You say that after the third image on the blog you felt you were ‘getting somewhere’.  This is what you want to expand on.  Where are you getting?  What are the clues?  Which bits are really working?  Is it the process or the outcome?  Try and ask yourself ‘why?’ whenever you make a claim and find a way of backing it up  If necessary make comparisons between your works to make your point.  If you’re feeling ambitious compare your work to that of others.  I’d be interested to see you write about Twombly or Pollock after making these.

This is a fair point.  It’s these areas that I struggle with, and I know I need to try to identify what it is that I think I’ve achieved by being specific.

As the work progresses (And it’s good that you’ve kept at this and produced a lot of work) you’ve tried to collide abstraction and figuration in the ‘tree’ works. By the end you seem quite in control of the processes (good) but there are consequently fewer surprises.

This is true; I decided fairly early on to make a tree drawing, and perhaps as it was an interpretive drawing I should have been open to making different drawings and experimenting with whatever sprung to mind during the music.

The photographs of the details have potential. What is their status? (remember the digital / analogue or ‘in the flesh’ conversation we had?) Are these works in their own right or just documentation of some thing else? It would be good to read your thoughts on this sort of issue. It starts to get at something fundamental about this body of work.: where is the work? Is it the process, the object, or somewhere in between?
The answer might be that it skips around, never quite settling. the the object, or somewhere in between? 

This really interests me because I was quite excited when I looked at the close up photographs.  it did occur to me that they could be a work in themselves.  Again though, I need to reflect why I thought that and be specific.  I think it would help to perhaps look at another artists work who has done this.

Drawing Blind: These are good – especially the two lyrical black pen ones – and you’ve made progress. It would be good to see some of this approach filtering in to your normal practice.

This has also occurred to me.  Whilst making the blind drawings I observed that the lines were less hesitant and rendered more confidently than when I normally draw and it would be good to be able to harness this is some way, and again I need to practice this.

It’s good that you linked these to Nicholson, but I’d like to see the link explored more. It’s not just a superficial visual similarity, but something that deals fundamentally with the nature of the object in question. It gets at big ideas like truth and beauty.

It’s the ‘big ideas’ that I find daunting!  I really need to think about how to address this.

Your analysis of this work is based the making and not on what the work might evoke or ‘mean’. Try and speculate a bit on that,

This is an area I struggle with.  I can feel an emotional response to an image, but sometimes struggle to put it into words.  I was pleased with the ‘blue spot drawing’ but struggle to say what it is that pleases.  It’s back to trying to be specific

Perhaps gridding up one of the charcoal drawings and making a facsimile of, but painstakingly done, would be an interesting way to extend / collapse time.

This is an interesting idea because the drawing was made by the machine quite quickly and the marks are in some places controlled and in others quite accidental.  Gridding up a drawing would cause my marks to be precise and laboured and my drawing would take much longer to do.

An Emotional Response: I’m not sure that these work as well, but I like the approach It would be good to think of the works as having the statements as their titles. I don’t normally suggest that students worry about making ‘art’ or anything ‘meaningful’, but you might want to start pairing text with the visuals. Don’t try be poetic or even descriptive, but perhaps simply explain something a bit. Have a think. It might feed into your Parallel Project, especially if you pursue abstraction. The rupture or juxtaposition of plain words next to complex imagery can be interesting. Perhaps the text could even become part of the imagery.

I totally agree with the critique and recorded my thoughts as such, I my blog.  Had time allowed I would have had another go at this exercise.  The comment about text is interesting because I had already planned to try this out in the Parallel Project.  I bought some letereset for the text and have researched some artists who use text in their work.

By the way, I think the first attempt at a self-portrait is interesting as the face is nearly blank and reminiscent of John Bellany’s work.

Very interesting comment.  I was so focussed on technique and getting the proportions of my face correct that I never actually noticed how the drawing looked with no features.  That does evoke an emotional response; makes me think of a loss of identity, anonymity, a mask, dehumanization, a person lost.

This is, again, clear and well-thought out and, with regard to others artists’ work, very thorough. As before I’d like to see a bit more reflection on the effectiveness of the work (yours and others) and not just a technical description or appraisal. It’s a subtle difference, but it should help you situate the work in terms of your ambition for it.

I think I need clarification on what ‘effectiveness’ means.  Does it mean what was the artist’s/my intention, and was this met?

Plotting your work in relation to that of others (that is ‘contextualising’ it) is crucial. It’s what you get marks for, after all. You’ve come to some interesting and insightful conclusions in the ‘research / reflection’ part of the blog. It would be good to see some of that shown in amongst your own work.

For instance, when you made the video did you feel you were documenting a performance?
Try and apply this sort of thinking to what you’re doing a little bit more. 
On the ‘Erased DeKooning’ (which I love, by the way) you say that
Interestingly, I was more excited by the assertion from Rauschenberg that if de Kooning hadn’t been home, then ‘that would have been the work’, and then if he hadn’t agreed to giving him a drawing, ‘that would have been the work, and so on. That is a very interesting concept to me, and somehow I can understand it better that the erasure of the drawing.
I want to read about why you thought that would be interesting. It touches on a lot of Conceptual Art practice (inspired in part by Rauschenberg’s gesture).
On the whole the blog is very good. It would be good to see some ‘bleed’ between reflection on the work of others and your own work. You’re doing it, but I need to see it in writing. 

Most of the comments made in this report pertain to relating my own work to other artists, or contextualising.  This is the area I need to focus on in Part 4.  It is my intention to look at blogs of other students to see how that works in practice.  In addition I intend to address each point in this report and go back and make changes in my original reflections.

Positive critique is;

Thesis a difficult assignment but you’ve approached it with ambition and purpose. Well done. The intensity of the drawings is good.

As the work progresses (And it’s good that you’ve kept at this and produced a lot of work)

Drawing Blind: These are good – especially the two lyrical black pen ones – and you’ve made progress.

Mark Making: Throughout this exercise you move neatly from drawings that are simple observations to something more intriguing and well done for thinking of the parallel project while working on them.

The roses end up giving you a strong patterned work that borders on abstraction while referencing calligraphy / writing. Well done.

The drawing following the roses is intriguing. I like the ambiguity of the space and the way to recedes and flattens the subject. It starts to reads as a landscape but then suddenly snaps to being an interior detail. More please. This could be the first step in an interesting journey.

The ‘blue spot’ drawing is good, too. I like that you have to improvise and use lots of small pieces of charcoal

Drawing Machine: It’s good that you kept working at this until you doing that altering the variables made a difference to what was produced. By sticking with this you’ve inserted some deliberate authorship into what might seem to be accidental. Making hand-made version of them was a good move, too as it should help you incorporate some of the marks into your vocabulary.

This is, again, clear and well-thought out and, with regard to others artists’ work, very thorough.

 

On the whole the blog is very good.

This is very positive and encouraging.  I have a clearer idea of the areas I need to focus on when going forward to Part 4.