Longing……For……For……For……

What other inspirations did I gain on my London trip?

After the Soane’s museum I decided that I wanted to look for the ChinaTown in London with one of my classmates so that we can eat some delicious Chinese foods for dinner and to see what it is like. We found it a bit difficult getting there as we lost our way and plus there were the riots going and the movie premier of the Hunger Games MockingJay Part 2.

In the end we found ChinaTown and it just looked very nice just seeing how you can grab a piece of China and bring it back to England. This very much related to my kind of work that I try to make with the different medicines and foods and my degree show from my BA in fine arts. It was the exact inspiration I was looking for and it just broarden my insight more in comparing China and england together.

What else did I do after the Ai WeiWei gallery?

The Soane Museum

I did successfully enough tried to find the Soane museum with my three classmates who got a little bit lost in the city area but did manage to find it in the end. When we got there, we had to remove any bagging and loose items before entering the old looking house which is turned into a museum full of relics and free to enter.

• Old Books

So… as I entered this victorian style house, it had a narrow hallway and a living room to the right where it housed a wide collection of old books in high display book shelves. Also the thing that drawed my eye the most was seeing some very old greek vases in which some were real but I heard that some were copied because of the war that was going on at the time.

• Chinese & Greek vases

Also he had some very nice twin vases which sat either side of the humongous greek vase and these twin chinese vases looked looked just as big that were green in colour to represent the special colour of jade. They were so inspiring to see as I myself deal with different cultures in my artwork and it is like seeing many cultures together at once in this museum. This was the kind of impression that I started to get.

• Roman & Greek sculptural ruins

Yeah… We came across many narrow corridors to get to different rooms that had different classifications but I thought this room really was the best. In this room or I should say ‘Open hallway’ seemed like the most spacious hallway we’d seen with the window on the top of the open hallway just letting a little fragment of light in on all of the sculptures.

There were a lot of sculptures there that go as far back as 1000bc like parts from pillars and very immense detail and highly preserved. Also there were a ancient Egyptian sarcophagus ‘without lid’ so we be able to see inside of it and saw the trace of the girl that was buried inside it. This was all inspiring to me as it opened my eyes more to seeing how art starts forming from different past and culture.

• Paintings

The painting room was in fact open and when I got there, there was a small enough room that housed some very famous paintings. One famous painting that I noticed was Canaletto, He was the most famous painter of Venice scenes in Italy and felt good to be standing right in front of one of his biggest paintings he made.

Canaletto’s painting was a classical one that I had done my research on in the past comparing his scenes with my printing scenes that I did in my BA and is a very good artist. Some other artists paintings looked good but did not recognise them but told  very interesting story as it was based on a true story and the guy that were guarding the painting told us the story which was funny and interesting.

What did I learn from this inspiration?

Well if there is one thing I have learned, is that there were many cultures in the same house and kind of made me reflect on my China and England in a way. It has also given me some historical knowledge about different cultures and stories in England that has left me wondering ever since now and still keep reflecting back to what I’d seen. It will certainly broaden my aspect of historical past and open my views more with dealing with two cultures of England and China.

How did the London trip go last Thursday?

I can say that apart from being a boring 2 hour journey plus some interesting nice talks with some classmates on the way there and back, it turned out to be a very interesting day for me. As we got off the coach we walk up trafalgar road and just to the left side we approached the royal academy where it housed the work of artists such as Ai WeiWei. I primarily wanted to go to London to see his work as he is one of my best inspirations and also use him as research.

Ai WeiWei had a significant amount of nice works made from natural different woods and other materials to make most of his sculptures. In the court yard area just where the entrance is, I came across some trees that looked like dead trees but actually it is a mixture of dead logs found in the mountains. I thought these were very nice and given me a clear story of how old things die away but can still be used to create something very special such as these trees.

 What kind of meaning do Ai WeiWei’s works point out to people?

All of the works that are shown above have given me some clear inspiration of what kind of work Ai WeiWei makes and how his work influences directly on Chinese government. His artwork to me points out towards a political aspect within his art where he constantly sources his thoughts secretly through his artwork making a political statement against what the chinese government are doing wrong.

Some of his works clearly shows the pain and frustration that Ai WeiWei has been through and seems like he is regarded as a free speaker in England of what he feels against the chinese government but has been restrained from doing so many times by the Chinese. I think that the reactions of his artwork by his audience are deeply astonished because seeing some chinese viewers there seem also frustrated to what the chinese government are doing to their own people.

I noticed one Chinese guy in the gallery watching the bulldozers destroy Ai WeiWei’s studio and he looked like he could not bare to watch it being destroyed, shuck his head with frustration and moved on like there is no hope… I think that Ai WeiWei’s work acts like a free speaker against the Chinese government and how these kind of rights impact not only us british but Chinese people as a whole. To me his work is quite strong and is a long ongoing theme that will always keep fighting to make a strong point with many Chinese supporters behind him and his work. This was how I felt when I was there at the gallery and has left me wondering what great artworks I can do of my own and have gained some new ideas that should turn out to be successful…

What have I done about the third layer?

Since the last post of my successful second layer print I quoted that I would have the third layer stencil and silkscreen done by Friday morning. But… because I was in London to see a gallery on thursday it meant that the technician had the whole day plus friday morning to get this done. Sadly when I came back the following day it was not done resulting more delay within my print work. But in the end he did get round to doing my third stencil for me at about 3:00 and by then I was basically prepared.

Were there any problems with the silkscreen stencil and printing process?

I thought that the stencil looked nicely done with the smoothness effect of the ink just laying on the inkjet acetate. But… for some unknown weird reason, the photo emulsion does not like sticking to the silkscreen resulting in deformed and missing outlines of my stencil image. This results in more frustration knowing that my image cannot be mended now until monday so thats 4 days of waiting to do my third layer.

The silkscreen stencil seems like it has not had enough thick layering of photo emulsion or the fact that the photo emulsion is out of date, meaning it is unusable and need to order some more fresh emulsion.

How will I be able to get through this problem?

I think that the only way out of this continuous cycled problem is to try again with the same emulsion to see if it works on monday but if not, then I will try get Shaun Camp to order in some fresh photo emulsion that will work better. I think the only way to know for sure is to try a new silkscreen stencil again with the photo emulsion to see if the same problem happens again and then I will know what to do.

So… What will I do in the meantime?

I think I will have a well earned break over the weekend after having the frustration and a whole day in London… I will try do some more research in the comfort of my own leisure on other artists that compare to my work and will also reflect back on my London trip last thursday to recap on what it taught me in the end. Roll on monday… a good start to any week.

Feel free to watch or browse through my short 5-6 minutes of commentary with unexpected results within my third stencil.

How well did it go with printing the second layer of Chairman Mao?

To be blatantly honest the second stencil layer that I had projected onto silkscreen worked very well even though there was a small hole left through the photo emulsioning that I had covered up with filler. Also the skin colour that I mixed up yesterday worked a good treat today indeed and so did the second layer stencil that I had projected onto silkscreen.

I thought that it looked quite nice the way I lined up the second layer to go onto the first layer and looked quite nice without fail. I basically used a plastic film to print the second layer on first and then once the first print was placed on the plastic film, I could then use that to line up the second layer to go on top of my first layer prints. This method I thought works very well indeed and because of this I manage to line up the second layer nicely with the first layer.

Were there any problems juring this second layering process?

I felt that today, despite having some good prints done I faced two major obstacles today which made me feel quite frustrated the fact that my prints were in danger of being destroyed.

Printing Colours – The pigment curse…

Yes… when I used the mixed skin colours today for my printing, I discovered something that could have stopped my second layer of printing for today… I noticed that as I was using the ink more and more, I say that the colour of purple was about halfway down to the bottom of the cup that I was using, meaning that the pigment has traveled through the skin colour! This frustrated me a lot as I did spend 10 minutes on mixing it well and could not see any sign of the purple colour insight so I knew that it was well mixed.

Then the next day the pigment obviously sinked to the bottom. Before getting the brown I had to mix the green with the red that made purple so this tells me that purple is the predominant pigment and is probably why this happened I am not sure but will make sure I mix the colours like that on the day of printing from now on.

Silkscreen – The sticky photo emulsion curse…

Ok so after the colour disaster, I felt fine and had enough of mixed colour to do the rest of my first layer prints in the end. but… after a while of putting pressure when silkscreening through the stencil to print the second layer, I noticed that the paper I was printing on liked sticking to my silkscreen… At first I was not sure why it was happening but when I looked underneath the silkscreen, I noticed that some of the photo emulsion was not dry and was turning soft which meant it was sticking to my prints and making marks on them!

This frustrated me even more because this is not something you expect when trying to print through an photo emulsion stencil right? so to solve this I manage to stick some tape underneath where it was sticky and manage to print the other ones just fine but still ruined two prints…

What will I do next as part of this printing process?

I will go away to have a good think on the next time I go to print the third layer which will be on friday, hoping I can be well prepared for the next session of printing without any more problems to face… I think a good break in London aught to do the trick seeing some nice artwork by Ai WeiWEi which will be exciting to see as I base him as one of my best inspirations for comparing English and China together. I will keep updated on my next session of printing hopefully on Friday.

Please feel free to watch this short 5 minutes of commentary about my obstacles I faced today and the final outcome of my prints.