BERLIN Day 4 - 5th May 2018

Day 4 - Home Time

Final Hours 

In the final hours, before the coach came to pick us up to go to the airport, as a class, we went to Babylon on the character map, as my tutor had mentioned that they were selling prints and books etc, in the foyer of the building. From here I had bought 2 prints and a zine. My zine and one of the prints that I bought were work I had seen within the first exhibition I had visited yesterday, by Moki and Ged Sia.
With the zine, I had loved the colours within Moki's illustrations, I felt they had been so well chosen with the earthen colours and the pop of green for the character, I just needed to take a piece of the exhibition home with me and hat was in the form of a zine.
With the print I had bought, as I had mentioned in yesterdays post, the character in this piece had reminded me of 'No-Face' who is a character from spirited away, my favourite movie from Studio Ghibli, and is a movie that I can watch over and over again and never get tired. I had also loved the colours in this piece, the deep blacks contrasted with the white and gold, when I saw it was for sale, I thought it was fate and again, I needed to take a piece of this exhibition home with me.
The third print I had bought was a riso print by an artist named Alice Monvaillier. I was attracted to this piece because of the colours, I loved the dark blue contrast with the pink and I liked how the artist still included the white of the page in her design, not just packing colour into the whole piece where it is unneeded. As the college does have its own riso printer now, this artists work had shown me what I could create with it, for instants the gradients, the noise, the patterns, it all works so well together in this design, so I want to use this piece as inspiration when working with the printer myself in future projects.
As I have mentioned in Day 2 of my Berlin blogs, I want to make a separate post on all of the prints I have ever purchased so far, because I feel it will be a better representation of which artists/work I truly like, as I have obviously liked it enough to buy. So when I make this post, it will also include all of the purchases I have made in Berlin as well and I feel it will be a nice round off to all of these posts.

Going Home

On the flight back home, as I was sitting with my two friends (who I share a table with in class) I was reminded of a 'collaboration' sketch that we had created in class when we were bored, in which we had given ourselves the task to create a silhouette of a bunny, then draw a face inside of it. This had been inspired by Pictoplasma's #RabbitReloaded, even though we had done this experiment a while after the Pictoplasma deadline.
So with this one and a half hour flight, I decided to find a spare piece of paper then pass it back and forth between my friends, (as we had done the previous time) but this time we had decided on the theme of birds, meaning each time we got the sheet of paper, we'd have to draw a new and completely different bird.
In the photo to the right, the one which we had drawn on the plane, the red drawings are my own, the black biro pen designs are Kate Sturrock's, and the birds drawn with a black fine liner are Adam Rowlinson's. Some of the characters are weird or funny, so I am happy with the outcome of this sheet as I feel its a good representation of our friendship.

Overall Experience

Personally, I enjoyed exploring Berlin more than doing the character walk because it was new territory. When I went to the exhibitions, although a lot of the work was beautiful and I would never be able to see it if I had stayed at home, I feel I have been more inspired by the things I may have seen or experienced whilst exploring or on the way to the exhibitions, as opposed to looking at someone else's final designs within a specific space.

Saying this, however, my favourite exhibition was number 1 on the character map, with Moki, Ged Sai and Victor Castillo. I enjoyed it because it was new, I was definitely not expecting it, it was creepy and eerie and amazing and everything I loved. This is what I would prefer as opposed to a white room with work on the walls, those exhibitions to me are slightly boring depending on the work, but this one was new, it stimulated the senses and made you feel slightly on edge. In my eyes, it was a perfect exhibition and I don't think I will ever forget it.

I also enjoyed this trip because I feel it has bonded us all together more as a class. Before this trip, I don't think I had said more than two words to anyone who was not part of my table, but now, I feel I have gained a few more friends and hopefully in class, everyone will be a lot more open or talkative with each other, and I can not wait to see how the dynamics of our class shift, if they do so.