BRINK.

Find information about my latest exhibit 'BRINK' on the new website....

www.brinkshow.com

Information about dates and how to get there can also be found here. To view profiles of each of the Illustrators exhibiting here including myself please visit the following luck.

www.brinkshow.com/brink_illustration.html

HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL THERE!!!

FMP.

To view the entire journey of my Final Major Project, please find January 29th in my blog and scroll forward from there!!

Enjoy....

BEAUTY OR THE BEAST.

I have made alterations to this 2 metre wide piece as it felt somewhat incomplete. I also feel it is now prepared to be displayed as a collection amongst the 'I Am Beautiful.' collage faces, photographic face scan ins and sections of the large scale piece i produced a week or 2 ago. This piece interlinks with all 3 of the aforementioned styles and i hope if i get the opportunity (enough exhibition space) to exhibit all of this at the same time, then they will work together to show a dynamic cross section of my work.

This project has been based upon various aspects of beauty and the human form. The 4 'I am Beautiful.' faces, shown in the previous post are based upon the idea of trying to cover up or distract from ugliness and imperfections, i portrayed this by the use of easy-on-the-eye patterns that distracted from the fact that the faces were actually horribly distorted and crumpled. I wanted to transpose the idea of beauty being reflected by such distractions and so again decided to involve floral patterns in this piece. This time i wanted to illustrate the idea of being 'beautiful on the inside' as opposed to being visually beautiful. The patterns illustrate the skin of the plain figure whereas the highly defined 'beautiful' figure jumps from the page, flowers clinging to the outside of its silhouette, as if not needed.

I AM BEAUTIFUL.

To accompany the large piece in the exhibition, i set out to produce smaller images to that would be in keeping with the image but in a lighter style. The following 4 images play off the notion of Beauty and what is considered beautiful. The structure of the faces are drawn from work i have produced during this unit but have worked with collage in order to set the faces alive. The face outlines are from the distorted studies i made from the face scans earlier in the project, and i have built them up with floral patterns, wallpaper and other found materials. I have used these patterns which we may consider pretty or easy on the eye to try and soften the ugly faces almost as a camouflage. This is after all, what make-up wearing women do everyday, trying to soften imperfections with camouflage or make-up. Are they beautiful? or are they still ugly?

DECISION TIME.

I've completed the last large wall piece i was working on, featuring the jumble of bodies. There are sections of it that i feel are really strong but this feeling does not transpose across the entire piece. I had intended to create this piece and to select which of the larger images i wanted to exhibit, with the intension of selecting the most successful one. I feel that this is perhaps not the one which is most successful and instead i will choose the wall piece featuring 2 men joined at the face and produce accompanying smaller scale images. This is the most recently completed drawing, its dimensions are 2metres by 160centimetres.

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN.

Keeping in mind the shows being held after the deadline for my Final Major Project, i want to create something that will catch the viewer's eye from a distance, because of this as my final submission for my Final Major Project i am hoping to create a large wall piece.

The time scale i am working with will allow me enough time to produce something of a similar scale as the previous piece of a the 2 men joined at the face. I am already a good way into producing this wall piece, here is a section of the drawing so far...

BODIES IN FLIGHT.

Here is the start of this piece, due to the scale and the space currently available to me the reproduction isn't great quality, but i endeavour to get some better examples up on here asap. I like the style iv used to draw these, where parts are less detailed or totally undone which contrasts to the areas of high detail. I like the distance between the figures but i think they could also work if they were all connected as if they were a network of body parts?

DIRECTION.

I wondered where i could take my work next, there is definitely something sexual about the image of 2 men from one face. I feel that whilst working with these warped faces the compositions are much more successful when there is more that 1 body. We can make a link from these sexual images to the poem that influenced this project from the start. The key line to this poem being 'We have no time to stand and stare'. My work perhaps suggests that society and culture changes so fast and so dramatically in terms of what is considered acceptable that we have no time to dwell upon agitational subjects such as the modern acceptance of gay/straight equality?

I think this raw display of complicated and varying sexuality could be something to concentrate upon within my work. I hope that these images are not overly comfortable to the eye of the viewer.

Here is the start of my next venture...

CHECKING IN.

Over the last week i have been busy building a website to show some snippets from my visual portfolios. It is near completion and will be coming soon to www.jodieclaregamblen.com !

FINI.

I've finally finished this drawing, and have also produced a quick stop frame animation of its gradual growth. Hopefully this will lead onto other similar studies. I was rather suprised at how enjoyable working to this large scale was, as i am often guilty of becoming sketchbook bound! I would like to try out the same concept with other faces/bodies as i am aware that these will be exhibited, ithink the large scale would look impressive in my graduation show and our following London show 'BRINK'.

WATCH THE ANIMATION HERE...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jaf6pknGEfk

Here is a shot from the animation which shows the entire piece...

In this piece the actual image is in brown and white.

I am pleased with the way in which the image developed, i took inspiration for

this piece from a previous piece of work of mine. This is the following image, it shows a human form but the way the piece is less detailed or perhaps unfinished in places makes the image somewhat ambiguous- is this a male or female? Are they sleeping or are they dead? I was keen to translate this style onto my most recent work and so i made the decision to leave parts in a less finished state as i was drawing.

STOP. HAMMERTIME.

So the template has been scaled up and i have begun work on the piece, i'm using dip pen and ink on this so its extremely time consuming due to the scale of the media i am using to draw compared to the scale of the paper, i am currently still working on this (nearly there now!)

I have been thinking about what my work will look like in my graduation show and at the following exhibition 'Brink' that will be held in Brick Lane, i want my work to capture the audience and cause them to ask the question... 'what am i looking at?' Whe

n this image is complete and hopefully looking good, my ambition is to create a series of similar themed yet very different large images that will look great in the up and coming exhibitions.

However, as i have spent a lot of time on this single drawing i made the decision to record my progress by means of a stop frame animation, here are a few photographs and stills from the animation so far...

SCALE UP.

Iv been stuck on the thought of recreating the bodies for the earlier shown face scans, iv been desperate to see what they would look like if we reattach the distorted faces to the bodies upon which they were once attached. Some of the faces were distorted to the point that they looked like they were the faces from 2 separate bodies that had collided and merged into a one faced, two bodied being. Almost as if they were siamese or conjoined twins sharing a face. Another desire of mine is to recreate this idea in high detail on a large scale, possibly life-sized. To make this idea a reality i have gone on a search for some primary research in order to get the scale and body proportions correct, and where better to look than the owner of the warped face. I asked my model to lie in a series of different positions in order to create something that might connect to the face, using the powers of Photoshop i have made a rough template that i can draw from and work into, this is the one i have chosen to start with...

IN MY FAMILY PORTRAIT.

A little side line project. My mother requested i attempted to draw all the members of my immediate family in return for helping me out earlier on in the project (plaster casts). They are not my usual subject matter of choice in terms of the style of pose etc and they don't directly relate to my project but as they are also detailed ink drawings and concern themselves with the human form i thought i would include them in my blog of my final major project. Here are the results...

Terry Gamblen

Andrew Gamblen

Jodie Gamblen

Jean Gamblen

Ross Gamblen

Thomas Gamblen

MONOTONOUS.

Here are a couple of mono-prints i have made from the scanned faces. They were an worthwhile experiment but i don't feel they are effective in showing the detail of the faces.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

A major inspiration to the current project is the current Channel 4 documentary 'Beauty and the Beast; The Ugly Face of Prejudice', which looks into the lives of people with facial disfigurement.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/beauty-the-beast-ugly-face-of-prejudice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FHxRE0UoHI

BILL AND BEN.

Another trial from one of the photos i took earlier of Ben Brooks. This one is much larger and more detailed than the last. Plays well with the theme of ambiguity as well as the the feature of time in my work. Its hard to work out what we are looking at.. one face? two faces? its human but there is something that is so wrong about it.. Thats kind of what i was aiming for!!

YOUR MUM.

A first trial of using the scanned faces as a basis for sketches, this one is of my mother...

JENNY SAVILLE

It appears me and Jenny Saville have a lot in common! Squashing people against glass and making them look distorted and deformed. Perhaps i should try body parts next...?

CLARISSE D'ARCIMOLES

It's been a little while since i have updated my blog as i have been out and about exploring London and such like in order to see what is out there! I have been grabbed by the work of Clarisse d'Arcimoles, her work is currently on show in the Saatchi Gallery on Sloane Square. Her work shows an exciting take on the relationship between old and young and the passing of time, which is also the basis of my work in light of the lyric, 'We have no time to stand and stare...'

A FACE PRINT IN TIME

Keen to grab a hold of the detail of skin, i took some casts of some faces, my parents faces were old enough, offering the texture and detail of a well lived life, and they were kind enough to volunteer, sadly only one of the casts worked but it will still be interesting to see what i can make of it.

TIME WARP

In a moment of madness i put my head in the scanner to see if i could warp my face as if it being stretched through time, in thought of the poem 'Leisure' ... 'WE HAVE NO TIME TO STAND AND STARE'...

After using my head, i have also invited a selection of other people to experiment with this to see what i could gather together to work with, as my work concerns the human condition i wanted to see a selection of different age groups, skin types, genders etc, here are the results...