I felt like Art Practice should have its own blog post because it's a bit different to the rest of the modules I've taken during my Erasmus year. The reason for this being that it's lasted for the entirety of the academic year. Personally, I've never had a project run for that long for a number of reasons which I won't bore you with now.
This module is also different in that I've decided not to choose my comfortable medium of photography to produce my work. Since I'm in a new place and environment where I have the opportunity to explore a range of techniques and materials I decided to draw for this. Originally the project was based around the fact I couldn't draw and was going to chart my progress as I (maybe) got better. As with any project both the concept, content and technique have evolved since this initial idea and the project looks very different now.
Initially I tried to focus on a range of subject matter and drawing techniques as I had an idea of the progress I'd make. I also suspected it would take me a while to find a technique I was satisfied with, however, I fell into a style that I liked sooner than expected and decided that since I was actually looking at my own drawings and not actively disliking them I'd stick with this and explore a range of techniques and materials. It also became clear to me that I couldn't continue to practise my drawing and wouldn't correctly be able to analyse my progress if I continued drawing different things. As I have a cactus in my room and the shape is fairly universal I settled on this as my subject matter and have been creating drawings of this using different materials. I'm still around 9 weeks from finishing this course and still have a lot of progress to make with my work. I'm currently exploring watercolours and how I can make the imagery appear differently using this material.
We're having a group exhibition for this course in mid-May and we are currently in the process of creating the exhibition catalogue along with the other students in the class. We've all been assigned different roles and Katie, Lucy and I are photographing the work and the students for this.
Art Practice has given me a new found confidence in my artistic ability. Before this I was always always one of those people that said they couldn't draw or paint because I'd not really been encouraged that I could, or at least that's how it felt. It's very refreshing to enjoy creating something that's different to my usual methods and chosen artistic practice. It's also been interesting to pursue a project for this amount of time. At first I was skeptical as to how I was going to interest myself for a year and even when I decided to pursue this project I was nervous. What if I didn't get better? What if I got half way through and decided I was done with drawing? But thinking back on it, I've found the experience very rewarding and I've very much enjoyed drawing again.
