Surrealism research

Ive been looking at surrealism, and been trying to figure out a way to add elements of it into my author work, as Carrington was more of a surrealist artist than she was an author.

Been looking through multiple books and just trying to understand exactly what surrealism is.

Breton (who started the movement) defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism through which it is proposed to give expression verbally, by writing, or in any other way, to the real functioning of thought..."

"Surrealism rests on belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association hitherto neglected, on the omnipotence of the dream, on the disinterested play of though."

Leonora Carrington ran away with Max Ernst when she was just 19. He himself was a huge part of the movement, so I've been looking at some of his work in the book above.

I see some similarities between his work and Leonora's, such as the bird heads. She uses many bird headed figures in her paintings, may try to incorporate this aspect into one of my prints or something.

This book is great, its got so much of Carrington and her friends work in it and its very informative. Her life to me is a mystery that I'm dissecting slowly and trying to turn into visual imagery.

Ive been drawing some of these characters, and trying to figure out surrealism through repetitive drawing. Ive really enjoyed it. 

What i need to do now is stop drawing directly from her work, but try to create my own that has elements and details of Carrington's.

After effects Part 2

Key board shortcuts

Select the layer and press 'P' to reveal and hide position
a=anchor point
r= rotation
s= scale
t= opacity (transparency)

If working on 2 at once hold the shift key and then press any of the other short cuts to add.

Press 'O'- gets the time bar to the end of the time frame that you're working in.
Press 'I' - gets the time bar to the start

B and N = set where you're working

Select a layer and then press 'U' and it will show you everything that has been animated on that particular layer.
Press 'U' twice and it shows the changes

To move things as a group, select all layers.
Press 'P' to show position property of all the layers
Click the stopwatch on one layer, key frame is then added at the same point on every layer.
Then while they're all highlighted, change the position to make them all move at the same time.

To change the pace of an animated sequence- highlight layers, press "U" to see what has been animated so far, select all of the key frames.
The closer the key frames are together the faster the animation and vice versa.

Press and hold alt and move key frames. By selecting one of them to extend them all from a locked point, to keep the change relative but spread it out or shrink it down.

Key frame interpolation-
What happens in between each key frame. It can work on a curved line (bezier curves)
If you want to jump to a point on a straight line, select pen tool, to change curves to a line select the convert vertex tool in the one tool selection box and then select points that curve, makes the curve into a linear line.


Part 2 - Photoshop to after effects.

In photoshop open a new file,
File-new-preset-film and video
size- PAL D1/DV widescreen square pixel

Should appear like this above. Nothing significant can happen outside the rectangle, its the 'safe zone'.

Make things the largest you will need in photoshop and use after effects to make things smaller.

Can save files as psd, tiff or jpg. If possible, use a transparent background, so you only have the shape or image you're working with and not the white background which can block out other elements of the animation. When importing files into after effects, make sure they are opened as 'footage' files.

Spot colour channels in photoshop (Workshop 2)

Spot colours - The colours you want to use ( solid colours ready for screen printing)

CMYK- Mixing colours to create other colours 

Colour- colour libraries

Brings you here.

You can then type in the reference number of the pantone colour you want to use and the exact colour comes up. 

When using spot colours in photoshop they may be printed with CMYK so not a perfect spot colour. In order to create precast spot colours ready to screen print, this is the process used…

Spot colour channels in photoshop...

Channels can also be used to identify spot colours. Adding colour to a black (grey scale) line drawing. The drop down bar in the corner of the channels box, select new spot channel. 

Choose a colour that represents the colour were going to work with (ink were going to print with)

Then name the spot colour channel.

Using the word 'spot' means channels are uniquely identified.

Ink will be applied where it appears black, nowhere else, as shown below.

'D'-takes you to black. (foreground colour)

Black applies the colour

White Removes the colour.

It looks orange on the screen, but when grey channel is removed its black which means its ready for screen print as its a positive image.

If you're not sure what colours to use, double click the orange spot and change the colour. Good for experimenting.

With cmyk on

Without it on, so what its going to look like when only spot colours are used.

So what it will look like when screen printing.

When saving make sure spot colours is selected. Must be a tiff or psd.

Then open in illustrator. Place the saved image onto the page.

There will be 7 colour channels displaying at once. At this point we need to check its all ok. To do this we need to go to window-seperation preview.

Turn on by pressing over print preview option. Turn off CMYK and thats what the image will look like.

Then to print. Make sure black and white printer is selected.

Go to output options.

Mode-seperations (host-based)

Turn off cmyk to print. 

This one is solid ink to no need to pat attention to halftones.

Now using half tones...

Different shades of black and grey will give different tints of a certain colour. When working with greys, try and match it with the tint you are wanting. 

Start the same as before by selecting spot colours etc but this time selecting the light colour first. Choose a shade of grey in the foreground colour. Do the same again for the darker shade, but this time fill with black but on the same spot colour. This will create two shades of the same colour. This just means the same colour will produce two different shades when screen printing. Because essentially the lighter grey is a halftone of the darker colour. Save again, take to illustrator and again make sure its all ok like last time.

Because were using tints/halftones we must change the print properties in illustrator like we learn last week. We must change the frequency and the angle (see last weeks session for correct numbers)

Over printing or knocking out

( The way the inks interact with each other during the printing process)

Its possible to use 2 colours but create a third. 

Thing we need to figure out is how transparent is the printing ink.

Most of them will be transparent so its possible to be quite clever with this.

The solidity is 0% so showing a transparent effect. 

However if the solidity is 100% it would be opaque ink so you wouldn't see anything if it was printed on top.

Must change the order of the layers to see this change.

Artist Research- Luke Best

Luke Best

I decided to do some artist research in order to push my ideas forward in my visual journal. Its always good to reflect on the work of professional practitioners in order to get some inspiration and to pick up on techniques I may have forgotten or am leaving behind without realising.

The top image also reminds me of a piece I've been working on, with the rhododendrons in the mans stomach, so i thought Luke Best rather fitting to analyse at this point.

Things I like and aim to tie in to my own work-

- Texture. I dont use it enough, but have always appreciated. I think it gives images depth and character, and the possibilities with texture are endless. 

- Shape. I need to get out of the cycle of just drawing images with line, even if it is just throughout my development, so that I can demonstrate an array of techniques. 

- Interesting compositions. Roughs and scamps are always useful for me when it comes to this, but i need to continue to think outside of the box. I really like the layered composition in the second image. Overlapping images is something I should try.

Progress Crit- Peer feedback

I didn't realise how daunting this crit would be. Presenting my work to quite a large group was a little scary, mainly because I had no idea what I was doing at this point. However, I usually find crits a lot more useful when this is the case. Talking to people about my work really helped this time round, and I've been advised to get a large sketchbook, and work on developing certain pages from my sketchbooks. 

To do-

- Get a big sketchbook, go wild. Stop being so precious in my tiny moleskine.

-Try out some more lino, and have a go at mono printing.

- Keep questioning my work, answering my questions and then questioning again.

-Stop being scared of crits like that, theyre helpful!

Progress tutorial

Progress tutorial went well, really happy with my attendance so far. Really want to keep it up, as I'm really enjoying being in the studios this year. I feel a lot more comfortable working around people.

Wasn't given much information that I didn't already know, so just need to keep going for now.

About the author visual journal

I wanted to look at Leonora Carrington's life slightly more in depth than I had been doing, and draw from various inspirations rather than just from her book. Which will hopefully help me to represent her as a person when it comes to the animated sting, and not just a small section of what she was about. She lived a large part of her life in mexico, hence the day of the dead skulls.

Surrealism.

I then started studying her surrealism paintings and drawings, and doing a lot more research in this field.

What works well-

-I could add some of these characters somewhere into my finals.

-I think it conveys how crazy she was

-Id like to portray her as a surrealist artist, as women weren't really well recognised for being part of the movement back then, so would be good to shine a light on that.

Need to-

-Develop surreal drawings

-Find colours that work well together ready for the limited colour palette in screen print

-Study other surrealists and understand what its all about.

Ive also been looking at Unica Zurns work, just for added inspiration, and because she was also a surrealist who was not recognised because she was a woman. But her work is incredible! The piece above was inspired by some of hear work. 

I then went on to doing some mad pages in the sketchbook, just to get ideas down, combining Zurn and Carringtons work.

I just got a brush pen for the first time ever so just been having fun with it really.

Some of the mystical creatures work well, would like to explore this more, and try to work out a way to incorporate her work into mine. Would also like to do some lino prints of some of them, just to see what I can actually do. 

I like this simple line one, but would also like to try it using just shape.