War Horse - Play and Book

For this brief I have re read the entire War Horse book. It isn't very big so it only took me a couple of days and I loved rereading it. It is a timeless children's book, and with it comes lovely, simple and beautiful ideologies that are allowed to happen in children's books. Everything comes right in the end.

Orca

For my one a week creatures brief this week I shall focus on the Orca also referred to as the killer whale.

Here is some reference imagery, as aways the BBC's 'The Hunt', narrated by Sir David Attenborough is also a big source of inspiration.

I did something that I haven't done in a long time, I drew some sketches of it and then I painted with ink on top of that, often these days I will forgo the line work, but in this instance I felt it would help me achieve a more developed image, especially as this viewpoint provides some challenging foreshortening. 

• They would benefit from some more freedom of media when painting them, perhaps use of tip-ex or just more exciting and bold application ink.
• I need to start considering more the background and context which I should display them in. 
• All of these images could do with being more dynamic.

Children's Book Covers

I saw this book in the library and decided to take it out for reference. There is an enormous wealth of old and different covers in here and it was worth a read just to get some ideas about varied layout and composition - especially using more analogue type images, which a lot of these comprise of. I found it helpful to see them as they are more directly relevant to the way that I work than many other more modern covers.

Bright Futures Research

5 reasons why the world is finally ready to tackle climate change... in 60 seconds.

Posted by The Guardian on Friday, 27 November 2015

https://www.facebook.com/theguardian/videos/10153773736131323/?pnref=story

I saw this video on the weekend, and thought it was very good. It tackles the issues of climate change in an interesting and dynamic way.

I also watched last nights new, and paid attention to the report on climate change, and the demonstration that occurred across the country recently, and indeed across the world all in advance of the upcoming UN summit in Paris. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-34957447

Protesters call for people to consider climate change, and for it to be tackled. The use of fossil fuels to be done away with entirely. 

Eco Activists 'Brandalism', artworks aimed to be like advertising campaigns that raise awareness about climate change, the overuse of fossil fuels and corporate involvement in this, with regards to advertising and consumerism.

These images are all fairly effective at communicating some of the pressing matters with regards to climate change, and how our leaders, and big brands seen to endorse positive work on climate change are perhaps a bit of a con, their iconic - ness being used as something of an appeal to a false authority. 

It's quite a brutal campaign, and its tone is too cynical and finger pointing to fit in with the kind of nature of campaign that I would like to consider creating to answer this brief.

But it does give good food for thought, and a serious issue does need a serious campaign and promotion to get people thinking about it. 

Bright Futures

Beginning this brief:

What would make a future brighter for our society?

• Define our society.
• Look up solutions and problems that we everyday humans can do to combat climate change.

I want to keep this brief achievable, as I have Cop and so many other things to be contending with, so my aim is to see if I can condense something in response to this down into simple image, that can be the basis for a very strong campaign.

This is one of the judges:

abandoned

https://twitter.com/_DesignStudio_

https://www.creative-conscience.org.uk/judges/ben-wright/

He has a lot of experience in big big branding. Here is an extract of his rationale from his website.

"through creativity anything is possible and uses creative thinking to effectively problem solve."

The Folio Society

War Horse

In doing some research for war horse I looked up the folio society, to scope out their general aesthetics for their work.

Their aesthetic:

• Classy
• Refined
• Minimal use of colours
• classic
• old type print and text.
• intricate
• calm.

The front covers tend to be on fabric, and are beautifully simple.

My tutor was also explaining to me how most of them are embossed/printed in a special way.

I need to consider my aesthetic and what fits in with their tone of voice when creating my war horse brief.

This one is a personal favourite of mine:

http://www.foliosociety.com/book/SUS/over-sea-under-stone

The simplified but bright colours are beautiful, and the simplistic shape of the characters gives it a wonderfully lovely feel. 

Polar Bears Digital

Drawing in this wasy is lovely as I find myself really beginning to reevaluate shade in a picture, and how you can translate that information into your own drawing.

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Travelling Man Opening Night

Finally the Opening night for Travelling man, it was a nice little gathering and it's always exciting to see your work in a professional, out there and legit context.

Feedback:
I recieved some lovely positive feedback,

It was especially interesting to hear it from coursmates:
-'I've never never seen you work in that way'
- 'It's so different to anything you have made before."
-"I think its some of the nest work/my favourite work that I've seen you do."

Here is a selection of some of the successful screen prints:

Polar Bears

This week I plan to draw polar bears:

Last week, and indeed most of my drawings so far in these last few months, I have spent a lot of time drawing with black quink ink. I think my challenge for this week will be to work with some colours and water colour paints, as I worked with quite a bit in my 505 module last year. Pastel colours especially can allow for quite an emotive and sensitive aesthetic, which can communicate emotion and tenderness quite well when called upon.

Zine progression

I had a play about on the photocopier with my summer sketchbooks and added some male/female who lives longer facts.

Some quite nice collage is coming through, and the leaves keep it a tiny bit fresh/break it up at least.

What there is currently is quite mad and unclear, but Ben suggested just being more selective and art directing the way I present it, by including some carefully placed negative space etc. So I will have a go at this on the computer tomorrow.

Tiger

This week I have bee drawing tigers, here are some of my sketchbook extracts:

I also had a go at drawing a tiger straight onto photoshop. I didn't really resolve it to a super refined state, but overall I would deem the experience a success in the way that I feel my aesthetics still managed to carry across onto this entirely digital platform:

Here are some general tiger facts that I have picked up:

• They live on average to 20-26
• They are lone hunters, but will share kills with the rest of their tiger crew if there is enough.
• They are considered some of the worlds most deadly and powerful hunters.
• They can reach speeds of 50mph when in pursuit.
• This speed can only be maintained for short bursts however.
• White tigers are particularly effective hunters as they are happy to follow their prey into water.
• They are the largest of the large cats.
• They're pretty adept when it comes to what they eat and hunt.

Stag

I had to draw so many deer to achieve any that I thought could be qualified as good. It was very frustrating and I was tempted to give up but I made myself draw a couple extra and thankfully came to one I liked!

Screen Printing

I have made some screen printing attempts.

I was pretty excited to print my negatives, they exposed mediumly successfully. THe top of the head outline didn't make it through, I think that it perhaps wasn't properly black, and the text was too textured so the broken textural line did not all print, so the writing doesn't look quite clear.

Don't really like the darker blue colour and the red together, so will try some different variations.

Perhaps even printing the block in black and using red for the detail, also I will experiment with taping off the face and printing into the jumper with a new colour.

Here is some of my screen printing process so far:

It doesn't quite align perfectly but that has led to some really nice colour blends.
The top of his head didn't expose but he does' look that bad for i so we can live with that - and learn to make sure that all parts of my negative are completely black in the future!

Stormzy Progress

I have some negatives!

- complicated trying to figure them out for two screens, I drew out many photo copy's and roughs onto scrap paper.
- will just use tape and wing it and be experimental - I have two screens, one for the line work and the other for the block colour. This second screen I will use a series of different colours and tape up areas to control it, I am looking forward to the experimentation process.
- colours may or may not print. halftone images looks quite  nice on its own.

H.

Progress Tutorial - Ben Jones

I had a super helpful progress tutorial today with Ben. We went through my briefs and he pointed out many things which I had neglected to consider, and helpful pointers for improvement.

War horse

For this brie I need to consider what type of work the folio society like, I need to do some research into them.

• Often their front covers are foil block printed, so I should try and work more with shape so that this could be a possibility.
• Go for this brief as I will likely enjoy it.
• Try to create images that are a scene, this can be quite minimalistic.
• Research that era, get an idea for the aesthetics of then.
• Try to keep a cohesive aesthetic, perhaps with the use of a colour scheme.

Travelling man

This really is a bit of a smaller project, however it is a fairly big challenge to me as I am neither very good at portraits or screen printing. He liked that I was trying to challenge myself this way however, it's good to do this.

He also showed me how to go about creating half tones with photoshop and suggested I take a look at the work of a college of his.

• Consider bringing photograph into the screen print.
• Include/incorporate some text, quite nice with ink handmade.

Half Tones = Image, then mode, choose bitmap. Then this should give me the option to select half tone and then 'rounded.

Zine

I also asked him about my zine as I had some photocopy collage things that were a bit all over the place and that I wasn't sure about.
He quite liked what was happening, and suggested just to just edit it and design what I had so that it could look a bit more professional/successful. Combine some selective negative space and control to give it a designed/edited good vibes. Like Laura Carlin. Use and include some simplicity.

Children's book

Try applying proposal to Pan McMillan brief

Medical

1 a week, nice idea
treat like bit of an editorial brief

Animals

this could be my big idea, maybe even go as far as to look at WWF, and national trust.

War Horse

As I read this book this was some of the striking imagery that stood out to me, which might make a good starting point for the illustrations to go within the book:

"Next to me old Zoey leant over her door to touch me but our noses would not quite meet."

"I turned once more to Topthorn, still licking and nuzzling him where he lay, although I knew and indeed understood by now the finality of death, but in my grief I felt only that I wanted to stay with him to comfort him."

Fred said that there was a lot of potential value in this ink drawing, which wasn't something I initially saw myself. He reminded me that the most powerful imagery and messages are often communicated very simply.

I think that I want to progress with these two images.

In the first I want to communicate:

• Dawning of new
• inquisitive
• potential friendship
• Uncertainty 
• Warmth of moment
• Touching (both literally and heartwarming)

The Death of Topthorn:

• Mourning
• Loss
• Misery
• Loyalty
• Destruction and harrowing realities of war
• Death
• Sadness

Who lives longer - Zine

I was recently at my great uncles funeral, ad it got me thinking about long relationships, such as those between siblings and those between life partners, spouses. It was only the second funeral that I have been to, the other one being that of my Grandfathers. Both of these men were outlived by their wives. It's not an uncommon pattern to hear of the female outliving the males. It got me thinking, and indeed when I looked it up women generally outlive men by about 5 years.

I started doing a little bit of research into it and this is what I discovered:



Perhaps I could collate to this into a bit of a zine idea for thought bubble.

Re consideration of my Briefs

After a brief chat with my tutor, where he flicked through my sketchbooks and pointed out some success in some of my drawings which I would personally have disregarded. He suggested creating briefs out of what I was doing, for example setting myself a 'One a Week' challenge of drawing a particular animal. And even the way I sometimes draw splodges and then illustrate into them.

So I now propose to edit into my Statement of Intent two new briefs:

• Creatures: To develop an animal each week by drawing them repeatedly and getting to grasps with them, the end result should be a a personal and proficient way of drawing each new animal that I take on, and thus a substantial body of developmental work which will help me to become more comfortable and capable at character design.

• Splodges: This brief entails filling at least three whole sketchbooks, cover to cover with these experimental and playful drawings. The end result should be a body of inventive characters perhaps, or at least several new approaches to drawing. This brief allows me to explore and investigate the creative potential of drawing, and characterisation. 

War Horse - Research

Here are some initial sketches just for fun and to get into it:

And here is some research/imagery that I have been looking at.

There are some really inventive, beautiful and expressive horse sculptures out there. :

This got me thinking about how perhaps for one idea I could build up a horse image with lots of other relevant items

I love that this stage art piece has bullets and the tips of its antlers, this seems relevant to hunting, and the trophy like bust of it further gives off an essence of how this animal can be highly associated with it.

By John Lopez

Statement of Intent session 2

Key to Good Feedback:

• Critical
• Focused/Clear
• Specific
• Constructive
• Reasoned
• Honest
• Objective
• Informed/Informative
• Appropriate

Some general pointers/notes that I took:

• Consider your working day, how much work have you set yourself to do, and how many hours a day do you log. Make it achievable.
• Be aspirational.
• Add structure and deadlines to your briefs.
• Balance, need to find a focus.

I got a bit confused and didn't quite take into account how this extended practice module really aims at producing work to go into a portfolio at the end of the programme. With regards to this the session enlightened as to how I should bear this in mind, and consider these points.

• There is a balance that one needs to find with regards to how varied your work is.
• A good portfolio needs a clear focus. Whats your specialism? 'What can you do for us?' type thing.
• This can be defined by your aesthetic and your visual or maybe even conceptual style?
• But it could also be defined by what you do for example you might just focus on creating book bindings.

So with regards to using your time at this institution for exploration, development and learning, use you COP project for this, to really get your teeth into and relish. This is where you can use drawing as research, and even let your drawing inform your writing.

Colour rad Giraffe

I Had this image of a giraffe that I thought would be vastly improved with some colour, but I couldn't face getting out all of my paints and painting it, so I though'd I'd have a go at digitally rendering it. I ended up having reasonably successful results. 

I simply used two old textures that I had in my folder of scanned textures, and then I used the mask tool to fit the colour to the appropriate places and then edited the colour with the hue tool, playing around with the lightness and saturation tool to get the shade I wanted!

Here is an action shot of how I rendered it, wahey.

Zine

I need to get underway with this really, but I'm stuck. I think I'm just nervous of making something bad, but that is silly and beside the point.

Zatul advised that I should just be myself.

But that suddenly seem's so hard.

Potential Topics:

• My experiences at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
• Horse physiology and how their muscles work. (I went to a brilliant demonstration over the summer and did some sketches as I took notes)
• Animals which menstruate. (I became intrigued, turns out its not that many.) 

1st Draft of my Extended Practice Statement of Intent

Statement of intent, completed and edited

After todays session:

The Face of Grime

Today I've been working on some ink portrait of Stormzy in practice for The Travelling man show.
I collated together some imagery together:

Here are the drawings:

Pros:

• Nice definition with use of fine detail in dark ink.
• Expressive with loose and jagged ink washes below.

Cons:

• They don't look anything like him.
• This is a little bit to do with an un optimal working set up, I was drawing from a piece of paper flat on the table above my sketchbook which was giving me elongated perspectives. This combined with my already so so ability to creative facial likenesses left for a very far off portrait.
• If this type of image will be for screen print I will have to use solid blocks of colour, so I need to start considering that into my practice too. 

Travelling man - Contextual reference and initial Ideas

For my Traveling man Screen print I am currently entertaining the idea of creating a big portrait of grime artist Stormzy. 

I'm not fantastic at portraits so it will take a lot of development to create a decent portrait, but it will be fun and a good challenge to have a go.

Here are some initial sketches and some reference imagery:

• The adidas jacket is something of an iconic symbol of his, and makes it easier to identify him in a drawing.
• However colour limitations will prevent me from being able to print that vibrant red of his.
• I need to explore further into the use of backgrounds, and how best to use my colours.
• One idea I have for making the most of the colour scheme, is to perhaps use the blue for the face/sin colour and fine/intricate detail with one of the reds.
• I would like to play about with the lyrics of grime by including some text, as the lyrics/mad bars are what I love the most about grime, they're so witty, humorous and very specific to Britain.

Here are some early thumbnails:

Contextual Reference

Dan Evans:

This artist focuses in grime portraits. He says that he likes to go for the grime stars that have prominent features as this makes them so much easier to depict and portray. He also said that the challenge was finding an angle and frame that was not just the same as photographs of them. This reminded me the importance of using my images to communicate something, as opposed to just creating another likeness of his face, otherwise it might as well just be a photograph.

http://assets.noisey.com/content-images/contentimage/45475/Screen-Shot-2014-11-19-at-10-53-27.jpg

JME is a lot more illustrated than Stormzy is which is one of the reasons for wanting to focus my work on him, he's also very relevant and up and coming at the moment, so that might help to spark a bit more interest in my work online perhaps, if I should so desire to try.

Here is a portrait of JME again, this time by FunnyTummy:

My Brief Selection

My Current List of Briefs for OUIL 603, Extended practice:

1. War Horse (SB1)
2. Travelling Man Exhibition A2 print (SB2)
3. Bright Futures, Unilever (SB3)
4. Illustrating Medical Information (SB4)
5. Arctic Tern Story Book (SB5)
6. Illustrated brie guide to horse anatomy (SB6)
7. Inktober (SB7)

I plan to add more live and competition briefs to it as they come along or when they are released, such as Reportage Awards and Secret 7.

 

The 4 Types of Briefs

Briefs can be subdivided into four categories:

1.  A piece per week
   
2.  Authorial/Process driven - investigating, not responding to a specific problem.
   
3.  Responsive (Live, competition, YCN etc)
   
4.  The Big Kahuna (define your life and solve the worlds problems type.)

Travelling man

I have put myself forward to be included in the upcoming illustration at Travelling Man. The brief is quite basic and open, simply to occupy an A2 portrait space. There will be 16 of us, Joe S is project manager for this.

To keep it cohesive we have decided to have a unifying colour scheme, as everyone works too differently for a more specific theme to be good for everyone.

Interim deadline for initial ideas/thumbnails for the 16th October.

Here is the selected colour scheme: 

As a personal assignment to myself I am going to make a screen print in answer to this brief, so I will probably select only one or two of the chosen colours. I think we are going to agree on a unanimous cream or off white paper stock.

Project Report

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Final Presentation Boards

Final Products

Self-esteem self help book

Fortune Teller:

Here is it in some context, on a pin board at a student union!

 Some students interacting with it:

 Poster:

Poster in reality!