Pop up Exhibition research and thought

Here are some examples that I managed to find.

Anorak London

H

After doing the Yorkshire Sculpture park festival Cathy invited us back down to the event that they were running at D&AD'S weekend festival.

When we were down there we also got an opportunity to look around the rest of the festival, which included all of their successful pencil awards entries.

We to go visit Pick Me Up at Sommerset House but they closed the tills by the time we got there so we looked around some other exhibitions instead.

Ideas for the Future

Ran workshops at two very established events, we have experience now. This collective has a lot of potential here are some of the ideas for the future of this collective:

• Bloop - make press pack - to send out to clients and promote ourselves.

• Activity book, go along lines of shape and dissertation, in what I have learnt about artistic development in children. This is a book that would work in a very same way to the theory of trying to prompt a child's imagination and really get them engaging with drawing.
• focus workshop ideas, go back to dissertation themes and beliefs.
• - monster and coffee cup ideas, would really hold up

workshop books:

• -Happy Mistakes.
• -no such things as bad drawings.
• - No such thing as perfect drawings.

Ideas like this one are good inspiration:
http://www.boredpanda.com/coffee-stains/

Shop of dreams. imagination station and creation station. Ideas to work on with regard to Anorak Magazine's next event.

29th Peer Review

Answers to general questions raised during this crit:

• Come along with very specific questions that you've got.
• In terms of physical submission, will have to submit Big Kahuna. Will have to make boards for every brief, the only ones that you have to print out will be the ones for your big Kahuna.
• Square away other briefs now, finish boards.
• Project Report presented through Issuu into your blog.

Below is the written feedback I received for this crit:

General things to take from this:

• Blog posts can be long an rambling, so I need to try and be more succinct. My blog in general just needs quite a bit of refinement. 
• Good synthesis of practice and research, I need to make sure that I ale my work out of it's sketchbook, and push beyond the developmental stage to think about what I can have finalised to show off at the end.
• I have a good level of research, the only problem analysis that they identified was that I have drawn a lot of sharks in my sketchbook, which implies that I maybe ned to consider problem solving more, or just document it better as I know from experience that I am liable to not factor in enough time to appropriately document this stage.

When we went onto the verbal discussion phase, they said they hadn't got anything else to feedback, which wasn't ideal but what I can take from this is that I need to smooth out my blog and just keep working, I voiced my concerns about creating the information boards as they will need a strong element of graphic design to them but they told me not to worry, and just to keep focusing on making beautiful shark drawings, so perhaps I can have the drawn element really strong and leave the graphic information element proposed , as realistically in reality there might hopefully be qualified graphic designers to apply my drawings to the right information.

Evolution and Shark Research

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20151003-the-epic-history-of-sharks

http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/dawkins_evolution.htm

I saw there grew saw fish, thought it lacked lustre and for want of better word was bad, so began to develop my own drawings for it.

The water-colour wash could be more dynamic, but I might try brush or even putting it through photoshop will improve it's lot.

Conservation Campaigns

Here is a link to a very diverse and interesting range of 

Conservation Campaigns:

https://www.ads-ngo.com/category/nature/page/30/

I was looking for examples of how WWF conservations posters and imagery. I wanted to explore the way that the go about it. They have one approach which I think could be very applicable to my drawings. I could do my illustrations, and potentially even just have them as a stand alone image. This rhino image is a good example. 

I had a quick go at mocking up some of my work like this:

The white background means it doesn't look very high impact, and the text looks clumsy at the bottom. I don't think that this is the best example or drawing of a whale shark to exemplify this anyway. Also it would likely need a link to a website or a relevant page to make it a bit more useful?

Overall though I do still think there is scope to make successful work in this way.

Conversation with Ben

THE DEEP Hull - A response and visit

They replied!

I went along for a visit on Tuesday 5th April:

A response! I have now arranged to go in and discuss my project idea with Graham Hill, their senior science officer. He was very friendly and interesting to talk to. 

I explained how I wanted to do this project on sharks, and talked about some of the research and things I had discovered so far, which can be seen on my Studio Practice blog, under the label of 'sea'. He liked the notion of bringing in an illustrators perspective and said that a good thing to aim to make would be a pop up exhibition, the topic of evolution being very interesting one - especially from the point of view of schools and key stage learning. A pop up exhibition is viable as it can be displayed in a whole manner of different locations and this would make my project a good one to do.

I asked him about how I should go about researching and working out what information to include, he said that reading the works of Richard Dawkins would be a good start, and that if I wanted any help understanding something I could always call him and he would be happy to discuss this with me. He talked about how the displays at the Deep were generally pitched at an audience of an intelligent 12 year old. He talked about how the independent actually used a style of writing and language aimed at an intellect not far off this too. 

He said that he would introduce me to their graphic designer, Jenny - and that I could hopefully get the opportunity to go in and shadow her, and learn about what she does and how it all works which would be amazing! 

He also said that he would put me into contact with Ali Hood from the sharks trust, and she could be the one to validate my project! Which would mean I could apply for funding to make it a reality.

The visit was conclude with him saying he would send me some proposal forms and that I should give him a contact of my tutor just to ensure that the project is a viable one, and I don't disappear. I was now have the opportunity to return there whenever I please if I sign in as a student. He gave me a safety induction there and showed me round the place.

Here is a drawing I did of their juvenile zebra sharks after paying them a visit. I had the opportunity to look round again afterwards, so I spent some time photographing and filming them to build up my own reference imagery.

Secret 7 Final Boards

Evaluation:

Seeing all of my resolutions for this brief laid out together in this format, really highlights to me just how bad they are. Too many of them are floating in white space, and of these white space ones the imagery itself is rarely powerful enough to warrant such a standalone performance. I really should have laid them all out like this together at the time and this would have shown me the importance for background composed images, and how much stronger these would have been. In this series the purple cover for Imagine stands out as better simply because it is not just floating white. I did however put a lot  of thought and consideration into the concepts of each piece, and this I think was more successful - I just must lear my lesson and place equal importance on the balanced aesthetic of the final designs, as many of them really need to be resolved much further. So it has been good for me to apply myself to a responsive brief like this, but I need to work much harder in the future to say goodbye to so much white space. Simplicity like that can work, but it hasn't here because the imagery is not of the appropriate standard. In many ways these images feel a little too digitalised, which is not my practice at its strongest.

Again of the gift card range, seeing them all laid out together made me realise how similar that they are, and that in really commercial card industry this wold not happen or work. Also I should have varied the  size and format of them as cards - getting them further away from the record covers which haven't quite worked out.

War Horse Final Designs

Here are my finished three page inserts and my cover design for War Horse.

Evaluation

Overall I am pleased with these designs, as so often my practice resolves around very un-composed images. Composing decent finished images is something I have always struggled to do much to my own disappointment. I do believe that a lot of this is because of the nature of my practice. My most successful images are when my drawings are expressive and free, and this is something that can get lost when I try to apply it to a well constructed and balanced image (which I am capable of as you can see at least a tiny bit from my scamps and early compositions.) I just find it hard to translate this into the aesthetic and image making approach to my final images. I feel with this brief I have begun to bridge something of a compromise between the two. The drawings themselves aimed to be sensitive, simple and raw (whilst also to be in keeping with the aesthetic desirable of a children's book.) Yet there is also a more composed element to them that aims to depict moments of the story with the surrounding scenes. It was hard to find the balance of it when staving for minimalism, and this is where the images are still not quite right. 

The simply draw horse and figure has big potential to be striking and engaging to a wider readership. It is not exclusively children aimed illustration, but more aiming for simplicity, emotional engagement which I hope can be appealing to readers of all ages.

These were the sections of the book that I decided to base my illustrations on:

"Next to me old Zoey leant over her door to try 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 only knew that I wanted to stay with him. To comfort him."

“The horse is yours. Take good care of him, my friend,” and he picked up the rope and handed it to the welshman. As he did sos he held out his other hand in a guesture of friendship and reconciliation. A smile lighting his worn face."

Here is it applied to context:

Leeds Discovery Centre

I contacted and arranged to visit this place partly because I have always wanted to go, and also to source some first hand reference material for my Shark big K project and also for my creatures project.

It's a wonderfully diverse place, I spent several hours there doing some first hand drawing. Below are some of them.

The lady whom I had been liaising with said I could come back anytime in the future, now that I had essentially been inducted there.

h

A dolphins Skull
Shag
Kingfisher

I also took many photographs on an DSLR camera so that I can use them for reference and research. I had a fantastic opportunity to handle and photograph a mix of shark teeth and fossilised shark teeth.

Research Crispin Orthotics

Here is some of my research into different patterns and ideas for what I might try to consider making myself. Some general observations:





https://uk.pinterest.com/jb25131825/patterns/

- Paler is better, some colours are too bright or too harsh. Red is not ideal, blues come across the best.
- Subject matters play a part in defining the overall aesthetic and feel of the product, like the its and bolts pattern on the pint rest board, it looks heavy, clunky and uncomfortable - not ideal for an orthotic.
-  Not too small a gaps of white these give too much of a contrast and make an eye sore. Like these black and white patterns here! This sort of thing should be avoided: