Thursday 28 March 2013

Markmaking and Memory Workshop Wednesday 27th March


Participants - Oliver, Ken, Jackson, Juliette, Katie, Mags, Nele, Fiona

Warm ups are always useful and we did a few exercises of making expressive marks with the drawing materials to hand, moving on to the next space after a minute and adding to the work of the previous artist.  This helped to free us up, and to experience using an unfamiliar set of tools.














Beginning of the exercise, followed by the results




















 



Anything goes, with marks, hole reinforcers, cutouts, sticky labels, thick, thin, you name it...

Next, we made a selection of marks to which the next person had to respond. This time we  took with us a favoured drawing tool.  Ken chose to use a knife!




Some people chose to use a different format from a plain sheet like this book shape of Oliver's.











These results seem a lot more compositional and sensitive.




MEMORY GAMES
















We took the popular children's memory game as the starting point for these memory exercises and set up a 'tray' of objects under a cloth.  The cloth was removed for 4 minutes and everyone was to try to remember as much as they could about them.  After time was up, they were to be recorded visually on paper.

Next, we had one person look at an object and memorise what it was like, and they had to describe it to the others so that they could draw it.  Jackson was definitely the best at this!







Consequences Workshop Wednesday 20th March








5 tables were set up exploring the idea of 'Consequences', taking inspiration from the Victorian pastime and the visual games of Andre Breton's Surrealists.
We had a 'Waiting Room', for those times when the tables were not accessible:








This was laid out with reading and playing materials

Each table had their own instructions.



Table 1 was the original written consequences. 

Table 2 was the original visual consequences.  Drawing and collage materials were provided, for inspiration or application.




Table 3 was for choosing random words from a selection of books.  The instruction was to pick the 7th word from any page.



Table 4 was based on the original visual consequences, but had to be guided by unseen objects in a bag, which the participant would feel.








Table 5 was to combine the written and visual.  An object was drawn by one person, which the next person would describe in writing.  The first image was then hidden and the next participant would draw from the description, and so on.....




At the end of the workshop the students were put into groups and given a visual 'character' (from Table 2) and a set of random words.  Their task was to make a few sentences starting with each word and, linking it to the character, compose a story.  Some chose to start with one word and finish with the next.  The narratives were all very entertaining and one group even had a song!  Everyone embraced the spirit of their character.







The Narratives







GALLERY



Original Visual Consequences











Unseen and 'felt' Consequences