Carmen McNally's Art

Tearing and attaching the images I've torn all the edges of my portraits and rearranged them like I did with the trial piece. However, I couldn't arrange the photos in the exact same way because nothing tears in the same way. I'm much more happy with the layout compared to how the portraits sat on their own as 5 separate photos. I really like the negative space left between the portraits of Mandy at the bottom and Cass and Arleigh above. I also like that the stitch pattern on the acetate leads off and connects to other portraits. However, I do not like that you can see where I cut the acetate behind the stitched pattern so I am going to cut the stitched pattern parts off and think of another way I can create stitching to connect the portraits within the negative space. It doesn't quite work displaying my portrait piece in front of the window at night but it does however, highlight the imperfections I want to change. For example, the stitching on the acetate that overhan...

Attaching Arleigh's portrait to the MDF board On my way back up to the studio A bumped into Ali And I managed to get a photo of her holding her own portrait. I sanded and prepped my MDF board ready to attach the portrait of Arleigh with some help from my tutor Julian. I'm really happy with how my finished portrait looks. I'm glad that I painted the edges of my MDF board black as it creates more depth and has given it an overall professional sleek finish. It's now ready for the Nottingham Castle's gallery.  

Problem Solving Portrait Once the PVA glue dried from sticking my torn portraits onto acetate they were curling. I laid some heavy boards on top overnight to see whether they would go flat again but they eventually started curling again.  To problem solve I decided to make my own frame laying clear acrylic sheets to sandwich my torn photos. However, I didn't like the images inside the frame for a few reasons. The first reason was that the acrylic was too reflective and it took away the depth from the photos. The second reason is that the photos didn't seem to connect with one another, they looked too separated, which is what I didn't want. I need to take away the frame and think of another way to make this work.          I have used some atmospheric music to play alongside part 1 and part 2 videos above to create some suspense. I really like how the sun rays pierce the negative space and how the out of focus background creates texture. I'm glad that I downs...

Using the sewing machine I found the sewing process a little stressful due to my lack of experience. Using the sewing machine to stitch through paper and acetate was quite tricky as the thread kept snagging and getting caught. However, I found that this distressed look created by overworking an area with gathered thread worked really well with my photo, adding to the raw emotion of the sitter.          Below is my finished stitched trial portrait. I was playing around with the sizing of the zigzag stitch pattern, making it smaller in some areas and larger in others. The photo size is A3 and I think if I downscaled the size of the image the stitch would look more impactful when making the stitch pattern bigger and smaller. As my portraits are black and white I wanted to pick a bold colour for the stitch. Choosing red represents danger, warning, blood and when something isn't right. I also followed the stitch off of the portrait so it was just on the bear ace...

Trialing the tearing and attaching I decided to photocopy each photo and play around with tearing the edges and then connect them together in different ways.     I also tried weaving in some wire just to see how it would look. But I didn't feel that it made much impact so I think I'll leave this one. I'm really happy with the final way that I connected the photos together. I think it really works and I'm happy with how it looks.  The image of Arleigh that hasn't got any tears in, I decided to screw this image up before stitching them all together. I think this adds a whole new texture to the piece.     

Experimenting with Tearing I printed out the portrait of Arleigh onto paper to trial the tearing process. I didn't want the tears to look too placed as though there was no thought into how it was torn. I needed to tear and remove more of the photo as I wanted wide gaps between the torn sections so the image lined back up again. I used the small extra torn pieces to slot in here and there. I'm really happy with how it looks so far as it accentuates the gritty look that the image already has. I want the viewer to choose how they receive the torn images. Does it show growth? Slowly mending and healing after trauma. Does it show damage? Nothing will ever heal 100%. Once something is torn it can't be put back together how it once was. I attached 4 pieces of acetate together and arranged the torn pieces of the A3 sized portrait on top. I plan to stitch over the torn areas. I'm really looking forward to how this will look.  

Displaying the portrait After speaking to Julian, he suggested that I mount my portrait of Arleigh onto some MDF board. My portrait needs to be in a square to fit the requirements of the 40 by 40 plinth. In PhotoShop I cropped my portrait in close and I was really happy with how it looked. I found by doing this it intensified her expression, drawing you into her eyes more. I also decided to work on the small details in her eyes by adding  highlights using the brush tool. This made her eyes appear more watery and added a whole new expression to her face. I painted the sides of my MDF board black to create more depth. Paul from the shop suggested that he could take me to another campus to get my image hot-pressed onto the MDF board to give it a more professional look. Unfortunately, the hot press machine was not available so I'm going to use Photo mount adhesive instead.  Prepping my MDF board in 3D workshop I am so pleased with how my portrait of Arleigh turned out. By closel...

Research Lee Jeffries heavily influenced how I edited my portraits. I wanted to make it look like the people I chose, looked like they had been through a troubling time. The people that Lee Jeffries photographed were mainly people that were on the streets but he didn’t just photograph these people, he told their story as they matter. This was quite opposite to Harold Knight, the painting of Girl in a White Dress 1896 that I'm responding to. She wasn't important to Knight that's probably why she was unknown. Whilst researching, I came across this piece of work that had been torn and stitched back together again. I think this would be a powerful message and a good thing to try with my own images. I think this would show care and compassion about the sitter photograph that's been torn and pieced back together again. Another angle is the torn pieces and stitching could be portrayed in another way, like enhancing that emotional distress. I like this openness, as it's a...

My response to Picture a Life: Portrait of Unknown People I have used Portrait photography to capture a girl called Arleigh who is studying a level 1 course at Nottingham College. I took many photos of different people in her class. Once edited, I put them on my display board for my other class members to see. After many opinions, most people were drawn to the portrait of Arleigh. The expression works well because it's ambiguous. She’s presenting herself in a way that is open to emotive interpretation depending on who the viewer is.  

 Dry Point Today in the Print studio we had a go at etching an image into a plastic plate using an etching needle. I wanted the piece to have more texture so I applied lots of pressure with my mark making. I also used lots of cross hatching to create tone and shade. I thought about the composition of my image, as I wanted the effect that you were looking upwards towards the tree tops. Dry point is quite a long process, from etching your plate and then rubbing away the ink on the plate. I didn’t want to rush etching my plate because I noticed from trialing this process before, your image can look a bit flat if you don’t create enough marks. I also used the Shinkalay technique by laying tissue paper on top of my print. I wanted it to look as though the sun was through the trees. I’m really happy with my result. I want to do more mark making on my plate as there are more blank spaces than I hoped for.  

I photographed the level one students to create their portraits for their own version of the British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, arts and youth culture called ID magazine. The brief was pro-creating the winking eye idea.     Here are some of the students I photographed for them to create their own version of the iD magazine cover.     

  Post-production editing I have edited 6 more portraits using Lightroom. The first thing I did was to choose one of the black-and-white presets that was available and adjust the levels of exposure and texture etc. Lightroom doesn't seem to work very well on the college facilities. A lot of the commands do not seem to be available and do not work properly. For example, the masks that are preset for eyes, hair, background etc do not seem to work so I've had to create my own masks. This has been time-consuming, especially doing all this with a mouse and not a stylus pen. Below is the original photo of Mandy, the first edit I did on my phone and my final edit which I did within Lightroom. Theres a huge difference with the edit I did on my phone compared to the edit using Adobe Lightroom. I did like the gritty, grungy and high contrast look from the first edit on my phone but I wasn’t happy with how all the detail and texture in her hair, eyes and clothes were lost. My final edi...