My Final Assessment...

My final assessment was the day after my exhibition, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. As I had to re-sit second year I think the fear of failing again had been in my mind.

But I had no need to worry; My tutors said that they felt I had come so far in my work.

I personally feel looking back over the past year my work has developed so much more than it has in the previous years. The past few months I have enjoyed university the most, and I really think you get a lot more inspiration from a positive environment.

And I think I have come a long way and using sculpture is an easy example as attempting it in the past it has always gone wrong and never worked and I’ve never really wanted to take my self out of my comfort zones of drawing and painting because I’ve never really had the confidence to.

I believe that my positive attitude towards my work will carry on into the final year of the degree...

Attempting Stop Motion

My idea of stop motion came to me when I was looking at a drawing that I had done. It was a drawing of the ‘creation’ of a daisy drawn in segments.

I thought back to one of my first tutorials when I had no further ideas for my work and quickly came to a bit of a stand still. My tutor asked me if I had any favourite artists or any hobbies, and maybe look at them for influence or try and worm it into my work. Immediately I thought of my favourite artist Tim Burton. I have enjoyed his work ever since I was little and I had begged my mum if I could stay up until 2am on Christmas eve to watch ‘The nightmare before Christmas’.

I think his style is unique and everything is completely gothic, and yet still remains enchanting.

And this is where I felt it would be ideal to try stop motion as it would let me explore a different context and also allow me to be influenced by my favourite artist.

Here are some of the clips from my stop motion:

Yes…it had taken me a long time to do… These are just seven clips out of 146 frames.

I really enjoyed working with stop motion I had done it previously when I was in college and found it a very long process, but I think its worth it when the final product is finished. 

Attempting Sculpture..

After a tutorial with Miguel, he said i needed to get out of my comfort zone of drawing my daisies in the same way, and to develop my work i should try and explore different contexts. So far i have only used photography and drawing, i feel that the photography is good as a form of research and documentation aswel as work itself. So i decided to look at sculpture. Previously, if i had ever attempted sculpture it would always go horribly wrong and i felt that was my worst medium, so i've never really had the confidence or felt comfortable doing it since. But after my tutorial i sort of just said "try it!' So i did...My idea was to make daisies out of paper, as this is my main material, and to be quite honest I thought they turned out quite  well to what i was expecting.

I remember looking at an artist Helen Chadwick. She done a piece which was titled "piss flowers" where she and her husband would piss in the snow and make steel moulds of them.

I liked how there were many of these big white sculptures all placed together. My sculptures were slightly influenced by these, but i wanted and felt that i needed to do more with mine. One of my Previous ideas was where i hung my drawings of my daisies out on the line. So i tried it again with my little flower sculptures, and i felt i had explored another medium, installation. I also wanted to take photographs, and videos to take my work into a different context and get certain photographs enlarged to use as pieces of work. 

'Relationship' Exhibition...

As the end of the second year is approaching, my Exhibition at The Liverpool Art Academy in April is getting closer. I am so excited to be able to show my work to the public. The title of the Whole exhibition is 'Relationship'. I feel that my project has in someway split off into two parts, but are still connected by the subject of flowers. 
My exhibition title is called 'Say it with Flowers'....i had to write a small paragraph about my work for the  public, this is what i wrote........

Janine Kimmance

'Say it with Flowers'

The artists main areas of work are drawing and painting. Janine is currently working on showing the 'relatioship' between herslef and others close to her through paintings of flowers.
The artist says:
"Flowers are given to the people we care about in times of Love, need, celebration and unfortunatley death. But beauty doesn't last forever, even the flowers die and then they are forgotten. So by painting them, I feel that it is alot more personal, and will last longer".
Janine feels that using flower symbolism within her work will help show the ones close to her what they mean/meant to her.

The work in my exhibition will mainly be paintings rather than drawings as i feel these are the works that are mostly relative.

Hang them out to dry.

 After looking through my work i was trying to think of some ideas,

Then i thought right back to the beginning when i first started taking photographs of the daisies whilst  sunbathing in the back garden.

I was thinking about the things that were going on around me at the time, for example:

The dog was running around and my mum was hanging out the washing.

So one of my ideas was to experiment by taking snapshots of my sketches which were hung out on the washing-line.

 The work that I am producing is low-tech as I am using materials that I have close at hand and I don't want to use technology too much, or I feel it will diminish the original values of the work that I'm making. However, I don't want this to affect my ability into use of other mediums, especially as I quite like the idea of creating a stop gap animation, drawing but documenting with a camera each line that I draw to show the process of me working on each flower.  

Say it with Flowers......

As part of my project i am also looking at flower symbolism/language of flowers, as i think that this will also help me to develop my ideas and work. I aim to look mostly at Victorian flower language as i think this is an era that it was used mostly. The language, sometimes called floriography, was a victorian era form of communication which various flowers and floral arrangements where used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings, which otherwise could not be spoken.

This language was most commonly communicated through tussie mussies, an art that still follows today, but they are mostly named as posies or bouquets.

The nuances of the language are now mostly forgotten, but red roses still imply passionate, romantic love, and pink roses are less affection. White roses suggest virtue and chastity and yellow roses still stand for devotion and friendship.

Also commonly known meaning are sunflowers which can indicate either haughtiness or respect. Daisies mean innocence or purity. The Pansy signifies thought and a daffodil stands for regard. The Iris being named for the messenger of the gods in greek mythology still represent the sending of a message.

Drawings of My Daisies......

These drawings are done with pencil and yellow colored pencil for the centre of the flower.
this is an example of what i aim for some of the main pieces to look like with a finished frame to present.

A closer picture of the previous drawing in the the frame..
As i carried on drawing these pictures some 'in bloom' and some 'dying off' i thought of the fact that beauty doesn't last forever. this is one of my latest drawings which has a sort of timeline to it,
being, the start of the flowers blooming right to the end where they are slowly dying off.

My first drawing that i done from the photograps..

These sketches that i have shown are sketch book drawings. as well as
my daisy photos being work I've also used them as research so i can draw
and be influenced by them.

A close up of the drawing before. 

This little piece isn't finished yet...in this i have started to show the flowers wilting
and the petals delicately falling to the ground.

This is a later piece of work were the 'Beauty doesn't last forever ' concept is more in motion.
here iv'e tried to attempt an almost mirror image but the top is the daisies in bloom, then underneath I've tried to mirror the flowers, but as dying.

Photos of Daisies

These are some of the photographs that i started taking

Out of this little series of photographs i think that this picture
shows a time line if you like, of the daisies beginning to blossom,
in full bloom to them starting to wilt.

What i like about this photo is the fact that every daisy is in full bloom,
from the heavily disguised ones deep within the grass to the tall
ones in the background over-towering the rest.

I find the best thing in this composition is the light on the grass.
i like how it doesn't reflect onto any of the daisies.

I don't think that this is the best photo of this little series, i think its too out of focus
 but i used it because of the light beaming down on the few selected daisies in the background.

This picture is very similar to the previous one.
I like this one more because of the central daisies.

Statment of Intent

In the summer holidays whilst sunbathing in the back garden...(making the most of British weather) i started taking photographs of my mums flowers and the daisies creeping up out of the grass..As i carried on doing this i found that this could potencially turn into one of my art projects as i really enjoyed doing it. so using photography as work and also as a form of research if you like to help towards taking my work further by sketches, actual drawings and paintings, as i find these as my strengths in art.
 I will look at the symbolism in flowers and link it into my work to make it more meaningful and help give it me some sort of direction.