The aim of this exercise was to take my ideas about the degree out into materials and express some of my feelings about the course through making. This is about taking my ideas through making processes and learning about the world around me in a unique way, through spending time with it working materially.

I began by revisiting my message in a bottle and highlighted the words that popped out, and time was the first theme that came through, and the need to “slow down”, “take the time to look”, to “see moments and details”

I couldn’t find an explicit suggestion of a material other than mentioning “mark making” and “making a mark” in several places.

And lastly, I thought the writing suggested careful, light marks, an antidote, a form of resistance against the hurried modern life through slow practice. This suggested a classical approach to drawing.

Through this analysis, came the idea of drawing my hand holding a watch. I used the Betty Edwards’ method and drew a rectangle on a piece of Bristol paper, and the same rectangle on a piece of transparent plexiglass. I draw my hand outline on the plexiglas and then transferred it onto my grid on my paper.

I did spend about two hours refining the drawing with little marks, trying to look at the shadows. I took a picture at the end for reference but I purposely did not want to work from a photograph but instead connect with the real world as I was drawing. There are details you can see when drawing from life that are lost when you work from a flat screen. Also there is a sense of time passing by as the view does not stay static. I noticed for example that my veins were much more pronounced when I was drawing than when I took the photograph later on!

Reflection

I took my time but also decided to keep this as a rough sketch to retain some of my mark making and stop myself from “overdoing it”. There’s another element in my message in the bottle which is the other side of my artistic coin: I talked about “experimenting onto my canvas” and “freedom to explore”, I talked about “discipline” and “existing in my own terms”. I know I do have this duality to reconcile. For the past three weeks, I’ve also attended the live painting workshop with Lydia Merrett. This was the opposite of slowing down as the workshops were packed with activities and often timed so we had to move quite fast and I must admit I also enjoyed these. I have produced quite a few “freedom” painting-drawings from these although they didn’t come from a brief or taking ideas through making processes, they also better reflect the themes of experimenting and freedom to explore. I don’t think I want to choose between these two facets, the high energy, adrenaline-fuelled me and the quiet, slow, reflective me! I wonder if I will merge them at some point through practice, or whether they will forever fuel each other. Richard Baker introduced me to Nietsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian distinction and that’s something I am keen to continue exploring.