.

This is a room straight out of my imagination as I thought about poor people’s houses. This is an Indian wedding hall I took in Malaysia after being in one. I sadly don’t have this picture anymore but I was always remembered it as it was the biggest wedding reception I’ve ever attended.

This palace was drawn after a picture that was taken at the V&A in London

In the lesson, I also created the concept locations. I didn’t like the 3 I drew at first as they were quick and ugly. So I went back to improve on it. I focused on the rich man’s houses, the wedding hall and the poor young girls house and room.

Overall, the artist research greatly helped me. The only think I wish I could have done better was to elaborate more on the topics. I wish I could have done them a better justice.

March 4: I didn’t know what to do for both projects. I was utterly clueless. Then we were asked to do a mood board. I thought long and hard on what I should do. Then it hit me. I wanted to represent the differences of my country’s culture and the country where I’m currently living to pursue my studies. It has also been a great importance in my life so I wanted to feature it in my work. I wanted to represent the countries of Malaysia and the UK.

At first, I didn’t know how to create a mood board. I’ve never made one in my entire like until now. So, before I did it, I researched on how some people did mood boards and I asked people around for help. In the end, I realised I only needed to add in pictures that related to my topic. But it lead me to one question. What do I put in there? I realised I needed to dig in further.

I started thinking about it more in depth and created the story then and there. Both relating to culture, I wanted to compare the daily lives people lead in the UK and in Malaysia. That is the main direction I want to head into for Photography and create my booklet. For Moving Images, I was told we could be more creative unlike Photography where we have to look at it more realistically with no annotations. So, I thought about a child who is filled with hopes and dreams, but is forced to have an arranged marriage. I reckon I could get creative with that. It took me a long while to think about it but with the help of the internet and Instagram, I was able to pull up some ideas.

I didn’t think 1 mood board was enough for me so I created 2 to emphasise my stories about culture. With 2 mood boards, I felt like I could get more creative whenever I look at it to garner inspiration. I took most of my pictures from Instagram as I felt that Google didn’t really have any creative pictures in it. However, looking back I wish I had included pictures from Google as there were many pictures I could have used that would have emphasised the point of my stories better. However, I am still satisfied with it because I did get some good photos and looked through videos with an easier access. It also allowed me to get along with my work quicker.

On the left, is a mood board for photography and the right for moving images. I’m satisfied with the results of my mood board overall however, I didn’t like the arrangement of the pictures in the mood board.

6th March: In the 3D Design class, we learnt different about using different medias to draw with. We have learnt some of the medias like Continuous Line Drawing in Graphics and Illustration, Extended Arm and Multiple Angles from Contextual Studies in the art period Cubism. However, I learnt that there were many other ways to do that in this lesson.

We started off doing an artist research on Jean Tinguely which I found extremely helpful. We watched a 7+ minute video of his artworks and discovered his moving, sound-making art. His artworks were based on destruction and the Cold War which kind of relates to my theme about weapons. I greatly appreciated this as it gave me more ideas to think about what I want to do for Unit 6. We then analysed some of his works on a piece of paper by noting how we think his artworks made sounds and how they moved. Loud sounds could be seen with bright colours and exaggerated lines. This helped me think above and beyond the horizons of what my work of art could be.

Before I started doing any artworks, we were taught/shown how to draw using different medias like ink straw, ruler drawing and opposite hand. It seemed pretty simple to do as I have learnt most of these in the first few weeks I have been here. Firstly, I picked a topic of interest from Designed Environment and Geometric Shapes. Out of all the things I wrote down in my mind map, I chose Weapons. I feel like I resonate more with this as it talks about life and death. I believe the weapon doesn’t kill but the person itself who takes the initiative to kill. It’s a pretty interesting subject I wish to delve into. We were told to pick an object, any object which fits our theme. My skin went ice cold and I froze. I thought, what could I use as a weapon to draw? I then thought scissors could do. However, It was too simple. I wanted a challenge. So, I went to a drawer full of tools and in there, I found a blade that had extra knives in its dispense.

Using what I was taught, I began to draw the blade using different medias but first, I went to cup up paper in A5. I didn’t use the guillotine but instead, I used my hands by folding it in half and making my paper weaker and then tore. I used to think it was bad to get the rough edges as my previous teachers didn’t appreciate the rough edges and called it messy work but in here, I learnt that it was interesting. So, I tore up my papers.

The minimum we were asked to do was 6 but I wanted to do more so I made 8 artworks based on my weapon.

I only completed 7 in the lesson. In some ways, I slacked off a bit. To complete my final drawing, I took a picture of my work from where my eyes would see the angle of the weapon.

I think this was a good experience for me as it made me realise what I wanted my topic to be. I can also added meanings to my work just like Jean Tinguely did by adding more lines and colours to symbolise the movement and sounds it made. This is obviously just a practice so I didn’t think too much of drawing it however, I will be more detailed in my A3 drawing of weapons with different medias. Overall, this lesson helped me overcome my problems with how I wanted to portray my topics.

For Fine Art, I partnered up with CC to make a video with her but first, we had to understand what kind of video we did. So, in the beginning of the lesson, we first did an artist research on 2 types of Ballet; Triadisches and Parade. Watching the videos and understanding the differences and similarities between the 2 Ballets made me think on a deeper level. From the props to the music, to the costumes, the the movement and the tiniest details. With this in mind, we created out own video which had elements of these. We also thought in the perspective of Jean Tinguely and used sounds and movement to stir emotions and feels to the artwork. Instead of the artworks that were put together and made into a machine, we were tasked to create wearable art that related to our topics.

In a way, CC and I were a match made in heaven. She did masks and I did weapons which I thought went really well together. We went through different types of music first and based our video on it. We both knew we wanted the sound to be a bit creepy yet sad so we picked a song where the piano had a slow and fast pace to it. After this, CC went to create the masks that were going to be stuck onto her body and I picked out the weapons that could be used. CC made masks using continuous line drawing with a black oil pastel. She made the in different sizes using scrap cardboard paper. I helped her cut out the faces as we were running out of time. By the time I finished cutting out the masks, my hand was extremely exhausted. After this, we had a little hiccup on how we could attach the faces onto CC. We finally thought of using wires and take to secure everything in place. We knew the headpiece was supposed to be stable and secure with slight movements however, we wanted the smaller faces at her hip and knee to be slightly dangly. We were about to throw the excess cardboard away when CC suddenly thought of using it as claws like wolverine. We thought it was a good idea as weapons and made the cardboard sharp but cutting its edges.

In the end, we picked scissors, cardboard claws, a T-shaped ruler that acted as an axe and a scrapper that we pretended was a knife. With all this done, we finally thought of the filming location. We decided that the best place to do this was at the staircase near the Skylounge as the background was white. It had geometric shapes which was the bricks. Overall, it gave us a really nice plain background to work with as it contrasted the dark clothing CC wore; it emphasised CC’s movements. I directed and took the video as my partner did as I said. We took into consideration the noises that the objects would make. For the makeshift claws and the scrapper, we thought it was best to run it along through the wall to create the different sounds it made when it made contact with the wall. For the scissors, we thought it best to make it look intimidating by opening and closing. It also made the snip sound which suggests cutting something/someone. The T-shaped ruler was a difficult one as we didn’t know what to do with it. I then saw the metal sphered railing next to the staircase and I asked my partner to hit it with the ruler to see what sound it would make. It was a different sound from the rest and also the most creative. we had to take a few takes of this as my partner could not see very well as the masks covered her eyes therefore, we had to adjust her mask a little to the side so she could see. She even tried to go slower so that the ruler hit its mark every time. After all this was done, we filmed the outro as my partner went out the video.

Next, we began the editing process. We took into consideration the timings of the video and made sure the video was exactly in pace with the music that we chose. Thankfully it did. With the help of the fast and slow motion tool on the videos, we could complete out jobs with ease. CC and I have both edited before so it was very nostalgic to both of us. We replayed it a few times after we finished editing to make sure everything was perfectly in place before saving the video.

I honestly think we did a pretty spot on job with creating our videos. It had elements of movement and sound. We also managed to create, design and use some props in the process. Overall, I would call it a success. The only downside to this is that I wish we could have had a variety of different weapons to be featured in this video but sadly, there were no weapons in the studio so we just had to make due with what we had.

For homework, I made 4 drawings of the screenshots I have taken which was easily done as I did them before in 3D class and the previous units before this.

Both lessons helped me understand that sound can be created through artworks. It can also make a person feel something when they hear the music/sound. I greatly appreciated as it gave me a better sense of this project.