A bit of HDR...

Today I went on a bike ride to take advantage of the lovely weather and took a camera with me in the hope to try (warning: geeky word usage) Automatic Exposure Bracketing to create High Dynamic Range images (HDR)  (I think I need a lie down after that sentence)  And these are the results.  Basically it is a way of getting all of the tonal range your eye sees into a picture by taking different exposures of the same scene and combining them.  I quite like a few of the effects, I think it has worked best on the photo of Berkswell Church, it's kind of surreal, almost film-esque.  I used some software called Photomatix Pro as I wasn't getting the results I wanted in Photoshop, I think I need a little more practice, I shall persevere!  I need to take a tripod out with me and maybe even a remote to make sure I'm not moving the camera as it causes it to have these funny double exposure "ghosts".  Pleased with it for a first attempt though!

Giant Cupcake

 Birthday party time. Cue a monstrous cupcake with slightly day-glo icing!

Make Do and Mend Art Performance

Last night Katherine Johnson and I performed our Make Do and Mend performance at the opening of the reduction exhibition at Broadcasting House. The exhibition was organised by the Young Curators, a project based at Leeds Met Gallery and Studio Theatre that gives young people a practical introduction to curating art exhibitions. The performance was as we wanted it to be, very hectic! We invited members of the audience to destroy maps of Britain and our task was to attempt to put them back together showing a literal cycle of damage and repair. The exhibition was based on cuts within the arts and the performance was based on the idea of "Broken Britain" and how the ever-mounting problems in society are never fixed properly but smoothed over and inherent to our culture. We were dressed as land girls referencing the idea of the wartime community spirit and the idea of the home and hard work to bring people together in more desperate times. We had some very good feedback during the performance and are both looking forward to performing it again at the Home from Home exhibition at 153 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds on 12th March from 12pm. More information about the reduction exhibition can be found here.

Call and Response: Campaign

The rest of February's drawings to be added soon.

A response to Katherine's call.
Campaign.
Champagne.
Kampf.

Moustache Tree!

Day 23 and I have cracked.  It's a tree where I believe all the moustaches of Movember flocked to in December.  I'm enjoying this imagining lark!

28 Drawings Later: February Drawing Challenge, days 20-22

A lovely day of drawing, printing and Photoshop.  I started off drawing a Penny Farthing in pen and then scanned it and manipulated it in Photoshop to produce some wallpaper designs (a la Rachel O' Keefe)  And then my favourite that took quite a while to do- a Raven made up of printed letters.  The inspiration for this came from the Lewis Carroll riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"  which famously has no answer, I think this is a fitting one.  Both have inky quills.

28 Days Later: February Drawing Challenge, Catch up!

Catch up Saturday!  Here are four "drawings" to make up for the last few days of nothingness.  I am having a go at monotype again, I quite like the orange one, it looks a bit more delicate in real life, the smudges aren't so splodgy and the pencil is nice and sketchy.  I like the idea of going over the top of a mono printed outline, might have a go at more of these.  The I quite like the lobster ghost though I don't think I have got the technique perfected quite well enough yet.  More experiments I think!  The digital drawing of Gordon Brown is a little strange with his gradient filled bags under his eyes but I think there is something there that has kind of captured the same sort of feeling as the new labour posters I remember from when I was younger.