Manchester University - Degree show.

When I arrived at the Manchester University degree show I did not expect the range of different specialist designs that were available to view, also I did not expect there to be digital and animated pieces of work that you could interact with either.

Some of the work interested me because you were able to see the design processes and how the person who created the work got to the final piece. Also some of the degree students had left blank sketchbooks out so people could comment on their individual shows. I think this was done so they would read comments and other suggestions about their work so in future they could change and improve areas that other people may not have liked.

I found the pieces with an explanation of what it was showing or doing more inspirational and informative rather then leaving me feeling confused and unsure of the work, however I think some designs are meant to invoke different emotions like uncertainty or an uneasy confusion like the videos of the girl rocking on a black and white screen or the videos on several screens that looked similar to the popular Saw films.

There were several sections of the show which I thought were not as well set out as they could have been, in one case there was a few small images on one large wall and opposite there was a wall with multiple large images on it from the same collection of work. The designer could have been trying to draw attention to the smaller images by singling them out rather than placing them next to a larger image but I feel the space didn’t seem like it was used as well as it could have been. However there was a section of the fine arts show that I think was really well laid out, they had hung a 3 tier shelf on one side of the wall to display their influences, this was antiques and other memorabilia from the 1950’s which included old coins, tins and children’s toys amongst much more. I felt the wall of items that had influenced them looked like a piece of art in itself.

The illustration and animation section of the show was the part that interested me most as it was more based around the digital process of design and showed detailed development stages that lead up to the final outcome. It was also interesting to see how university students organised their sketchbooks and how they started out the designs. I preferred the designs that were less based around textile work and more based around the combination of digital and traditional methods as this is an area of design I would like to peruse, although it was still interesting to see what people had created using textiles and embroidery such as Gemma walker who starts off by using inks and stamps then added hand and machine needle work to the image.

There were a lot of sketches of the human form and of animals around the illustration part of the show. I really liked the technical drawings by Peter Carrington who focused his work on the dynamics of animals. He is an excellent draughtsman and his sketches are very life like and clean. I also enjoyed Zia Chan’s sketches; on one of his pieces he combined a human body with an animal head to create his illustration.

Chesterfield College - Arts Festival.

It was interesting to see work from other courses in chesterfield college, I hadn’t actually realised the amount of different courses based around art and design. Also I noticed while walking around how much life drawing and being able to draw or portray the human body is involved in each course. Such as fashion where you have to have an anatomically correct body shape before you draw the clothing design around the figure.

Near the entrance of the dome as you enter the downstairs section of the arts festival I noticed a display by Joshua Farnon, it was mainly based around drawings and paintings of sheep skulls but one piece in particular impressed me most, it was the large image of a sheep’s skull created with paint, inks and charcoal. He had let the white paint from the skull section of his image drip down to the bottom of the canvas and he had used a section of jagged black strokes in the background to make the image look more interesting. The skull looked realistic and it was interesting to see a sheep skull painting in that size as I have drawn them before and it was time consuming just creating a small piece.

The illustration of a woman singing into a microphone by Christopher Hogan appealed to me as it was simplistic but designed very well, the lines he used were smooth and clean and the block colours of the image complimented the faded black background well. He had done multiple images in this style and looked good as a whole on the white background of the display boards, almost like a comic book. I have created similar images using Illustrator and Photoshop but never really used colour like he has on these images. It was a good source of inspiration and showed me what could be achieved by using simple block colours.

It wasn’t just the illustrations that interested me, I really enjoyed looking through the architectural work by Rebecca Wadsworth she had clearly labelled sections of development which looked very professional and were everything I expected an architectural display to look like. It was stimulating to see a different style of drawing. The muted colour scheme used on the technical drawings of the building she had created were very effective. Also the layout looked professional and organised with the final piece central of the display and the development work surrounding it.

The year 2 graphic design students section of the arts festival was the most informative and understandable to me as it related to the course I am studying. I think it is important to see the process of design through people who are studying and have studied in the area of design I am. Also it gave an insight into what I could be doing in the future.  My favourite display was the section with the designs about different evolution stages, in particular the monkeys face with part of it changed to a human face, I liked how the designer had made the area around the human face look like it had been cut out and placed on top. The sketchbooks laid out on the middle table helped me to see how other students have set out their work and how they had gone through each design process. In future I am going to experiment more and try more ideas out before I get my final outcome as experimenting allows you to explore different ideas and focus on the ones that are most successful.