Hi Ms Hampton

Good evening Ms Hampton,
(well, it's evening when I'm writing this)
I'd just like to share with you that tomorrow is Thursday and on Friday guess what we have due?

You guessed it!


I think I've done most of the work.

But here are some examples of marks that we have made in our etchings...


Directional line
Scrippling (is that what it's called?)
Cross-hatching
Hatching
Controlled scribbling (I have to say that this is my favourite)

And even though these terms aren't artistic in any way I feel the need to mention the difference between short and long lines because I've realised they can make SUCH a difference in the detail of the piece.

Also, organic and geometric line.
In my piece I used mostly organic lines (because most of my piece is trees) and they were controlled scribbling but I also used a fair bit of geometric lines on the buildings.


I think I have this in my book or on my laptop somewhere to stick into my book but I'll evaluate my first etching test here also in case I can't find it (this happens a fair bit, can you imagine?)

I really like the foxes face and ears because I used lots of small fine strokes to create this and if you look closely you can see the detail. ALthough I like the darker print more, you can see this more clearly in the lighter print (the second on in the centre of the page).
I crosshatched at the bottom where the rock is and, to be frank, it just looks messy, so I made a point not to do that in my latest etching. Although in the background I didn't make all the lines (because there were about 23945345789 of them) I think I made good use of getting the texture and the form of the trees and the shubbery using directional line and controlled scribbling. The colour changes in the water are easily spotted because of the density of the lines and I think you can really easily differentiate between the colours in the water.

We looked at a Petrina Hicks artwork in class and studied it.

I found this interview with Petrina Hicks:

“I like photographic images that are beautiful to look at and ones that are genuine and truthful in their approach, and ones that evoke some kind of emotional response.”
INTERVIEW by Jason Lingard
1. Where are you from? Sydney.

2. How did you get into photography?I picked it up as an elective when I was doing a Communications degree at University, then got hooked.

3. What do you feel makes a good picture? I like photographic images that are beautiful to look at and ones that are genuine and truthful in their approach, and ones that evoke some kind of emotional response.

4. Your portraits are simple in subject matter, but you manage to draw something extra from the subject. What aspects do you consider when planning a portrait?I take portraits of children or teenagers whom I find inspiring in some way, it's usually something about their appearance that inspires me. I try to use the medium of 'portrait photography' to explore certain ideas and feelings, so the primary goal of my portraits is not the traditional sense of portrait photography where you are trying to reveal the persons essence or identity. Sometimes the persons identity is secondary to the ideas I'm trying to explore.

5. The old saying goes "Never work with children or animals" How do you find working with both?It's fine, I love working with children, however you do need to have patience, because it can take some time to get what you are after, and sometimes it just doesn't work. It usually works when I'm photographing a child who has an intuitive understanding of what I'm trying to achieve. As for animals... that is hard work!! They are tricky to direct.

6. A certain surreal value is added to your images through digital manipulation. Tell us about this process and how it influences and effects the way you work.Most of my portraits are digitally manipulated in some way. I shoot on film, then end up completing the images in Photoshop. I try to create a tension between perfect and imperfect imagery, so sometimes I will photograph teenagers whom have physical flaws or disabilities of some form, yet at the same time I will use Photoshop to make the image appear 'perfect' and airbrushed similiar to what we see in fashion mags today. So there is a tension in the image between what we perceive to be 'imperfect' and 'perfect'. I also use Photoshop sometimes to add a surreal, futuristic or spooky feel to some of the portraits.

7. If you could have anyone in the world sit for a portrait who would it be? An alien.

8. With unlimited funds, what would be your dream project?I would like to go to Russia and do a series of portraits of teenagers there.

9. What are you working on at the moment?I'm putting together ideas for a new series of images: futuristic portraits of teenagers.




Appraisal :)

Title: I had several titles for this piece because there were so many ways you could look at it and see different things. One was "Beauty and the Beast" and the rest all sound excessively lame so I might just write them in my journal or keep them to myself. :)

Why did the artist make the picture? After reading that interview with Petrina Hicks I reckon she'd be so reserved but just bursting with things that she would be thinking and questions that she would want to ask; I think she would have been the kind of child who asked a million questions a day. She wants to question, to push boundaries and to think outside that realm of social norm. I love it. I think she made the picture to question and to push boundaries; it's a beautiful image, the action is in the centre in a perfect circle, but it's so unnerving to look at that beauty and that perfection and it's weird. It's tense. It's outside the social norm that we all want to stick to. She made it to make her point, to say something in a way that she might have not been able to say in any other way.


What is your interpretation of the piece? Honestly, I got about a million different things out of this image. I first thought of Little Red Riding Hood and her betrayal by the wolf that thought she was helping her and the forced relationship that seems forged between them. I took another look and thought of the story of Mogli in The Jungle Book (which was the last Disney movie that Walt Disney personally worked on before he died) - and how Mogli was taken in by the animals as one of their own because the girl, at closer inspection, seemed relaxed. In the presence of a large dog a lot of children would feel threatened. She seems to know this animal very well, almost as if she was raised by it.

After thinking about this my thoughts led me to the grip the dog has on the girl and how it is much like the soft bite that mother lions and tigers have on their young to keep them safe and out of harms way. So it's protecting the girl, I thought to myself. Then he wouldn't try to betray her.

But betrayal can happen for all different reasons - just like lying - and I think it's fair to say that sometimes everyone lies to protect the people they care about. I don't think that this dog would betray this girl though unless he was betraying her trust or breaking a promise.

Like leaving her.

Something about the composition of the piece reminds me of a woman saying goodbye to her husband before he goes to war - the soft forced brush of the hand, the forced happiness, it's so fake, and you can almost see disappointment glowing out of that girl's blonde hair.

The scene is so pure, so white and gold, so innocent. But the message behind it does not seem innocent or simple at all. Much like the novel Alice in Wonderland (yep, here we go again Ms Hampton...) the overall simple happy meanings can seem so much more sinister upon closer inspection.

There is something about this piece that makes me want to stop looking at it but at the same time it is entrancing and it is beautiful.


Petrina Hicks ... she seems like a complicated kind of person. But there are a lot of her pieces that I have looked at and really like in particular the albino girl's pictures - they're so overly photoshopped, so overly perfected and beautiful - like the girl is perfect and then it occurs to you that there's something "wrong" with this girl. She's not as perfect, she's not the wax-figure you first thought, she's "different".

All her pictures have such strong understatements and I could probably write about them forever, but I won't because it'll bore you to tears Ms Hampton.
But have a great weekend/Thursday/Tuesday night/24th June/etc.

:)