patterns of drawing

by sophie

I had been doing so well at regularly posting on my blog! And then my laptop decided it didn’t want to turn on anymore. That put a bit of a damper on my blogging plans. Things like this always happen close to Christmas, so there’s no way you can get it fixed in time and you have to wait a few weeks into the New Year. We’ll see. End Rant.

Also, there are an awful lot of pictures that come up in the google search ‘angry laptop.’ Like this gem.

Now for some of my art projects, from a year ago. It’s obviously too soon to share any of my recent art…in the crazy mind of Sophie. Who refers to herself in third person.

Here’s some pretty flowers that a friend and I stole from the Botanic Gardens, even though there were signs blatantly asking us not to pick flowers. I made dye out of them as a precursor for this project.

This is a wall-sized drawing that I created using dye I made from tree bark. Cherry tree, if I recall correctly. Although I study Sculpture, a lot of my work seems to come back to drawing; or using drawing to alter the space that my work is displayed in. However, at my lovely conservative art school my lecturers aren’t so keen on pushing the boundaries of Sculpture. Think 3-D Sophie! 3-D! A ‘conservative art University’ may seem like a contradiction in terms. I assure you, they do exist. It’s like the French salon all over again.

Another sculptural work using drawing. This was for a self portrait assignment. I researched anatomical drawings of the body and used a ‘face mask’ beauty product that peels off, and put a layer on my own skin. I painted the anatomical lines onto the face mask and then very carefully peeled it off when it dried. Finally, I used spray adhesive to stick the skin peels onto white board. So the triptych is my foot, hand/arm and face.

This work accompanies the previous triptych. It’s a drawing of a peeled off face mask, but I drew it looking through a magnifying glass.

The odd thing is, when I was doing high school art, I really didn’t enjoy drawing and didn’t think that I was at all good at it. I loved photography; and to this day my photography teacher has been the only art teacher that really encouraged me.

It’s completely bizarre that drawing preoccupies me so much that it invades all parts of my art work. It’s funny after a while, you start to realise your own patterns, and the things you come back to in art.