Haircuts in Film!

Many of my favourite films involve some kind of hair cut/make-over - I've decided to make a wee database of them here:

'ALL OFF?' '...All off.'

'I love your eyebrows. We'll call them Frida and Kahlo.'

A CLASSIC.

Here's a couple of great really great video about make-overs in films:

ASMR Haircuts

ASMR videos are videos intended to trigger auto-sensory meridian response - a relaxing tingly feeling on the head + back. They're a little weird at first but after watching a lot of these videos (mostly as research for this project) I like them! A lot! I love the language and syntax used, the purposeful hand movements, the performance!

Favourite sounds:

• Spray bottle
• Scissors snipping
• Tweezers tapping
• Hands on magazine paper
• SOME hair brush noises - some are horrible. 
• Comb noise!

Here's a selection of some good ones:

Good Hair by Chris Rock

I've decided I want to make a book about hair, so I've been doing some research into different salon industries.

I'm struggling to find the whole documentary but I have been watching clips of Chris Rock's 'Good Hair', it's about the relationship black women (and men - Prince and MJ for example) have with their natural hair and how some go about trying to get """good""" hair. The most shocking part I've watched is about relaxers - I had no idea how dangerous the chemicals in it are! 

I think it's super important for me to not be preachy about black hair - because really, who am I to make comments on it? I'm not black, ergo I have no idea what it's like to have black hair! As a mixed race person I understand how Western beauty standards can manipulate your self-esteem for profit, in South and East Asian communities colourism is regularly exploited to sell skin bleaching products, but even so it's definitely not for me to comment on the black hair salon industry in my work.

This documentary has prompted me to think about whether I want to put any political or social message across in my work. The beauty industry is huge and ultimately it relies on the insecurity of women, if I ignore that and just make a pretty picture book about how having your haircut is nice and good am I somehow complicit? (That's really an overreaction but it's something to think about.)

REALLY GOOD PACKAGING!

Diisa Wallender Visual Diary

http://disawallander.tumblr.com/post/138810566297/my-hourly-comics

As we're keeping diaries for the project I thought I would research how other people do it. This is Diisa Wallander's visual diary! I love her little model of herself, I love the skype calls and FB messages. It's awesome!

Primer Task Responses

1. The most important piece of personal work you have completed - no matter how small or unrelated to illustration as we teach it.

This is 'My Monobrow Heart' - a painting I did for my BOBA DOG exhibition. It's kind of about how I got teased as a kid for having a monobrow and now how I don't have one ... I kind of would love to have one.

Anyway now I can't stop drawing it! It's become a bit of a tag, it's all over my lecture notes and my sketchbooks.

(INSERT PICTURE HERE)

2. The most important object in your life. (Not an art tool.)

These are my lucky fringe scissors, I stole them from a kids activity session at my old volunteering - so they were once an art tool but now they're just for my hair. I never cut my fringe badly with these. 

3. The most influential place to your life

I initially made the image on the left, thinking my most influential place was nature or somewhere but really, and this is deep, the most influential place is probably inside of myself. Or just slightly outside. I have synaesthesia, sound triggers a colourful sparkly reaction in a kind of bubble just above my head.

4. How you feel when you are wearing your most influential set of clothes.

I feel like a banana! I really like yellow, my most influential set of clothes is yellow tights, yellow skirt, and yellow jumper. Plus a yellow rain coat + shoes if I dare leave the house in this ensemble.

5. The song that is most emblematic of yourself or your beliefs.

I had to prove that I could make it alone now
But that's not me
I wanted to show how independent I'd grown now
But that's not me
I could try to be big in the eyes of the world
What matters to me is what I could be to just one girl

I'm a big wuss.

6. The most important film or piece of moving image to you.

Just watch.

7. The most important thing/book/poem that you have read.

John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing' was a very important read for me! Understanding the ideas Berger explains opened up a whole load of other reading (Sontag and pals)

8. The person (that you have met) who has been most influential to you.

I used to work in a charity shop and it was my first experience of customer service. One day this man came in because he was trying to return a Wagner Album. We only allow returns on CDs that don't play. He said it didn't play. We managed to get it to play. So now he couldn't get his three quid back and was VERY very very mad. He yelled and yelled, all the while this was playing in the background:

He influenced me not to be a colossal twat to customer service workers.

9. The most important piece of art

Hanging Man by Ai Weiwei is my choice. The economy of line + material + the efficiency of the message is all very very good. 

10. The most influential perosn that you don't know or will never meet, how have they shaped your life.

This is Aung San Suu Kyi and the shadow of her father, General Aung San. General Aung San was responsible the murder and arrest of members of my grandfather's family, he had no family by the time he left Burma except for his father who was kept under strict house arrest for the remainder of his life. So there's that.

Then there's his daughter, a woman I admire deeply. (We even resemble each other.) It's a very weird complicated relationship.

11. The most important idea to you

Everybody has baggage and everybody deals with it their own way!

12. The most important feeling to you

That post-yoga glow where you feel super grateful and happy that you took the time to look after yourself :^)

13. The most important activity that is not related to art

Walking out in the sun and getting FRESH air and vitamin D.

14. Your favourite smell
My cat smells really good because she sleeps on my clean laundry. 

Heta Uma

I've just stumbled across this wonderful term! Heta-uma is "unskilled-skilled" or "bad but good", largely used to describe a pre-Punk Japanese style of graphic design that sprung up in the 70s. Yumura Teruhiko is largely credited for it - or at least coining the phrase. 

There's an outsider artist feel to it, very charming but a little idiosyncratic! I particularly like the colours + the text style. I've noticed it's having a resurgence in some Asian illustration, and is also being mixed into other mediums apart from drawing - like ceramics! These images are a mix of old and new:

 

 

 

Some good reads:
http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/heta_uma_mangaro
http://yagian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/heta-uma-unskillful-but-skillful-and.html