Exercise 5.2- Planning your review

Select two artists whose work resonates with your own practice or who between them set up an interesting framework to discuss an aspect of drawing media that is relevant to you and your practice.Ideally at least one of the artists should be someone whose exhibition you have visited during your course. You could also choose one the the several artists represented reasonably fully in the key texts.You should write around 500 words, but you won’t be penalised for writing slightly less or slightly more than this.

 My review on the work of Egon Schiele and Louise Bourgeois

Egon Schiele, 1890- 1918 and  Louise Borgeouis 1911-2010    

The reason have chosen these two artists is because they both inspire me with how they expressed their emotions and feelings in art. How they dared to show their deep thoughts and struggles putting pain and pleasure as in a  similar state of mind. The intensity is shown equally  either it is a  painful or full of pleasure image.

Egon Schiele in a very short life career has created more than three thousand drawings and  although Gustav Klimt was his mentor , Egon developed his own particular style. His work inspires for the use of space  and his mark making was very unique with dry brush strokes and irregular spontaneous lines. The distortion of his figures merely affected the shape and beauty of the women’s body he drew.  His erotic and daring ways of drawing his models in very revealing poses and also in his various self portrait is nonetheless surprising  considering the time he was living in. He risked and openly expressed his deep feelings and emotions as well as his  psychological disturbances in shocking yet artistically beautiful ways. I like how he focused mostly in the models, in unusual positions with absence of  background .Most of their facial expressions were strong and all the sexual and erotic feel exudes in every drawing. His lines are spontaneous and the unfinished limbs or hands/feet was just right . It had to be finished that way like the end of a string that he used to contour that drawing. It was simply  unnecessary to add any more to it. I want to keep exploring and drawing the human figure with similar rawness and flow. 

 Louise Borgeouis who was primarily a sculptor with an avid ability working on materials such as : stone, bronze, metal, wood and embroidery .The large scale sculptor Maman – a spider considered one of the largest sculpture in the world measuring  30 feet high and  more than 30 feet wide gives the idea of  her remarkable talent and ability to work from drawings, concept and finished product . Maman started as drawing and it gave me the idea how some artists generate ideas to develop into sculptures . Her drawings series that encouraged me to keep exploring my mark making possibilities are : L’ infini about unmapped expanse and life cycle . I like the washes of watercolour, shapes which reminds me body organs and  the predominant colour red . It is all powerful, with strings, resembling veins and bodily parts seeing from the inside. “Insomnia” are drawings of repetitive patterns, in different sizes and some containing words , or poems also with predominance of red colour. In my opinion, these drawings are  engaging to the eyes as if you are been hypnotised when looking at it.  “10am When you come to me”  is a more sentimental work. It is serene, calm and simple. It shows a lot gratitude for her 30 years assistant Jerry Gorovoy.  “Don’t Abandon me” ,her collaborative work with artist Tracey Emin refers to the loss of both – unborn child of Tracey Emin and Louise loss of a child. Again, the washes of watercolour, limited palette with dominance of red and blue, body shapes, genitals and sexuality shows feeling and emotions overflowing in the paintings itself. The balance between delicate lines and blotches of paint is beautiful. I am so inspired with Louise Borgeouis work because her transparency in bringing  raw feelings, emotions and concepts in her art making the worse that came out of her conscious and unconscious mind into her best pieces.

1. How is pencil/charcoal and watercolour used in the work of Egon Schiele and Louise Borgeois and how does my own work locate within that???

Both artists were very expressive with spontaneous lines, sometimes putting more pressure in it, sometimes drawing with a soft flow. I think my best work comes when I just feel very expressive and let it flow out of me. It is when I don’t think much and let it happen that drawings with a lot feelings and emotions come to life. I think I get that  intensity in a similar ways of Egon Schiele and Louise Borgeois.

 

Part one – Assignment 1 sketch

Louise Bourgeois – drawing and notes 2008

 

 

DS module- Part 5 -sketch

Egon Schiele – pencil drawing

2. Women/ageing has been a recurring theme in my work. Looking at Egon Schilele and Louise Bourgeois,How can drawing media support an investigation of this subject?

Both Egon Schiele and Louise Bourgeois drew a fair amount of human figure. In Louise’s case it was more about emotions and feelings, with  strong sexual notes in the images. In Egon’s  women figure, the drawings are mainly erotic and also show a lot of expression and emotions in their poses and facial expressions. My own concept came out as expression, feelings, emotions and sexuality like them but I focused in how these seems to appear differently as women age. My intention is to include all of those aspects in a beautiful image of a woman’s body entering the last cycle of her life..

 

Exercise 5.1 – Planning your project

1. Write yourself a set of aims to follow on from our initial sentence (see below)
2. Complete the method section with detail relevant to your preferred project
3. Add some more specific points for reflection

Aim

To bring together your learning over the course by creating a final project and body of work that combines two or more strategies to explore some course themes in more depth

Method

• Make initial visual enquiries about

What kind of image do I want to create?  What is the process/purpose I want to go through? How am I going to execute it? What is the concept for it?

• Collect materials together by combining at least two of the strategies investigated in this course

I want to work on a bigger scale based on researches of Louise Borgeouis , who worked in panels, Egon Schilele who drew erotic drawings .Both drew a fair amount of women figure. I also want to use “collage” method learned in Part two and “The process” learned on part four

• Create some studies and exploratory work investigating ( see on sketch Part five)
• Make some drawings or series of drawing which will bring your own ideas to images

Reflection

What have you learned about drawing materials and their potential within a drawing practice? Reflect on your final body of work in your learning log. ( See on Assignment five final body of work)

My investigation 

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of fixing broken objects in a way that it looks better than the original piece before the breakage. Golden

 

I want to incorporate the concept of Kintsugi which fascinates me in how they transform a broken object into a better piece using and old, traditional and very precise technique.  I also want to apply this similar technique in my drawing exploration using  the concept of women ageing. I want to show that women might get “broken” for many reasons as they age and it is in these flaws that a new sort of beauty and strength arise.  I am take inspiration in the way Louise Borgeois depicted women figure with her washes of watercolour and the irregular lines. I also get inspired by Egon Schiele lines and use of space and mostly his erotic women’s drawing. I think the same can be applied to an ageing woman’s body which changes with time but it also can be seeing with eroticism . I hope I can put all these aspects together and develop my own unique image where I can implement some collage work and also using large scale drawing to be more risky in this new exploration through drawing media.

 

Exercise 4.3 – Drawing and thinking

Method

1. choose a story to tell to a friend, or just out loud to yourself. It might be a fairy story told to a child, an anecdote from work told to a partner, or a secret told to the mirror.
2. Select drawing materials, based on your experiences of the course so far. Choose the scale and material substance of this drawing. You might like to explore materials borrowed from mapping diagrams, doodles or flowcharts, or you might like to dislocate the process from its usual materials and use something quite different. Remember make brief notes in your learning log about your choices.
3. Tell the story and attempt to draw as you talk. Don’t worry about capturing all the detail; allow the natural ebb and flow of the language and images to operate together. For example, there  is no need to complete a part of the drawing once the narrative has moved on- just leave it incomplete.

 

I have first created comic story on manila envelope with mix media ( collage, acrylic and markers)  based on the lyrics of the song from the singer Bjork, called  “Human Behaviour”. It took me time and effort to finish it . I did it slowly, worked on it for over a week and it was more an exercise for me to learn to take a step back, leave the work for a day or two and go back to take a look, continue, change or just finish it. This was not as proposed in the exercise: a natural flow, but I just felt like exploring something new.

Human Behaviour (1993) [user-generated content online] Creat. Bjorktv, 8th August 2010 at:

The story of how I received the news on my Dad’s death was exactly as proposed in the method for this exercise. I just followed the flow. No planning, not much thinking, just the main memories of a day.

Reflection on exercise 4.3 – drawing and thinking

For this exercise I have chosen Graphic recording method. I have done a couple of graphic recordings for meeting in the school I work at and I found in it  the flow and visuals to tell a story the way I like to . With Bold lines and clear images, little details but only the essential information to engage the viewer. Black markers and tones of grey and a little red was the range to express my feelings in the right amount. I had sketched before but my final exercise is in A3 paper with better sequence of events. I didn’t worry much about proportion but to let it flow out of me, as I re told the story to myself out loud. Once again the only thing in my mind while doing Part four was the death of my dear Dad. The story goes through exactly the scenes I have in my mind: everything seemed to have happened in a split of second! The pain and lack of air I felt was exactly as described in my images.It was like I was bottled and couldn’t breath or hear anything.  I had no chance to go back home due to financial and logistics . At the end of the day, I had to accept it, give him my best thoughts and love and it didn’t take long for me to feel that he was ok. I have the feeling that he is back to his roots in Japan, with our ancestors. I feel sad but I feel comforted by thinking about it this way.

Questions from module on exercise 4.3

• How do you feel about your drawing? I have been doing comics for fun since I was a little girl. I enjoy drawing stories, specially for children. For many years I wanted to be a children’s book illustrator. I have the ability to create characters and picture the place for them when I read a story. I never had the chance to do it professionally  as it is a very competitive field and I live in a part of the world where limits me to find publishers or ways to get into this kind of job. My true answer is, YES, I enjoy drawing stories, but more about the images than words.
• What worked particularly well in your story? How I depict myself, my simple morning routine and the sudden change by a phone call.
• How might you extend these features? If I was to draw a whole comic, I would draw more panels with details about how was the day before, how long it was the next 24hours after the sad news. How I told my kids and how we participate through the funeral ceremony via Skype. I have loads of more images to depict how much happened inside me in about 48hours.
• How might you incorporate them in your future drawing? I have always done drawing with a quite extend level of details. It is my comfort zone in drawing. I want to be more expressive, a bit abstract. That is my challenge, I want to do less but with more intensity and it happens when I work more freely and lose details. I like the fact of shrink the whole stories and only a few images. That why the choice of Graphic recording.
• Can you see any benefit of varying the pace of your work to include more spontaneous lines and marks? Yes, if I don’t take much time and try to simplify it is when my best marks come out! Maybe not in this specific exercise, but drawing in general , I tend to like my sketches more than final pieces.
• When you look at your own sketchbooks, can you see a way to cut to the chase more effectively now? I am not sure yet. I struggle keeping up a sketch book, I like to just go for it but I understand the importance of giving my tries and possibilities before deciding for a final work. I realise that sometimes through many sketches things can be added or excluded and the change of perspective and ideas change.

 

Exercise 4.2 Labour and time

Method

1. Research drawing methods that take time to use and appeal to you, for example hatching, shading, using small media to make big drawings, scale drawing, hyperrealism, etc.
2. Choose a subject for your drawing that might benefit from having time spent in either of the two directions suggested above:

• From the viewer’s perspective, for example, a minutely detailed drawing of a piece of discarded fruit peel might set up and interesting relationship. Equally, an eight-foot high drawing of a two-year-old child might shift its interpretation
• For yourself. Choose something that you would like to spend time coaxing into being and thinking about. You might spend time creating a hyperrealistic portrait of someone you love, or carefully using a pin to scratch the face of a politician you don’t like. It may well be that the labour becomes the subject and you have simply decided to shade an entire sheet of lining paper with a ball point pen.

Reflection on exercise 4.2 – Labour and time

My Dad passed away on December 5th, just the time I had started Part four- The process. I am in Malaysia and there was no time to go back for the funeral all the way in Brazil, everything happened so fast, my family had to make quick decisions and the only thing left for me to do was following the funeral ceremony via video call and grieve here, by myself. There wasn’t anything else I could think of doing for this project but pay a homage to my Dad. He loved his coffee, espresso, in small coffee cups (the way we serve in Brazil). He had it every morning before eating anything. The first thing in Brazil you offer when someone comes to your house is “um cafezinho” which literally means a short, small cup of coffee. It has always being like that with him after I was married and he came to visit my house. I last saw him in August 2018, when I went to see everyone after 3 years. We had coffee together, we didn’t speak much, he was 84years old and had lost 70% of his hearing. The day I start planning for this exercise I was home by myself and using coffee as a tool media was just right for this exercise. At first I did a big scale drawing in Japanese washi paper- since Dad was Japanese…. It was a scene from the funeral that got stuck in my mind. After the coffin was closed there was a rain of red rose petals falling over it. I did it in the scale of 1.60cm. His height. I liked but I needed more. Two days later, drinking coffee I decided that doing a portrait of him in big scale would fit : time and labour and also my “process” of grieving and reflection on his life and at the same time doing it with something that completes and comforts me: my art. It took me about 6 hours, with maybe two breaks for water and toilet. I was consumed by it. I did it on the flour, squatting, kneeling and laying down at times. My whole body ached for a few days later as if I had climbed a mountain carrying heavy luggage on my back. From tracing the features of his face, trying to depict wrinkles and marks, blending the right amount of coffee to achieve tonal range, it took time, thinking, movement and focus. The smell of coffee and effect on paper completed the whole experience with sadness, grief, peace and satisfaction.

 

Exercise 4.1- Look, no hands

Method

1. List as many different mark-making processes as you can think of. Write another list of as many different materials as you can think of. Eg: nail, polish, wax, tea/coffee, charcoal salt…..
2. Take some large sheets of paper and mask areas of each one. This means separate off an area to work within ( by taping it or laying paper across parts to be left clean). You decide on the size and position of these masked areas. You may want to create a series of stripes, a small box in one corner or use the whole sheet.
3. Make a set of drawings using pair of processes and materials from your list, operating on your cropped area. Pin up your drawings and spend time with them. Decide whether you want to affect them with a further act or process.

 

rubber bands stapled

baking paper burned

thread on paper

tea stains

nail polish in water

 

 

From Top left: styrofoam flakes from a football, burnet baking paper, watercolour on candle drops, sewing thread glued on paper

 

Rubber bands randomly thrown on paper

Coffee stain granules on paper

Tea stain and soft pastels as counterpart

football flakes for artwork!!

Reflection on exercise 4.1

It was very revealing trying unusual media and just lead it to a certain flow without intervene in the outcome. It felt like sort of a scientific experiment without any expectations rather than apply materials and procedure and record the results. It taught me how to control amounts, timing, movement and spontaneity. It gives a possibility to think out of the box and take risks in terms of unusual materials to make art. It also gave me the understanding that when working with concepts, materials can add a fair amount of meaning and expression. Throwing rubber bands randomly on black paper resulted in an interesting image. Burning baking paper in certain spots made the noise and appeared the same way: popcorn. Threads of different colour create a intricate pattern and using styrofoam flakes from an old football was an unexpected fun idea. I particularly enjoyed working with coffee stain which made me research for artists who uses it as media under “coffee stain art”- researches .  I also like the idea of tea stain and affecting  the result later on with more usual drawing media like pastel pencils. This experiment has broaden my understanding of reaching out new ways of expression.

 

Exercise 3.4 – Installing a drawing

Method

1. Find a room or space that you have an affinity with and make some brief notes about what draws you to it.
2. Use our sketchbook to think about and draw the room and your relationship to it. Don’t make finished drawings or do lot of writing- just think and draw
3. Make a drawing which you can site in the room in response to some of your thoughts about it. You may really enjoy seeing cut flowers in a room, for example. Perhaps you would like to draw some flowers and position the drawing on the shelf where flowers might go. You might have chosen a room where light falls beautifully against  the wall paper. Perhaps you can make a drawing of those abstract forms. The room might be an office where you often feel you would rather be in the garden than typing. Perhaps you could draw a lovely Rothko-esque escape hatch.

Reflection

How your own drawing relates to the research you did? What aspects of the room did you find yourself responding to ? Was it the space itself, or the story of its usage?

I look for some installations on bedroom and hardly find anything. I already had in my mind “My bed” by Tracey Emin. I love her work and how open she is about her live and how she puts it down into her artwork. She shows struggles and pains without shame and I think it is brave and noble of her as we all have so many struggles and pains in life and it take guts to openly show that to an open public. When I chose my bedroom was simply for the fact that it is the only space purely to myself in the house. I have my privacy there, it is my escape from my busy days. It is where I lay on my bed and dream about things I would love to do, places I would like to be. I start sketching just thinking about how important is to have that space but how I wish to have it the way I want… The apartment I live is old, already furnished. Old and ugly furniture and there are so many things I wanted in my bedroom to make it cozy… Through my sketches came out things like: a four posted bed, big clocks without handles ( I hate having to wake up early and always having my life depending on time). Slowly thoughts of having my bed in unusual spaces came out. A bedroom in the clouds or in the middle of a lake , a bed in the sky, a bed in the middle of the jungle… Finally it clicked! How amazing would be to have my bed on top of an old, huge tree? A cozy bed, among branches, leaves, gaps through to look at the sky, on top, where I am completely alone, in piece, no noise, no kids, no construction sites around, no ugly furnitures and walls…. More than a bedroom, the bed itself is what most attracts me to that room. Warm, cozy, private.

Exercise 3.3 – Affecting the way a space is experienced

Method

1. Find a room to make your drawing. Remember to be safe if it is a room used by others. You might be able to make a temporary drawing in a room somewhere interesting like a castle or a shop.
2. Choose a material you can easily use to draw a line. It might be a wool, florist’s wire, bean canes or even flour or sand. You might even use water. Does the room you’ve chosen suggest a material?
3. If possible, take photos of the room, sketch it or use an iPad to plan your proposed intervention in the space. Try out different ideas. Don’t worry too much about the concept behind the work- just enjoy the possibilities and try out as many different permutations as you can.

 

Reflection on Exercise 3.3 – Affecting the way a space is experienced

I have chosen the kitchen because it is a place that I spend a lot time weekdays preparing meal for my kids, snacks and pack lunch and having a quick breakfast. During the weekends is where I enjoy having sometime alone while kids are still in bed, having a more peaceful and relaxing breakfast. I also realise that it is where I always finish up chatting and have a great laugh when my friends come to visit me. It is a simple and humble kitchen but it is where I find comfort and warmth. I wanted the viewer to experience it the same way I do. Adding all the food, my stool and slippers was with the intention to make them feel a cozy and nurtured by that space. The kitchen is where many cultures tend to spend time and that is the feeling I want the viewer to identify with me. The look of the space is different and so is the food, but the experience is the same. I have always connected  with my woman hood this way. Either is my sisters or girl friends, we always tend to hang out in the kitchen. I wanted to depict a enclosed space, to give the feeling of being away from any other room in the house and purely experiencing ” the kitchen” space. The choice of watercolour was for the exact reason that is what is mostly involved in being in the kitchen. From cleaning to cooking, water is always present there.

Exercise 3.2 Back to two dimensions

Method

1. Position your three-dimensional drawing at eye level and make sure it is well lit.
2. Use your sketchbook to make some preliminary sketches of it, identifying interesting viewpoints and moving it if necessary
3. Select you materials (charcoal would work well) and make a drawing directly from observation.
4. Pin your drawing up next to the original collage drawing from Exercise 2.2 and place your three-dimensional drawing in front.

 

Reflection on Exercise 3.2 – Back to two dimensions

• Do you feel that making a three-dimensional drawing helped you discover new qualities about your subject? I am not sure. I just felt that I transform a 2D drawing into a 3D.
• Which drawing do you prefer? In this experiment I prefer the 3D drawing because of the impact it makes rather then just on paper. The subject is very simple and yet, in 3D it brings a certain beauty to the shapes.
• How has this switching  back and forth supported your understanding of a possible art process that encourages experimentation, investigation and development? I think it taught me a bit of the process of taking something on paper and transform it to an object, giving a different perspective to the viewer. Taught me also that  drawing can be experienced in other forms and in 3D it brings a different value to it. For instance the simple shapes of a lemon and an avocado in 3D has more impact and draws more attention. Turning a drawing into a 3D shape requires planning and creativity which is all about the process of improving art.
• How has your understanding of drawing as a discipline been informed by the course so far? I have completely changed my idea of how to define a “drawing”. Before this course, I might would say it is lines on paper done with pencils or pen. Now I see the process of drawing as in using different tools and materials. I see drawing as the starter of a sculpture or 3D object. Drawing in different scales and sites.

 

 

Exercise 3.1 – Constructing a drawing

method

1. Go back to 2.2 where you made a drawing that modelled tone as precisely as you could. Take that drawing now and pin it up where you can see it at eye level.
2. Take a sheet of car. Cut it into thirds. Paint one third very pale grey, one third a mid-grey and the remaining third a much darker grey. You will use these to correspond to elements of your drawing so, if it is particularly pale or dark, you may want to use greys which are better match.
3. Observe the objects and patches of the tone in your drawing, and cut shapes from your card to correlate. Use a glue gun or PVA glue to join these shapes together to make a spatial construction. Try to keep the tones accurate within your simplified range, so that the final structural collage has some sense of directional light.
4. Photograph your three-dimensional drawing in black and white at close range so that it fills the frame.

original 2.2 exercise drawing- specific about tone 

Reflection on Exercise 3.1 – Construction a drawing

I think my representation in 3D of my drawing is pretty accurate. It was a very new experience to turn a 2D work in to a 3D. It feels I am taking a drawing to life. Removing the image and giving a body to it. I think my tonal range was quite simple and I kept the same in the shades of black and grey. The drawing is different from my 3D one but the shapes remained the same. I have never tried that before and I think it was a successful .exercise I am sure I could have improved it but I don’t know how as it is all new to me.

Exercise 2.4- Adding a collaged element

Method

1. Collect together all your work to date from Part Two. Think about the work and pull out some ideas for a new artwork that builds on some o the things you’ve already achieved. make a brief notes in your earning log about your choices and directions.
2. Work in your sketchbook or on loose sheet with compositions that set a single collaged element into a drawing. Experiment as widely as possible with scale and all the other aspects of the composition. Try to avoid making too many decisions in advance – let the process speak to you.
3. Experiment with different materials too – both drawing and collage. In particular, consider the relevance of how the collaged element is attached. Is it embedded? Does it read as being part of the same space? Is it a liftable flap?
4. Reflective on the relative compositional weights of the two elements. How powerful, for example, would a small photographed figure be in a simple line drawing or a leaf skeleton embedded in a drawing made with encaustic?Make notes in your learning log
5. Review all your experimentation and either make a final piece in response to this exercise or select one or more of your exercises as being the most successful.

Playing out and about – A3 paper, mixed media

 

Let’s say Youth is timeless – A3 paper , mixed media

 

A la Twombly – mixed media on A3 paper 

In this Part two, the work of Cy Twombly and Lappin Morgan  have inspired me a lot. I feel confident and hopeful with my artwork when I read about someone like Cy because  of his audacity to have exposed his art without any concerning of what people would say or think . His art is very conceptual and knowing  how his process worked and how it  brings value and grandiosity to his pieces is eye opening for a “wanna be” artist like me. I also believe that in his art , scale made a big difference. His lines and movements are not limited to a small space and has the energy that I  think only in that  freedom of space it can be expressed. Before I decided on those two collage/mixed media artwork above, I had a go ” a la Twombly”. I just wish I could go for big  drawings but I don’t have any room in my home to work in big scale. Nevertheless, working in  A3 size drawings provided me with  a feel of abstract expressionism and scale.  I wanted to use one of the drawings as a back ground for another collage work but in the end my “a la Twombly” turned out to be a big scale panel of all the drawings together . My first ever collage/mixed media artwork ” Playing out and about” was kind of a warm up and I didn’t expect to have such a nice result. It looks playful, fun and balanced to me, I hope my mentor sees it the same way! The second one “Let’s say youth is timeless” has the concept of Ageing. I chose two people that I admire more and more as they age : Iris Apfel who is 97 years old and Yayoi Kusama, 89 years old. They are still working and creating which shows to me that time is nothing when you do what you are meant to .  The symbology of the moon is connect to female. In Wiccan believe, the moon is feminine. There are a few theories that wants to prove how women and moon are related. Tarot cards, in some other religions, menstrual cycles and moods. The happy skull symbolize  death as something good, and also in tarot card, the symbol death is more about renovation, to let die the old and welcome the new. The clocks broken  symbolise that time is not important but for me it is very frustrating and annoying. I guess that is why I have them all broken. The last two things I included is the flower that looks like a vagina shape and it  brings that powerful feminine feeling. Finally the polka dots representing the style of  Yayoi Kusama as well as drops of blood from women’s menstrual cycles.

Reflection on exercise 2.4 – Adding Collaged Element 

I feel improvements every time I start a new module/part in this course. I am so sure that I am studying exactly what I have always wanted to and it has been so far a very rewarding journey. Trying collage for the very first time was hard. I felt so stiff and insecure .I had no idea how it works and have finished two interesting artwork is a good sign of progress. I wish I had more time to keep trying new materials and mixed more in terms of media. Collage is definitely time consuming and preparing a bank of images is one of the first steps to make it more effective. I focused as much as I could into those two pieces of work and other exercises. I think my conceptual work ” Let’s say youth is timeless” is not as visually as good as the first one ” Playing out and about” but it made more sense to me and made me think more of how to find images to translate the message I wanted to. I have kept the moon watercolour painting for a couple years now. I liked it but never knew what was missing. It was plain and boring. As soon as I decided to use it as a background, the firm idea of depicting the feminine, connected to ageing, power, time and life all popped out of my mind. With these concepts in mind, it became easier to  look for images. However, even though my ” Playing out and about” has no concept, it was a great experience of just creating something balanced, harmonious and pleasant to the eyes. It was a different kind of work to look for images. I just picked what I liked and was more concerning of how to put them together in a harmonious and beautiful ways. Both artwork was a way of learning that mixed media can be visual or conceptual or both. There are no rules and artists have the freedom to work as they wish to send the message they want to.