Danielle Knight’s Thesis Blog

Sometimes the funniest things happen by chance. My sister and I are planning a trip to the UK in the summer. I was looking at the site Visit Cumbria because we are thinking about visiting the Castlerigg Stone Circle. I clicked on the map link so that I would have a better idea of where it is located. That is how I stumbled upon this really nice map. It is more detailed than the one I have been using. I am going to implement this one until my printed one gets to me.

This one below shows about the same area as the references that I have been using.

This other map shows it zoomed in to more of the area that I am looking to focus on.

After looking at my options with SCAD, I decided to try another route. Showing with SCAD involves a lot of paperwork and they want the thesis visuals to be about 90% complete before there is even the possibility of obtaining space for a thesis show.

One of the professors suggested that I look at the Desotorow Gallery in the Starland District. The gallery has two spaces. The first is the Desotorow Gallery proper; the second is Truspace. The blueprints with wall measurements are available on their website. Just eyeballing it, I think that it would be possible to do five pieces in the main gallery. Truspace looks like it would be good for another 5 pieces plus the video. I am thinking that I will rent both out for a week.

When I was talking to the girl, she said that they were all open in May. I am hoping to book for the last week or maybe the week before.

Desotorow Gallery

My first visual is going to be the Old Man of Storr. This is a specific rock formation located in the Storr Mountains on the Isle of Skye. Stuart suggested that I use a topographical map to more accurately model the overall landscape. I started modeling using a sample from the map shown below. I have ordered the map from Amazon, and it should be here by the end of next week.

The image below shows the sample that I have been working with so far. I am hoping that the actual map might have a little more detail of the area I am specifically looking to show.

I have used this in Maya to start my preliminary model of the landscape. Each line is 15 feet. I started with a simple NURBS plane and have moved the points on the plane to the corresponding height. I am then going to go back and add more divisions in areas that have more height variance over a short span. The image below shows the wireframe of my model that I’ve created using the sample.

Bridget suggested that I read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. I want to create traditional landscapes with the purpose of evoking an emotional response. As soon as I said that, she said that this is the book I need to read. I picked up a copy from Barnes and Noble here in town. I’m about 50 pages into it. It is set up interview style between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. So far, there has been discussion of myths as the dreams of man. There are common themes that span across cultures: the afterlife, virgin births, etc. They have also spoken about how people in society have trouble fitting in and following the rules because we don’t have important rituals that show the passage into adulthood. Other cultures have rites that show that a child has become an adult. We really have one all important rite that shows that. This makes it difficult for people to know when they need to leave their childhood behind and stand as adult members of our tribe.

I have found the reading to be interesting so far but don’t think that I’ve really hit the part that will help me with the storytelling aspect of my thesis. However, 50 pages out of almost 300 means that I still have a bit of a ways to go.

At the end of this post, I have the very brief outline that I had when I went to see Bridget. I am trying to hand write most of it with only a very loose outline. This is helping me hit my very main key points, but allowing me the freedom of trying to just get it all out at first. I am pretty much just writing as I think so that I can get a sense of what I have and don’t have. I will scan my handwritten pages for the last day of class because they are much more expanded than my outline.

Ouline

I haven’t really updated in a while, but thought that it would be good to get everything that I’ve been doing online before the end of the quarter. I’ll start off with my meeting with Bridget. I want her to be my thesis chair, but I need a solid outline and thesis statement before that can be done. She suggested several things for me to do, and I’ll go over them in this post and in following posts.

First, I showed her what I had of my outline and talked about what I had actually written out long hand. It pretty much amounted to me having the artist statement portion of my thesis paper. I still need to work on creating the technical portion. Bridget suggested that I read Jessica Canter’s thesis. It is entitled Storytelling Through Texturing. She thinks that it will be helpful to read a visual effects thesis that deals with visual storytelling. Continuing with the visual storytelling, I am supposed to get a copy of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth.

I am also supposed to list ten reasons why I want to focus on Scottish landscapes for my visuals. I think that this is supposed to help me focus on the main things I want to convey through my imagery because these are the things that drew me to this specific location.

All of these things are mainly working toward one main goal: further narrowing my focus. I have an overall idea of what I would like to do for my thesis, but it needs some flushing out. I need to really have a strong thesis statement with a clear idea of the visuals I will need to support that. The idea is that I can’t go further if I don’t know where I’m going.

It has been suggested to me that I incorporate some video footage with my show. As visual effects shots incorporate movement, it does make sense from a practical standpoint. I have decided to maybe do one or two small screens that help to breakdown the process. Stuart suggested having it do a slow camera movement and show the buildup from the wireframe to finished composite.

I am hoping to get gallery space through SCAD for a  show in the Spring Quarter. The gentleman in charge of MFA thesis exhibits said that for the scale of my work, my two viable options are the front hall at Montgomery Hall or the front hall at Alexander Hall. I am considering doing it at Montgomery just because it happens to relate a bit more. I need to bring a tape measure to see how long each wall is. Just based on my visual assessment, I think that the wall won’t hold 16 pieces at the scale I want. If I had to guess, I would say that it would probably hold about 7 plus the video.

That kind of ties in to my next thing. The guy from SCAD exhibits thinks that I might have some problems using the photography as the basis for my relights due to copyright violations. There are a couple of views or ways I could go about doing this. 1) Stuart thinks that I should be fine using them as reference as long as I have significant changes. After all, it is a precedent in art to study from the masters of the different fields. 2) I could just use my photography in combination with others to build the scene but not as a reference for compositions. I have noticed though that some shots are from popular spots along nature trails and can be found easily on the internet, not just the photography book. 3) I could take the money that I’d save from not doing as many prints and use it towards a two or three day trip to Scotland to do my own photography. The main problem I see with this plan is that it will be the middle of winter and not that suitable for hill climbing.

I’ve looked through a couple books and online for the reference images I am going to use. I have some tentative ones below. I have a couple photography books of Scotland coming in the mail. They should be here by the end of the week, so I don’t want to say that these images are 100% what I am going to use. However, these are the ones I have picked if I don’t find anything that tops these.

I have one more that I like that isn’t pictured. It is on page 99 of Landscape in Britain by Charlie Waite. I haven’t scanned the page yet but will do so in the next day or so for reference.

Andy Hall

Joe Cornish

So, reading the theses made me think of things that I want to cover. I don’t really have an order yet or anything. This is just a kind of first wave brainstorm.

1 - How I decided on my idea. It started with the idea of creating art for a gallery space. We went through several topic changes until deciding on doing digital relights of UK landscapes with a focus on Scotland.

2 - History of landscape art. Landscape art was considered to be beneath art like portraiture or a long while.

3 - Print media choice. Chose print media with the intent of being allowed to hang it up like traditional painting or photography in a gallery. I’m thinking gallery wrap canvas prints. I want them to be fairly large scale, maybe 36-60 inches in length. I am going to do them all landscape orientation with 1.6 - 2.0 ratio. I think that the combination of such large canvas prints with them being notably wider than tall will help to emphasize the vastness of the landscape space.

3 - Why UK, mainly Scotland? - I like the sense of openness. A lot of the pictures have a sense of the untamed, the pure strength and depth of nature. I also like that some of the landscapes include older buildings and ruins. It adds a sense of history that I find appealing.

4 - Artists I chose. Maybe some artist background. Talking about their techniques or analyzing the reference images i pulled from them.

I found this photography thesis to be particularly helpful. Swinehart begins his paper by talking about his original plan to photograph sprawling landscapes in the tradition of photographers like Ansel Adams. He goes into the fact that he had problems finding unspoiled land that didn’t show any signs of human development. He was constantly cropping photographs and altering angles to hide things like power lines. He ended up changing this thesis topic to documenting the effects of urban sprawl. He starts back with the idea of Manifest Destiny and expanding our claim on the land. His explanation of the situation also touches on modern times; we are developing land at a significantly faster rate than the population.

Swinehart talks about painters and photographers who influenced his work. He starts with a brief 1-2 sentence summary of their work style before breaking them up and going into further analysis of what aspects of their work can be beneficial to him. He even pulls a couple of photographs from them to make certain points and act as examples. He also explains some of the visuals in his own work. He talks about the size, proportion, lighting, and focus of certain pieces.

I really like the way he approached the telling of his process. I feel like he highlighted a few points that will be helpful to touch on for my own thesis paper.