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Do you really want me? Do you really love me?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 31 May 2022, 14:38

An opportunity arose to work for The OU again so I applied; let's see what happens. Maybe departing after just one year the first time round was a mistake that I can never put right - but that was then, and now is now. The kids have left school, gone through university and settled down and 'we' are free to move ... within reason. We'll see. Meanwhile, the two big events of this last week have been trips to Rodmell Food Forest and to Brighton Open Art Houses 2022. 

A collage of photographs of Rodmell Food Forest showing a Siberian Pea Tree and a Toona Tree.

The Rodmell Food Forest was an eye-opener. I garden on chalk so know how tough it is to develop a sound soil. It has taken me over 12 years to grow substantial shrubs and hedging through total lawn destruction, mulching with kitchen waste and all cuttings, and while there was lawn to nibble my secret weapon - guinea-pigs. (I'm told a goat is handy at the job too. Up in Cumbria we used a small herd of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs to root up the foot-trodden turf). 

I know now to mulch intensively, keyhole plant, collect rainwater, encourage birds and other kritters to look after the garden for me. We may stop short of having a composting toilet to collect dry human waste - though the head garden Marc Stenham recommended it - that and comfrey leaves.

Cover for work featuring figures underwater by Patsy McArthur

We left Brighton Open Art Houses late - again. We always mean to make an early start and be picking off a last trail or returning to a favourite one by the end of the month. Here we are trying to cover too much ground on the last afternoon and it went slightly pear-shaped, largely because we also thought we could ditch the car and do it on foot. We spent most of the allotted 4 hours treading the pavements of Brighton seafront; there were some gems though, I loved a return visit to Sussex County Arts Club where I took up life drawing in 2016 and to the work of figurate fine artist Patsy McArthur. I aspire to paint large, on a big canvas or mural in scale. 

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Inspiration Teachers Count

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 8 Dec 2021, 13:27

Teacher's matter.

Silvia Macrae Brown runs the life drawing class at Charleston on the first Tuesday of each month. I go along when I can, Covid permitting. I've taken the day off from work in the past to go along. It is just one day. 

It matters to have someone with a plan, especially if it is designed to stretch us. This isn't one of those classes where anatomical exactness created over a single pose over many hours is wanted, rather we have multiple poses, movement, drawing with our non-dominant hand, or with our eyes closed.

Today was different. There is an exhibition of Duncan Grant's work 'Duncan Grant: 1920' showing at the moment.

Duncan Grant's first ever solo exhibition is recreated at Charleston, September 2021 to March 2022

So the plan was to work the way artists at Charleston worked 100 years ago - a life model was a rare treat so what doodles and sketches they made were reimagined into later works, painted onto tiles, cupboards and wall panels.

Duncan Grant's 'Dances' 1925 Charcoal and pastel on paper

Now it was my turn. 

I've always embraced instructions whether from a coach or teacher - however awkward I may feel the challenge of the new can create insight. Today was such a day.

An idea that had been fermenting in the first idea for something to contemplate in the afternoon was brought forward. The model would hold a pose and rotate 45% every minute - that of put her on a rotating plinth. I prefer the short pose. I find 30 seconds is enough. The race is to 'grab' the essence of the pose for future reference. Silvia is a sculptor who often references her own approach to seeking to find the essence of a pose.

Having too much time to think while the model was delayed I put down some ideas for a story set in a life drawing class (model dies during a long pose), and also tried downloading a drawing App to my iPad (too old, not the write operating system), then my phone. A few experiments with a stylus and I gave this up as a lost cause (for today). My son uses swears by an iPad Pro - but I don't have that luxury.

Pen and ink will have to suffice. I use a regular Lamy fountain pen and black ink. I used to swear by an artist's felt-tip but have come to prefer ink on paper for its smudge-ability and inconsistency; I enjoy the fight. Just as I enjoy keeping one step ahead of the blunt pencil by having at least 20 sharpened (with a Stanley Knife, never a pencil sharpener).

I keep all drawings. 

This is a dictate handed down by my later mother who did her MA in Fine Art at Durham University in the 1950s; she studied under Quentin Bell. I will just show a few here to illustrate the progress. Plenty of my efforts fail - I correct minor errors and leave them on a page, with a disaster I abandon the sheet and quickly get back to doing another, and another, and another until it starts to look and feel right. I doubt I discard two sheets of paper in any day long session - usually I draw over, or mark out something that doesn't work. I rarely if ever use a rubber, unless it is being used as a tool in the creation of a particular 'look'. 

This is what is meant about getting your hand in ... like a gymnast or dancer practising moves before a session.

First three poses of a day long session - each poses lasting around 1 minute.

After another go like this and taking note of the instruction to be capturing the essence of the pose I went for something smaller. (Imagine trying to draw a horse, bird or cat that will not be so accommodating! I have tried drawing people in real life, but gave up, unless they were static: on the beach, or watching TV).

A set of eight 1 minute poses as the model changed her pose.

From these the idea was to take a pose and work it up as a single art piece, as bathroom tiles, wall paper or some such as the Charleston artists did (not the reproduction tea towels and place mats you might buy in the shop).

From here, whether or not the model was posing (which felt impolite and potentially a waste of a rare resource) we were invited to take a pose and work it up as a pattern, shape or draft for an artwork. I had a few goes with a single, double and various other repetitions and combinations.

Twisted Arms Pose repeated twice. Charcoal pencil on paper.

And a single pose with colour - something I've rarely ventured into using!

Single pose with twisted arms. Duncan Grant or Matisse Influenced. Charcoal pencil then oil pastels on paper.

This was a breakthrough moment for me. I've only ever thought of a life class to be a period of work that delivers its only outputs at that moment, on the day. That any reworking of something would be a lesser thing - akin to copying from a photograph. How wrong I am. Of course artists are forever gathering up ideas on pads of paper or working with models and items in the studio to work up into a distinct and separate work. 

For lack of ink and seeing a set of blue sheets of paper to use up I went for white charcoal and produced a series of five multiple sketches on single sheets, followed by a few single images. I was beginning to feel confident with what I was able to express with a few simple lines. The skill is to let the hand/arm draw what the eyes are seeing and the brain is feeling. Experience, practice and growing knowledge of where the bones and muscles are helps. 

A selection from six 'white charcoal on blue paper' as an exercise in capturing a set of poses from different angles.

We were then invited to return to a favourite pose and work on this. The model kindly took a number of poses as requested including the 'crossed arms above the head' which I favoured.

Francesca in my favourite pose from the morning's session. White charcoal on blue paper.

We ended the session with a seated pose. Enjoying using the white charcoal pencil I had only grey or green darker papers to choose from. A single pose for 35 minutes I did four sketches in each trying to do little more than get the entire figure on the page without making it too small. I then added the colour based on the model sitting under a bright orange/red heater in the barn where we are working.

Francesca in the same seated pose for 35 minutes. White charcoal pencil on grey pastel paper.




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My mother taught Art!!

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You'd think that I would have remembered this earlier than today. Sometimes the thing under your nose is not the thing you recognise. As a trainee teacher I can surely draw on her home schooling me through my 4th A Level in Art. I never saw her teaching though. 

Sketch of the girl I had a crush on when I was 15 or 16

I have to wonder if a girl I had a crush on telling me she would never go out with the son of a teacher embarrassed me so much that I put it to the back of my mind.

Tell me about it? Is the line she so often used to have us open up to talk about our marks on the page.

She taught us art from as soon as we could hold a pencil in our fingers. We each had our area of interest:

  • Big sister: fashion
  • Big brother: cars
  • Me: Portraits, people and landscapes. 
  • Little sister: animals, especially horses.

Life Drawing at Friston Place August 2020

Many decades on I took up life drawing with a vengeance, I've been attending sessions in Brighton and at Charleston for the last four years.

When I draw I hear my mother's tips in my ear.

When I visit a gallery, I hear my mother walk me around.

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The ultimate method of communication

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 7 Apr 2015, 10:56

Fig.1 me, bis sis, and big brother.

I remember the shorts and the wellingtons. I loved it when I stepped in a puddle so deep and the water came over the top. I had a habit of not wearing underpants which meant that dangling from a tree or turning backward somersaults gave a view of my 'bean sprout.' It also resulted in my getting my willy caught in the zip on my trousers more than once. I guess I am four and a half. There's a very similar picture of me dressed in school uniform a few weeks before my fifth birthday: shorts again, tie, blazer and cap with one sock up, and the other one down. I remember that first day at Ascham House as I waited forever to have a go on a huge rocking horse but couldn't because Nick Craigie was having a turn, also the mashed potato in the school lunch made me sick because this sloppy gunk still had the eyes in it.  The response from the teachers: all spinsters of at least 90 years of age was the same 'eat it up or you won't get any pudding!' The gooseberries and custard made me sick too.

I'm recalling all of this as I try to get my head into that of a child for the FutureLearn course 'Medicine and the arts' in which we are recalling stories of children in hospital. I had a hospital visit to have stitches put in my willy. It was a short, traumatic visit where I recall at least three people having to hold me down.

Children begin to release what matters to them with paintings and figurines, in song and play. It matters that it takes a little thought and care to figure out what a drawing, poem, song or dance means to a child. My late mother, who taught art, said that on looking at a piece of work created by a child you should only ever say, 'tell me about it.' i.e. never presume that what you are looking at is a 'house,' or a 'dog' as you may discover that this is a 'castle and a dragon,' or a 'hutch and a mouse,' or a 'prison and someone escaping.' Let them talk it through and elaborate.

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Reflecting on H818: The Open Studio

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 08:06

I'm getting a sense of deja vu as the rhythm of this module reveals itself.

Openness comes with some caveats. It is not everyone's cup of tea.

As people we may change or behaviour in different environments.

I am not saying that we as individuals necessarily behave in the same way in an Open Studio online (a virtual studio no less) than we do or would in an open studio, as in a collective in a workshop or 'atelier' that is 'exposed' to fellow artists -  but is nonetheless human interaction with all the usual undercurrents.

What I believe will not work is to put a gaggle of creators in the same room and expect them to collaborate.

The studios of the 'open' type that I am aware of are either the classic Renaissance workshop with a master artist and apprentices at various stages of their own development, or,  with a similar dynamic in operation, the 'occupants' of the studio are exposed LESS to each other and more to external commentators and contributors and this requires some formality to it .i.e. not simply 'the person off the street' but an educator/moderator in their own right.

Is H818:The Networked Practitioner too dependent on chance?

The foibles of a small cohort and the complex, messy, moments 'we' are in. Three years of this and, by chance only, surely, six of  us in a subgroup jelled. More often the silence and inactivity of the majority makes 'group work' a myth - partnerships of two or three were more likely. The only exception I have come across in the 'real world' have been actors working together on an improvisation - they have been trained however to disassociate their natural behaviours.

Some of us study with the OU as we cringe at the 'exposure' of a course that requires us to meet in the flesh - distance learning suits, to some degree, the lone worker who prefers isolation.

By way of revealing contrast I am a mentor at the School of Communication Arts

Modest though pivotal role given their format and philosophy - exposure to many hundreds of kindred spirits who have been there ...  a sounding board and catalyst. NOT a contributor, but more an enabler. 

We'll see. My thinking is that to be effective, collaboration or exposure needs to have structure and formality in order to work.

At the Brighton Arts Festival the other evening I wonder how the 80 odd exhibitors would cope if the Corn Exchange was also their workshop?

In certain, vulnerable environments, the only comment should be praise. Feedback is invited from those who are trusted.

A school setting is different again, as is college ... people share the same space because they have to.

Open Studio apears to try to coral the feedback that comes anyway from a connected, popular and massive sites such as WordPress, Linkedin Groups, Facebook and even Amazon. Though the exposure, if you permit it, is tempered and negotiated - Facebook is gentle amongst family and friends, Linkedin is meterd and professional in a corporate way, Wordpress is homespun while Amazon, probably due to the smell of money can be catty - and in any case, the artefact is a doneddeal, it's not as if, to take a current example, Max Hastings is going to rewrite his book on the First World War because some in the academic community say that it is weak historicaly and strong on journalistic anecdote.

We'll see.

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Where do I stand academically? Where and what next? And the madness of being.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 07:48

Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) with the Open University, UK (OU)

H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates

H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes

H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students

B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change

H808: The e-learning professional

 

This completes the Masters Degree. I graduate on Saturday 27th April 2013

Currently (March 2013) I am taking H809 as a bridge towards doctoral research or professional consultancy. Complete in June 2013.

H809 Practice-based research in educational technology

I joined the #H817open MOOC for one component of this module. I will register for 2014

H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning.

I am applying to undertake doctoral research in education - using learning technologies.
 
H809 will help prepare for applications starting in January 2014 for an October 2014 start. Most are now a 4 year programme, with a Masters in research to begin. WebSciences at University of Southampton is an interesting option - I attended an Open Day in January.
Too many active interests was a stated issue on childhood school reports. Nothing's changed.
 
I am looking at an MA in History with the University of Birmingham which would give me the opportunity
study the First World War. (I have written extensively about this through my late grandfather's memoire 'That's Nothing Compared to Passchandeale')
There is more.
 
I attended the School of Communication Arts, London. A full-time programme in copywriting, art direction and design and have worked in the 'creative' and 'communications' industries all of my career.
And 'EAVE' (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs)
 
My first degree is in Geography. My dissertatio nwas on demographics. I love maps. Perhaps I should try to match maps, e-learning and the First World War. Animated it all and add some interviews and 'drama reconstruction'.
See what happens when you let something fester and wake up in the middle of the night.
 
Neuroscience and long term memory are fascinating too.
I need my life over. I need to split into three and start again. I need a coffee and a long walk on the South Downs. (I need to go back to bed)
And then there's Fine Art.
 
And Creative Writing. And cooking. And the garden. There's teaching, and moderating ... and blogging. There's movies. And sailing and swimming coaching. There's family and friend ... ah. Friend? I knew there was something missing in all of the above.
Scrap the lot and have a belated 50th birthday to celebrate 20 years of marriage, parenthood and the madness of being. Then sign up to crew in the Round the World Yacht Race.
And if that doesn't kills me ...

P.S. ADHD

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Visualising social learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Nov 2012, 11:09

DSC03935.JPG

Fig.1 My mother sketching one of us c 1974

Imagine taking a desk and chair and sitting down in the concourse of Liverpool Station with a large computer screen. You are researching and writing up an assignment. People are going to look over your shoulder - some will contribute.

What makes this more or less likely to happen?

I used to sit and draw. This attracted attention. Sometimes I would draw people who sat for me - I was 'getting my hand in' for an A Level in art.

If my mother, an art teacher, were around then she would offer some gentle suggestions, sometimes taking out a sheet of paper to show me how.

Would you like someone to look over your shoulder?

With family around this is inevitable, from the indulgent love of a grandparent and the snidde teasing (potentially) from a sibling.

  • Where do we recreate such ways to learn online?
  • What more can we do to facilitate this?
  • What is it about the human nature to help each other along?
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History of Art

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Masterpiece%2520Complete%2520Board%2520Game.JPG

I played this with my Mum in the 1970s and eventually knew every painting in the set. No formal lessons, some visits to galleries but these were initially confined to the North East of England.

Masterpiece%2520Cards%2520SNIP.JPG

What lessons do we learn from such games when it comes to teaching? That it can be fun? Exploratory? By default?

How or where else could this be applied, whether as a commercial game 'for all the family' or to use in the classroom, meeting room, board room, lecture hall?

  • Cloud Formation
  • Breeds of Cattle
  • Car Makes
  • Body Parts (Human, as in First Year Medical Students)

Please do add your suggestions ...

 

 

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The Economist posted this in their Linkedin group a while back. What do you think?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:52

The membership of this group continues to grow at a rapid speed and we get a healthy stream of postings of discussions and news.

1. The discussions board is primarily intended to start discussions therefore please take some effort to phrase your idea, thought or observation in such a way that responses are encouraged.

2. Don’t make multiple posts of the same item.

3. Don’t blatantly promote your company, product, weblog or yourself.

4. Please do not promote other groups (unless of course they are one of ours!) or simply provide links to external reports (though of course we all have some of these to share from time to time). Rather, if there is something worthwhile to be found elsewhere, please post the premise so it can be discussed here.

5. Posts that are off-topic will be removed.

6. Multiple off topic/solicitation postings will result in removal from the group. Indeed, if any members flag a discussion three times it is automatically removed.

I champion this OU Student Blog platform thingey because it is aking to the Bulletin Boards of a decade ago. You post your stuff and others may spot it vicariously or tune in. I love the stuff I am introduced to that would never otherwise pass before my eyes. I want to sudy Art History, I can't get enough of the MAODE of coourse ... I even quite enjoy the enthusiasm some people have for poetry and maths.

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The value of voice recognition software

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 7 Feb 2011, 14:05

I have in front of me a script for a video production dated 1986. I could have typed it in by now. However, I have twenty of these to do and if I want to digitise 2.5m words from old journals and letters I may need something faster than typing it up or scanning it in.

Dagon%20Speaking%20Naturally%20Software%201.JPG

Voice recognition seems to be the answer and this seems to be the product.

I've been familiar with the oddly named, though brand creating 'Dragon Speaking Naturally' since it came out. Now I feel a need. I doubt it'll solve an OU H800 essay crisis, though often reading something out loud is the best test of its sense.

Dagon%20Speaking%20Naturally%20Software%202.JPG

Any recommendations or warnings?

I could also skip the writing/typing process entirely and turn into text what I record verbatim, for example, poolside coaching or teaching to inform fellow coaches. They can have it as a podcast and/or as text.

My aim is to find ways to get the contenst of my mind

On verra.

With all the production materials, scripts, schedules, budgets and other plans it feels retrograde to be taking a linear video production and turning it into a Power Point style presentation, but this is the plan. And to treat this as the penultimate draft before segments are replaced with video and interactive and assessment components are added.

DSC00727.JPG

The topic is The Great Picture which illustrates the struggle Lady Anne Clifford had to keep an inheritance her father bequeathed to his brother Henry during his lifetime for a cash sum, so denying his then 15 year old daughter what she considered to be her rights. The painting is dated 1646.

I have the permissions to use pictures of miniatures and other portraits dated from 1986 which I'll have to renew, including the lute music copyright. I own photographs of the picture I took between 1974 and 1990 and have broadcast quality video footage of the picture too. I also have and this replica which I've just photographed on the top of the piano where the figures are the size of Ken and Barbie rather than life-size.

The Voice Artist who 'played' Lady Anne will be replaced simply because I want to re-conceive it so that 'Harry Potter style' all the figures in the painting (and the painitings of paintings) tell their own story.

We'll see.

And this is simply an exercise to see if I can make the Adobe eLearning Suite 2 software I picked up at Learning Technologies sing.

 

 

 

 

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The importance of the words

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 08:15

Writing is everything.

I'd master it now. Keeping a blog is a sure darned way to do that. Handwritten is fine; find yourself the perfect pen.

Writing, or rather the ability to write.

It is the key to communication, to learning and to e-learning, and a great deal else besides.

On my passport it says 'writer, director.'

I like that, though I think of my skill as a visualiser and the writing and directing is rarely TV, but corporate and classroom training, desk-top learning, and product launches, change brand and change management.  Still there can be drama in it, and tears, and death, and love, and life, and music and dance. We go underwater and scale mountains, enter shear caves of nuclear power plants and wade through sewers, track super-models along catwalks in Paris and record the last words of a man dying of cancer in Carlisle.

I see things in pictures.

Perhaps the MA in Fine Art IS what I should have started a year ago ... though I fear I may have missed out.

It's easy enough I find to get my 'hand back in' if I want to draw something as it is rather like riding a bike, or skiing in deep powder snow, or racing a Fireball, or pushing off a wall in Breaststroke and emerging from a legal transition half way down a 25m pool ... once you've put in the days, months, years (even decades) learning to do these things, barring ill-health and great age, you ought to be able to do them for some time to come.

Which reminds me, I want to crack written French in 2011.

Clients think of me as something in addition to writing and directing (I produce), but no. that's not it; there are words, voices, images, cut together and linked in various ways that form linear and non-linear assemblages, but to them I am 'a problem solved', a job delivered, with passion, on time, on budget (of course), sometimes as a team of one, but sometimes in a team of a few or many more. I do wonder if sometimes an email with the finally agreed Creative Brief is the end of the process, rather than beginning.

Today, once you've solved that you can invite everyone to come up with their own creative execution.

Now there's a thought I'd not heard coming.

All of this takes words, expressing and solving the problem and sharing this requires words. A fast, reliable typing speed helps too. So perhaps my Mum was right to get me a typewriter when I was 13 when I wanted an electric guitar.

Sometimes I find the problem for the client and share it with them in all its beautiful ghastliness.

This is what good writing means. And experience. And judgment. And belief. And your approach and thoroughness. And the write people around you. And sometimes conviction that £60,000 will deliver the job, but £600 will not.

Good writing is less about the words chosen and put on the page (unless you are a novelist or poet, and I am neither), no, good writing is a good idea, clearly expressed, in as few words as possible. (Which in due course requires editing something like this).

Who is it who said the selling is a good idea?

That all it takes to sell something, is to have a good idea.

Good writing has a purpose and the author knows how to put the words to work by addressing a problem, because you know your audience and whether you or someone else is the subject matter expert, it is your responsibility, even if the words are hidden by a creative brief, a synopsis, treatments and scripts, to get the message across ... like, with some or many images (photos, graphics, cartoons), or with the spoken words and/or similar images that move ...

A swimming club session plan written on a whiteboard to take a squad of swimmers can be beautifully written if it is magically composed, and serves its immediate purpose. The good swimming coach rarely leaves such things in the head. It is thought-out, it is planned, it fits into the scheme of things, it is the right session for that hour or two.

Good writing hits a chord; it too is of the moment.

I conclude that a good teacher, a good tutor, educator, practitioner of e-learning ... all have this ability to write well at the core of their being. They are confident with words, words that are as carefully chosen even if spoken on the fly, as a result of their experience and all the lesson plans or scripts, or class programmes, they have written in the past that bubble up to the surface when faced with a problem - a fresh student.

(My only caveat is the from the podcasts I've heard before an educator is interviewed they should at least have the wisdom to do some media training).

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No longer a passing interest ... (EDU)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 10 Aug 2010, 17:22

Happier with a stack of books to get through than anything else, so chasing texts I didn't get through for H807 'Innovations in E-Learning' that I will need for H808 'The E-learning Professional.'

Some ideas, themes and authors are starting to leave impressions across the shifting sands that I wash every week with novels, biographies, books on history, art and learning.

August will be the month of Camus, Andrew Marr, Simon Schama, Conole and Oliver, alongside historical novels and applied psychology. To what end?

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