Elle Newman

Today we looked at different ways to put are book together, we got taught about book binding. There are loads of different ways to bind books but we got taught how to book bind using the straight stitch technique. They gave us some instructions that we followed to make the book.

We created holes with a scalpel and then from using a binding needle sewed the book together using a running stitch. This was quite fiddly and took a few times to get right, but over all was quite an enjoyable process. I think I will use this process to create my zine.

I decided that I wanted to use the heart from my mastheads and strap-line as the front cover of my zine. I thought I would try Laser cutting the heart out to give a peep a boo effect. I arranged an appointment to see the laser cutting expert. Before the appointment we had to scan our images into illustrator on to a template that Chris had made for us. Using this template I had to chose how I wanted my image to be cut there were a few options I could have chose for it all to be cut out or only some of the image or to be engraved or sketched. I wanted to originally get the image cut out but my image wasn’t all joined together so I couldn’t do that. So I decided to get the image engraved on to card. So that meant I had to make the image green.

I then went and had the image cut, I had it cut onto card as that is what I’m having my Zine made out from. Unfortunately it didn’t show up at all on black card so I tried white, It did work but there were some holes where the lines had been drawn together. Even though I wanted to use it for my front cover I had chosen against it, as it doesn’t look very good. So I’m going to just use the scanned image as my front cover. However I did really like the laser cutting machine and now I know how to use it, I will hopefully be using it in the future.

As part of a mini brief we were asked to create collages to put in are zines.

For my first one I used old David Bowie album covers and painted his famous Aladdin Saine hair and lighting bolt on it. I’m not overly happy with the outcome as it looks quite rushed and messy. I don’t want to put this one in my zine.

I then created collages using tracing paper and pen/ pencils. One one of the collages I even used old pastels and tissue paper. After i had drawn on them I scanned them into Photoshop and added colour and strokes onto them. I really like how they turned out and they have an almost Andy Warhol look to them that I love. I’m going to use these collages in my final zine.

I then did collages with a mix of young and old David Bowie to see what that created, the first one was him in the ‘Life on mars’ video and the face was from hero’s album shoot. The other is from a shoot when David was in the 80’s and the face is from the 70s. I really like the first one and think it illustrates that he was an idol and even in the different eras he is still recognisable.

Over the last few weeks we have been going to life drawing lessons on a Wednesday afternoon. In these lessons we have been learning about the different types and styles of fashion illustration, particular drawing techniques and learning how to use a range of mixed media . The first week of the sessions looked at the different types of drawing styles out there such as, blind drawing, peak drawing and line drawing. we also had to try  drawing for different lengths of time from 30 seconds up to 30 minutes

 

After I had drawn the images out on illustrator, I then used Photoshop to colour in the images. This was fun and didn’t take that long to do and I really like the results, I will use these images to create a gif and I want to find another place to put these images as I really like them!

I wanted try and illustrate the changing faces and style of David Bowie. And after seeing loads of giffs and flip books of David Bowie changing faces, I wanted to try myself. I started this by picking the styles that I wanted to illustrate. I chose the styles Mod, Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sain, Halloween Jack, The thin white duke, clown, Goblin King, tin machine, 90’s and backstar Then I used illustrator to create line drawing of the face. This was very difficult and took ages to get right! But I’m really happy with how they all turned out and I’m going to colour them in and use them as one of my gifs.

 

I really enjoyed doing the typography classes so I knew it was something I wanted to include in my zine. I thought I would experiment different techniques to see what worked best for my zine. I tried water colours, ink, pen, pencil and photoshop/ illustrator. I found the most effect ones were the ones I wrote and then cleaned up on Photoshop and Illustrator. So I think I will be using this technique to do the typography for my final zine.

Another person who inspired David Bowie was the Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto. It was Yamamoto who inspired David to give Ziggy Stardust bright red hair and also he inspired all the clothes that Ziggy wore. I didn’t know how I would try and experiment with this one so I just did some drawings of David Bowie wearing the clothes.

For my last inspiration I looked at the artist Guy Peelaet. He was the artist that created the cover for Diamond Dogs. He used bright colours and high saturation to create him images and I thought this would be perfect for a poster.

Andy Warhol was a huge influence on David Bowie as he wrote a song about him and even played him in a film. I looked the art that Andy Warhol had created and picked two to try and create a David Bowie/ Andy Warhol themed art work.

I picked this piece of art work as inspiration as I loved the black background in comparison with the bright colours in the tigers face. From this inspiration I used the song space oddity for my inspiration, I created two astronauts in a bright red and green and created to planets in the background with opposite colours in opposite positions. I then put a back background behind to make it more like Andy Warhol’s work. I really like it and love the effect it creates.

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I also used the famous Maryilyn Monroe artwork as inspiration for a poster for my zine.

I used Halloween jack as inspiration for this piece, I first drew him out and then scanned him into the computer where I used photoshop to colour him in different colours so he looked like the Marylin Monroe print. I do quite like this piece but i don’t think its clean enough to go into my zine.

Loads and Loads of people say they have been inspired by David Bowie from Lady Gaga to Ricky Gervais. So I wanted to find out what artist and fashion designers inspired David Bowie himself. From this research I found loads of people that inspired Bowie but I decided to only focus on three: Andy Warhol, Kansai Yamamoto and Guy Peelaet. Andy Warhol is famously known for pop art and created commercial art. Kansai Yamamoto is a Japanese Designer famously known for creating the outfits for Ziggy Stardust and Guy Peelaet is comic/ animated artist known for creating the cover for David’s Diamond dogs. I’m going to use these artists and designers style to create some David Bowie themed artwork for my zine.