The word ‘Blog’ was derived by Peter Merholz from ‘weblog’, to ‘we blog’ as a humorous comment in his own blog around 1999.
So…what actually is a Blog? “A discussion or informational website published on the world wide web consisting of discrete, often informal conversational or diary-style text entries”.
Well, who knew? Apparently, most of the students in our group…bar me! [must be an age thing?!] So this should be interesting… most diary entries I’ve made every New Year became so boring that by February I’d given up!
So, that not being an option…here goes
What’s happened so far this new 2022 academic year?
Friday 30th September 2022
Following pep talks and upbeat discussions of this year’s Modules from Tutors filled with hope and promise of their new Year 5 Students, we duly troop down to the lovely Mark Hatton in IT to discover how to set up our Blogs. Three days, lots of trials, errors and major meltdowns later – I think I’m all set to go!
Black History Month
My contribution to Black History month is a snapshot of the Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE. Researching this Artist gave me a fascinating insight into his unique perspective.
His installation works are full of movement, colour and based on everything from African colonisation and the complex historical relationship between Africa and Europe to the ‘Balloon Man’ sculpture inspired by happiness. Shonibare created this work in 2015 to help celebrate the anniversary of the Stephen Friedman Gallery.
Friedman befriended him early in his career and his continued support has enabled Shonibare to create and exhibit whilst helping to pass his own support to young artists which is very important to him.
Thursday 6th October 2022
In the studio for re-cap on portraits and lighting with Catherine.
I think we were all a bit hesitant over handling the equipment after the long summer break (especially knowing how expensive it all is!) The group soon got into step deciding who was the subject and how we wanted the final image to look. We went back to the basics of Light and shadow, position of the lights, strength and intensity of the flash, which lens to use, position of the sitter, choice of background, which all have a part to play. The results gave us some idea of what worked and what we need to work on but the session was another step in the right direction thanks to Catherine.