Day 9: Beach Visit

Task
Copy an artists work onto the beach

Analysis
The brief itself was very vague, prompting us to use our creativity through use of materials, tools and images. Working with a group of people had a very positive outcome as a range of ideas were discussed and finally deciding on my idea in which we should re create Van Gogh's 'Skull With A Burning Cigarette'. I had selected this painting due to its ironic imagery of a skeleton, which could be related to on the beach as a castaway or pirate. I also suggested this idea as the very detailed drawing could be turned into a simplistic sketch, which I made yesterday. The sketch was perfect as it meant as soon as we arrived at the beach we could start the outline. We encountered many problems at first, the only copy of the drawing was getting wet in the rain, proportions were hard to work out on the beach and due to strong and noisy winds communication was tricky. I took a leadership role within the group as i enjoy working with others and have found am I a good mediator between people. I overcame these problems by tracing more sketches, having a lookout on the top of a cliff to help with proportions and communicating through mobile phones. Whilst the copy of the sketch was useful at first, each drawing was slightly different and therefore encountered problems at a later date so had to refer back to the original only. One technique I discovered was to draw the basic outline with only a few spades and lots of people was to have one person on the cliff top directing where people should stand. I used people as a dot to dot drawing which one person could then draw a line traveling from each person, this was a quick and very effective method. Once the outline was made it meant we could then go back and work on detail.
I found this exercise a breath of fresh air compared to working in a studio all day as it gave us a freedom to work within the beautiful environment of Falmouth and also interact with the public. I have found working in public a great way for instant feedback as lots of walkers would stop and comment on the piece.

Below are other artworks created by colleagues