Month: March 2019

Drawing Workshop 1

These drawing workshops are beneficial to my development of my illustration skills because we are allowed to be free with the materials we draw with, we’re not briefed to do anything but simply draw or collage the figure we see without any limitations. This helps me because I can be expressive with the materials I use, and the combinations between different materials that I can use to see what works and what doesn’t because even if they don’t work as well it’s helpful to know for the future to avoid those techniques or give them another try to see how they work.

 

Even the use of music in the background allows me to relaxed and focus on the movements of my hands to create marks which can be related to the music to give a different impression of the figure and clothing I’m drawing than if I were to be listening to another type of music.

 

I created some work I was feeling positive about in this workshop because briefly I was worried about this project and being able to create illustrations that looked aesthetically pleasing and realistic however, I’ve come to realise that the point in illustration is about creating your own personal style with the image you see in front of you creating something truly unique to yourself with whatever materials suit you as opposed to focusing on what someone else is doing. Some of my friends are using a lot of coloured pens to create their illustrations which looked beautiful however using those doesn’t work as well for me. therefore I stick to using a lot of oil pastels and black fine liner or brush style ens which create a better image for myself. Also creating fashion illustrations of these very obscure and crazy outfits that we were also styling was helpful in thinking of the style of illustrations that I wanted for my zines.

Initial Themes To Look At

The representation of body in the media is such an exciting them to base our zines on because it allows us to be expressive and act like an activist for the dozens of arising issues relating to the our own personal experiences with body image, how people we now have been affected, issues that the media causes and issues that the media doesn’t bring up enough. The topic is so relevant and so hard hitting in our everyday live that to create some sort of art about it felt very exciting. I know already in my zine I want to bring attention to the emotions faced while thinking about body image to get the people reading and looking at the images in my zine to related to it and understand where everyone is coming from. I also want some sort of text, poems, articles or quotes highlighting some of the issues presented in the media which are touched upon nearly enough so more people can read and relate to it.

 

Several themes came to mind when the brief was presented to us; the representation in the media of male and masculine bodies and how that can affect men or even young children from the ages of 4-20. This is something that I hadn’t thought about too much before although it’s clearly a massive issue as there is hardy any male opinions of this for fear of showing emotion. The male body is always shown in magazine spreads and editorials with a large amount of muscles, the men are always very tall and have a toned figure as well as clear skin and perfect teeth which naturally doesn’t come for anyone. Representation like this can easily influence the way a male can feel about himself if they don’t look like the toxic images the media is feeding the about how they have to look.

 

This related to another issue I was reading about relating to children playing with toys that subconsciously changes their thoughts on what they’re meant to look like and what they’re supposed to look up yo. If a child is playing with a toy, for example, a barbie, they’re naturally going to come to the realisation that this is what they’re meant to look like, and want to look like as this is the figure that is being sold in shops ad is really popular, as well as also relating to the figures they’re seeing online. The same can happen to young boys too playing with toys such as a GI Joe, for example, which are muscly, ‘typically masculine’, strong and able to fight whereas boys that age can’t do any of those things and naturally won’t represent this body which could always damage their own opinions of themselves because their brain is still developing and growing and they’re still understanding things around them.

 

I also wanted to look at a generalised theme relating to body image in the media, with people’s everyday struggles as it’s so commonly spoken about and very easily brushed off even though this is something that is spoken about every day between people so it would be interesting to research where this is coming from and why.

 

This then leads onto another theme of the corporate businesses thriving off of the lack of self confidence from ot only their customers, by reaching out and guilt tripping other people into buying into their products ad organisations which are feeding off of people feeling not as confident about themselves so they will buy anything to make them feel better about themselves by society’s standards, even if just momentarily until they buy into the business again, these companies range from diet companies who are selling slimming pills, juice and liquid detoxes or’ tea toxes’ which are proven not to work but are lying to people to get the to buy them. These companies could be magazines who are only showing people of a certain size, which are usually unhealthy and unrealistic, with articles based on losing weight or looking ‘better’, once again to society’s standards.

 

Initial Zine Research

To begin the journey of our new project we explored different existing zones to refresh our mind of how they are made and what they stand for as well as how the differentiate from magazines themselves. Zines are more tactile, hand made, collage based, handwritten; basically made using more practical techniques and raw methods to then print professionally for a more unique, less high definition and perfected version of a magazine.

Polyester is made up from emotive, activism inspired posters and illustrations which are constantly challenging different social normative and ideals and expressing the opinions of people. The main part of this zine is to show expression, emotion and to inform the public, their audience, of issues that are important to them that aren’t being spoken about enough, or need to be spoken about more even if they are already. Polyester often has images relating to body image; challenging the idea of having body hair as it’s completely normal and natural to normalising different body shapes such as the athletic body or the larger body types.

https://polyesterzine.com/why-we-need-to-celebrate-the-athletic-body/

https://polyesterzine.com/prettyugly-from-the-author/

 

Law magazine, although still a zine, has a very different approach and completely different aesthetic to Polyester Zine which is shown from the video by i-D. “It’s not a fashion magazine, it’s an Argos catalogue of the things you never knew you needed”, this approach in itself shows how Law differs to high fashion magazines such as Vogue or Elle, which are typical fashion magazines as they present themselves as such, however the content features in Law is more broad, not always necessarily related to fashion or clothing but more about the people they attract to the magazine, the culture behind what they d and why they do it. Even the way they conduct photoshoots are very low maintenance and tactile by keeping up a massive white material to use as the background for their shoots as opposed to always going in a brightly lit expensive studio.

 

http://www.law-mag.com/about/

 

The Mushpit presentation of themselves is like a memory capsule, the work is quite documentary of people’s lives , their journeys and the emotions that they face as the owners started to document the years of their own lives and their friends lives to translate into the work of their zine.

All of these examples just show the variety that zines can have aesthetically and the origins of these three London based zines and how each of the founding members had a different approach to representing the art they want to make a  sort of activist and expressive way to do whatever they liked a they were working for a creative independent zine and not a high fashion overly edited magazine, showing that the possibilities are endless.