Deconstructed Book

This project was about getting a book and changing it's appearance and function into something different. It was to start off our own book making project where the final piece will be a book based on the work 'place'. Here is what my deconstructed book looked like...

Even though I didn't spend that much time on it and it could have turned out a lot better, I still quite like it. I am pleased the way that when you open the book the 'tree' comes out. I was worried it didn't look like a tree so I added a little person on a swing. Yes, he's on a swing it's not someone hanging, I don't think I'm that morbid.

Rose Wong

(Spotlight, 2012- Ink and Photoshop & Holding Closely, 2012- Pencil and Photoshop)

I came across Rose Wong when looking at the tag Illustration on Tumblr. I really like her work! The way she draws the hair on her characters above is really interesting, and the reddening of the joints on the body I find adds a sweet, innocent and rosy feel to the piece. I also like the textural background because it doesn't look pristine like most digital pieces again adding to the humble innocence of the pieces. I then looked at her deviantART and Tumblr page to find more art from her and thought these hand studies she did in graphite were really nice. I like the fact you can see the hand is hollow, a really nice detail, making it unusual and different in comparison to your average hand study drawings making them an artistic piece in itself. 

Clay Rodery

Clay Rodery is an Illustrator which I stumbled upon when looking through Tumblr. It was this piece which caught my eye and I thought it was very interesting in terms of composition and imagery. The subject was, I think, the SOPA and PIPA law enforcements in America. This artist, based in New York, would have been affected by the protests against the enforcements being made. In the picture you can see that the hands are cuffed with an ethernet cable, used to connect to the internet. Saying perhaps that the internet will imprison us. I then looked into some of their other work on clayrodery.com and saw some other pieces that interested me...

(Recession Blues, 2011- Scratchboard)

(3 Sketches of Lightnin' Hopkins- Crayon and Ink)

I really like their black and white drawings. The areas of light and dark on the shirt image I find really impressive, I wish I could draw like this and make it look good. I really like the little triptych of Lightnin' Hopkins portraits are really simple and are quick neat little sketches. 

(Dorothy and the Cyclone, 2011- Ink, Charcoal, Pastel and Digital)

'Curtains of Oz', obviously related to 'The Wizard of Oz', are a series of colourful illustration on Dorothy's Journey through the land of Oz. The picture above is when she is at home and she sees the cyclone coming. I think these are really nice and simple but hold a sinister theme throughout the pictures. This eerie feeling is emphasised by the darkness of the images as a whole. 

David Foldvari

There was a lecture with the artist David Foldvari today who came to talk about his art work and his profession as an illustrator. He was a really interesting guy and did some really interesting drawings. It really fascinates me how some people can draw faces so well and put so much character into the faces with just lines. Foldvari's portrait of Prince Phillip really demonstrates what I like about his drawings. 

A project he has been recently working on is for an interactive graphic novel called 'Dickens Dark London'. He has created a series of illustrations on Charles Dickens' travels through London at night. During the lecture he mainly showed us pictures from 'Seven Dials' which is what Covent Garden used to be called, and was one of the darkest, dirtiest places in London around that era. In his illustrations he depicts dirty chimneys, children in poverty, crowded market places and the great fog which engulfed most of London. One of my favourite images he showed us from the series was a scene where something has happened and people are shouting, screaming and the chaos is then calmed down by the police.

I mainly like it due to the different facial expressions everyone has and the general feel of the image. From the darkness surrounding the bottom of the crowd in the centre, it looks as if the people have suddenly ripped through the page and are all trying to get through at once, adding to the sudden hurried commotion of this particular scene.
After talking about his previous and ongoing projects, he gave some good advice on how he works as an artist. Throughout the talk I was trying to imagine how he came up with all these faces and facial expressions in such detail. He then explained that he references images from primary sources or from books in the library. This gave me inspiration for the book I am going to create as part of the 'Place' project as i need pictures of shocked faces and other facial expressions. I also need lots of victorian imagery which so far I have been sourcing my imagery from the internet but I may turn to the books we have at college. Another piece of useful information was to draw all the time. He then showed us a small image he created which wasn't anything like his commissions. A small illustration depicting himself playing the bass and being really small because his friends took the mickey. Quite a comical image, showing that drawings don't have to be all perfect and as detailed as what you have drawn before.

David Foldvari's Website: http://www.davidfoldvari.co.uk/Site/home.html
David Foldvari's Blog: http://davidfoldvari.blogspot.com/

Think Project

Since I went back to college (on the 9th of January) we have started a new project called the "Think Project". At the beginning we had to pick a word from a certain list which we could promote or protest against. I had no idea what to pick, so I randomly moved my finger across the word "coaster"... Possibly one of the most difficult words I could have picked but I thought that it would set me an interesting challenge. I then chose to protest against coasters because we were encouraged to do the most outrageous thing to be able to be more creative. I thought that promoting coasters would be boring because it would be the normal and easy path to go down. However, I wanted to challenge my creativity and thought of how to protest against my word/object. Without coasters, there would be stains of furniture and other surfaces around the house, so I chose to concentrate on the idea of coffee stains and rings from mugs. Thinking about how they can be artistic, add character to someone and add to the history of the object it stains. I then created a poster for my final piece...

This was my final piece. I quite like how it turned out, because I didn't use actual coffee/tea because I didn't have any at the time so I drew huge circles and painted over them in a coffee like colour, then I blew on the excess liquid to look like it had run across the surface. I then realised that I never mentioned 'coasters' anywhere within this piece, but hopefully people will get the message anyway...

Illustration: Day 4

I came in late today but apparently all we were doing was experimenting with our already created imagery. I decided that I go on photoshop (because I really like photoshop) and experiment with some digital media. I scanned my monoprints in and found pictures which I could add to them.

My first two pictures are my favourite especially the first one. I shall develop these by transforming the pictures I found off the internet into something more illustrative. For example, tracing over them with acetate and painting them or created a line drawing from the shape. Might try this next lesson.

Illustration: Day 3

(A monoprinting roller that has gotten dirty with so much paint!)

Today we learnt all about monoprinting. A subject I knew all too well from having done it previously. I enjoy monoprinting but it does become a repetitive task of putting ink on your work surface, rolling it, place paper, drawing, take off the paper and repeat. The reason I would say I enjoy it is the effects you get from the process. The images we were monoprinting had to be based on a story we had created using automatic writing for homework.

  

  

(First we experimented with just black ink, taking inverted prints and using different materials)

  

  

(Then we experimented more with coloured inks and collage with pieces cut out of our previous monoprints)

I really liked adding the colour to it. I picked red, white and yellow because I wanted to use colours associated with the rising sun. I also like the dramatic affect this has with the darker, more monotone elements such as the silhouette of the milkman (the last picture). I also really liked using collage within these pieces as it creates a clean edge contrasting with the rough texture of the monoprints. I'm beginning to really like the little character with the crown. So I decided to take some completely random pictures of him looking like a cheeky postman king (Ever heard of the rhyme "I'm the king of the castle, get down you dirty rascal"?).