I’m trying to get to grips with tutor feedback from the printmaking course as well as recent assessment feedback on the watercolour course. I understood that my blogs are seen as too descriptive. My printmaking tutor pointed out that I should be including more information on my personal journey as an artist. I guess I put too much focus on describing the technical process, at the expense of writing about inspirations and personal motivations.

Therefore I’m reviewing what my approach in the blogs was so far. For one, I think it’s valuable  to simply document the technical side because this represents knowledge I gained through the coursework. I can get back later to it and check how I achieved certain effects, and see what worked and what didn’t.

Then there’s the aspect of enabling my tutor to see what I’m doing beyond the assignment outcomes and selected preparatory work. The blog contains the complete coursework and this means it also includes the “uninteresting” stuff. It might be a problem that assessors don’t have the time to read it all and therefore simply don’t find the bits of reflection that are included in the text.

Beyond this, I’m somewhat at a loss for now what I’m actually expected to do or write. But I do perceive “lack of motivation” in the sense that I’m eager to do some printmaking, but I’m often having trouble finding a subject. Or maybe rather, trouble to develop the initial idea further into something more exciting.

I was happy about the recent development in sketchbook work, where I experienced a sense of departure and liberating myself from strictly focusing on sketches that are relevant for  coursework. I also think that the experimentation I did after completing the Elvis prints in project 13 was a huge step forward, because I just played around without limiting myself to one particular approach. This might be a way to approach the problem: If I can’t liberate myself to experiment with an idea before I’ve actually done it as aprint, then it might work to do the playing afterwards. I might then make a second set of experimental prints, which take the initial idea further into new territory.

There’s a discrepancy between what I perceive as steps forward and the feedback I receive… somehow I feel like an infant proud to have made its first consious “La La La” utterances after the stage of either sleeping or crying. Now being criticized that I still can’t pronounce intelligible speech… it will come, but it takes time and everybody develops at his or her personal tempo.

I guess I will just have to endure the comments, try to respond appropriately and continue to strive for development of what I’ve begun.