Ereda's Public Drawing Documentary

Ereda's brief was get into pairs, go to a busy place and try to sell wacky portraits to people. Record this and make it into a short (some people clearly didn't grasp the meaning of short) documentry film on youtube.

I partnered up with Billy, ignoring his bad punctuality and thinking instead about his skill at drawing.

We planned to meet at covent garden station at 10 and that we'd've practiced before arriving so we knew what we were doing. I took wacky portraits to mean charicatures, so I practiced doing those over the weekend.

With the first 3 images you can really see how I improved at that style under Chloe's tutelage (Chloe's the girl I'm drawing).











Next time I practiced there were more of us around and of course everyone wanted to have a go at drawing someone, so I included a few of other peoples stuff.



(Kieran with a hat on drawn by me)


(Grace drawn by Chloe)


(Grace drawn by me)


(kieran with a hat on drawn by kieran without a hat)


(me drawn by Chloe)

I also seemed to take a massive step backwards, the last picture of Chloe I drew is the best characature I've ever drawn, including the ones I sold. There were a few more drawings, but they weren't so good.

Speaking to a few guys on monday who've tried over the weekend, I learn that asking for donations is the best way to go in regards to pricing. So, the next morning, I get up early, buy myself a couple of big black pens and a new A3 sketch pad (as the last one's full of everyone's practice charicatures) and arrive at covent garden for bang on 10. Billy arrived at 11 and we got cracking on drawing the folk of covent garden. That didn't work, I think because it was a tuesday morning and the place was pretty quiet really.

Next stop was trafalgar square, we had a bit of success here, I drew a french woman and Billy drew a mexican woman who were hanging out together on a bench. I quickly discovered that out of the 2 of us, I was the most capable when it came to going upto people and asking them if they'd like to be drawn. Which is a bit daunting, but as Billy was there I felt like I had someone to best in that regard, and I did. The ones Billy drew were all set up by me. He's just a bit shyer, once we got talking to people he'd open up a bit more.

But anyway, trafalgar square was a bit empty, so we went to the parkland around buckingham palace, had no success (couple of little frenchies tried to give it the bigun, but they soon got shut up. Unfautunatly they were about 14, so I couldn't really claim any macho points). Then it started raining (so it's not only tuesday, but a wet tuesday, which just sounds like the worst day to ty and sell something outside EVER) so we went for a bit of lunch in tesco.

2 sandwiches and a couple of cookies later we were back on the scene. We went to whatever the monument next to picadilly circus is called and I drew a dutch girl there.

Then we went back to trafalgar square, asked all around there, and a group of 3 bristolian birds were up for it. The one in the middle was pretty tidy, so I chatted to them whilst Billy drew them.

We tried a few other people, but no-one else was interested and we'd been doing it for a good 4-5 hours so we decided to call it a day. Billy was entrusted with creating the short documentry on youtube, and this is what he created:



I think our video was one of the best because it didn't drag on. Some of these videos were 9 minutes long. Trust me, watch 2 documentrys about doing street drawing that are 9 mins long each and they don't feel short, they feel like 20 minutes of your life you're never going to see again.

A good few lessons learnt, it's scary cold selling things to people, being able to sell yourself is the only way you can make money and most importantly of all, the biggest skill in creating a video is cutting shit out of it.

SHORT is like 5 mins or less, some of those documentrys were literally painful to watch (that old grainy filter over one of them made my eyes kill). Next time we have to make a film I hope there's a time limit in the brief (like no longer than 3 mins) or something (I say that forgetting the newest brief we've got, make a feature length film...)

Dream Project

After everyone (I say everyone, I'm not including myself in that everyone) moaned at the teachers because they haven't liked the projects so far (like say, I've had no issue with any of the projects) they set the next brief as "Invent your own dream project".

It was a really nice sunny day (I'd spent my lunch out on the grass with some friends) and I couldn't help but think about warm summery type things. I came up with a few summer holiday inspired ideas, but went with this one:

"Come to Sunny Prestatyn

Design a holiday brochure for the area you live in (if you live on campus design it for Beckton, not the university accommodation).

Create a 4 page A5 booklet including front and back cover and artwork it onto A2.

You can be as truthful as you like, so long as you sell the location as a good holiday destination."

The title's from a Phillip Larkin poem, not where my parents live (which is Wythall), if you've read the poem then the title will make a bit of sense, if you haven't then you'll just ask me if that's where I'm from. I'm not even from wythall (nevermind Prestatyn), we moved there from croydon.

I was told by someone that the brief I'd come up with was what the kids over at central st martins are doing at the moment, that isn't why I made it up though. I just thought that most of the people at UEL don't live in the nicest areas, they don't live in touristy places, so it would be interesting to see them try to sell it. And for me it would be an excuse to learn a bit more about beckton. Currently I just know what time various shops are open till and the best route by which to get to those shops, that and where the hospital is (about an hours walk north (and slightly west). When I got to the hospital I also discovered that the 474 bus will take me from cyprus station to the hospital in 10 minutes. Still though, I had a nice walk doing it, saw some horses and a horse and cart, which I might've missed had I gone by bus.

Anyway, my brief wasn't picked, Ereda's was.

Mile High Type Club

I missed the briefing for this one as I woke up late (missed my alarm) and so I missed a few key bits of information. Things such as: don't use a bed sheet it looks shit.

But by the time I'd been brought upto speed on that it was too late, I'd figured out what it was I wanted to do and alas, it involved a bed sheet (it actually involved 4, but that number went down to 2 when the market stall only had 2, and it went down to 1 when I started trying to do it) and I couldn't think of a new idea that I wanted to do.

The brief was to pick a font and get a letter form as big as you can and as accurately. I thought it HAD to be on a vertical surface, but judging by the fact that over half of them were done on the floor, I guess that can't be the case.

Which is annoying, because my friend said to me when I got the brief "Oh, I'm going home for the weekend (to her farm in Staffordshire) you could come with me and then use one of the spare fields and just go mental with it, and we've got stuff to lift you up to photograph it and everything"

"no, no" I said "that sounds fantastic and I'd really like to do that, but it has to be on a wall."

I wanted to keep pushing myself and trying new things after the success of my Justin Bieber video, so I went to the print making room and had a chat with Glen, and he said try this cyanotype thing, so I researched it, liked the look of it and decided to do that. I couldn't use the facilities until thursday, which meant I missed most of the lesson, but it sounded like it was just a lot of grumbling really.

Cyanotype works by coating something absorbant (paper, wood or fabric) with a mix of 2 chemicals (Ammonium iron(III) citrate and Potassium ferricyanide) that react with light and turn blue. If you block the light however then that area will remain white, and then you wash the chemical off and it will stay white and the part that was exposed will remain this really nice blue.

This is a very easy, cheap process... on normal sized bits of fabric, not on 3 metre square bed sheets. I did a test and it looked great. So I made my stencil, took the sheet to a dark room (which turned into a pitch black room about 2 mins in as the red light refused to work) and began coating it in this chemical. It took aaaages and loads of the chemical to coat the bloody thing. It has to dry in the dark, so I left it there over night.

I came back the next day, after looking around for a studio with enough space next to a big enough window I gave up on the AVA building and took the sheet back to my kitchen and laid it out beside the window. And then I went and did some other stuff (went to my friend's fashion show, hung about with my mate who got roped into wearing a rediculous dress made out of metros (where I saw more of her than I'm used to!) had some dinner, went to a party, left early because I was just so knackered) and when I went to bed I couldn't sleep for thinking of the sheet and how this was the best time to wash it as it would be dark in my kitchen. I checked on it and it was the right colour blue, so I put my dressing gown and some plastic gloves on and got washing.

And that's when it all went wrong. I mean, there were a few bits of fabric I'd missed with paint cause I did it in the dark (like propper dark) but the bloody thing hadn't exposed properly and so it came out a pathetic watery blue. Like a swimming pool blue rather than a nice american passport blue. Which made me lose heart somewhat, as I'd sacrificed on size so I could experiment with a new technique and it'd come out shit.

I hung it off of a bridge and photographed it and threw it in my wardrobe, embarressed by my failure. I'm back in birmingham next weekend, I'm going to see if with access to the country side, my parent's garage and a bunch of mates with nothing else to do than sit around in the park for the next 2 weeks we can create something worthy.

Here's the way it looks in my portfolio:











Still though, be a bit shit to just abandon my "try to push yourself and try new things" mentality because of one failed hurdle. Besides, even the projects I am happy with need tweaking/redoing, just because they can be made better, so mile high type (expect the next one to be on the floor and huge) wouldn't be any exception even if it had gone a bit better.