My choice of briefs were well-selected and appropriate to my abilities as an abstract expressionist artist who wants to retain and apply this way of working as much as possible, while also pushing out of my comfort zone through image-making, shape, dimensions, limited colour palette, and moving image.
Electives 2 was truest to my way of working in a very open studio format using a range of methods to problem solve the brief and respond to an appropriate piece of music. What does Salford represent? What are the fundamentals? How can I convey that through texture and colour? With the university facilities closed due to the pandemic and with the November lockdown, I had to work out how to screen print and monoprint at home in a very DIY and homemade way. It deeply embedded and imbued those values of graft that the working class people of Salford, and the wider North, hold dear: giving a greater meaning and connection to the work I was creating.
I found that the greatest surprise was Electives 3, the animated GIF brief. I struggled at first to come up with an idea for a signifier/visual identity/branding/logo and I continued to push it and reduce the shapes and forms. It became very naive and simple, hard to recognise in some instances, but was also a very overdone idea in the rock and metal community. To "throw the horns" is the crux of everything in mental music, created by Ronnie James Dio who is a dear and iconic figure to us, and I tried to do something with it but found that I couldn't quite solve that problem in an image-based way. Taking a different approach through responding to music, staying authentic to how I now make work, offered a much more successful outcome. Identifying and contextualising a font and colour palette gave greater success to this brief.
My ability to problem-solve the briefs in good time, with consideration for limited colour palette, the specifications, and what I find value in - my heritage of Salford, married through my love of music, worked to my advantage. I tried to put music at the heart of all three of the briefs by either responding to music (electives 2 and 3) and including music motifs (electives 1 with the Salford Lads Club - an iconic building in relation to the Smiths - and Joy Division's album cover Unknown Pleasures.)
What could have been different or better? I have realised that I find it incredibly difficult to work to a brief as I don't work in an illustrative mindset anymore. This is no longer my way of working as I no longer identify as an illustrator. I consider myself an artist, or painter, and I work in a very open-mode way. There are still parameters in place in terms of canvas dimensions, the colours I'm using, the song I'm listening to - but anything goes. It's difficult to make this kind of work on a computer. The work I make now is very open and abstract and anything can happen in that one take. The vulnerability and authenticity excites me, rather than planning in a sketchbook as before.
With the animated GIF, I struggled with a successful logo that wasn't a generic fist throwing the horns. I couldn't quite solve that visual problem as it didn't interest me or align with my practice. There was the possibility of being more elaborate and adventurous in the branding through animation but I made it work for my level of vision and my way of working in abstract ways responding to music and the songs on the playlist. The same with Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures for the final stamp in Electives 1. I don't work in an image-based or visual way, I prefer to make abstract work and work through feelings so lost interest in solving the problem.
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