Over the next few months I'm going to try and keep this blog going, documenting my process/ 'journey' through the AS Art Exam Unit, I think it's be useful to keep up a constant written narrative throughout this experience as I usually have a problem with writing too much but not *saying* enough, so hopefully this will help me get better at that, any comments, criticisms or feedback is greatly appreciated!
So, we got our new exam title today and holy mother of ducks is it a good one! To be honest I think anything would have been better than 'Similarities and Differences' from GCSE but this was actively good instead of being just above mediocre.
Going through the exam paper page by page was the first thing we had to do, making notes and highlighting stuff and it's definitely the best way to start going about it, you really read everything instead of possibly skimming over it. I wrote about 4 pages of notes in just one hour, the paper was so inspiring and had loads of great 'leap-from' points it was hard not to think of an idea for each of the different media it suggested (Fine Art, Photography, Textiles, 3D Design and Graphic Communication).
Springing from doing the animation for the end of the last unit*, my teacher would really like for me to go down a moving picture, film kind of route, and I think I could really make it work within this theme; I've started looking at street photography and the differences between posed photographs and natural ones as well as photography in crowds such as political demonstrations like the Occupy movement.
Adding to that I'm really interested in how different groups of people view the same incident/ object/ whatever differently. For example, a lot of people think the Occupy Wall Street movement is a force for good, the protesters are standing up for their rights and what have you, but the opposing side say that, while they're protesting they're not working, so they're not helping to make anything better and a common criticism of the Occupy Movement is that they protest against the establishment, they don't like how Governments and the Banks are run, but they don't offer up any solutions.
In art the division continues; many people view Tracey Emin to be an inspiring artist and one of the greatest visual thinkers of our time whereas others, like me, think she's pretentious and crazy and needs psychological help.
I'll end my first post here, I don't want people to get too bored with my writing. I think it'd be a good exercise to keep posts to between 500 and 1000 words each time, so they have enough to be given feedback on, but small enough so they're easily readable for anyone.
Lydia.
*My final piece for my last unit was a digital painting which my teacher asked me to develop and make into an animation so I did :) I only joined my current school last September for 6th form and art wise I think it's the best move I've ever made; I've tried so many new things I wouldn't have even thought about if I'd stayed at my old school, Flash would be sitting lonely on my desktop and I'd still only paint in acrylic. I've learned to use oil paint pretty well, I've done a lot of work I'm proud of in oil paints, I've tried animation and it's been a pretty big success, I've developed my digital skills with Photoshop and a whole range of other techniques and media that I may have thought were cool in my old school, but wouldn't have the confidence to try out.
