The difference with my work...

Artists like Wassily Kandinsky produce some childlike drawings but these are very intentional and calculated to look like that rather than mine which isnt intentional as I cannot see what I'm doing. However there are blind artist who can't see what they are doing but there work looks just as good if not better than someone who can see. People like John Bramblitt paints at an amazing standard using his fingers to 'see' which is a technique I used. I used my fingers to feel the paint so it was easier for me to paint.
As you may be able to see from my exhibition, my work is unique to me. Unfortunately the photo didn't show the colours as bright as they actually are. I observed people looking round the exhibition rather like I did when we went to London. I noticed that it was the bright colours and energy which attracted people to my work, even if they were next to the guns of someone else's work. I think my exhibition would have been better if my three final poster designs in the middle were printed off bigger as this would make it easier to see the details of the posters and also attract viewers from afar. This would also make it obvious that they were the final pieces.

Painting in the dark

These are the two paintings I managed to do in the dark. Lets just say they didn't look like that when I was doing them...they looked different colours and different shapes. But ahh well, I like how they look!
Now I would need to look into partially sighted or colour blind artists!

Exploring race more "What If..."

What if the most common race of the population was black rather white?

Well in this photo in a group of about 15 teenagers, only two of them are Caucasian. You may think that this is in a different country but in fact, its in Birmingham - somewhere which has a high population of not-Caucasian individuals. You'll generally find that Caucasians are the minority in a friendship group and at schools.

What if Prince William married a black woman?

Would this be allowed? Would he have had the blessing off of the Queen? Would the general public have gone so crazy about the royal wedding?
To be quite honest, I have no idea.

What if the queen wasn't British?

I was seriously thinking about using my nan and putting a crown on her head but I don't think she'd appreciate that.
But oh wait there's no need for Photoshop with this one because the queen is in fact foreign descent. Many people do not know this but the queen is in fact not fully British at all! If you think about it, the queen may be able to trace her bloodline back to royalty from many many years ago but in those times, royalty used to only be allowed to marry royalty. So that's royalty from many different countries. Many different races.
The Queen can supposed trace her bloodline back to the pharaohs...the pharaohs are Egyptian which is African which is not Caucasian.

What if the Western World was more racially black/asian than white and the rest of the world was more white?

Well the world wouldn't be like it is today. In fact it would be the total opposite.

Can't imagine it really. But Yinka Shonibare explored this with the black man being the master and the white people being servants and slaves in some of his work.

What if there was a soap opera set in Birmingham with many asian/black characters reflecting the population? 

Soaps like Coronation Street and Eastenders have about 5 not-caucasian characters out of about 60 - 70 characters. Is this a proper representation of the population today or is it more diverse?

Well it depends where you go but there does tend to be more than that, especially in the cities which are very diverse so you would expect soap operas like Eastenders (set in London) and Coronation Street (set near Manchester) to have more black characters..even if they are extras.

Birmingham has a very high percentage of asian/black people so if a soap opera was to be set there they would have to represent the population accordingly otherwise it would have no truth in it whatsoever. Would the soap do so well if a lot of the characters were of a different colour anyway?
Only one way to find out!

What if the children's cartoons were of black/asian origin?

I know that nowadays little children's programmes, the characters aren't any race but in fact brightly coloured like blue, green, yellow, red etc. But how would children react if the characters were black? Or if the main character in an older child's program was black?
Would scooby doo have been as successful if the characters were all/partially black?
People generally wouldn't have thought of them as American for a start and therefore wouldn't have been able to relate to them as much...well that's what I think.

What if superheroes started off universally black/asian?

Well there would be a whole lot more black superheroes that's for sure. There are about ten out of loads of superheroes which are well known...Storm, Black Panther, Bishop, Blade and War Machine to name a few.

The only way there would be loads more black superheroes would been was if the western world was more black/asian people than white.

What if superhero films were more interracial?

An obvious choice would be to use my family's heads in the photo poster. My dad's white and my mum's black and me and my siblings are mixed race so we are an example of an interracial family/group.

I have already done using my family's heads but that was on one of the conclusions of my experimentation. I have decided to use photo posters, particularly this one which is the one which I rearranged myself so it looks more real.
I have still left some of the heads/character skin tones as they were in the original rearrangement because I thought it looks good as it was before I would've changed their skin tones. If superhero films were more interracial, it would represent the nation a lot better because the majority of people aren't just one race, they have lots of different ones.

Just thinking...

Michael Jackson
Would he have become as famous as he did if he didn't change his appearance?
These are questions we'll never be able to answer.

This image and Michael Jackson himself makes my point of the pressure of the media and people in general to conform to the stereotypes. At his time, the music industry was more white dominated and he thought that he had to be white to be famous and make it big. Was he right?


This is an artist's conception of what Michael Jackson would have looked like if he had aged naturally. Now he's not looking stunningly beautiful or anything but its a lot better than what he turned out to look like. He looks normal. But is normal enough to make it in the music industry?

More things to strengthen my work..

I'm going to do a small few more blind paintings but instead of being blindfolded, I'm going to wait til its dark outside and do them outside in the dark...rather than being blind, I'm going to be partially slightly. I wonder if this will have any effect on how I paint!

Seen as I believe I have nearly done the final piece for this project, I have started to explore other routes and aspects of my work because I could have gone in so many different directions for this. If the work I do is strong enough, I could exhibit it next to my other work as it relates.

I can also do more research. I could easily take this project further and keep it going for a long time but I obviously have to come up with a final piece and exhibit my work.

Strangely, how soap operas changed the world

Soap operas aren't often celebrated for contributing to the good of society. Whether it's the materialism of Dallas or the idle gossip of Neighbours, they are better known for being shallow and addictive than for bringing about social change.

But around the world the genre has succeeded in providing "educational entertainment" - a blend of public service messages and melodrama that has enraptured millions of viewers.

Here are some of the things soaps have achieved;

Gay Tolerance

In 1989, the British soap Eastenders aired the first gay kiss on British television, prompting one British newspaper to run the headline "Filth! Get This Off Our Screens". Actor Michael Cashman received a brick through his window.

"On the second kiss there was barely any fuss. By the third kiss barely anyone noticed," Cashman wrote in The Mirror newspaper.

Another first occurred in 2007 in Vanuatu and Fiji, when a gay character appeared on screens in a series called Love Patrol. It has since been aired on TV in other Pacific Islands - a region where homosexuality is profoundly stigmatised.

"People are saying we actually do have gay men in our community too and they have rights," says Robyn Drysdale at the University of New South Wales, who has studied the reaction.

"There is a lot of discussion going on around human rights, and respect and an increased understanding of quite marginalised populations. That hadn't happened before."

Girls' Rights

Poor people didn't own television sets, so PCI Media Impact soon realised it could reach more people through radio. In 2002 it created a radio drama called Taru, set in the Indian state of Bihar, which challenged the preferential treatment of boys over girls.

The series' researchers found that girls in rural Bihar didn't celebrate their birthdays and decided to tell the story of a plucky young girl who petitions her family to throw her a party - and wins them over. Listeners across the region followed avidly as a little girl planned her birthday party for the first time.

In his follow-up research, Arvind Singhal, professor of communication at the University of Texas at el Paso, saw birthday celebrations for girls popping up around the region.

"It had the elements of an infection," he says.
Taru also led to the opening of several schools.

More research on media and stereotypes to strengthen my work

The first piece of research states:

"The media have and will continue to portray a self-serving negative stereotype of the African-American community. The societal and economic factors of racism have become more than just a bias. They are also a profitable industry, in which the elite will continue to suppress the lower class in order to maximize profits. According to Harvard professor Cornell West, 1 percent of the elite holds some 48 percent of America's wealth. This means that media, racism, and stereotypes will continue to be employed so that those elite can be sure of their continuing economic stability."

http://www.yale.edu/ypq/articles/oct99/oct99b.html

The second:

"If we assume that the media perpetuates stereotypes, what can be done to combat them, or has our society become numb to these stereotypes? What do the media messages say about women in society? About men in society? About race, gender and class?"

The answer to this is in the link below

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/sports03/papers/lgataullina.html

Transgender TV Ad Ruled Offensive

 Complaints over an advert for bookmaker Paddy Power featuring transgender people have been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The TV advert shown in February ahead of Ladies' Day at the Cheltenham Festival invited viewers to spot the "stallions" from the "mares". The ASA investigated 92 complaints that the advert was offensive and condoned harmful discriminatory behaviour. It ruled that it must not be shown again in its current form.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-18075633

Seen as I'm looking into fantasy films...

and in particular the stereotypes in these films, this was perfect research.
This article talks about sci-fi films that rare to have a true-to-life portrayal of women.

"But the problem with sci-fi – and film in general – is that for every kick-ass woman there's a limp damsel in distress. For every Ellen Ripley there's a Princess Leia, for every Buffy Summers (the vampire slayer) there's a Bella Swan (the soppy, bland one played by Kristen Stewart in Twilight). You watch Sarah Connor, the tough waitress-cum-action heroine in Terminator 2, and feel empowered, then you see Mikaela Banes, the mechanic played by Megan Fox in Transformers, whose main job seems to be to lean over the bonnet and poke her bum skyward, and you feel that feminism has died."

Rest of the article
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/fantasy-females-should-come-back-down-to-earth-7834570.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Public reactions to gays

I thought both of these were very interesting!

Jenna Marbles

This person off YouTube is a bit crazy (hilarious) addresses a lot of interesting things in her videos.
Surprisingly a lot of these have something to do with my work.
For example, when I was looking at Disney and their stereotypical effects upon children and what they make children expect when they grow up.
She talks about how messed up the Disney films are with the certain qualities they have especially qualities of the princesses that many little girls want to grow up like.



There are also videos about stereotypes about men and women. Particularly  when they are driving. This is funny but makes a great point about gender stereotypes.

Less conventional superheroes

Daredevil

Disabled because he is blind. He can 'see' through hearing sound bouncing off surfaces.

Hancock

Alcoholic. Anger issues. Careless. Black. Homeless.
The film is about him getting on the right track again to become a proper superhero. He even gets a superhero costumes towards the end.

These both have films all about them and are successful eventhough they are your regular heroes. However as Hancock is a comedy this helps it be successful as it makes people laugh.

Important information concerning the superhero genre

Growth in Diversity

For the first two decades of their existence in comic books, superheroes largely conformed to the model of lead characters in popular fiction of the time, with the typical superhero a white, middle- to upper- class, tall, heterosexual, professional, 20-to-35-year-old male. A majority of superheroes still fit this description as of 2011, but many characters began to break out of the mold in the 1960s.

Female superheroes

The first known female superhero is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks' minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in Fiction House's Jungle Comics #2 (cover-dated Feb. 1940), credited to the pseudonymous "Barclay Flagg".
Another seminal superheroine is Invisible Scarlet O'Neil, a non-costumed character who fought crime and wartime saboteurs using the superpower of invisibility; she debuted in the eponymous syndicated newspaper comic strip by Russell Stamm on June 3, 1940. The first costumed, superpowered superhero character, the antihero the Black Widow—a costumed emissary of Satan who killed evildoers in order to send them to Hell—debuted in Mystic Comics #4 (Aug. 1940), from Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics.
Starting in the late 1950s, DC introduced Hawkgirl, Supergirl, Batwoman and later Batgirl, all female versions of prominent male superheroes. Batgirl would eventually shed her "bat" persona and become Oracle, the premiere information broker of the DC superhero community and leader of the superheroine team Birds of Prey In addition, the company introduced Zatanna and a second Black Canary and had several female supporting characters that were successful professionals, such as the Atom's love interest, attorney Jean Loring.
As with DC's superhero team the Justice League of America, which included Wonder Woman, the Marvel Comics teams of the early 1960s usually included at least one female, such as the Fantastic Four's Invisible Girl, the X-Men's Marvel Girl and the Avengers' Wasp and later Scarlet Witch. In the wake of second-wave feminism, the Invisible Girl became the more confident and assertive Invisible Woman, and Marvel Girl became the hugely powerful destructive force called Phoenix.
In subsequent decades, Elektra, Catwoman, Witchblade, and Spider-Girl became stars of popular series. The series Uncanny X-Men and its related superhero-team titles include many females in vital roles.

Superheroes of color

Initially superheroes were almost universally white. Superheroes of other racial groups began to appear in the late 1960s. First, in 1966, came Marvel Comics' the Black Panther, an African king who became the first black superhero. The first African-American superhero, the Falcon, followed in 1969, and three years later, Luke Cage, a self-styled "hero-for-hire", became the first black superhero to star in his own series. In 1974, Shang Chi, a martial artist, became the first prominent Asian hero to star in an American comic book.
Comic-book companies were in the early stages of cultural expansion and many of these characters played to specific stereotypes; Cage often employed lingo similar to that of blaxploitation films, Native Americans were often associated with wild animals and Asians were often portrayed as martial artists.
Subsequent minority heroes, such as the X-Men's Storm (the first black superheroine) and the Teen Titans' Cyborg avoided such conventions. Storm and Cyborg were both part of superhero teams, which became increasingly diverse in subsequent years. The X-Men, in the particular, were revived in 1975 with a line-up of characters culled from several nations, including the Kenyan Storm, German Nightcrawler, Russian Colossus, Irish Banshee and Canadian Wolverine. Diversity in both ethnicity and national origin would be an important part of subsequent superhero groups.
In 1989, the Monica Rambeau version of Marvel's Captain Marvel became the first female black superhero from a major publisher to get her own title, a one-shot issue. In 1991, Marvel's Epic Comics released Captain Confederacy, the first female black superhero to have her own ongoing series.
In 1993, Milestone Comics, an African-American owned imprint of DC, introduced a line of series that included characters of many ethnic minorities, including several black headliners. The imprint lasted four years, during which it introduced Static, a character adapted into the WB Network animated series Static Shock.
In addition to the creation of new minority heroes, publishers have filled the roles of once-Caucasian heroes with minorities. The African-American John Stewart debuted in 1971 as an alternate for Earth's Green Lantern Hal Jordan. In the 1980s, Stewart joined the Green Lantern Corps as a regular member. The creators of the 2000s-era Justice League animated series selected Stewart as the show's Green Lantern. Other such successor-heroes of color include DC's Firestorm (African-American) and Blue Beetle (Latino). Marvel Comics, in 2003 retroactive continuity, revealed that the "Supersoldier serum" that empowered Captain America was subsequently tested on an African American.

LGBT characters

In 1992, Marvel revealed that Northstar, a member of the Canadian mutant superhero team Alpha Flight, was homosexual, after years of implication. This ended what one Marvel writer claimed was an mandate that there would be no LGBT characters in Marvel comics. Although some secondary characters in DC Comics' mature-audience miniseries Watchmen were gay, Northstar was the first openly gay mainstream superhero. Other gay and bisexual superheroes have since emerged, such as Pied Piper, Gen¹³'s Rainmaker, Freedom Ring, Tasmanian Devil (comics), and the gay couple Apollo and Midnighter of Wildstorm Comics' superhero team the Authority.

In the mid-2000s, some characters were revealed to be gay in two Marvel titles: Wiccan and Hulkling of the superhero group Young Avengers; and the X-Men's Colossus in the alternate universe Ultimate Marvel imprint. Xavin, from the Runaways is a shape-changing alien filling the part of a transgendered lesbian. In 2006, DC revealed in its Manhunter title that longtime character Obsidian was gay, and a new incarnation of Batwoman was introduced as a "lipstick lesbian" to some media attention.
On June 1, 2012, DC announced that the Green Lantern would appear as a gay man in the title "Earth 2", which will be released on June 6, 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhero

Politically incorrect advertisements from the past

Found these after watching the graham norton show and looking at the advertisement archive!
The format of the posters remain the same throughout time

Advertising Archives

This is good for looking at advertisements from the past to the present.
Make reference to these for when looking at posters in more detail.
http://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/en/page/show_home_page.html

Miro

I came across Miro's work when we visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park but I never even thought to think about whether he did paintings as well as sculpture. His sculptures seem to be big, bold and colourful and so are his paintings.
They also lack realism so therefore relate to my childlike paintings.
I've been struggling with what to put in the background of my paintings but looking at some of Miro's paintings, they've given me some ideas.
Anything from a plain coloured background with some shading to childlike backgrounds.
This paintings called The Garden, has both.

Could do some blind paintings for backgrounds if I was really stuck.

Through Childlike Eyes

As my work looks quite childlike...

Kiera Beecher, Age 5

The exuberance of a child exploring her world is a pleasure to watch. Children convey an unbridled truth and inventiveness in their observations of the people and objects around them. Most importantly, they believe in the absoluteness of their place at the center of the universe and the fantastic possibilities of everything within their reach. The magic of children’s art lies in their ability to engage the imagined world, unencumbered by rules of physics or probability, ascribing unique shape and color to everything they see around them. We were all part of that world at one time in our lives. We once all intuited the secrets to unbridled creativity. At one time, we were each artists in our own right. Only a small fraction of us, however, have attempted to find the way back. artes fine arts magazine

The idea that modern art looks like something that can be done by a child is a cliché. Yet, most artists understand that to paint in an abstract style is more difficult than representational art by an order of magnitude. The logical breakdown is two-fold: first, to assume that the child is intending to create an abstract work of art. They are, in fact, using untrained muscles and a set of drawing skills not yet impacted by the rules of perspective, relational size and color guidelines that impede the rest of us. They are working hard to create a realistic drawing and, for them, their effort, no matter how quaint or ‘primitive’ in our view, is usually a success from theirs; the second is to assume that the professional artist is not capable of creating a refined rendering of their subject. Suspending the formal rules of rendering or mark-making in art, in the interest of a desired effect or impact on the viewer, is only possible once you understand what those rules are. Their finished product may look accidental or erroneous, but the intention is most often deliberate and calculated.

 

This relates to my work because I am doing abstract visuals that look childlike and then using them in posters. The artist's work is Wassily Kandinsky, Little Pleasures (1913) includes references to drawings of his childhood village in Russia

http://www.artesmagazine.com/2012/05/through-childlike-eyes-what-modern-artists-learned-from-childrens-art/

The process

Here are some of the pictures I have taken throughout the process of creating the paintings today.
They are rather interesting images I must say.
The first is the paint palette I used.
Second is the paint running down my art work onto my easel.
Third is the plastic bag that was underneath the easel when I was throwing very watered paint at the wooden board.
and Lastly is the kitchen roll I was using to wipe my fingers after finger painting.
I could use any of these images in my art work.

What I did today!

Despite the horrible weather I still worked outside painting, seen as I'm not allowed to do it inside my house especially not blindfolded. I did quite a few pieces today, some better than others but all good for my knowledge.


The first picture is on the first painting I did. I did it blindfolded using my fingers rather than using a paintbrush like last time. and I used just primary colours so there is less brown in the painting.
For this I used a design which I memorised. Adding bits along the way like the big red X in the background ...well I did that first so I could use my fingers to see whereabouts I'm putting things without actually seeing. hence why its not as messy as the first one. I really like this. 
The second painting on the other hand..I do not like. Maybe its the design or because its on a white materialor because the material is extremely textured. Either way, I think more energy and more paint around would make this look better. Maybe try again.
Whilst blindfolded I was thinking about the concept of what I'm doing and how it relates to my research.
The paintings look quite child-like.
Children can tell the different between male and female and stereotypes of gender are often known and used by them. However, stereotypes or race and sexuality are not.
Talking to a few people and using my own experience, I never realised a difference of race or sexuality until I hit puberty.

 For this I was using my work into not using humans as the main focus. I didn't use any designs in my head because I didn't want to focus on any objects either like I had done in my work.
I chose to make a colourful mess on top of a carefully made and coloured road I had previous made.
I like the contrast!
This signifies a journey like that made in almost every film.
With dark obstacles which are sometimes big along the way but they always get through it! Colourfully!
The energy into the random lines suggests its an action film.

This is a blind painting version of the Storm design I did inspired by Ale Cherry. I love how Storm turned out fat. I did not intend on this at all! This still looks amazing and my mum loves it. Not biased at all!

Next...I'm gonna look at the things I created along the way of creating these pieces of work.

I think that the process is just as important as the end product, if not more!

A few of the different textures

I needed different textures for a series of things including the background of the posters I wish to create.
I have a lot of random textures from places I've been to but I specifically look at creating cloud effects and then photographing them. The cloud effects were created by condensation on a blue-coloured plastic cup. This created the best effect.

Famous Blind Artists

Dmitri
Dmitri was not blind from birth, but he had some recognition in the local artist community before his accident. The accident occurring during a digging operation in the forests of Ukraine stole the sight of the Russian soldier, Dmitri. Due to the loss of sight, Dmitri became depressed until he has been offered to conduct an public exhibition of his old works.












Lisa Fittipaldi
The blind painter Lisa Fittipaldi currently living in South Americabegan painting in 1995, two years after she lost her sight. Lisa Fittipaldi lost her vision due to the vascular disease in 1993 leading her job loss and hard life. That\'s the reason why blind woman considers painting as a source of inspiration and a way to keep her world alive in her mind.




http://leisure.ezinemark.com/most-famous-blind-painters-ever-773679266583.html

Blind Artists

CBS News - A Blind Artist

My work will obviously be nowhere as good as his as he's had a lot of experience.
But I hope to use techniques he uses like that through touch to create my pieces of work.
This blind painting that I have chosen to do also addresses my fear of losing my artistic ability if I lost my sight as the loss of sight is something common in my family.