observation - drawing

I started drawing fairly small objects that I found around me at home and in the art department. These included the shrunken pineapple, various shells and the plant stem. I tried drawing these in a variety of styles; watercolour, shading, and line drawing. The background of these drawings was often omitted to focus attention purely on the structure. I went on to draw some larger structures such as the tree and the 'bays' at school. I found larger subjects harder to draw because there was always a greater textural surface to consider, it was necessary to find a balance between true form and detail(textural).

observation - photographs

My observation so far has contained subject matter from a variety of sources. I was lucky to be able to take most of my photographs within a few miles of my house, thanks to a wealth of structures all around me. A large portion of my photographs were taken in the university of Reading. These included the shots of small organic plants and flowers, trees and derelict buildings. Because of the time of year (winter) there was a fair amount of decay and a lot of the structures I found were skeletons, wooden shells, husks and cold frameworks.

Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer's Jericho is a good example of a bold, derilect-looking structure. I like the simple 'building blocks' approach and the attention to detail, such as the protruding reinforcements. Scale is also quite important here, the average viewer will be forced to experience perspective distortion. It would be interesting to see what this structure looks like on a small scale.

Lu Shengzhong

Lu Shengzhong has cut thousands of frogs by hand. In an exhibition at the V&A (spectacular crafts) he has displayed them in glass cabinets along with the offcuts. The frogs are red for good luck. I like his meticulous approach and the way that the individual strands of paper create a larger overall structure. I want to follow this up by experimenting with paper, looking at its qualities when folded, scored, layered, bent and twisted.