My baby! My baby! Who threw out my baby!

This one may be a bit brief. “Phew” I hear you say.

No I don't care what you've been looking at, I said go do some RESEARCH!

I had a conversation today with some mature students about research and what it means. In true edit fashion I asserted my contention that research meant being aware and actively searching for visual references. I went a little further however and mentioned that an awareness of the visual qualities surrounding all things around us can be nothing other than research. I might have been deliberately baiting a completely predictable response but I felt like having a discussion. The aforementioned ‘predictable response’ was that research is ‘devalued’ unless you can prove on paperwork, to external educational authority moderators, that you’ve done some. The word some is important here because, to the external moderators, the only thing that matters about your research is that you have photocopied something that looks something like it MIGHT be artwork.

Forgive this slightly jaded view of ‘professional moderators’ but my experience of education thus-far has taught me that success means duping or putting the shine on your efforts so as to convince the moderator that he or she is looking at exactly what they want to see as a high grade body of work. Educational success therefore is defined completely by how a pupil performs to over objective and numerically based criteria. This archaic system will (I hope) be swiftly trumped in years to come by the sheer volume of uneducated and uninterested people who are separated from the general population of England by the fact that they have a degree, not that they are educated enough to get a degree (not all of them will be). A tutor of mine put it best when he outlined the logic behind the government founded coercion of pupils to entertain the idea that they NEED higher education:

“There are a lot of intelligent ((not knowledgeable, intelligent!)) people who attend university. This must mean that if we make everyone in the country attend university – our people will all be made vastly more intelligent. Eureka!”

Back to the title. I may be combating my bathwater+baby removal disorder. Though I had it preached at me that despite the benefit my own research has for me, the people around me and my work and despite the fact that my tutors and the people around me are made aware of it constantly by my lip-flapping – I did come away full in the knowledge that I should use a filing system to keep a hardcopy of key pieces of research if only for easy access. I had thought that using a research file was naught but a waste of time when I could just as easily (and probably come out comparatively better off financially) get copies of the books I would otherwise be photocopying from.

Like drawing blood from the space in stones…

Today marked another turning point in the drawing project. I see-sawed from having a disastrous morning of drawing to some of the work finally taking shape in the afternoon. Instead of doing exactly as I was told, I began working straight from life – drawing the other people in the studio. I’ll be honest I didn’t tell any of them because I don’t want to stop anyone working or make anyone uncomfortable. I was forced to work quickly as the original drawings were of some of the biggest fidgets I’ve ever seen, sat swiveling on computer chairs. Needless to say, these were the less successful attempts. Eventually I sat behind a mature student who works at the other side of our studio. I’ve noticed that she tends to move around only to charge/wash her brush or to change her seating position. It happens periodically more or less every couple of minutes, perfect for quick studies. The line quality I achieved whilst working with this rapidity was much closer to that of Piranesi’s original sketches. The same can be said of the amount of lines I began to use to describe the student’s form. The challenge became largely centered around describing as much in a single line as was possible.

I’ll post some of the better results as the week goes on if possible. I’m falling asleep typing this in bed at the minute.