PHOTOSHOP, INDESIGN & ILLUSTRATOR

BOOK ARTS I

LINOCUT

MONOPRINT

There were two inconveniences were behind my spontaneous trip to the Tate this morning. Firstly my friend Bradley, who I was supposed to meet in the morning, texted me to inform me he was incredibly hungover and would I mind pushing the meet back to two so he had a bit more time to recover and secondly my train to Victoria was cancelled so I wound up on the Thameslink to Blackfriars. Arriving a short walk from the Tate Modern with 3 hours to kill it seemed the most logical option.

It’s always mad revisiting London now I no longer live there. I used to dread it, my flat in the east became my burrow that I never left for fear of the isolation of being surrounded by thousands of people who did not care about you or your wellbeing. That’s a dark outlook I am aware, but being an 18 year old fresh out of my countryside home I was not ready for the scary feat of the capital. Now I don’t live there I’m back to being incredibly fond of the place.

I had a pretty productive morning, it’s been a while since I’ve explored the permanent collection at the Tate so I thought I’d have an amble through them again, them being free as well was also a bonus. I found some gorgeous sketching material and the book about Surrealism and Dadaism I had been reading on the train also provided some good food for thought as I explored.

Hilariously, I did a sketch of Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ thinking how ironic it was that it was still on display in the Tate however many years later and that such an iconic piece of anti art could be valued and in an institution like the Tate for ‘art education’ purposes. It wasn’t until the next day when I was talking to my Grampa about it that he told me the original had been lost many years ago and the one I had seen was simply a replica from the 60s.

      

It’s always a bit of a change of tempo to address a one day project. With the Assessment looming, a double project on the go and essay results in a couple of days some might say it was a completely unneeded situation. However, I’m not one of these people. Having had two so far, with very different outcomes (one went incredibly well, the other resulted in three very stressful hours staring at a single sheet of paper), I find the possibilities of outcomes very exciting.

We were allowed to choose our groups also which was brilliant. I joined up with Amy Austin and Luke Attwood for the duration of the day and we chose our envelope to work on. We had a variety of stories to choose from but settled on the ‘phenomena’ of the stone toads. The stories go that there are various documented cases in the recent past of rocks emerging having been encased in stone for an unknown length of time. There was a particular case of a frog emerging from a piece of coal in a mans fireplace. Intriguingly he frog was partially transparent and appeared to have no mouth, the frog survived a further five weeks after being fished from the fireplace.

We quickly decided on stop motion as the time pressures didn’t leave us much time to deliberate. We stopped by the shop to grab some materials and then headed back to start forming our genes. Together we thought that we would be better off doing a short illustration of the frog in the fireplace rather than attempting a complicated story. Here above are some of the stills from the final piece!

The day was brilliant, we were able to develop our knowledge of stop motion greatly in a short space of time and accomplish something that we were all pretty chuffed with at the end of it. It was especially ideal for me as I wanted to experiment with block paper collage for my images of Giacometti the Yeti. I think in someways the stills are just as successful as the final video. It might be fun to use this method to come up with the frames for my Graphic Novel (sequential images) for my final outcome. All in all a brilliant day! If very knackering.

Sadly the blog platform seems to not want to upload the video of the animation so here’s the youtube link (cop out I know) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z66pp1g58dU

  

Being forever anti establishment as I am, I started with the second half of the brief over the first. For some reason the pull of the unexplained was far too tempting. As soon as I got home after I went straight to the computer and watched a couple of half an hour documentaries; the first exploring the mysterious entities located in the Bermuda Triangle and the second informing about the eery circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

I took extensive notes and get engaged by the research I had carried out, I went into Uni the next day feeling informed enough about the two subjects to get going on the brief. When I got to the studios, however, I found myself doodling pictures of Yetis. The subtitle ‘Cryptids’ had caught my eye and I found my mind wondering to think about how Yetis have been presented to me throughout my life. The Yeti in Monster’s Inc sprung to mind as the most prominent. So many different interpretations of the mysterious beast run through popular children’s shows and you’re taught about it from such a young age. But how much do we actually know about the Yeti really? From the moment I drew my first fluffy little grey Yeti I’ve been hooked. So for the Explain the Unexplained project I am going to be exploring Cryptids and their various mythologies through the world.

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It’s been a very long term and has taken some real effort to adjust back to being in education- but it’s happening! I’ve got through it. Very much looking forward to going home, but I’m going back with plenty of new skills in my arsenal. I feel like I’ve spent a term making art that has developed my knowledge of Illustration and Art in general, but that I’m not necessarily producing work that is particularly reflective of what I want to do.

I feel that these past three months have been like my foundation all over again and that taking these skills forward to use more consistently through my projects is going to be the best way to justify the time spent this term.

 

I happened across the artist Diana Beltran Herrera when trawling for images of bird content for my project. She creates beautiful sculptures for her practice and the ones that particularly peaked my interest were, weirdly enough, the ones of birds. They’re so beautifully complex that it’s hard not to be a fan of them. Looking into her practice was so interesting. Herrera creates complex digital images of her work before working from them to create the final pieces, the 2D work would be enough but that’s not the point. Her process is all posted on her (stunning) blog that I’ve referenced below.

Since working on ‘Pink Man’ I’ve really wanted to continue developing my sculpting skills and taking inspiration from Herrera for this project could be a way of realising this.

http://www.dianabeltranherrera.com/

  

There’s a lot of different directions that I can take this project in. I feel like birds have been fundamental to my practice for many years now so there is an element of nostalgia to revisiting them. However I also want to approach them in a new manner, perhaps exploring colour schemes and patterns. These images are a result of some initial experiments with Sharpies and I feel like they have gone really well. I’m going to pursue these kinds of images by looking into further abstraction of their features to purely draw out the blocks of colour in their feathers.

 

A lot of the pressure was taken off the crit we had for the compositional project today. Everyone, including myself, has been pretty overwhelmed by the workload the past couple of weeks, what with the double project-essay deadline combo. However, the wonderfully lovely tutors that we have (sycophant alert) have let us off a little with a more relaxed approach to analysing our work. We were put into groups and each person talked through what they had achieved for the project in the time we had, with little emphasis on part II.

When looking at other peoples work it was fascinating to see how different people had approached the same brief. I had stuck to a very literal exploration of the compositions- with little contextual backing. Other people had incredible concepts to back up their work. It was a really enjoyable crit, and made me feel a lot better about the amount of work I had produced. There is a lot of room for improvement in my project, for example I have barely touched upon the requirements of the second half of the brief, but there’s time to explore this further I’m sure.

I agreed with Gary that my collages with images of ‘The Pink Man’ were a lot more lively than the 2D compositions I created. I want to explore more uses of layering and photography when I create more pieces from the given categories in the second half of the project.

 

Wolfgang Weingart was a Graphic Designer recognised for his explorations in typography. He was very expressive in his approach and as a result was influential all over the world. Through his experimentations he ended up forming his own visual language, and for this reason I think that he’s a great reference for my exploration of the project ‘The Art of Composition.’

I haven’t had much time to explore the project thus far, and am really concerned about when I’m going to find the time to do so. But I think a good way forward is to look into collaging some of the photography work we carried out from the ‘Let There Be Light’ project alongside text in a similar style to Weingart. I’ve brought some paint from home to add to the mix as well so am going to look more for artists to reference who collage with paint.

I really love Weingarts work. It’s really interesting how he chooses to arrange the shapes he creates from the type. It draws people in as you want to understand what he communicating to you as the viewer.