Victoria Ashdown Art

I spent last month in and around Rome on the art program, painting and drawing different spots and being immersed in art history everywhere I went. I have returned with a massive portfolio (most of which are rough and need some more work) but a lot of people have been asking me to post some photos of some bits... I loved working on location and making an immediate response to a place. While out there I received some fab tuition about showing the warmth and coolness of a place and although I do not usually work with paint on its own I have really got into it as its just so easy to travel with . I now have the job of working on all the bits I came home with, I have already started to cut up some of the lest successful bits and just having a bit of a play to see what  it is I am going to do with them. -these are a couple of the pieces which were put up for auction while I was out there.

Wednesday night is our private view of the exhibition Visual Sound at Walcot Chapel in Bath. as the name suggests each artist showing at the exhibition has interpritated the noises on 5 sound tracks. the exhibition runs from Wednesday 29th March to Sunday 2nd. Would love to see as many people as possible on Wednesday for our private view but if not here is a peak at my working process.  Working on the floor as per usual.

here's some photos of my latest sculpture project I've been working on, this work is references my trip to Ghana.

I have really got into the stone litho technique I have wrote about in previous posts because of all the different type of marks you can create. I did these drawings in my loose, colourful style, with the thought of turning them into prints.   Doing the forest scene screen print has helped me develop the idea of overlapping colors to create more colours and tones. I wanted to try this with litho, the inks we use to do litho print are oil, not acrylic like in screen print, so you can add more transparent white which makes the layers overlap easily. I started two prints at once, these photos show the prints with three layers. I used the same green and yellow inks on two layers just using a different colour on one layer, its really interesting to show how the change in one of the colours can change the vibe of the print. By making the print up in layers it gives me a lot more options for experimenting with the composition- the first layer was the ...

As part of the course we are each required to undertake a exhibition of some kind whether in a traditional gallery or something more obscure. I have been working with the National trust property- Wicken Fen which is a flooded fen land in the East of England. The site has an array of  of insects and birds visiting and is a site of scientific interest.  I was required to make work specifically for the fen. I started by doing drawing both of the scenery and closer imagery of some of the insects and birds found in the fen (some of my initial drawing are shown on the right). I began transferring these images into litho prints starting with an images of a kingfisher. This print only uses 3 layers which is less than the number of layers I have used previously but I didn't want to over complicate the image. I also transferred my drawings of dragonflys into print, I printed them all at the same time so the colours would be the same and they would be a cohesive set. When visitin...

For  the 3D part of the course we each all have to undertake a socially engaged project, for this I wanted to carry on with my theme of migration. After much deliberation of how I was going to do this I came up with the idea of project train ticket. I decided to make train tickets out of ceramics with decals on them(the same technique as I used with the cups). I wanted the tickets to look realistic and like a actual ticket, but have a made feel to them which I created by adding the orange strips with under glazes before I clear glazed the tickets. I used Photoshop to edit a real ticket which took a long time as I haven't used Photoshop a lot before so it took a lot of playing to get the tickets right. On the back of the ticket I wrote a small paragraph with instructions for the ticket. The idea was to have each ticket having a different destination, to give them out in bath and hope that the people would pass them on  until the ticket reaches its set destination. To be ab...

Normally when firing ceramics the kilns raise the temperature at a slow and steady rate and take time to cool after, however the raku processes is completely different raising the temperature quickly and then cooling rapidly. Because of this distressing process the clay we used has grounded ceramics in it and the clay had to be rolled to a equal thickness to avoid cracks emerging. We made slab built vessels, and added texture by pressing in object while the clay was at its green stage. The vessels were then bisque fired and then were ready for glazing. The options we had was white and turquoise glaze however if the turquoise glaze oxidises it turns a copper colour. The spaces without glaze turn matt black when fired. So even thought we only had two glazes there were so many options on how to glaze; which parts to wax resist, and how to apply the glaze- spray,dip or brush. We glazed one vessel so we could evaluate the glazing before doing the other. To raku firer we loade...