Student name   Anne McLeod       Student number 497519
Course/Unit Drawing 2 Assignment number 5
Type of tutorial (eg video/audio/ written) Written

Overall Comments
Thanks for submitting the latest set of work. I know that this portfolio has been a difficult submission but I think that you’re really getting somewhere. I read back my last report and your comments on it before writing this one and I hope that you feel more confident. There are tricky steps as you’re challenging yourself all the time and learning a lot. Your work is moving from representation to something more profound.
You are outside you comfort zone, but – trust me – the work has some really strong qualities. One advantage about working in a more speculative way is that each piece ought to throw up problems that need addressing, which gives the impetus to make new work in a way that a rounded-off or ‘complete’ work doesn’t. Stuff that is looking for something will always stumble across other stuff that’s fascinating and worth exploring.
In this report I haven’t separated out the ‘work’ from the learning log as they seem so closely linked. My main focus has been to try and help you recognise links that exist in your shelf directed parallel project work and the more ‘brief-driven’ exercises. You may not see the links as clearly as me (and perhaps I’m looking too hard to link everything), but there are connections. Your underlying ability to draw is fine and you shouldn’t worry on that score and you have potential to do well on the contextualisation and creativity elements of the course, but you need to push on a little. This won’t necessarily be easy, but it’s a journey worth making as the world will look more exciting and interesting once you’ve done it. I have also returned the draft of the critical review with notes on it and you should refer to that document too.

Feedback on assignment
Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of
Creativity
A Changing Scene. Well done for trying various approaches to this problem. I think that you preference for the drawing with the shadows is perfectly reasonable. Its composition is interesting and there’s a sense of time (and space) unfolding. I do think, however, that if the shopping centre drawing had been denser that something rich could have been made. You’ve stopped quite early in the process, I think, and not given it chance to breathe. You’re interested in your position as an artist as recorder, and I wonder if there wasn’t more mileage available to you here. You could, for example, have traced the routes people take through the shopping centre which would have conflated the car headlights idea with the observation. I do like the use of the water and the soluble ink and would be interested to see you push this technique further.
An Artist’s Book. You’ve looked at the work of the artists suggested but I really wanted to get your take on their work. In the section on Botticelli, you write that ‘the imagination used is amazing’ and I wanted to read how? Aside form the technical aspects (‘His draughtsmanship is perfect and the fine line drawing technique employed often implies movement of the characters so that you could almost be looking at an animation’), what moves or excites you in the work? What can you borrow or learn from it? In your summaries of the other artists there’s very little of your voice. You mostly quote from other sources and don’t agree / disagree with the statements. Although it’s tricky, I want you to bring something of your knowledge or opinion (which is informed by your education and practice) to bear on the subject.
You do establish a relationship with another artist’s work when you come to make your own book, which is great. The idea of using notes and ‘doodles’ made during phone
conversations is really strong and pulls on all sorts of strands in contemporary art. I know that you put this aside as you progressed but its something you should consider
reincorporating. Aside from Martin Wilner’s work there’s something of Cy Twombly’s interest in scribbles and (possibly) subconscious mark-making.
The pages of the book have a vibrant but evasive quality. Parts of the images shift into focus and others are obscured or tricky to read. The ambiguous orientation plays its part too. You managed to re-think what a book might be. It’s not narrative and the front and back (and in terms of a time-based project, this is important) is perhaps arbitrary or complex. I’d call this a success and though you’ve puled back from using all the material you considered you might want to return to the sheets to explore the form further. As I’ve already written, you could employ the technology of bureaucracy (photocopiers and scanners (which I mis-wrote as ‘sinners’ last time)) to fold elements of the work back into itself. Making copies of the pages and working into them again (and again, and again) might also reinforce the repetitive nature of bureaucratic systems. I really think that this little book has legs and ought to be pursued.
Don’t forget that you can layer the image with different colours in different sessions. You might also attach other bits of office paraphernalia to the main substrate. You cool for example staple stuff onto the pages or add posit-its (you actually mention this in your notes on my last report), or even rip or cut stuff out, or censor it. The key phrase in your reflection is:

If I were to do this exercise again I think I would try to include doodles and
sketches done unintentionally whilst listening on the phone and perhaps look
into what the subconscious meanings of these could be. Why not keep this going by adding this sort of material? I’m reluctant to say ‘start again’ as I think it would be better making this denser and more complex. The idea of doodling and then
analysing them is really very good as it makes your position as maker more problematic. You become a subject in your own work alongside the people you are quoting. Problematic is good. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet I have been collaborating with a friend on a series of books in which we work onto a pre-printed surface (also designed by us) in different ways to create a deliberately disorienting experience for the reader / viewer. The background includes photographs of a dense installation we made as well as material found online. It’s a ‘real’ collage on a digital one and each book will end up being unique:

A Finer Focus.

This is a good response (and a really solid drawing) to the brief and I’m glad you’ve thought about it in terms of your parallel project. In the light of the theme of the submission being ‘timelines’ I would be interested to know how it felt to work this way.
Making even a small drawing with such meticulous attention to detail can takes ages and you’ve implied as much in the text. How did it feel to make slow progress, but progress nonetheless? Is there something related to the speed of the bureaucratic machine here? Perhaps I’m over-stating it but the task of drawing something in this way of almost like the character in Franz Kafka’s Trial who goes round in circles trying to escape a legal system. The more you look, the more there is…
Also, the reflection on Stephen Walter’s drawings is very brief. What is it about having to get close to drawings to understand them? Is something lost even as the viewer reads more detail? More please, as I think you could get a greater insight into your own work by addressing these issues.
Time and the Viewer.

It’s here that you resolve – or explore – some of the issues raised in the other exercises. The text you’ve written is good and adds to the work, I think. The plain and
clear way you write about how colour and black and white work differently is  convincing and unpretentious, for example. Visually the piece relates not only to the precedents you mention but to the artist’s books you made, though all the elements are more ‘equal’ in status. The idea of time is very visibly encoded into its making, too. The reposted material from the OCA forum is a great inclusion as it shows how a work is ‘read’. It’s an obviously symbolic or allegorical piece and invites the viewer to speculate on meaning and connections and you see this played out in a very
clear way. Does this, I wonder, have a part to play in the piece itself? Is there room for some of this text to be incorporated? Perhaps also you could draw the key, like this:

This would provide a visual map rather than just a list and would extend it just a little further. On a side note, I’m interested in the YES logo and wonder if their work – detailed and technical, with a little bit of the ‘kitchen sink thrown in’ approach could be seen as an analogue of your approach? This isn’t as trivial as it seems. Often our work can be informed by other cultural interests? How might different artists approach cooking, for instance? Andy Warhol: a ready meal? David Hockney: something tasty and fresh, but improved from ingredients? Whereas a conceptual artist might follow a recipe meticulously.
The final comment – ‘In a sense, this could be viewed as the artist having power over the viewer and the ability to ‘steal’ their time’ – is interesting. Does the art work also steal time from the artists, demanding to be made in certain way.
All in all these are interesting projects and while they may seem fragmented and unrelated to (a) each other and (b) the parallel project, I think that connections can be made. I’d recommend drawing a mind-map that covers all the work made for Drawing Two to plot the links. This could be quite big and incorporate thumbnail sketches as well as writing (and be as dense in tis way as Faust in his Study). You could write a contextualising statement and include both in your submission. If foldable, like a map, it could be a artists book.
This is in line with the ‘reminder’ on p68 of the course:

Pointers for the next assignment
● Reflect on this feedback in your learning log and link it to the last report which still
has relevance here
● Think back over the course and try and eke out the links between things
● As an artist you are responsible for not only making your work but also recording its
making, especially in THIS context. How does that fit with the ‘artist as recorder’ idea?
Please inform me of how you would like your feedback for the next assignment. Written or video/audio? I’d really like to speak to you again a I think that at the end of this course you have made real progress, but lack a bit of confidence in its value or the objectivity to see how it might all be linked. A conversation would really help, I think.
If you decide to make some more work (and I hope you do) and rework the text a bit, we can talk about that.
I look forward to it.
Tutor name                     24th June

Next Assignment due ; 31st Aug 2016