OUIL501 Evaluation

This module stressed me out much more than it did last year. I had a really hard time coming up with a question because I had so many ideas that I kept getting lost in, whereas last year I was able to choose a solid question quite quickly. This caused me a lot of stress but in the end once I chose a question I really got into it and enjoyed researching the topic as it was something I was really interested in finding out about. I reached my essay question of “How have representations of women in classical nude European paintins influenced modern beauty standards?” in a weird way, as in the beginning I was thinking about how we in the modern age don’t view classical painting as sexual but we are offended by the female nipple – I went on to find out that a lot of classical nudes do generally have sexual connotations as a lot were painted for high ranking men (Lords, Kings, etc ) of their mistresses. Which lead me to thinking about the ideal form and the idealisation of women, and how this is similar in classical painting to now. I was able to draw on research I had done last year, as I had found out about the elongation of proportions to make the woman more pleasing for the male gaze. I was able to further this research and it was really interesting to find out more, the best piece of information I found was about body hair being an indicator of sexual dominance – and that is why women are portrayed hairless most of the time!

Again my time management has been terrible, I absolutely did not plan it at all and I really should have. The draft that I submitted was unfinished and while I still got really useful feedback from it I think I really shot myself in the foot there. I definitely need to work on balancing my time and planning it so I can spread out my work and not end up with this one week rush of having to finish off everything. I am definitely going to go down to learning support and get some help with time management, because it’s becoming a regular occurrence in each module and I am a terrible human being and never do anything about it.

I don’t feel very confident writing long chunks of writing, I feel like I can never quite hit the word threshold by some miracle I did this time but I still felt uneasy writing it. Everything I wrote didn’t seem to make sense, but when I read it back it did? I feel like I should have finished my essay a lot sooner and gotten more feedback on it as while I think the structure is sound, the content might be a little thin. I’m worried I’ve used too many quotes and it looks like I’ve just padded it out with quotes rather than having written anything useful, though I did think through everything I put into it and it went through a heck of a lot of editing.  

In regards to my practical work I am happy with the concept and overall happy with the final publication I made. I think the interactive element of the book being a ‘make your own paper doll’ type thing, makes it fun and engaging while also commenting on the issue of idealism in art and media. If I had managed my time better I definitely would have liked to have made the imagery a bit more polished, as it is a bit rough around the edges and there are some elements I didn’t manage to erase in photoshop before printing. Though I do feel a lot more confident using indesign and making a booklet style book, as this is probably the best experience of folding / cutting / putting together a booklet I’ve had. Usually my folding skills fail me. Also I am really enjoying pattern, I made a quick pattern for the cover of my book and think it looks pretty cool – this is definitely something I could move forward with in my practice.

I am apprehensive about the looming dissertation next year, as I am not confident with my writing at all. I will have to choose a subject that I can really get stuck into. I am still interested in representations of women, and particularly female sexuality and empowerment but I’m not sure what elements I want to focus in on as of yet. I just want to make sure I choose something exciting, and give myself enough time to DO something really exciting with it! I definitely want to strive to be better at everything than I have been this year!

OUIL501 Essay

Cop3 Proposal

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Final Publication!

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It is done! She is finished! The folding didn't go too badly, and I got to try the funky stapler down in the digital print room. 

While I appreciate this definitely could have been better executed, I am happy with the publication I have made. I think it's got a solid idea behind it and it looks quite nice, it could have done with some extra polishing though. When I got it digitally printed I noticed a few lines, scuffs, noise etc. that I hadn't managed to erase in photoshop so I will be paying much closer attention to detail in the future so I don't end up with this problem again. 

My book will be packaged with a watercolour pallette and split pins - to give the truly authentic activity book feel. I wanted to get a real kids style watercolour set but they were all much too big so I settled for a slightly fancier looking one, it still does the job. 

The size of the book is appropriate, and I'm really happy with how the pattern looks on the front and back cover. I did have some trouble trimming the book, as by nature I am not very good at folding or cutting - not good at lining things up at all. Luckily I printed two copies one to make an example doll, so the one I messed up a litte I used for this. The proper one for submission looks fine. 

I think that overall my book reflects the themes of my essay. Particularly the things about ideal beauty, and how the ideal woman is not real but an amalgamation of parts of many different women - often these parts don't match up. The aim of the book is for the viewer to choose their favourite parts but when they're all attached together it looks totally wrong. Hypothetically combining lots of beautiful parts together should make a beautiful whole, but this is just not true!

The pose I chose for the woman was a twisting one, often seen on comic covers or advertisements. Meant to show both the breasts and the butt, because this is what dudes look at/for in a woman... good boobs, good butt. It was pretty hard to translate into papercut though, and it makes the end paper doll look absolutely horrifying as the body parts definitely don't fit together. I think in this context it works because the aim is to make something awful, but I definitely could have thought it through better. The main body part that bugs me on this is the feet! I had no idea what to do with them! I can't really draw feet anyway, but especially when I don't know what pose they should be in. I settled for the underside of the foot, as the whole bottom half is meant to be the back of a woman. They look bad though. 

I made an example doll, just to show an option of what this would look like completed and she is just beautiful (horrifying). But it showed that painting over the pieces works, you can add any colour to it! Another thing I found is that the papers quite tough so it can be hard to push the split pins through. If I had more time I would have thought about this and tested stocks, or put holes in the paper so slip the pins through. She is posable too, and that's pretty fun!

Pattern!

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I wasn't really sure what to do for the front cover so I thought I would make a nice (utterly horrifying) pattern out of all the body parts. I learned a lot about making repeating patterns from responsive and it's come in so handy because I absolutely love this awful pattern. I just think it's so unsettling, and fun!

I think it really gives the impression of what I'm going for. It implies the cut and pasting and making a frankenstein's monster of a woman out of all these parts!

I decided to name my book "Your own Personal Venus" based on the song "Personal Jesus" as it fit to the tune (haha) and also I think linked to my theme. The viewer would make THEIR personal ideal woman from these parts, and a lot of classical paintings depict Venus thus - Your own Personal Venus. 

Molly suggested I put the pattern on all the blank pages too, half my pages had to be blank so when cutting out pieces it didn't cut into anything that would be on the back. I did this because it made the book more interesting to look at, as there wasn't as much blank space and it also meant the paper doll made from this would have a cool pattern on the back instead of just being blank. 

I got it printed in the digital print room so I could have the book on nice stock (200gsm, and matte so it's quite sturdy paper) but I'm apprehensive about folding it because I'm bad at folding!

Creating the pages!

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I liked the watercolour texture so I did a few pages of light wash and drew the body parts over the top. I found drawing the arms and legs most challenging as I had to split them up into different sections which makes them just look like sausages of flesh rather than a recognisable limb. However once I arranged them all onto the pages everything started to come together. 

Though I do think they all look best flesh coloured I wanted to keep the aspect of choice for the viewer, so made the images black and white so they retained the texture and were also light enough to be painted over. I think the texture looks really good though, exactly how I wanted it to!

(not pictured) I wrote up an instruction page so the viewer would know what to do with the book - obviously. I would have really liked to have put some dotted lines around the pieces to make it clear they're meant to be cut out but given the spacing of a lot of stuff it just wasn't possible without either taking some things out or adding more pages (which I could not). To the body parts I added some circles to act as a guide on where to insert split pins to hold the body together. 

Figure Studies

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So that I could draw a few different shapes of body part, and test out some media I did some quick nude figure studies from references found online.

This was pretty fun as I was able to cut loose and do what I really like doing - painting naked ladies. I tested out ink and watercolour as I had an idea in my head of the kind of texture I wanted for the fleshy bits, both worked really well. I especially enjoy the colours in my watercolour tests - however for my final ones the imagery will be black and white to allow the viewer to paint their own skin tone onto the body. Also it would be pretty problematic making all the parts white person colour. I do still want to give a little but of texture to it though, and I think a light wash of watercolour would achieve this.

I think I've got a better grasp on bodies again, once you draw stylised bodies for ages you tend to forget what a real one looks like so it was good to revisit a real reference rather than trying to work from just my brain.

Post Crit Madness

Oh boy, if anything the recent crit has shown me how little work I've done and how much I've got to do in a week, so I am going to try and get myself in gear.

My publication will be an activity book where the viewer can make a paper doll of an ideal woman from a range of body parts that can be cut out of the book.

I had a little play with making a mockup paper doll, which gave me an idea of how the body parts should be sectioned up. I wanted to make it so both the breasts and the butt are shown on the doll - because this is a prominent feature in the sexualisation of women in the modern day.

As I wanted this to be a cut out book I had a little play with a rotary cutter thing, seeing if perforating around the shapes would make them able to pop out, this sort of worked with a rectangle but I think it took a bit of wiggling to pop it out and that might damage the pieces so it's probably a good idea for it to be set up so the viewer cuts out their own pieces.

It seems like a lot of people think my idea is good and that my research is looking good. Though I distinctly feel like it's not, as I have barely done any development with media and everything's really rough. Over the next week I'm really going to have to do something about that. I have started drawing up final components for my book, I'm finding it a bit of a challenge drawing all the body parts seperately because I have to think how they connect to other body parts, without drawing those other parts.

Also as Jennifer Aniston was voted most beautiful woman, I decided to base one of the faces off her.

One point of feedback was to include a few different / smaller breast and nipple sizes as in my preliminary sketches for the body parts I had unintentionally drawn a lot of larger breasts, as I tend to draw curves better.  I think I will get some online references and do some quick figure studies to help me get used to drawing different body types before I make the final pieces for the publication.

ORLAN - The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan

This project of ORLAN's was a series of cosmetic surgeries compiling different aspects of beautiful women's faces from classical paintings. 

 

"Orlan's goal in these surgeries is to acquire the ideal of female beauty as depicted by male artists" 

"Of the operations performed so far, one altered her mouth to imitate that of François Boucher's Europa; another "appropriated" the forehead of da Vinci's Mona Lisa; yet another imitates the chin of Botticelli's Venus. These models were not chosen by Orlan purely for their ideal beauty, however, but also for their mythical and symbolic connotations. Venus was selected for her symbolic notions of fertility and "Europa because she looked to another continent, permitting herself to be carried away into an unknown future" (Rose, 85). Yet another surgery, the widely publicized "Omniprésence," which took place in November of 1993, implanted protrusions in her forehead to mimic the protruding brow of Mona Lisa. Naturally, Orlan's was more exaggerated: rather than a gentle protrusion, the end result was two symmetrical horns."

I find this project really interesting, and it relates really well to my essay and practical work as I think it relates back to the fact that the ideal woman is comprised of parts of several different women, and thus ideal beauty is not attainable. It's especially interesting and relevant as instead of using contemporary women / models / ideals of beauty ORLAN takes the beauty standards of classical paintings. From ORLAN's site: "Carnal Art is not against plastic surgery, but opposes its standards such as engraved in the male, but particularly female flesh", the project seems to me a comment on how men rule over beauty standards for women and while we may know this of today it highlights how it has always been this way. Though ORLAN imbues the parts with her own aura, by not using each element just because of their ideal beauty but because of the meanings of each woman. 

The practical work I had an idea for is similar to this, but with less surgery as I'm unsure college would accept me having mass amounts of surgery just for this module. It would be more focused on the body and the idea of making a cut and paste woman, I'm thinking in an activity book style. 

Thoughts & Failures

I kept thinking about the flip book and tried cutting up some grey board to try and make a mockup, needless to say it didn't go well. Given the amount (lack) of time I've given myself to make my publication I think I'm definitely going to have to scrap that idea. Even if I had enough time I don't think I actually have the technical skills to make something like that without a mass amount of research.

I still like the idea of something that can be played with, I'm wondering about some kind of activity book where different parts are cut and combine-able to still make an absolute abomination of a woman, something still kind of horrifying, and linking to the ideal woman being made from severl different parts.

Audience Participation

I want my practical work to base around creating the "ideal woman", as representations of women in classical nude paintings and in the modern media are an ideal form of a woman rather than a realistic human. I got lots of people to draw me their ideal woman, I did it to see what the general public find desirable in a woman - perhaps there would be images I could use to influence my work. 

Not sure I found out much as everyone's "ideal woman" is different, we are clearly a diverse college. I did find out that people enjoyed drawing the pictures and the interactive element. I definitely want to have some kind of interactive element, one of my original ideas was an activity book and I also have the idea of a flip-section-outfit book. (what is the technical term for these, example below)

 

100 Years of Beauty

These 100 years of beauty videos are interesting. The one I've linked here is the USA one but they have made them for several different countries.

The video runs through 100 years of beauty for the country in question. It splits the beauty trends up into decades, (1910's, 1920's &so on) it's more of a presentation of fashion, but is popular fashion not a beauty standard of sorts? Beauty is informed by fashion, fashion is informed by beauty. The whole "buy the product get the girl" or "buy the product to be like the girl to get the man" paradigm of advertising.

Obviously this is just a fun video to see how fashion / beauty has changed over 100 years.