What a nice way to spend my money.

A couple of weeks ago while I was away in Leicester I visited the local Borders for a browse, something I always enjoy. While I was there I found this lovely book about sketchbooks featuring images from the sketchbooks of a lot of very good designers and illustrators (even Johnny Hardstaff has a few pages). Here are some of my favourite pages by Ed Fella, Oliver Jeffers and Pablo Amargo






Everytime I look through the book I find new things which is exciting and the whole thing is so inspiring, it's refreshing to see unfinished and personal work from designers who are usually so polished. It's made me start using my own personal sketchbook and it's really good to just play around with different materials. Each designer/illustrator also has a chance to explain the way that they use sketchbooks and it's actually really interesting to read. I want to research the professional work of some of the people I've never heard of to see if there's much of a difference.


Here are some pages from my own sketchbook that I've been playing around with in the past few days and weeks:

Can't take pictures..will do it anyway

So I don't really think my blog has been receiving enough attention recently, probably because my fingers are so cold that it's difficult to type etc. BUT anyway, I thought it was about time that I put some of my silence work up here. This is the later part of my project (not silence part 2) the first part was a book of drawings and paintings surrounding the theme of cats and I'll put those up here when I find a nice way of capturing them.

I've taken some photos of the 3D work I've been making but the quality is pretty poor, I just can't be patient with a camera!

The idea behind this work is based on the lives (well, correspondence) of Prisoner's of War from the 30's and 40's. There isn't a real narrative yet, I came across the idea after I visited the 'Captured' exhibition at Imperial War Museum North. I basically started linking the idea of silence to the restrictions that the prisoners had with regard to communication, whether with each other or with their families and friends. Themes such as censorship and secrecy are what I was thinking about. I made these three 3D pieces over the past two weeks using photocopies of some letters, postcards, newspapers and photographs that I have from the time period. The imagery isn't specifically related to Prisoner's of War but they have the essence of that time which was all I needed really. I suppose they are meant to represent the way that the prisoners were trapped, they're weren't able to talk freely about things. Letters would mount up or become lost and a lot would be censored. The censorship that I've used is really just the cutting up of the letters, it makes them illegible and useless because so much of the text is missing.







The images above are the first structures that I made out of cardboard and baking paper prints. I wanted the sections of letters to have a slightly transparent quality to them, making them quite flimsy and fragile in a way and the baking paper helps to achieve this look. I also didn't want to use the originals of the postcards etc that I had. The structures didn't really turn out as I had planned, I was looking a lot at Joseph Cornell's work and obviously that is a lot more sophisticated than the pieces that I created. However I did make them in a very short time.







This is the third 3D piece that I made, after showing my first attempts to Hitch he said to try and bring the paper out of the structure and he said to make the pieces more beautiful. I decided using a frame would tie in well with the theme as the whole correspondence idea is a very personal one and has links with family and memory which is the whole point of keeping photographs in frames. I'm really pleased with the structure, it's not completely finished yet as it's very fragile and almost impossible to move around and I want to add some more detail once I have a narrative to go with it. I love the image in the background of the people, especially the woman, she really draws your attention.

OPERA

Final Design

Original Design



Last week I took part in a live brief for the Elemental Opera company who are producing Benjamin Britten's 'The Rape of Lucretia' later on this year. I was actually unsuccessful but the piece that I made is still being shown at the venues which is good news and they seemed to really like my work.

I was asked to produce something 'stark and visceral' that conveyed a sense of 'high drama' using the colours red, green and white. I ended up making the poster in one day which was quite intense but I think I did quite a good job of it. I used watercolours for the background and a red ribbon as a symbol of control and death. I used photoshop to enhance all of the colours and add text. I wanted to pick out some of the background layers darker than the others to link with the personalities of the 3 male characters.

I'm disappointed that my work wasn't picked for the final design however I think I gained a lot from the brief, the quick turnover was good for me as it pushed me to use alternative methods which worked out well. I also felt comfortable expressing my ideas to the people involved with the company and I look forward to designing more work for them.

Why in Gods name..

have I never seen these before!?!

I just found these beautiful Andy Warhol pictures while desperately searching for a poster.

Some More Kino4

Here are some more experiments, basically I'm just really trying to make something good by the 21st so I don't feel ridiculous pinning my work up. Also need to get back to working HARD, no more of this lazy nonsense.

Kino4

So I'm attempting to create the body of work needed for the summer project. So far I've done quite a bit but there is no order, reason or clarity within any of my experiments. I'm not finding it as easy to take my work further but I think that's because I'm on my own and therefore my only critic and I hate everything.

I've been looking at the Czech film posters again for some inspiration, these 3 being my particular favourites at the moment:



I really loved the colour and layering in the 'Psycho' poster although there are a lot of elements included in the poster it doesn't look too crowded, I think the colouring helps this as the uniformity keeps it from being too much.

I liked the 'Mary Poppins' poster mainly because it's such a contrast to the film and the way the film was advertised and conveyed through Disney. I really love the jumble of different types.

The Jaws poster (bottom) I picked out because of the fragmentation, I wanted to try this for myself (see images below) again it is completely different to the Hollywood posters and is a much more creative interpretation of the film.

(2 weeks later)

These images below are a few samples of what I've done so far, I've just picked out the ones that I originally scanned in as well because I've only been working by hand/photocopier and not using the Mac at all. I'm quite pleased with the outcomes that I've produced so far but I think they're a little bit messy although they are only quick collages and none of my work is ever very polished anyway so I suppose it's just my style. As well as the Czech posters I've also been influenced by some of the Joseph Cornell collages that I've been looking at for my extended essay research.