Manifesto and signing out...

OK so I exceeded the two-thousand word point on my last entry so it's time to write my manifesto and wrap this (and my trusty napkin) up...

Let's see here, ok well we'll start with...

On Aesthetics...

- To always create fully fleshed out, plothole-less concepts, which will provide answers to questions the viewer may not have thought of yet.

- To have my artwork communicate fully with my audience on a self explanatory basis. The Characters define themselves, the panels show what is happening clearly and concisely, the story and dialogue should provided further clarification, while at the same time illuminate subtext for those who wish to find meaning for themselves.

- To acknowledge, early on, that one should play to their strengths and venture down the path that flairs passion in the heart of the artist. Mine for example would be to stick to pencil and ink, as this is where my strength lies. To use digital mediums to place text and colour onto my work, for my strengths lie not in the  realms of traditional media or typography. To embark down a path for the sake of diversity at the cost of the quality of the artwork is, in my humble opinion, a fools errand. Which only caters to the whims and personal preferences of others, not to the soul and integrity of the artist.

On Ethics...

- To stand by a moral code and never sell out for a buck. I would rather wait tables till I die than cater to the whims of others. The artists should create art for himself before the audience. The subject material should entertain him/her before it entertains others. They are after all, the ones who will slave over it for however long. If the subject matter is not one of personal importance or of entertaining value to the artist, how can he/she throw all of themselves into it without a sense of restriction? The feeling of someone elses thumbprint on the page? To create art under the impulsive inclinations of others is, in my opinion, as tedious and laborious a task as inputting data to a spreadsheet. Did we not become artists to express our innermost thoughts and desires? Our personal stories be they fact or fiction? I know I did. So if the world of freelance is about forever redesigning other peoples characters and creations, you can count me out.

- To focus on the inevitable conclusion that in a few plus years all paper will be replaced by an LCD screen. To embrace this fact and hop on the band-wagon express to the digital frontier. I will always buy a hard copy of a novel or graphic novel where I can, the reason for this being that reading from a book allows you to lean back, to read from a screen one must lean forwards. However we live in an age of i-pads and kindles and soon the hunching over a screen to read will become obsolete. So in favour of our mother earth and her environment, and being of the generation I am, I vow to maintain a digital presence over paper, I mean, I use enough trees drawing the things let alone printing them upon completion. And should there be a call for hard copies, I'll be damned sure to use a renewable source of paper and ink, you have my word.


In Conclusion...

I essentially want to draw for myself before anyone else. Drawing was always remained a form of escapism from being about 6 or 7 when I'd draw and cut out my own versions of the action figures my mum wouldn't buy me from the Argos catalogue. Right up through school and work to subsequently to attending university. One of the many things I've learned since attending university at Glyndwr, along with a vast progression in comic composition, story structure and character development amongst other things. Is that I don't respond well to other people's briefs. My tutors (Dan I presume you're reading this) shouldn't take offence to this. It's my own problem, I spent my childhood and subsequent adolescence drawing maps and creating my own fantasy worlds and characters, with no constraints or obligations to anyone other than myself.

With a varying degree of success I might add, the successes in technical ability and concepts coming the older I got and coming on even further since I've attended Uni. But the drive to composite my own universes has always been what I've taken pleasure in. When I came to university and received briefs akin to those we would receive in the freelance world, it soon dawned on me I'd never do too well working for someone else.
That's not to say I haven't enjoyed any of them. I've enjoyed some of the challenges provided by a great many of the projects set in the three years I've been here so far. But the drive to complete them within their constraints and objectives begins to dwindle from the initial release of the brief, to the point of the deadline. With my own projects however, I can bend and ply these to my own desires and that creative freedom is what has always driven me to put my pencil to paper continuously. Which is why I'm desperately looking forward to the third year...

This will probably be viewed as a selfish, even immature and unrealistic view point of the creative industry on my part, by my respective tutors. If that is the view you take of my stand point then all I can say is I've tried it your way, and it's clear that I don't respond too well to it. Now maybe I'll realise my dream by sticking to my guns, and somewhere down the line I'll get published with my own material. Or maybe because I didn't attempt to break into freelance and make the right contacts I'll die a penniless waiter with a plethora of rejected comics filling up his bedsit room.

Who knows? It could go either way, the point I'm trying to make is, if I'm willing to take that chance, to hold on to faith that someone, somewhere along the line will be interested in my own stories. And if I'm satisfied with being a waiter up until that point. Isn't that my right as an artists and a creative?

I understand the need the tutors impress upon us to carve our way into some creative market by the time we leave, to have developed a style thats NEVER been seen before, and forge our way into the industry. But I'm a hopeless romantic who hopes that one day, he'll be discovered for his own work as opposed to work done for somebody else. Besides there's much more money in creator owned stuff that in being someones corporate monkey, pencil pusher, no matter how creative that company may be.

Does this mean that should I ever receive a job offer from a game company to design characters, or the opportunity to create concept art for film or television, that I wouldn't leave my six table section at T.G.I Friday's and jump at the chance?...

I honestly don't know. I think my soul might die a little bit each day if I did though. Drawing is my refuge.

You can have a rotten, arse-hole of a manager at the restaurant or store where you work, but if you can come home and draw for yourself, you can escape from the reality of a situation and create whatever you want. But what happens when that manager now has a say in what you can draw or create? When their personal opinions suddenly matter more than what's in your heart? Then what happens to the one thing that always provided comfort and security, when its waters get muddied with the opinions of someone higher up? I've found the tendency is to find a new refuge, form the old one. Which inevitably turns out to be a far less productive use of time i.e games or television.

This is not a rebellion against criticism of my artwork, that is how we progress by the observations and suggestions of viewers, critics, and the audience and I welcome them. But when there is someone in the position of a "head office" sending down strict instructions on how you should develop aspects of your story or characters from the ground up. That's where I draw the line.

I'm all for a fresh set of eyes on something that has an already formed foundation spawned from the mind of the creator. "have you thought about doing that, this way?" or "What if he came from here instead of there" etc. Much the same way our tutors currently provided advice. But the idea of a finacial party, holding my purse strings, being able to say 'yea' or 'nea' to any aspect of your story or creative process. No sir-ree that's not for me.

All I know is the more time I spend drawing for other's the less time I spend drawing for me, and as a result I think my artwork suffers for it. I have my own ideas and concepts that I'm unable to act on because I have a mountain of (usually overdue) projects due for other people, sat in the way. So I procrastinate till the eleventh hour, trying to find a new refuge in games or t.v, that drawing used to provide before it became a stress zone.

Then feverishly rush to complete the projects I just want out the way, and who wins? I turn in half grade stuff to the "client" and don't complete my own stuff before the next project lands on my desk. I believe I produce the best results by drawing what I love, and I intend to stick to that method from here on out because that's what works for me.

That is my manifesto...      

Constructivistis...

OK so this ones all about the Constructivists, also known as the "Supremacists", now that doesn't ring and pretentious in any way. Though as the movement did spring from a post revolutionary 1919's Russia, it could have been seen as a form of confidence as opposed to pretension coming out of those troubled times. Spearheaded by Kaezimier Malevich, this artistic and archaeological philosophy rejected the idea of autonomous art, in favour of art as a practice for social purposes...
An example of this are the children's books by El Lissitzky, they show a story of a scientific romance, set in a 4th dimension, where vibrant red geometric shapes, in relation to the negative space around them, represent the protagonists...

Wow, well they just look riveting, what a bed-time story. Yeah, I know what'll be great for kids, a book where they have to work out what the hell's going on via the correlation of negative space to blocks of colour... I mean, what kid doesn't like maths and conceptual theory?! 

Well me for one, for all its intents and purposes, you can give me a 'beano' over this any day of the week. 

The Constructivists intent was to push society out of the end of the revolution into a new sense of civilisation, where materialism would eventually lead to spiritual freedom. I think it's arguable that from the way our highly materialistic, western society operates, it's clear materialism only leads to a want of more things. An eternal feeling of dissatisfaction or a sense something is always missing from our lives, that until we have it, we will never truly be happy. Materialism has done more damage to our society and planet than any other 'movement' that was ever coined 'for the people'.

Though its a logical train of thought for these people at the time. Coming out of a cold harsh revolution, the prospect of better day's and a brighter future on the horizon. It makes sense they'd associate the things they've never had, or lived without for so long, would bring them happiness and subsequently enlightenment. 

An example of Kaezimier Malevich's work here is this austere painting form 1915.

According to Adam Cooke (2012) this was "...one of the most radical paintings of it's day, yet it wasn't impersonal; the trace of the artist's hand is visible in the paint strokes and subtle variations of white."

He goes on to state "Suprematism represented a leap into a totally non-representational, non-painterly dynamic. Basic geometric shapes, either isolated or together, were being energised, propelled to an optimistic ideal, soaring from lower left to upper right, the vector alone suggesting time."

Well call me dense but I don't see any of that. Sure I get that that's one meaning you could place to it, you can see the logic in the interpretation. But frankly it's the most boring thing I've ever had to look at for longer than five minutes, hovering above me as I sit here typing, it looks like someones recently moved a small cabinet or perhaps a fine oak lamp stand, that's been sat on their cream rug for the past few years, showing what colour the carpet used to be. Aside from that, I see little else and wouldn't in a million years have drawn the same or even a similar conclusion as Adam did. 

I suppose knowing the history of the piece provides context and a reasonable area of time and information, for you to drawn your own conclusion out of it. But does it make it any more entertaining to look at? You tell me.

I guess I'm just a product of my generation, growing up with saturday morning cartoons, action figures, and lego, then later on in life, glossy CGI movies and seamless video games and super-hero comic books. All these things explain themselves, there's no need for interpretation, that's not true as a whole of course, some films and comics are ladened with layers of metaphors and messages, but the difference between them and this, is that they're entertaining...

Overall the Constructivists/Supremacists propaganda and education-encoraging posters were lost on the masses. What with the majority of 1920's Russia being illiterate, the overly conceptual themes flew over the heads of most. And hey, I can read and write fine and I still don't get them really, so who's to say that literacy would have changed anything anyway... 

I'm sure all artists can relate to the want to achieve something above and beyond the necessary, I tend to try and communicate my idea's by putting a lot of (sometimes unnecessary) detail into my work. But when an artists strives for this extra detail in theory and metaphors only. Relying solely on the conceptual ability of the viewer to deconstruct these meanings and messages. There's bound to be a communication problem somewhere along the line, and that's bound to cut out half your audience.

I've never been one for entirely abstract art. It's my belief art should be immediately captivating and entertaining. If after this fact the artists wishes to place hidden meaning and messages underneath something that can still be enjoyed without  deciphering this hidden code, then I'm all for it. But in my opinion conceptual theorising should be an extra, a hidden easter egg under something that's already given you a source of enjoyment for what it is. For the skill that was involved in creating it.

But as I've mentioned I'm of the generation where, as a rule of thumb, there's about and 8 second window to grab our attention before we change the channel, click the next link, of fast forward the next chapter...

Ooh look, a pop up on how the get ripped in three minutes!!!

I'm gonna check that out...

*click*

   

Futuristic?! Oh wait no... Futurists.

Well I got mildly excited when I read Futuristic on my napkin here, I jumped on google and typed in the word and a whole plethora of images came up, super-cool space cars, and advanced cyber-cityscapes. Then I realised this was far too entertaining and up my alley to be a part of contextual studies.

So I went back and re-examined the napkin to find it said "Futurists." Type that into google and the results are somewhat less interesting, though not however, a world away...

They appear to be a group of people who set about to change the world but didn't quite succeed to their own expectations. They appear to have spent their time writing manifesto's to or about one another and the world. To express their view on a new world order. Claiming war to be a purging tool, academia to be shunted, and people who didn't get the cause to be spat upon. Fillipo Marinetti was the ringleader, and a fascist sexist pig by all accounts. But its not all cybermen and new world orders, some interesting art came out of the movement. This one in particular caught my eye...

This remarkable piece  of work is by Antonio Sant'Elia, although perspective can at times feel like the bane of my life, I try my best to implement it in my artwork. And so this gentleman has my utmost respect. Sant'Elia uses bold groupings and disposition to create a heroic sense of industrial expressionism.

His goal was to design a mechanised city of the future. Full of interlinking, cathedral-esque skyscrapers, connected via aerial walkways. Fully embodying the scale and excitement of modern technology & architecture... I think Sant'Elia would be impressed with the likes of the Burj Kahlifa in Dubai...

Along with concepts such as the rotating skyscraper, also planned for Dubai...

And I think, although we have not physically built our first mechanised city yet, as he evisioned all those years ago, I'm sure he'd be impressed at the extent of our imaginations in terms of fantasy future cities created for games and film on a regular basis...

A sense of creativity and artistic expression being applied to architecture is commonplace these days, and actively encouraged, and it was the likes of the 'Futurists' that pioneered these ideas. I've always looked on in envy at the likes of Dubai and New-Yark, Chicago etc for their towering skyscrapers and super modern, at times space age, feel to their cities. London, much as I love her, for her dense history and beautifully ancient architecture, was a little laking on the front of modern spikes in the sky, and a flat city doesn't provide much of a skyline. However with the presence of the oncoming olympics lingering ahead, Londons councils bucked its idea's up and commissioned a streak of shiny modern skyscrapers to accompany our beloved 'gherkin'...

Unfortunately only the 'Shard' (Pictured directly above) has been built so far and will be completed for the olympics. The 'Spiral' and the 'Cheese-grater' pictured either side of the 'Gherkin' above are still in commission but don't have a hope of being complete for this summer...

Interesting fact about the 'Gherkin' the top portion is a beautiful glass dome of interlinking diamond shaped windows which all meet at the top, providing a gorgeous 360-degree view of London and the sky above. All of which can be observed from the 'a'la catre' restaurant housed inside. And all you have to do to get a table is pay nearly a thousand pounds per year in membership. (Meals not included in membership fee.) Can you believe that? Like they honestly wouldn't make more money opening it up to tourists and the public? Proof of elitism, the haves and have-nots, and the archaic class system at work... 

Whenever these new ones get finished, however, is fine by me. So long as they open the top floor up to the public. London's blend of old meets new is seamlessly erratic and I love it. The more we can do to define our skyline the better, and we have the Futurists to thank for it all...     

Modernism and Postmodernism

Ok so after some correlation between my old napkin and moodle, I've managed to ascertain that it was in fact "Post Modernism" that I'd scribbled down all those months ago. (The 'post' was hidden in a crease) So I'll start with that.
According to "Answerer 1"(2010) on Yahoo answers (he/she) claims Modernism; 'is the study of very modern fence making.' "Anonymous" (2010) goes on to state Post-modernism; 'is supposed to mean after the Civil War, but its meaning keeps changing.'
I considered these sound starting points to base this entry on, however a few google hits later, these statements were proved to be somewhat inaccurate...
Apparently Modernism encompasses a rough period from the end of impressionism around the 1800's to the start of Post-Moderism around 1970. It's general consensus was that there was a need for expressionism within art, that the viewer was as important as the creator in defining the work. Leaving things open to personal interpretation was key. A prime example of this is the infamous "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp.

The upside-down urinal that he signed caused quite the stir among the gaggles of pretentious gallery go-ers at the time, when it was rejected from the apparently uncensored 1917 show by the Society of Independent Artists. Quite the fur-or I imagine...
The same movement gave way to the likes of Barnett Newman who liked to paint a canvass one vibrant colour, with a few of thin vertical lines somewhere on the canvas in one or two other colours.

  Well it's meaning lost on me... Oh that's right, I have to put meaning into it. Well I think it means the artist didn't have much time to paint. Frankly, I think its like one of those characterless printed canvases you see for sale in ikea or on the wall of high street salons. An inoffensive block of colour to brighten up the workplace. And yes he may well have been the first to do something like this, but does that make it genius? I'm not sure...

I could mention a hundred artists from this period of Modernism and similarities in terms of content would be scarce but if the philosophies and goals of the artists are taken into consideration, theres a pattern of a combined sense of drive towards expressionism over realism...

Hang on a minute, further extensive research via the web (aka wiki) now cites Newman and Duchamp in the Post Modernism section too... I'm extensively confused and from bouncing around the web it seems no-one has a clear answer as to who goes where, leaving me rather frustrated. Between Moderism, Post-Modernism, and all those bloody sub-genres it's anyones guess. All I know for certain is Metal Gear Solid 2 was referred to as the first Post-Modern video game... And I liked MGS-2.

Next!...

Oh wow is that the time?!

OK wow, well gone are the days of pen and paper where you could fake the dates of when you wrote stuff... I shall miss them dearly.
So it's been about three months since my first (and last) blog post, that's gotta be some kind of record. So here I am, returning to the the Web of the World that is Wide, in order to frantically state my opinion on lectures I attended over five months ago... Man I should have really written this back then. I think I have an old napkin around here somewhere with some notes of it from those lectures...
Yeah! Here it is... Something about 'modernism' or maybe that says 'modem isn't'. I don't know it's kinda smudged, and there's something almost legible under this coffee stain here... Something about a bunch of constructivist, futuristic, losers, living in a haus of Bau? I don't know, I'm gonna have to try and decipher this and get back to you. Just, err, hang on a second there...