"Silk Stockings"

On monday the 29th of December I watched the wonderful, humour and brilliantly executed musical 'Silk Stockings' directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Starring Fred Astaire as Steve Canfield, an American movie producer in Paris and Cyd Charisse as Ninotchka. Fred Astaire never seizes to amaze me, even at the age of 58 in this performance and Cyd Charrise also carries out an oustounding level of charm as her portrayal of a dead-serious, witty, beautiful soviet agent with a heart for the working class and dedication to her job and her country (who just happens to be an excellent dancer as seen here and in her performance along Gene Kelly in 'Singing in the Rain').


The plot summary is as follows:

A musical remake of Ninotchka: After three bumbling Soviet agents fail in their mission to retrieve a straying Soviet composer from Paris, the beautiful, ultra-serious Ninotchka is sent to complete their mission and to retrieve them. She starts out condemning the decadent West, but gradually falls under its spell, with the help of Steve Canfield, an American movie producer. Written by John Oswalt

My favourite scene in this movie is when Ninotchka, the three Soviet agents ( Brankov, Bibinski, and Ivanov) and the composer meet up in Moscow and fantasise about their memories from Paris and suddenly burst into spontaneous dance which was not only filmed in a great way, but the actual performance was breathtaking. I had to hold my breathe when it all took place. It certainly deserved every bit of applaud it got. I would recommend this comical musical to anyone who hasn't already seen it and just wish that there would be more 40's and 50's influenced musicals produced and viewed these days. This has also been written as a tribute to Cyd Charisse who sadly passed away on June the 17th, this year at the age of 86.

random doodles

no idea...

...no they aren't sperms

Arkangelsk

This is probably one of my favourite buildings, and it wasn't even built by an Architect, but a retired russian gangster in a small town in Russia's far north-western region. It shoots up to a staggering 13 floor structure (originally only being 2), apparently built over the course of 15 years, received a head load of criticism from neighbours and the community wants it down, which I honestly don't understand why. I mean, it's so beautiful. It makes me think it was built by a really crafty child trying to imitate the Kiyomizu-dera combed with a giant fairytale-like treehouse, where the floors, roofs and walls overlap and withstood a mild tornado.

continues

It's almost finished, this is how the sculpture looks so far, quite a mixed media piece.


Some close ups:
one
two
three

...more project sketches

...here I just tried finding ways of exploring and expressing the inner conflict in human nature.



















Some photos of its current developing stage:

sculpture

These are some sketches for a sculpture I'm currently working on, has to do with the duality of human nature and the inner conflict of humans sense of good and evil- more details soon (with some pictures of the progress so far).

marilyn monroe

...

experiments

I'll let you figure it out...

crazy moustache

And my fascination with moustaches continues...

another day in the wild life...

I decided to draw some animals, a cow/bull and some sort of deer specie then found myself turning the cow into some abstract pattern thing. It's not weaved intestines, though it could be.

mechanical

(click for full view)

I've never used a mechanical pencil to draw with before, so when I was at my parents house over the weekend I got hold of a mechanical pencil and did some doodles. Not sure exactly where I was going with these, perhaps just another sketch of my fascination with pipes and moustaches and possibly some death reference you can decide.

greenpark

Was sitting in the park the other day, just sketching what I saw from my bench. Got a lot of stares which was funny, but yeah happy that I managed to get something out of it. So here are some quick sketches.

Benwiskin snow

This is where I wish I was right now, where the sheep stands. But then after that I'd like to go back country on some bigger mountains. snow, can't wait for winter.

The Aurland Lookout

I came across this lookout called the Aurland Lookout, located in Aurland, Norway quite some time ago (not in real life, though I hope I'll be able to see it in person in the near future). It was designed by architects Todd Saunders and Tomie Wilhelmsen who won the competition for the new lookout. The beautiful thing about it is that it seems to be almost like the Passage d'Enfer as it drops down midway, but still carries on with it's surreal charm. However, there is a tall glass wall at the curve and if I remember right, that's exactly what both Tom and Tomie wanted to play on, the idea of deceiving the eye and creating an almost daredevil atmosphere and the need to explore the end of it only to discover that it does in fact stop at the forefront of the beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding fjords. I lived in Norway for 3 years, but only travelled up to the far north once to see the fjords, something I'd like to see again.

Bartlett Summer School '08

During the summer I attended the summer school program at the Bartlett. The two week program was meant to be a Micro-festival of Architecture, following on from the London based architecture festival that was held. During the course we were split up into three groups and then sub-categorised depending on what area we wanted to work on as part of our overall group assignment, which was to create a performance or festival of architecture. We spent several days exploring the South Bank and the River Thames. The subgroup I was part of in the first week's assignment was to build something out of and showcase objects collected and incorporate that into a performance. So myself and two other guys got thought of creating a portable homeless shelter, which opens up as a museam as well. The idea was that the homeless man (who had to be quite short as the whole thing was within an abandoned milk container thing) don't know the official name (left) was the performing agent, and the process of unfolding, opening an enclosed, box on wheels to transform it into something quite contrary to it's appearance, merely a functioning bed space, chair, shelves, roof, exhibiting found objects as a small museam etc. and this was to be the 'performance'. This was then set up on top of a stage we built and the ceiling of the portable home was used for a projection of another performance.

Over the second week, we were assigned a new project which was also meant to be a festival. For that, we designed and constructed a suspension bridge (and surprisingly, it didn't collapse as we all expected) along with an almost fictional environment created with wooden rods/poles attached to the bridge that would trigger movement and sound that created the whole atmosphere of the festival. We tried to reconstruct the traditional meaning of a festival, which is already there. The visitor created the festival as he/she entered and ended as he/she left. More details can probably be found somewhere else, and I apologise for not explaining it better.




All this said, if anyone is interested in attending any future summer schools at the Bartlett, then please feel free to contact me (by e-mail, which is provided) and I'll give you some better feedback from myself as well as others. And the photos provided here are just a select few from the ones I took, I have more which can be found under the bartlett ss 08 facebook group.

MOLESKINE

A while ago I bought myself a new moleskine sketchbook which I intend to take seriously from now on and so far I've been taking it with me everywhere I go. This is a start in it, just a few sketches of some guys in the train. People thought it was odd that I was drawing them, but I liked the guys socks and boots and the guy sitting in front of me had the same pose for ages lol so maybe he was giving me a hint. Anyway I drew him as well, but also worked him into a sculpture I did a while ago using modelling paste (which I still need to cast) of a Victorian gentleman. I'll provide a picture of that as soon as I've got one. :p

Beeswax

This is an extract from my final exam work (module 7) for my A-level Fine art course, sat in May of this year. There was a lot of experimentations and preparation I did for this project, and it become my favourite, most enjoyable of the lot. I'd never worked with pigmented beeswax before, let alone, combining it with oil paint and other media, so it took me to untouched territory which is kind of what I wanted. I wanted to try something completely different from what I've done before, and this was a good opportunity (though my art teachers were both really worried at first, when I told them what I was going to do :p).

This is one of the test pieces I did as part of the preliminary work for the exam. However, this is only pigmented beeswax on a clear undercoat on top of an old wooden bit I found and decided to use for my canvas. Tools used was a very powerful heat gun, a blow-dryer and some poor quality paint brushes.


This led me to my final work which was a sequence of three paintings on the backside of some old 60's wooden stools that I found in the old art shed and cut off the legs from. I've already written a detailed description of the work, so I'll quote that bellow.

"The topic I chose for this exam project was ‘tranormation’. I began by exploring various directions with the title, from observing and studying the transformation of an origami bird (a 3-dimentional form) from a flat, 2-dimentional piece of paper (transforming in shape, dimension and appearance) to the transformation of meaning, purpose and use using an old keyboard, to exploring the ways in which smoke transforms in air and ink, food colouring, brusho, etc. transforms in liquid. For each I took several photographs and produced a number of observation drawings capturing the processes and sequence involved. I later went on to experiment with pigmented beeswax on wooden panels and enjoyed how the outcomes themselves proved to be a transformation, with the paint constantly being transformed on the surface, when in its liquid state, to create the final piece.

For my final piece (above) I decided to use the under parts of three old wooden stools lying around in the shed. These were to be used as wooden panels for my sequence work. To prime it I heated the surface and then added a layer of plain beeswax, and then coated it with another layer consisting of white pigmented beeswax, whilst blowing it around. I used the shapes and direction of this layer to guide the direction of the background that was going to be applied to it using other pigmented beeswax, heated oil pastels and oil paint. I wanted to create a very lively, very vivid background full of energy with more pale and subtle colours towards the central region, where I was going to paint the main subject i.e. the red liquid transformation.

The final piece was not only a depiction of a transformation, but the techniques used, by rubbing the layers with tissue paper, blowing and pushing the beeswax, oil paint and oil pastels around made the technique itself a transformation as well. This is the main reason why I decided to use these techniques for my exam piece, but also because I felt it added more of a character to it. Additionally, the stool’s purpose has also been transformed, from being a stationary object for sitting on, to its use as a canvas."

Introducing the Gunpowder!

This is my first post on my blog. I thought I'd start off by posting some negative willow charcoal drawings I did a while ago. I find it more comforting sometimes to work with charcoal powder from back to front as opposed to using a pencil as I feel it allows strokes to be less restricted, more experimental and expressive.

These drawings to the left were part of my 'human form' project (yr 12, AS fine art) where we had to study the human form and branch off in a direction that we could relate back to this starting point. I chose to explore the slight mystery and curiosity attached to the violent, bloodbath sports of the underworld such as bare knuckle fighting, where the bare body is a defence and attack mechanism, muscles tensed almost animalistic and has a very dark gruesome reality (which is what I tried to illustrate in the the two drawings here). First one is of an opponent (I modelled myself for thedrawing) before a fight, the question mark is to question the reality of the sport and choices. The second is of one caught up in a match, I wanted to emphasise on movement and the tensing of muscles. The text is there (it's just something I like doing) because I feel everything tells a story.