Carmen McNally's Art

Exploring with different textures This link will take you to me trialling different wood surfaces and craft board for the test  cut out pieces . The first photo below is a test piece of a laser cut out. I wanted to experiment and see how the pieces worked with thin paper, normal printing paper and card. I was so surprised to see that the thin paper didn't just frazzle with the small detail as these test pieces were just over ⅔ of an A4. I prefer this test piece above in subtle lighting as I am able to see the engraved detail unlike the photo below which was taken with just the light box on. I found when it was too dark below, each layer didn't let light through how I wanted which affected the depth I wanted to create. I will move forward using card as I believe this will let the right amount of light through whilst also being strong enough to hold it's structure.

  Editing the test pieces on Procreate In the video below I am showing how I had to edit my test piece line drawings using Pro create software.  I will use this process to clean up my drawings moving forward with my main piece.

 This link will take you to a video of the  test piece  and an audio annotation. Image 1- I covered the light source with white card Image 2- I covered the light source with white paper Image 3 has just the original clear plastic covering the light source I mentioned in my video that I prefer the second image, covering the light source with paper. However, under further inspection, I prefer first image, covered with card because the background looks smoother.  In the video footage you can see the ripple effect from the lighting. this is something I thought I would like but I think it is distracting and doesn't help with the illusion I am trying to create.

I want to use the vines I created on my previous page for my main piece. I wanted to create a simpler test piece to see how it will work. This link will take you to the process of my  paper cutting  for the lightbox. I am going to move forward with laser cutting my layers as it will cut the layers out alot cleaner and quicker than by me using a scalpel. I need to figure out how I will sketch up the different layers. I'm not sure how I will line up all the layers. Maybe I can use tracing paper so I can see how the layers line up.

  Tracing the vines Even though I found difficulties tracing the vines, I still managed to make out a rough guide of the vine and where I couldnt I just made up my own flow of vines. I want to make the landscape I create, look over grown & hard to see things. I want the viewer to feel as though they are peeking through having to move their head from side to side to look over & under the vines.

 The video below explains my thought process.

After the AI session with Kate, I decided to look at more AI-generated images of overgrown woodlands, gardens and gates to give me some inspiration. The photos I have selected are some of my favourites. In the video below I spoke of my thoughts on some. I spoke of the two above images of the close up gate and roses saying how magical they look. The roses image has a romantic feel because of the yellow summer glow. The wet railings show great highlight and shadow that almost give it a veneer of newness. Overall these two images are a moment caught in time as a raindrop won't last forever and the fragility and beauty of a flower will soon wither.

Using Playgound and Leonardo AI Today Kate showed us how to use 2 different AI software to create some images. I enjoyed having a play with them. However, I found there wasn't much I could do with Playground as it asked me to pay for the subscription after a while With Leonardo, I was able to generate the pre-set prompts to create some really nice scenes and also get an idea of the kind of wording that is used. I managed to save some of the prompts just incase I wanted to try and use them another time. Unfortunately, I was only able to generate 8 images from 2 different prompts which was a bit annoying. This is the type of scene I want to create behind a gate. A small opening into a beautiful land behind the gate.

Visiting Wollaton Park and other walking locations Today I took my kids on a walk. We started at the Wollaton Park where I didn't find much over grown doors and gates because of the current season we're in. I knew this would be the case but I was still hoping to find some overgrown parts with lots of old vines and ivy leaves. I did find a gate all on its own which was a little creepy. My kids seemed to like it.  A gate to nowhere and everywhere.   I was so surprised by how neat many people kept their back gates and hedges during the Winter months.                             Below are some unmaintained gates within Wollaton park that I found. I'm still a bit unsure of what direction I want to take. I really love the idea of looking at some overgrown areas, if only we were in the Summer months, it would be a lot easier to find overgrown green areas. I do like the idea of keeping things realistic and look...