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!