Studio Brief 2: Reflective Report

Overall, I feel I really benefited from the time and independence I was given in this brief to explore my ideas and create work. It helped me face two of the recurring problems that I had last year. Firstly, I struggled to bring colour into my work and the two colour specification forced me to do this while its limitations gave me time to experiment with lots of different combinations. The other thing that I struggled with was making my work look finished because of my tendency to overcomplicate. Here, I was given the time to refine and simplify my images and apply a level of craftsmanship to my finals not possible with the shorter briefs.

I also really valued the amount of time we were given for media experimentation. It helped me to get away from thinking about concepts and to just play. I am pleased with my decision to use overlays because it allowed for a lot of visual experimentation. It was interesting to see what happened when I overlaid some of my linos with the wrong images. I got some interesting results, perhaps the most successful one being the image of the tiger with the hands overlay. I think that I was effective in creating a contrast in between the sensitive, almost delicate lino prints and the solid ambiguous shapes which overlay them. Colour was a key component in creating this contrast and I like the positive spin the bright colours put on my quite morbid subject matter. However, I could have saved myself time by playing with colour digitally rather than rolling out all of the different inks.

It was also interesting to try to create a series of different moods across my images, from the stiller, eerie flower images to the more aggressive tiger prints. I think I was successful in doing this.

Initially, I had lots of big ideas, which I struggled to bring together but as suggested in a tutorial I wrote a list of the pros and cons of each and how I might bring the pros together. This reflection was a major turning point and I had forgotten the value of blogging, which I now realise need to do more of.

Moving forward into my moving images I would like to continue to think about mood and how I might bring more of a sense of eeriness into my images while continuing to think about my theme of contrast. Perhaps bringing in more contrasts in sound and movement.