Finished

It's been a long six weeks, a very lazy beginning 2 weeks and a rushing last 2 weeks. Pretty much summed it up. I was very happy with the outcomes of my pieces but looking back in my sketch books I haven't done enough research that I hoped for, but felt like I made up for it in experimentations and the final outcome of course.

Heres my evaluation I wrote for the project:

Final Major Project Evaluation - Ralph Pedersen

Looking back on my Project Proposal now; I thought I had set a good, open brief for myself. I thought it was broad enough and had lots of different pathways leading out from it. At one point I thought I was completely wrong, but the further I used research methods and experimented with practical ideas; my work began to develop and I ended up with a  successful final outcome.

The research stage of my project did not co operate with me, at first I did not find anything that really interested me about Idioms which was worrying. I did manage to use a variety of research methods including books from the library, the internet and most successfully the general public. This was when I discovered that my project wasn't becoming just about idioms, but how people interpret them. I began to look more at the wording and literal sense of the idioms. Questionnaire results soon gave me ideas and I decided to put the research to one side and actually produce some practical work.

I began to produce literal idioms in the medium of photographs, some were more successful than others but I felt like my pieces didn't really have a point to them, they may of had a nice aesthetic quality but that was it. My ideas quickly developed on when I came across one piece I found in a 3D Typography book by Julien Repentigny. The piece really did focus on the objects and words it was using and inspired me to create a couple of my own. The concept of my idea was slowly changing and progressing into something a bit more interesting and meaningful.

Sources in my Bibliography did become useful but were very limited to a certain idea I had at the start of the project. Although these references I made, did lead on to finding out a lot of great websites and other artists. I stuck to my action plan as much as possible throughout the project, although I did not plan on the size of my final piece which took up a considerable amount of time which I didn't have.

My practical skills soon came in helpful as my idea developed. Looking at 3D work really inspired me, a lot of ideas that came out of the final outcome were due to 3D experimentation and really getting to grips with the materials I had chosen to use. I could of saved my save a massive amount of time by simply asking more questions and taking a second to think about the idea before producing work. That is one of my main aspects I've learnt during the course of this project.

If I was do this project again in the future I will definitely look more at my time management, as a lot of time was wasted on this project thinking about the final idea instead of generating ideas and going through the whole process. I also really need to churn out more research as I have learnt through this exercise, you cannot come up with a good idea without research first. Never try and leap frog this stage.

And here are my final pieces

NEARLY THERE

Today was a good day.

Yes today was a good day because I basically finished all of my 3 idioms which I am very proud of.

• I finished nailing in on my nails and cropping the board to it was neat enough to present.
• I plucked out the styrofoam letters from my Idiom block and made the crack
• And I bought some more rope, and arranged my idiom word at home, sewing up all the letters and ready to bring it in to college tomorrow

FULL COVERAGE OF MAKING IS IN MY SKETCHBOOK

So tomorrow I will be having my mini PHOTO SHOOT! very exciting, I'll take my nice camera into Chelsea and set up an area with lots of white card and surrounding bright light. I'm thinking a plain white background for all the 3 pieces so they look part of a set (which they are).

Tomorrow I will also be finishing of al my paperwork and writing my evaluation now that I have finished. There was no point in starting to write my evaluation before I finished incase it didn't work or I needed last minute changes. 

Hectic rush to the finish line.

A lot of progress has been made!

So today was a bit of a hassle, getting a lot of work done but regretting some decisions I made earlier on and because the deadline is looming I cannot restart making idioms.

First of all I unscrewed the box of my 'chip of the old block'. The block was perfect but not completely dry on the front side. I could not take out the styrofoam without ruining some of the cement around the letters, so I thought I would give it a day to dry and finish it tomorrow.

As you can see from above its still wet so I thought it would be too risky to remove the styrofoam now.

Secondly I started working on my nails. It was time to use the big boy nails (the ones with larger heads). They were nailed in so only 2cm of the nail would stick out which I thought was about right. Unfortunately I couldn't finish it as I ran out of nails, so on the way home from the studio I bought some more to finish tomorrow.

Close up of the nails, trying to nail them all the same height.

As you can see I've filled in the slots between the letters and from a birds eye view of it being on the table you cannot see any gaps which is exactly what I wanted. Looking back now though I have some regrets,  wish I had nailed the first smaller layer of nails with the middle ones nailed in and the rest slowly rising to meet this new layer of nails. Kind of like a map you see in a geography textbook...

It may be to late to change, I will see how much time I have at the end to maybe re do the piece as I know exactly how to do it and the short cuts to take.

Now for the 'good money for rope' ordeal. Its been very hard and stressful with the time I have left to work out how I'm going to produce and present this piece. Today I went to Arthur Beale, The Chandlers in Tottenham Court Road. They had a massive supply of rope which wasn't to expensive. I found a perfect size rope (12mm I think) with the perfect colour. Bought it, took it home and measured it out, I DIDN'T BUY ENOUGH ROPE! pretty stupid I know so I will have to make another trip on the way home tomorrow, very annoying.  The rope I had was still okay though for the words, I just needed a bit extra for certain parts. For the letters to keep its form I had to sew the rope together, and it would then always be the way I wanted it to be. Very smart. Whether I sew the rope onto the large rope behind it...I'm not sure. We'll see.

All joined up!

Close up of the sewing. I did it on the back of the rope so you cannot see it when displayed.

Pick Me Up Exhibition and Sean Freeman

A lot of my friends went to this exhibition and told me great things about it so I thought I would pop down and see if I could find any inspiration. The exhibition was great, saw lots of cool stuff although not many 3D pieces of illustration/ typography which I was hoping for, most of the work was flat on paper which is fine but didn't relate much to my work. I got talking to this one guy asking about one piece, and the conversation moved on to me and my FMP, so I told him my idea and he suggested a illustrator/ typography expert he knew. So I went home and looked him up and his work was
AMAZING. 
Very relevant to my work and although it's not 3D the whole concept is the same in being that he's illustrating the word or idea using the word in it. Heres a couple of my favourites, plus one of his pieces was a lot like my 'good money for old rope idiom'.

Like I said above, this was the piece that is very relevant to my rope idiom, He hasn't made it 3D but probably on Photoshop by photographing rope then creating it from that. Really like the contrast int he piece and how the rope fades out into the darkness.

This piece was particularly relevant to me because he's used the word 'Cannabis' in the piece and illustrated it within the concept of the idea, which happens to me your eyes get very red and veiny when you smoke cannabis.

Saw this piece on the tube before I knew who did it, great piece of Computer Arts work. Brilliant!

Final Piece is coming together

So over the weekend I have continued to create my final pieces which has been a little slow and I have encountered a couple of problems along the way.

To start of my 'chip of the old block' cement should definitely have dried by now so I will check that out in the workshop tomorrow which hopefully will go according to plan.

The next piece I began to start was my 'hit the nail on the head piece'. Which has been going all right. The block of wood I chose to use is a bit small and not very thick which I will write about in my evaluation. I have acknowledged this small mistake but I think my piece will still work anyway.

You can see from this angle that the wood (MDF) is not nearly thick enough to cope with the nails. I did actually use two sheets of MDF glued together but its still not thick enough. And because I used two sheets put together, the nails have gone though one layer and into the next making a small crack along the edge; it won't be noticeable when it is displayed but it shouldn't of happened. So from now on i'm using clamps when putting all the nails in so the wood vibrates less and causes no more cracking.

I finished putting in all the nails for the first layer which turned out perfectly, I think I only screwed up on one nail making it bent but you can't notice it. I used a grid system, marking it out with pencil first so they are all roughly in line. I will be using the same grid system for the second lot of nails which I have bought. They are first of all bigger but have extra large heads, this means I don't have to happen in as many nails! I think they're called 'clout nails' but I might be wrong. I will be back int he workshop tomorrow and hopefully finish this idiom.

AND FINALLY, for my third and final idiom update!

I have started to create my final idiom, 'Good money for old rope'. As I said in my last blog post, I spent ages looking for the perfect pieces of rope. I ended up with a big success, I went to my cricket club and borrowed a spare piece of the boundary rope - approx 18-20m long! The rope is old and used which is perfect because it fits in perfectly with the idiom. So today I did some experimenting with my ideas from my sketchbook which I make very clear. I then went to Homebase to buy my smaller rope, unfortunately when I got home and put it against my big rope it was just to small! VERY ANNOYING! So I will have to go back and find some thicker rope, the one I bought was 6mm; I need about 10-15mm rope. So this idiom has set me back a bit and I hope to buy the new rope tomorrow. Below is a rough experiment...

I also experimented with the 'Hangman's Noose' as I talked about in my sketchbook, worked out quite well and works well giving a kind of 'crossword clue' for the viewer to guess the idiom which I quite like. Although not completely sure about using it, I will have to ask my tutor and peers about what they think.

Over and out, 

back tomorrow PEACE!

Nailing down the work

So today I moved away from looking for my rope idiom and decided to sort that out on friday/the weekend and start on my third idiom 'Hit the nail on the Head'. It is quite a basic concept tbh; I have found a lot of small nails in my cellar and bought some extras which I will be using. Its hard to explain, so I will upload a photo tomorrow of my progress on the piece.

And just to say, I must of nailed over 300/400 nails today and only hit my thumb ONCE. Very impressive

Running around!

So today I went in to the foundry, quickly bought some cement, mixed it up with soft/ silver sand and added the water. Once the cement was ready I added it to the the box I made yesterday and now all I have to do is wait a couple of days for it to dry. One of my made idioms is basically done which I'm happy with.

Although still got 2 more to make, one of my ideas was to create the idiom 'know/ learn the ropes'. The plan was to get 2 different thicknesses of ropes and have the thicker one on the bottom layer and the thinner one on the bottom. The top rope will spell out the word idiom in a cursive kind of font. All joined up by one rope. So I've found some small rope which I can buy from Homebase or B&Q but I'm not sure how much to buy (pay by the meter). So first I need to find a really thick rope; 30mm or thicker. After looking everywhere around my area I resorted to the internet where I looked up a couple of places that might have the rope I'm looking for. So tomorrow I'll be trying to find some rope and I'll report back to my blog if theres a problem. Definitely back on track!

Example of cursive type. The letters are all joined up with excessive loops that are really not needed. My bit of type will say 'Idiom' in rope.