I have continued to work on my latest body of work – ‘News’. I decided to explore different crow expressions to use in my compositions. In particular, more expressive, angry or ones in flight. So that I have a wider variety of expressions to choose from when responding to news articles that I see.

METHOD

Lately, whenever I feel unsure about how to proceed then I have been returning to drawing. I find the process comforting and grounding. So I started with a few drawings on expressive crows using my non-dominant hand.

Angry crow:

This one was meant to be angry but actually looked anxious:

I then went onto painting on newspaper. I used charcoal to mark the outline of a crow that I wanted to paint. The newspaper was chosen especially for this composition – a shouting crow:

I then painted the crow – staying with my non-dominant hand. I was going to paint the wing behind the man’s head. But then decided to cover up the head. This was the finished work:

The painting was held up to the light. The man’s head was slightly visible despite being covered. What came through was a woman speaking on a microphone on the reverse side of the newsprint which made the composition more interesting.

Then I experimented with a crow looking in despair up to an article about the tariff trade war. Perhaps it was not totally in despair, but certainly questioning what’s going on:

Again the finished painting was held up to the light as a metaphor for holding someone to account. The images on the reverse side made the photograph of the cars under the trade tariff headline more ambiguous.

Crows in flight going in different directions:

Putting together paintings to start exploring combined composition:

Another shouting crow under the headline ‘We are all affected’. The crow was in line with the gun held up by the man on the left page. Then I noticed a large capital letter ‘O’ on the crow’s body – like it had been shot by the man in the photo. I added a pine tree around the greenery on the photo on the left, but I don’t think it worked. It distracted too much from what the crow was going through.

A few landing crows:

A large landing crow going for a prey:

A screaming crow in flight aiming at a photo:

REFLECTIONS

As I made more work, I became more confident about this new body of work. My confidence increased in both the concept and the process. My recent tutorial was very useful in helping me to reflect on my thinking behind the work and the progress so far. My increased confidence meant I was able to go for a more freestyle approach to my Chinese ink painting in the work listed above. The freestyle approach enabled me to be more expressive and spontaneous. The last few paintings shown here were done without needing to use charcoal upfront to mark out the composition which I was pleased about.

I was not happy with every outcome here, some of the depictions were more aligned with my intentions, some not so. But I was trying not to overthink it at this stage. Just wanted to keep making as I know from my Chinese painting class that it would get better with practice.

I continue to find Chinese ink painting ‘unforgiving’. I have written about this before and it still has not changed – it is just part of that medium and again, practice helps. ‘Just keep making’ is the key.

Also, I believe painting with my non-dominant hand has helped me to not agonise over my work too much because it’s not meant to be perfect. It will be what it will be! I have found it liberating to paint in this way and I plan to continue this exploration.

LEARNING

I am gaining confidence in the making process through practise and more importantly – I am pleasantly surprised by my confidence in tackling a completely new body of work that is very different from my previous transcultural work. I am happy that this major change happened during my MA course because the guidance available gave me the courage to do something completely new and experimental.

Also, the structure of my reflective practice has really helped me to realise the concept knowing that if I got stuck then the reflective process would help me to find answers or a way forward.

I feel very excited about this new body of work and I am really enjoying this way of making. It continues to help me to respond to what’s happening in the world through my practice which is very important for me right now.

To build on this, I want to think more about why painting with my non-dominant hand has become so important to me. Also I want to understand more about my overall process – from buying the newspaper to completing a painting.

NEXT STEPS

Think more about my reasons for using my non-dominant hand – especially think about this as I paint.

Start to be more considered when moving from one step to the next in my process to better understand the process with the aim of future improvement and development.

Keep making and think about what to do for the degree show.