March 2024

This is a collaboration with the HMMP Year 2 Students. Their theme for this year is Brothers Grimm and our commission is to work with them to design backdrops for their end of year exam photoshoots.

We were working in our two groups, there are 6 students, so we took 3 designs each. A quick update on our group, we no longer have Alan and Caroline has joined us instead and our name has been changed to Art-iculate.

This is the first project I feel excited and happy to be involved in. I think that’s because I love all the fairy tales and make believe – even the darker versions of the popular ones we tell our children. Our groups three back drops are:

• Seven Ravens – The story of seven brothers who failed to return with a jug of water to baptise their sister and their father, cursed them by wishing they were ravens.
• Six Swans – the story of the sister who escapes being turned into a swan by her evil stepmother’s, mother whose a witch, but has to stay mute for seven years.
• Into The Woods – which is really an adapation of Grimm fairytales with Red Riding hood as the main character it revolves around.

We split the three backdrops between us to work on, Sam and Alicia had into the woods, Caroline and Claire Seven Ravens, and I started on ideas for the Six Swans.

I loved that Ffion wanted light witchy woods, with a stream or pond, with six swans on it and a medieval village/house in the back ground. It was very reminiscent of ballet scenery and backdrops from the theatres when I’ve seen Swan Lake, so I already had ideas bubbling in my head.

The catch of course is that the mood boards needed to be generated digitally and using Adobe AI products. Not sure if you’ve ever used AI technology but what you get out is only really as good as the word descriptions you put in. I did struggle and couldn’t quite get six adult swans but that was rectified by using photoshop once the design was agreed on with Ffion.

Ffion chose the middle mood board, I then made changes in photoshop that had been requested, like more adult swans, and a bit of land at the front it didn’t look like her model was in the water. For once, I actually felt as though I knew what I was doing and enjoyed using photoshop to get the final look.

Exam Day…. we installed our frame for the backdrops and our system of having two so that we could photograph one, and have the next ready to go worked really well. Because it was a Monday and not our usual university days I couldn’t stay for all of it, however, I did capture a few photos.

My overall conclusion on working on this collaborative piece is that I loved the HMMP students, they were actually pretty easy going, had really clear ideas on what they wanted. The hardest part for us I think is remembering it’s their final exam and our work, even though we are also being marked on it, really shouldn’t overshadow theirs. I think we managed to complement their final costumes and models quite well.

The change in dynamics of our team was a little more difficult as we ended up with two very strong characters, one of whom tended to bulldoze on and not really consider others feelings until after something was done. I was annoyed because we had worked out the lighting direction for the six swans backdrop after it the acetate had been put on the overhead projector with everything on the opposite side. And this person was asked to do the house because that was their skill, and they just got carried away and repainted over areas that had already been done. The affect of this is they changed the direction of light, were pretty messy with the dark colours and areas that had been finished had to be re painted and blended in. However, they didn’t ruin the backdrop and it all came out in the end, it was just really difficult when we were all stressed trying to finish this project of and our final end of year pieces for the Summer Show.

I did get a little fed up of my ideas being spoken over and some good ones from other people being totally disregarded. The final collective outcome was a booklet that was designed by Caroline, which was great but again, some requested changes were ignored and if things weren’t to her deadline, regardless of what else we had going on, you felt like you weren’t being a good member of the team. I have no problems with acknowledging we all had different deadlines with our various bits of work but did feel that the same consideration wasn’t always given back. I am aware that the quieter member of the team has been singled out as not having much input. Whereas, they helped on two backdrops, especially into the woods. Honestly, if I’d been spoken to like she was then maybe I would have stopped voicing opinions and ideas as well.

I think that’s the issue with any project where you are working with various personalities that are sometimes polar opposite. It’s also interesting how we all have a different perspective on who did what and whether all of us were pulling our weight. Personally, I think we all did. I also think that despite the feelings I definitely had about it not being a democracy at times, we actually achieved what we had set out to do. That is to create three backdrops on the themes required.

Am I going to actively look at collaborative work probably not, but if I was asked to work in a collaborative collective on a project – I will definitely meet the key people and consider the personality vibes I pick-up before I commit.

January 2024

This is an individual project, the brief being to choose one of the three books they list and design a new book cover for it. All the details are here https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/work-with-us/cover-design-award

• Atomic Habits – Adult Non Fiction
• Daisy Jones and The Six – Adult Fiction
• Stolen Magic – Childrens Fiction

I’ve chosen Daisy Jones and The Six, apparently it’s also a netflix series. I’ve never watched the series but I did buy the book and did a quick synopsis of the main characters and the story line. I didn’t agree that the main character was a “Stevie Nicks” persona. from the first description of her walking down the streets of LA, I got a real Janis Joplin vibe. I also think that the strongest character of the book, and who the story was really about was Camilla Dunne the wife of the lead singer Billy. So straight away, I’m at odds with the book synopsis but I really wanted to tell the cover story as I see it.

My sketchbook notes.

My original idea was to use a 3d plaster sculpture that I had made a couple of years earlier, that looked like a broken record and paint my design on it then photograph it. I started mocking up a collage of “Daisy” using images I found, to me she was mix of Janis Joplin and Florence of Florence and the Machine. I also found patterns of 1970’s style clothing and a Halston robe, to give me an idea of the flower pattern I wanted to use in relation to the Wild Flower Project mentioned.

My nemesis here is that I had to use in-design and whilst I was great at my paper mockup, actually using the computer was not really my forte. I think to say I struggled was an under statement.

I haven’t enter the competition, I wanted to but I’ve missed the deadline. Also, this is my mock-up of something I wanted to paint. I’m not happy that this ended up being my final piece of work because I don’t feel like its finished. I don’t feel like I’m done with the idea.

I think it would be great for my work to be considered for a book design cover, not this one, but any future work I do, its one of my quieter ambitions.

November 2023

This year as Yr 2 students we were responsible for the marketing, putting up, pulling down and rota for manning the pop up shop. Also making sure any monies from sales were given to the relevant students at the end of the year.

The theme this year is “Light” and we have to create two or three 10″x8″ pieces of that relate to our current practice/materials. Already got a stumbling block because I’m really not sure what mine is at this stage.

The venue this is was “We are Super” in the Sovereign Centre in Weston. As soon as the rota came out I put myself down for the only day I knew I was able to do due to work and family commitments. I also helped set up the display, and checked the monies at the end of the week.

So, I guess me being me I went a little of tangent in that I decided to screen print cotton tote bags. Re-useable bags are always handy and they can be folded down to fit the required measurements. I also had a couple of prints of the slogan on paper. However, I did sell a bag so I consider that a positive result.

A couple of ideas of how to do the designs for the bags, using a quote by Maya Angelou “Be a rainbow in someoneelse’s cloud” I then chose the colours and learnt how to mix them up with the medium for fabric printing.

Did some test prints of the designs on cotton fabric scraps. Decided which one I liked best and then set up the production line to print out 10 bags.

I then used the same screen to print out onto paper, the writing didn’t really stand out the same on paper so I decided to line up and go over the words in black.

The problem we had sorting out the money is that we didn’t really set a spreadsheet up to record the sales properly, and some of the students got paid privately for work. Coming from an accountancy background it would have been really easy for me to set some simple tracker up that could have been printed out. Being totally transparent, I didn’t want to do that. Just because I could and I have the financial knowledge. It really didn’t take very long to reconcile the records we had.

I also think, that as there were lots of gaps on the rota because the 1st years wanted to do their spot with their friends, we should have given clearer guidines on it only being one person at the quiet times, and if you insist on it being two of you then you do two shifts. One of the 2nd year students did more than their fair share of covering shifts that people couldn’t.

November 2023

Over the two reading weeks we had a sketchbook project to complete. It is based on the Brooklyn Art Library idea where people completed sketchbooks every year based on a theme and sent them in to be kept at the Brooklyn Library, a lot of them have been digitised. The project lasted 17 years. https://brooklynartlibrary.org/

This year the idea is to start our own “UCW Art Library” – we had to come up with 5 themes to choose from and we had 2 weeks to complete it. The sketchbooks are A5. After the two weeks we will write our own rules to launch the project to the Level 3 students to complete over Christmas. There are lots of possiblities to grow this idea, engage with the wider University and College community, track and promote it.

My Ideas:

• Daily Rituals
• Habits of pets
• Sunrises and Sunsets – Tails of the day
• Nature
• Connections
• 6 degrees of seperation

The Group Ideas:

• Portraits
• Journey
• Random Thoughts
• Places
• Home
• Big Hats
• Wind Down
• Tales of the Day
• In Nature
• Bits & Bobs
• Ermmmm
• Feet
• Dinner
• Straight Lines
• Dreams
• Rituals
• Collections
• Sunset

We put them all in the computer and did spin the wheel to create a random choice.

The lucky 5:

• Wind Down
• Big Hats
• Bits & bobs
• Tales of the Day
• Sunset

My choice out of the 5 is Tales of the Day. Honestly I started out with good intentions, but I am actually really really rubbish at journalling/sketching on a daily basis. I have on several occasions tried and failed at making a habit out of these things. Like my blogs I seem to have a mental block. It’s like I’ve already written these or live it, and I’ve got memo notes in my main diary or in my main sketchbook, or photos on my phone. Why would I want to repeat stuff I’ve already done! And another part, the insecure part of me actually doesn’t want anyone to have a glimpse into my inner thoughts, feelings and imagination. Due to things that have happened in the past it’s my way of protecting myself.

I bought my husband a record deck for his birthday which was at the beginning of the two weeks. It gave me an idea to base my daily theme around songs.

It’s done. Have I got into the habit of sketching every day? No.

October 2023

Today was the offical launch of the collaboration module. Under this module we will have group projects and a couple of individual ones, along with guest lecturer talks and visits for primary research purposes.

Sketch Book Half Term project – Individual

Pop UP Shop – Group

Penguin Book Cover – Individual

Backdrop for HMMP yr 2 students – Group

Project Reframe – yr 1 BA Art & Design – this one we have just completed.

Before being split of into our groups, we did a SWOT analysis on ourselves.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – what are my skills? how would they work in a group setting? what can I bring to a group? What does it mean to me to be a part of a collaborative? At the moment the last question is easy, it’s my worst nightmare. After doing Project Reframe I am really not looking forward to the rest of this academic year.

I’m in a group with Alan, Claire, Alicia and Sam – our group name is using our initials Art CAAHS

We need to look at branding, instagram, an identity of who we are. My initial thought is we are a collective with diverse skillsets. We’ve already set up a teams chat, I think Sam is going to set up the Instagram – I would but I actually have 5 linked to my name already two personal, HelenLouiseArt, Horses & Dogs Photography, Awakening Beauty (hardly used) and Helen Dougill Creative (predecessor to my separate art and photography ones). I think added another would send my main account into meltdown.

We need to think about how we are going to brand ourselves and the identity we will present to the outside world.

28th September 2023

As a collective across the two years, we have a good sense of humour. A lot of us felt the final arrangement of our pieces was a good message about the place we live, intentional or not.

Part of working as a collaboration is that we have to evaluate how well we feel it had or hasn’t gone. Being totally honest here, I have not 100% enjoyed this project at all. There were elements that I absolutely loved like the film photography and learning about developing negatives and exposing the images. That I found really interesting, although my brain did ache.

We had a very rough start and I honestly didn’t think we were going to work well together as a team at all. Although we did and I’m not quite sure how that happened, possibly because the three of us all wanted to do well in the first project of the year.

I still feel we didn’t follow the brief, although looking at the final result of the works together, it turns out to have worked really well to create a bizarre yet accurate reflection of Weston Super Mare.

For me what didn’t work was the fact the initial brief was more or less ignored and I guess that set the tone for how I wanted to engaged with the other two. When they both said about wanting train tracks and actually agreed with each other, I seized on that idea and knew that I had various images of trains on tracks from having days out with my son. The one that everyone liked was the Flying Scotsman passing through Weston Super Mare. The only flaw being that the original file sent across wasn’t a good quality jpeg. This limited us in how big we could blow up the image without it being too distorted with pixelation.

What worked well was that the three of us problem solved and came up with some good solutions as ideas were bounced back and forth, like standing the train up at an angle to the track. The threat of the storm on the day we were supposed to be doing outside photoshoot of the object, meant that we risked only having indoor images. One of the first years took the cardboard image home the evening before and took some photographs on the beach, so we at least had some outdoor images to choose from. However, the rain held off and the two of us that hadn’t taken images went to the beach and enjoyed working together to get some images. The funny thing about this is that I was using all my knowledge of being an amateur photographer to try and line up the light, focus and wait for the background to be clear. Yet the other person was just randomly snapping and I think she got one of the sharpest and better angles of the train coming at you from the sand. Her images were really good, yet she dismissed using them.

I do feel that when we came back and the other person was editing their DSLR shots that they had decided what the final image would be. I did make some comments about it being better if the train had looked a bit closer to the sunset, and by the end of the day I think it had been edited that way. The tutors all like it, and the other first year was happy to go along with it. Sometimes it’s better to just go with it, I feel like any objections I have would come out as sour grapes.

At the end of the day did we fulfil the project? Yes I guess we did, we took a photo of something, enlarged it and rephotographed it in a place you wouldn’t expect to see it. So technical yes we reframed it.

Was I a bit black and white in my views on this? Yes, and that’s probably because my initial views and ideas were dismissed without even being listened to properly. I still feel that we should have agreed to rephotograph something together on the college grounds and go with that, as that was the initial brief.

Am I happy with the final outcome? Yes.

I have a film photograph of the Flying Scotsman rising out of the sand on Weston Super Mare beach, that I think even my dad, an avid steam train enthusiast, would have found amusing.