Melbourne Museum of Printing

On the 14th of October we visited the Melbourne Museum of Printing in Footscray. Most of our class was put off by this at first, seeing as it was a far drive or to catch to public transport but most of us went thanks to David for driving us in a minivan. :) We got to what seemed to look like a warehouse, some of us confused, this definetly did not look like a museum! We were told that they were in the process of moving from Sunshine so the warehouse look of it was just for the time being.

Lorry gave us a brief introduction about the place and then our guide, Michael started on the history of typography and printing. We were told about impositions (planning of how pages form in books) and the letterpresses. I found this part interesting to learn about as the negatives of text becomes a positive when it is printed. When we later developed our own printing of our names, its funny to see that everything was backwards and upside down at first, but when printed onto paper it forms the right way up and side. We looked around the front of the museum, a A1 board of fonts interested me with this quote in particular, "with this many amazing headlines, why haven't we been bought out by Rupert Murdoch. I talked to Michael briefly about the amount of fonts just used alone for  headlines, can we imagine how many fonts there is out there if that was just headline fonts?

* Picas and Inches, which were the standard measurements for a font size.
In the USA, the standard size for a pica is 1/6 of an inch to make a size 12 font. An inch is 25mm

* "Printer's pie" refers to the split type, this is when type in the forme can be shorter in one line and then become looser than the next...

* Forme/ Chase: the steel frame that holds the text/words.

*Quoine: pushes the type into the corners of the chase.

We learnt about mats/ matrix, which were used to assemble a word together, followed by type cases. Upper case fonts got its name as they were in alphabetical order in the cases and Lower case fonts were just in the bottom for convenience.
Michael told us about kerning – to create a nicer style for the fonts, as we already knew from Jennine's class, but Michael went into more depth about it which was good.

There was 3 parts to the museum, the composing area, the printing area and the finishing area. 
The composing area consisted of the letters, which you composed the words letter by letter. The printing area which had the paper and press machines, etc and the finishing area for binding.
We were able to create our names on the linoprint machine by Lorry but we got to ink and create a certificate like thing to remember our trip. We had to find the letters ourselves and create the words which Michael then made for us from the melted metal.

Overall it was a good experience that helped us understand the history of printing and how letters were made and how easy we have it now with computers to do all our calculations for a font size for us. The best part was watching Scott do some of the printing using different fonts, text and paper. The work he did looked really unique and vintage like. He made me a print but i wasn't allowed to bring it home, but i got inspiration from it anyway. It looks a little like the 9th picture below but it had fonts and type everywhere with different inks.

Walker Street Gallery

As we found out on Thursday 7th of October, books are a tool of communication. Books were a vital part of communicating ideas and thoughts to others long before facebook, twitter or the internet in general. We visited the Walker Street Gallery for 2 exhibitions being held – 

Tess Edwards Metaphysical Fishing being one of them. Tess Edwards was not particularly Catholic but her artwork was based upon prayer books. She would paint over prayer books, sometimes revealing text, sometimes not.

This was an interesting thing she did to express herself. You wouldn't think one would, i suppose, 'vandalize' something sacred, such as bibles, prayer books, etc, but it gave a new depth to her work. Some of the artwork looked quite random, with no particular meaning behind it to me, or not as obvious as some of the other images she may have painted. 

We looked at different forms of books that were created by Deakin Uni students. Some were fascinating, such as the Trees and Ladders, 1995 by John Ryrie, Alex Selenitsch and Hamish Hill. The book didn’t look as fascinating as the case. The case was a symbol of trees with the wood grains and a hard cover for the book. It had a step ladder on the right side of it that represented growth and more like a ladder of success.

            The boat books were interesting because they represented things that books can be – easy to print, cheap and fun. You don’t need a lot of pictures or text, or fancy fonts, or anything, as long as you can just fold paper and make an interesting shape to add to the content. The idea behind the boat reminded me of in primary school when you would make paper boats/hats.

There was many pieces that were pleasing to look at, the matchbox book, the book with the buttons and vintage photos, however the best one for me was the owl book sitting in the right side corner of the gallery. “An Howl of Owls” fascinated me with its contrast of black and white, like day and night. The stencils and patterns of the owls and even the title in grey lead pencil. It looks like it had been spray painted as well which added a bit of a 3D look to the owls. The combination of the text and stencils, the use of negative space and the simplicity of the book, pictures of owls with no text gave a new meaning to books. You don’t need both text and images!

Even though it was a small gallery, there were a lot of fascinating pieces to look at and learn from. The thing we probably have forgotten is that books are a vital part of communicating and learning. 

Photography Quiz

Photography Quiz Answers

1. Sir John Hershel first used the term photography in 1839 when photography first became public.

2. The term ‘camera obscura’ means dark room in Latin.

3. The earliest writings about the camera obscura were written by Leonardo da Vinci, which was used to understand perspectives.

4. Who produced the first photograph in 1827? A French man by the name of Nicephore Niepce.

5. Daguerre’s invention in 1937 was called the Daguerreotype, which was a chemical process that tried to change the exposure time of an image.

6. In 1884 George Eastman introduced a flexible film that would allow multiple images onto light sensitized paper. Four years after he introduced this flexible film, he then introduced the box camera.

7. Eadweard Maybridge is famous for recording what? Animal Locomotion was the study that made Maybridge famous, his study of the movement between humans and animals, which were horses galloping. 

8. What did Thomas Eakins invent? Eakins invented a type of camera with a rotatating disc that could record many exposures of a person moving in one single photo.

9. ‘Migrant Mother’ is the title of a famous photograph by Dorothea Lange, which captured the despair of migrant farm workers in California during the 1930s Great Depression.

10.  What was the first major world disaster to be recorded on a photograph?
     The first major world disaster to be recorded was the Empire State building
    in the 1930s focusing on the builders, but also he explosion of the German airship, The Hindenburg.

Monash Gallery of Art

Thursday 16th September 2010 we visited the MGA to see the Ponch Hawkes Photography as well as some other artists.

Ponch Hawkes was a photographer who used actors and performers for her night time photography. 

It was interesting the way she used car lights to give that particular look in her work. Her pictures usually were of random travels and featured weird things in some such as a man holding a mug, a man skipping, etc. But these peieces featured a main colour as well such as the man skipping had a blueish green top and the photo had some bottle shop glowy bits in it that were the same colour for the bottles. The man holding the mug (red) also had another red part in the picture.

Robyn Stacey had the artwork with butterflies and insects pinned down to her work, which you don't notice at first glance until you look up close. The picture looks like a fisheye lens has been used even though it is like a collage in a circular shape to give it that dimension.

We then looked at John Grollings who had the tribal pictures that had no horizons or gave no indication of where you were, he got viewers to be 'zoomed in' to the picture and be focussed on what was happening. He did alot of work from Papua New Guinea. 

Rod McNicol was a Melbourne photographer who was going blind and was having emphasema. 

He photographed graveyard stones but chose to do them in Sepia rather than black and white or colour. They were cropped rather then the whole stone, and there were different age groups of the photos he captured. Another photographer – Anne Ferran took photos of what seems to be grass, it was the grass at a woman's prison in Tasmania where pregnant women would go. the position of the artwork in the gallery needed more light so that Anne's message of looking at yourself through her photos would be shown better.

The piece however in the gallery that i enjoyed the most was the illustration of Ex de Medici. There was a hidden message of beauty in things ugly. Ex was in the Canberra Barracks for the army in Timor. 

She illustratated guns, birds, skulls and tattoo like things. The piece was done with markers and inks. 

It was fascinating to see some things smudged and done wrong such as a orange flower and some other little things, that the artwork wasn't perfect at a second glance.

European Masters, the Stadel Gallery, Germany

Thursday 2nd September 2010 we visited the NGV International on St Kilda Rd to see the European Masters art collection. I expected it to be mostly german artwork, but there was artwork from different artists around Europe such as Switzerland and particularly France (Degas, Cezanne, Monet, etc).

Rosemary was our guide, she began a short speech about the Frankfurt museum. Where the ideas and styles were easy to swap around and showed us a map of Germany then and now and that Mainehattan/Bankfurt is in the heart of Europe.
She explained about Johann Tischbein Frerick Stabel, who was the main artist for the museum in Germany that is called the Stabel Gallery.

We learnt about the real history of Art, the different periods of time from (in no particular order) of:
Early 19th century German Art, Impressionism, Classicalism, Romanticism, Symbolism to Modernity of Surrealism and Expressionism. There was a slideshow representing each area of the movements, with paintings from that era.

Some of the notes i jotted down as Rosemary explained some pieces include:


* Jacques Louis David: The Oath of Horatii has a bit of symmetry work in the piece.
* ROMANTICISM: (1820s) the pictures are all mainly landscapes of the natural world, the contrasts and sceneries are captivating.
* Monet: Painted with light, tones and colours. The Luncheon 1868 – is an ordinary subject matter for the panel of judges – Les Jury de Peintur– so when he didn't get chosen, he chose to join the Impressionists.
* Caspar David Friedrich: Rising Mountain of Fog – There was a scenery that included 3 mountains which looked like it represented the Holy Trinity. There was a real spiritual feeling about this painting.
* Eugene Delacroix painted against the 'rules' of french painting.
* Auguste Rodin portrayed human emotions – statue of Eve 1881.
* Arnold Bocklin (Swiss) – symbolism of myths and fairytales.
* Franz Marc was interesting for Cubism, he painted religious and nobility artworks. a popular piece in the museum was the Dog lying in the snow, c. 1911.
* Cezanne was the "Father of Modern art" 

It was good learning about the history of art itself before we entered into the gallery and looked at the pieces, it was a bit hard to grasp all the areas of history properly within that hour talk Rosemary gave us but it was a good insight into why the judges chose particular pieces, all with different subject matters and reasons.

video clip

My friend sent me this video clip, it's really interesting.

It's a lady who uses sand to create different artwork, i think it's european but it's still amazing!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1105044239089&ref=mf

hopefully that works :) you have to sign into facebook to see it though.

Tim Burton exhibition

27th August 2010


Tim Burton's exhibition at ACMI was a experience that helped me learn alot about a totally different style of illustration.
  The most recent Tim Burton film i'd seen was the 3D Alice in Wonderland movie that came out last year. The Tim Burton version of this disney classic was quite interesting especially with Johnny Depp's lead as the Mad Hatter. 
Later in the exhibition i discovered that Johnny Depp is in many Tim Burton films including voiced characters in the cartoon films such as Corpse Bride. 


The exhibition showed Tim Burton's roughs which was good to look at for inspiration for an assignment at tafe. 
His roughs still looked rather good, compared to our roughs at school howveer showed the imporatnce of doing roughs before our final work. 
  The most interesting drawings Tim has done was the Nightmare before Christmas. It was said that Tim uses alot of shapes such as triangles, circles and spirals in his work to show emotions in his characters.


Tim Burton seemed to have a weird like childhood to produce such unique and distinctive artwork for his films. 
His ideas and concepts all explore the same gothic fantasy themes such as graveyards, skeletons, corpses, but also people like clowns. 
  Towards the end of the tour, we got to produce our own drawings on Tim Burton characters, this exercise was good because we got to see our capabilities in illustrating his style, it was easy enough to do spirals and his character's hands (which are like stick figures) but i found it hard to draw those odd shaped heads and characters, some of which can be 3 or 4 different animals joined together. 


I found this excursion interesting and when i got home, ended up watching a few of his cartoon movies, the Corpse Bride and Nightmare before Christmas. Its good to see this distinctive style that carries through in the actors of the characters that plays these roles for example Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands and Willy Wonka (Charlie and the chocolate Factory).