Tracey Emin

To start off on my exam prep for outside, inside, in between, i needed to look at an artsist that could link to the idea of feeling left out and also depression. I thought that Tracey Emin was perfect for this, in particular her figurative, self portrait work. The way she paints the figures curled up, in the centre of the page and the colours she uses really gives a feel of being alone, sadness and depression. The emotions in these peices are so strong. The use of text in her work also adds to these feelings, letting us into her thoughts. I have done research on Emin and i also wanted to try and recreate these peices using my own photograph and style. I took a photo of a friend in a hunched, vunerable position as Emin does so in her images, i then did two monoprints of it, one in blue, one in black and with the blue i added text, which i thought was appropriate to my idea. I also did a free hand ink and stick drawing in blue as Emin does use blue ink in a sketchy way quite often. I feel that my mono prints went and looked better, the blue one is my favourite because of the text that came out well, the sad, lonely colour and because of the sketchy detail in it that i didnt put into the black monoprint. The ink and stick did'nt go aswell as it didnt have the blotchy style Emin uses because i used a stick instead of a brush, I didnt get the proportion that well and i could've done with mixing a blue rather than using one straight out of the bottle. I will definately using Emins style within at least one of my ideas, i am in love with her work.

Bring on the prep

I have just recently been given the exam specification for my a level art final exam. The title is 'Inside, Outside, Inbetween'. At first i thought that this was a little vague, but then i realised that this wasnt a bad thing, vague means i can go wherever i want with the title as long as i can make a strong link. As a class, we brainstormed a number of different ideas for a starting point, but as we did this i felt that the rest of the guys in my class were being a little to literal with their ideas. Ive been wanting to make my art as un literal as possible recently, and with that the first idea that came to my head was the idea of being inside and outside of different social and freindship groups. This could transfer into the way you feel when you are outside and inside your freindship group and also the way we change when we move and migrate from different friendship circles. I dont exactly know how i am going to get this across using art yet but I really do want to use video art or maybe even photography.