Sue Pownall: Artist & illustrator

Charity Week

28/10/2018

Positive postcards.

In the teaching standards, teachers are required to fulfil wider professional responsibilities and one part of this is to make a positive contribution to the wider life and ethos of the school. One way to do this is to engage in enrichment activities, which includes school clubs, I'm currently helping with the photography club, and during week commencing 15th October it was my house's charity week and below is how I was involved.

Firstly, I arranged a fund raising activity, which took part in the morning breaks. My original idea was to have a postcard auction. However, after talking to the house manager we adapted the idea for the students to buy cards, decorate them, and then they would be delivered by the prefects around the school. On the back of the cards, I filled it with information about our house's chosen charity: the Breck Foundation. I then designed a poster, which had a slot for physically mailing the cards through.

Tuesday lunchtime I helped some students with cake baking. I can't remember the last time I applied Royal Icing, so that was a challenge. On Friday, I was part of the team of teachers fielding in a game of Rapid Rounders, which was fun especially as it was a lovely sunny lunchtime.

Open Evening

14/10/2018

Recently, the school that I am training in held
an open evening for potential students and their parents. My involvement began with preparing a display of year 11 self portraits. With only half a board to work with, I used a technique as discribed in The Art & Design Teacher's Handbook by Hodge (p77), which suggested a random overlapping arrangement for limited space. On the right is how it came out.

On the evening, I headed up to the art department where my role was to support the staff and I was soon talking to some of the parents about the department. I was able to talk about some of the lessons I had witnessed and the various techniques the students got to try and experiment with. Having walked into Food Technology, one of the conversations I had with a dad was about both the theory and practical sides of the subject, as current students cooked biscuits for the parents to ice.

Next, I had the great opportunity to walk around the school and see what other departments and staff did, which also meant talking to even more parents about the school in general. It was such a useful activity and I especially found the science labs engaging as I am interested in STEAM collaborations between the arts and science.

I love plasma balls.

Back in the art department, I got to talk to some of the volunteer current students about what they were working on, offering guidance where I could, such as a variation on a piece based on feathers through using white on black paper. I also got to talk to a few more parents too.

It was a long evening, but the school certainly showed itself at its best, and I am honoured to have had a role in that and to be part of the staff even temporarily.

Changes

8/8/2018

Two of the many new books I have/will need over the coming year.

Big changes are coming in September, which is why I am writing this post.

Since returning to England in 2014, I've continued to work as an illustrator, clients have included both National Trust Stowe and National Trust Bourne Mill, and as an artist, having drawings selected into two London exhibitions and many commissions. Starting in 2014, I have been teaching art and giving art-themed illustrated talks and courses, working with organisations such as The Roald Dahl Museum and Old Bank Studios, Harwich. That will all continue. However, I will not continue with art group demos and/or workshops, nor private classes during weekdays.

What I have discovered over the last four years, is that I love teaching art and I have decided to expand on that, so in September I am going to be training to teach art to secondary school students through a school based system. Please note the UK government adverts about bursaries for trainee teachers does NOT apply to art teacher trainees! Therefore, a big change will be a severe lack of travel and days out over the next school year as my saving will not stretch to it. Visitors always welcome here in Suffolk :)

Over the next year, I'm not sure how much time I'll have for creating my own work nor whether the daily social media posts can continue (maybe weekly?. Please bear with me during this transition year. Thank you.

What if we could see colours differently?

10/7/2018

Negative macro collage. ©Sue Pownall 2018

The last part of this year's DLaB asked the question What if we could see colours differently?" and shared this video (below) of Neil Harbisson's Ted Talk, which I found fascinating. Harbisson does not see any colours: his vision is in greyscale.

Kandinsky: Impression III – Konzert (1911)

Exploring a connection between colours and sounds, I found this BBC article on synaesthesia, a union of the senses, i-see-songs-in-colour According to the article, there are up to 70 different types of synaesthesia from tasting the time to smelling a symphony, although the most common involve colour. I hadn't realised that Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings were his experience of seeing music. This article includes links to the concert Kandinsky heard: music-art-schoenberg-kandinsky. I am not convinced that this piece is about seeing the music rather it seems an emotional response to the concert.

Going a stage further, another question posed in this unit was How do blind people perceive art? and linked to activities to explore this as well as the tech apps etc that are now around to aid a visually-impaired person. I explored further and found a great article on visual impairment and sight is this one, What do blind people see, that linked interviews with photographs of the interviewees and then an artist created images inspired by them. However, what really interested me was the specific question annd I found this on the BBC website bbc.com/culture with a film on Lisa Squirrel, who is visually impaired yet still has a passion for visual art.

Questions for self reflection:

What experiences do you already have?
In what areas would like to stretch yourself?
What new skills do you need to learn?

In many ways, I have already started to gain new knowledge if not new skills through my research following this unit. I would like to stretch myself further in creating opportunities for students to have these links between the senses, connecting sounds and colours for example, and not just have the traditional emotive responses to art and by extention producing art.

As a realist who draws in great detail, I interested in exploring how to make my art more acceptable to those who are visually impaired. It is already in grey scale for those who can see tones, but do I need to scale up, add an oral description... hmmm

Last year, I created a colour collage, it's here: White. This year, I chose to do another one. As it hasn't rained for weeks and the prevailing colour is yellow, that was my choice for it. Furthermore, I added week one's what-if-i-could-change-size and took macro photos.

Yellow. ©Sue Pownall 2018

Firstly, I converted the collage to grey scale, as Harbisson would see it.

Greyscale. ©Sue Pownall 2018

Finally, I created a negative of the collage - at the top of this post.

That brings me to the end of another thought provoking course.

What if we moved to space?

18/6/2018

Week 2 of the DLab Erasmus project focused on design thinking and their

"pedagogical approach was based on an interpretation of ‘design thinking’ (Kimbell, 2015), an approach that begins with empathising, and puts an emphasis on defining a key question and then framing a problem. This is more akin to problem finding rather than problem solving. This model was relevant, as we wanted to highlight creativity alongside the criticality of the scientific process."

What caught my attention was the unit on designing a new planet and started by looking at how our interaction with Earth has led to pollution, the extinction of bees, insects and other animals, plus created radiation etc. This is a matter close to my heart, and back in Doha I sneaked Al Gore's amazing film An Inconvenient Truth into teaching trainees at Qatar Petroleum. If we do the same on our new planet as we do to Earth, we have the potential to make a new planet uninhabitable too.

However, we do need to survive and this trailer gives a clue to what we would need to do to survive - if I still taught TESOL this would be a great way to link language and science teaching.

I have used this design thinking process in the past, but currently cannot see how I could use this with adult art students. I may revisit this when I am teacher training in autumn. Or do you have some ideas for me?

What if I could change size?

16/6/2018

Last year I completed a DLaB Erasmus course called Technology Outdoors, which aimed, amongst other things, to promote digital learning across the boundaries of physical spaces, across curriculum subjects and across languages and cultures, to facilitate collaborative learning across national boundaries. This year's course is STEM to STEAM, which is adding the arts to science, technology, engineering and maths building on the technology outdoors by promoting real world exploration and creative problem solving through physical and digital making.

I've just completed week one and explored the concept of art helping us to visualise scientific data - looking at the hidden world. On a wonderful, but time consuming wander through amazing photograohic magnifications, I stumbled across the former biologist Robert Rock Belliveau, who on retiring started taking amazing magnified photos of fruit and vegetables. There's a great article here.

Throughout June, I have also been participating in a challenge to create a daily direct watercolour, that is a painting without any under drawing. More info here. Combining that with this course, I created this direct watercolour painting from a magnified image of a corn husk with silk from an image by Robert Rock Belliveau. (sorry the photo has lost some of the vividness of the original)

I can see this sort of activity as a great jumping off point into further art and/or science.

If you are interested last year's DLab posts are here:

Technology Outdoors: Creating Trails
Technology Outdoors: Art in the Environment
Technology Outdoors: Wild Writing
Technology Outdoors: Science Outdoors

Now it's time to start week two on design thinking.

Loosestrife

30/5/2018

Click images to enlarge.

Page in progress

I've planted a wildflower patch in the garden, as I shared in my post here, but this yellow wildflower has selfseeded (thank you birds) in the grasses.

I believe it is a Loosestrife, which is the common name for the genus Lysimachia.

It has been a grey day, as the sun came out late evening, I did this little watercolour in my nature journal. I will add to the page when the flowers come out.

For this nature journal, I am using a Seawhite of Brighton A5 travel journal. This image was created with Sennelier watercolours.

The finished page... for now.

What have you drawn or painted recently? Why not tell me in a comment?

A Cabbage White & Weevils

30/4/2018

The next day, it was sunny and warm, so I caught the cabbage white butterfly, which had spent the night in my kitchen, and released it onto the forget-me-nots in my front garden. In my new nature journal, I recorded this in watercolour and coloured pencils.

©Sue Pownall

Today, I was out in the rain to biologically treat my containers against vine weevils, so I put it in my nature journal.

Do you nature journal? Leave a link in a comment and I'll check it out.

Nature Journal - a new diversion

24/4/2018

For Earthday2018, an urbansketcher friend posted an invitation, a nature challenge #sowinghopefornature, which included starting a nature journal. (Read the post here). I've been having a muse-free year and think this is the incentive I need - I'm even blogging again.

First, I got out a new Seawhite of Brighton A5 Artists Travel Journal Sketchbook and attacked it with a stencil that was left over from a workshop, thereby commiting myself to the task.

Then, my furry assistant and I headed into the garden - it was a glorious sunny day - and started my first spread and, as last year, I celebrated Earthday with a watercolour. On 8th April, I sowed a corner of my garden with wildflower seeds, cornfield annuals, plus a plug of Digitalis and one of Knautia Arvensis. They were last year's seeds, but they are starting to grow 🌱 In front, is a willow fence is to stop my lovely assistant digging them up. Below are photos of this first spread.

With text added to the spread. (Click to see the image larger)

I had several ideas for a second spread, yay I have a muse, but when driving to visit my mum there was a hitchhiker, a cabbage white butterfly, on my dashboard and then windscreen. (I pulled over, parking, and turning the engine off three times to take photos and to try to let it out). Therefore, my second spread had to be of the hitchhiker.

I don't like handlettering, so am going through a trial and error period whilst I find a style that's both fast and neat. Here's the hitchhiker...

and a bad photo of the spread.

Today, I managed to get the butterfly out of my car, fed it a little sugar water, and it is currently on my begonia in the kitchen as it's too cold to put it outside.

Unfortunately, due to my teaching commitments, I didn't have the time to add anything to the journal, I will do soon, but am not putting any pressure on myself to do X per day, week, or month. Please check back here soon.

...and the winner is...

4/9/2017

@DegasWorld picks the winner

Aided by my furry assistant, the name out of the hat (aka paper bag) was
Tina Koyama.

Tina please could you message me with your postal address please. Your prize of Spectrum Noir pens will be coming your way soon.

Thank you to everyone who participated.

******

If you want to know more about Spectrum Noir, they are a Crafter's Companion brand and the two website addresses are as follows:

www.spectrumnoir.com and www.craftercompanion.co.uk

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