Category: Rachel Orphan & Beckie Mitchell

This postcard was based on Schedules. The inspiration for this came from how structured our Fiddlesticks (orchestra) residential course is. Throughout the four days, I noted down the time we would begin each new activity. 

I was struggling with ideas of how to display this particular postcard. Codes, was what came to mind.

As you can see in the image above, I gave each activity a visual symbol or pattern. After doing two days, I was began to see this was quite a complicated and confusing system. However, after testing other styles I continued this as it was still the best idea.

Dear Rachel ~ love Beckie

Postcard eight was sent from Greenman Festival. The nearest village to Greenman, is Crickhowell. I went to Crickhowell a few months ago when they had an art festival. I found two local artists Robert Macdonald and Dorian Spencer-Davies. 

Robert Macdonald is a painter and print maker. He often uses bright colours and vivid movements to depict Welsh Landscapes. However, he does not primarily see himself as a landscape artist. He enjoys creating works that contain inner imagination and mythology or legends. 

Dorian Spencer-Davies again uses bright colour but in a very different way. He uses it to compliment his style in which he stretches reality causing a dreamlike state. 

I was impressed with the artwork of the Greenman merchandise this year, with the bands and T-shirts.

They have almost created their own greenman style and language. Through the festival there are symbols to replicate various marks like waterpoints or different stages. Moreover, there is a giant naturally made Greenman creature, this gets remade every year and each is more impressive than the last. Quite an inspiring and artistic festival. 

Dear Rachel ~ love Beckie x

Today’s postcard was a simple one. This was sent from London, I was shocked by the lack of variety of postcards from the exhibition in Royal Academy. However, thought Rachel would like this one.

This is a piece by Francisco Vidal titled Free No. 6. 

The exhibition itself was different from many other exhibitions I’ve been to. The layout seemed overwhelming almost as it featured over a thousand works in an average sized space. This meant that there was no negative space surrounding the works. I enjoy space surrounding as it lends itself to focussing on each work rather than skipping some due to feeling too busy and rushed. That being said, I felt due to the large variety of works there was always something for everyone, since my dad, mum and me all have different opinions of artwork. 

Dear Rachel ~ love Beckie x

The past two weeks, I have been continuing my part time job whilst doing a two week summer playscheme for kids. I have done this every year for four years and used to do this as child. This hasn’t given me much free time therefore I decided to monitor how often I got painted as it is very common to get paint three or four times through the ten days. 

This year I got pained five out of ten days. 

• 24th July – Grey and white, over the face.
• 27th July – Blue, pink and purple paint brush lines, across the face and neck.
• 31st July – Dark blue, whole body (hair to toes, including clothes).
• 1st August – Clown facepaint. 
• 4th August – Spiderman facepaint.

I wanted to replicate the style and colours in which I had been painted onto this postcard. Using facepaint, I sponged some of the basic colours down like gray/white, dark blue and red. As I didn’t want to paint a clown, I sponged the colours used all close together. I then used a paint brush to do spider like web’s on top of the red and I created lines similarly to how it appeared on my face.

I really enjoyed playscheme however exhausting it can make me. I hope this postcard shows how fun and playful it can be. 

This week I monitored my phone usage. For five days I recorded how many times I used my phone. In order to keep track I noted these using gates on my arm.

Moreover I wanted to monitor what I was using my phone for. The categories were as follows:

• Checking the time
• Replying to messages
• Social media
• No real reason
• Phone calls
• Work-related
• Camera

After half a day, I realised how difficult it was to keep track of how often I checked the time as it was so frequent. I decided to remove this category and only recorded when I unlocked my phone using its password. 

I did test pieces using different ways I could display this; I began with a ring idea.

After seven circles, I realised this was not going to work as there would be five days with on average 40 checks. I then tried a bar graph style.

This would have worked very well if I had also monitored in which order I used the sections; for example messages, camera call, messages, call, work etc. 

This was the finished postcard. This was the most effective and efficient way of reflecting my data. I was disappointed with how often I go to use my phone and how much of an necessity it is to my life.

To Rachel ~ love Beckie 

The purpose of my fourth postcard was inspired by Radio One’s competition week. Whatever the prize or competition it was always involving ‘words’ usually where you were to listen out for a particular word. I decided to use my conversations via Facebook, text, WhatsApp etc. to see how often I spoke about myself, the other person and referenced time.

Time = 56 times

Myself = 61 times

The other person = 83 times

It concerns me how often time was discussed within seven days. After researching, I discovered that the word ‘time’ appeared in the top 50 most commonly used words in the English language. This encouraged me to monitor how often I used it. Although I had to widened this so it became references to time eg. days, months, years and numbers rather than the word time.

To layout this information, I consisted using coloured lines. 

Each continuous coloured line being the length of the result. This however didn’t fully replicate the purpose of the postcard or the data collected. Instead I drew from a theme I was exploring as part if my final major project within foundation which involved shape outlines. Moreover, after testing this with felt tips I decided to use embroidery silks sewing the shapes in. I used a different technique for each colour to further emphasise the different sections. 

The green (representing time) is a basic running stitch. 

The yellow (representing myself) is a back stitch.

The orange/brown (representing the other person) is a laced running stitch.

Each of these were basic stitches, I felt this as best as the paper was thick and became extremely difficult to see into. 

Dear Rachel ~ love Beckie