Week Review - 10/3/18

This has been a hugely successful week for me, and I am confident that my project has finally lifted off and taken the necessary steps forward in order to have the potential of a brilliant outcome. I have spent the week developing the start of my sketchbook work, which not only have I found beneficial to be able to see my experimentation and tests laid out physically, but has also filled me with confidence knowing that I have more work than the last few weeks. I also like the ability of being able to flick through work quickly with a sketchbook, allowing for constantly analysis and evaluation, with the flow of ideas from page to page enabling strong links between ideas to be made and a clear path for progression. However having said this, I am still using my blog as a place for artist research and evaluation, while making more of an effort to use the blog space as a relaxed platform to write anything that comes to mind at the time and not worry about layout and content too much.

I have also found this week that it is important for me to always work with a notebook close by even if I am working on a computer as ideas that float into my head have a bad habit of not sticking around for too long, meaning I loose good plans and ideas for my work. I haven't been going into uni that much this week, as I have been working at home which for me I have found better as the studio space at uni, although there is good space and opportunity for ideas to bounce around my peers, I am more comfortable working in an environment I can control by myself.

I am happy with how my project is progressing, partly due to the fact that my work is finding its own contexts as I go along, and it is becoming clearer what I want to pinpoint in my final piece and what I want it to achieve. I still have a long way to go, but I am hoping through my notes, work and research that I will have a strong outcome that achieves what I envision.

I have hit a point in my sketchbook work now that I realise I want to look at 'masking' something as an act that goes beyond simply obscuring a physical identity and appearance by obscuring or distorting, and want to think more laterally about how I can extend the idea into other concepts such as emotion or personality being masked externally vs. what is inside someone's head. I can draw a very strong link here to my previous project HEADSPACE where I explored the idea of memory and built up thoughts inside the head, which will be critical as a base understanding of this idea.

Like John Baldassari, I have solidified my thoughts this week that I am interested in Black and White imagery combined with block colours, such as previous work I have done with monochrome and contrasting red. Not only this, but his fascination with circles can be echoed in some of my Alevel work last year in my minimalistic studies on circles and mirror tiles. I think the mirror circles I have previously used would be effective in my current work placed over the faces of my portraiture photography subjects. I have built on my previous masking techniques from the experimentation using circles, and progressed masking as a simple facial obstruction, and am now fully obstructing the face therefore removing its identity completely.

I am fully aware I need to be doing more evaluations, however a lot of my analysis of work happens in my notebook or in my sketchbook as I go along so don't feel the need to write a huge paragraph on a blog explaining the same thing twice. I just need to find a happy medium of sketchbook and blog to allow for the best work.

A few questions to try and clear my head:

• Do I want to continue masking faces or would it be interesting to start masking locations and what would the effect of that be?

• How can I project my work onto a large scale to make it effective for an exhibition space?

• How can I produce the puzzle idea I had the idea of and should I incorporate the magnet repel idea of the final piece of the jigsaw?