I finally got my main design finished for my Christmas card and it's now available for purchase! I re-done the lighting on the card and made some small tweaks, like turning the lamp on. I'm very happy with the outcome and I know have it for sale on Etsy!
I finished another design set for Christmas cards, these are a unique idea I haven't really seen before. They're recipe cards so the actual Christmas card has a bit more use to it rather than just being recycled after Christmas!
My self directed project for my final third year is The Renaissance. It started off with Rome as a general focus and slowly I decided I love the architecture and artists of the Renaissance period. I create this image based on work by Cameron Moll who creates images of structures in type. I chose St Peter's because of how impressive the architecture is not just inside but outside too. I used Times New Roman because that's the type face that can be seen on the outside of the building, I only used numerals and letters to create the shape of the building.
I then took the image and created it into a silk screen, I tried two toned layers as well as including colour to certain parts of the building. I worked at an A3 scale on Photoshop and printed onto A2. You can see the whole collection of prints on my website or by clicking one of the images.
I have gotten around to producing a design for a Christmas card. After finishing up this idea I thought I'll also try one without Santa and perhaps another with either a cat or dog in front of the fire. Then I could sell a set of 3 and they'd all be different. I bought a few doll house Christmas items and arranged them in my doll house (while giving the back wall new wallpaper) and set up this shot. This was a lot of fun both to set up, shoot and edit. Hopefully I get some custom once the cards arrive and I can get printing!
In a workshop by one of our lecture's, Lorna, I looked at using cut and paste methods from pre-exisiting materials to create a new illustration. I had to choose a type of machine/appliance and create a super hero that held the qualities of that machine. We had to consider costume, accessories and a name. I wanted my super hero to be themed around my current subject, The Renaissance, so I chose the pasta making machine. Using some books I had of Michelangelo's paintings I cut out one that featured Christ and chose him to be the 'Perfect Pasta Painter'; his power of being able to paint pasta perfectly and it comes to live. How does this save the world?.. By providing delicious perfect pasta whenever my super hero paints! He holds his best paint brushes and his staff of pasta to provide those who need a bite to eat.
I saw this in a window of a charity shop and I knew I instantly had to buy it because all the furniture alone in the house would be worth way more than the charity shop were charging. I got the whole lot for £20 and I know after previous projects that some of the items would cost a lot of eBay. Just the bed side lamp alone would range between £3-£5. Finding a china bath like that would also be an expensive buy, a pretty lucky sighting! All of this will work in future photo shoots!
Over the summer I bought got two new books that I really liked. One was bought as a gift for me and the other I bought myself because I wanted to add it to my collection.
The first book is by Lauren Child. It's retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears but done with photographs and 3D sets. Similar to the photos I like to do, I thought having this book would tie in well with my own work as well as Lauren being one of my inspirations. The book is also interesting because at the back it has a "behind the scenes" section in which you can see how the sets and shoot was done. It is also a collaborative book with a photographer and set designer.
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The second book was bought as a gift from Rome, although it can be bought anywhere, it is the story of Alice in Wonderland. This book is an advanced pop up book, the time and effort put into this book is amazing. Every element of the book is different to the last and it features a wide range of mechanics in paper craft. It is created by Robert Sabuda with the original text from Lewis Carroll.
I wanted to create a range of possible birthday/occasion cards that could be given to family members or friends. I took my old favourite 90's toy 'Betty Spaghetti' and arranged them in situations that could be featured on the front of the card. Most of the scenes are brothers and sisters helping each other out. I did a few other scenes but the lighting wasn't that great once I reviewed the photos.
Looking at the book sculptures byAlexander Korzer-RobinsonI decided to create my own. I bought an encyclopedia of Knights and Chivalry and one by one began to remove the pages only leaving some images. The book had 236 pages and only 29 separate images were left by the end. It is a long process but very rewarding, you can see the image building up bit by bit and it's surprising how well the images through out the book can layer one into one narrative. A very delicate but fun process.
Browsing DeviantArt and I saw this book that had been crafted into a sort of treasure chest. It just looks really pretty and almost like a collectable. It is very delicate and by the appearance has a lot of tiny hand made hard back books or scrolls. It relates to my current project because it could be an artist book. It would also be quite a unique take as its more of an object based piece.
After finding a new love with tunnel books I created a few mock ups and then a final version. I wanted the Coat of Arms to go back in layers with each layer broken down into each component of the arms. I painted by own Coat of Arms for my surname and made a book to resemble the materials medieval books were made from.
My new project is based around making and the history of books. My brief is to pick a book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and then take inspiration from it and move in a certain direction. I chose the book "Sir Nigel" which is the story of Knight from the Medieval period. This lead me to research what books looked like that were made from the Medieval time period. I then created my own book based upon my research, so this is my second attempt at a leather covered book. It still needs work but I'm quite happy with the final look, especially the leather bound strap!
I used a couple of clippings from magazines and decided to create some posters that would draw in the audience via violence. Violence seems to have more of an attraction than positive medias. I thought I'd play on peoples attraction and then once they actually see the poster, it is in fact a positive message. They're just basically watered down acrylic paint splatters with the cut out and some letter pressed facts.
Trying my skills at Illustrator I wanted to create a pixel animation that could be resized without loosing the "pixel" look. Technically using Illustrator does not allow the creation of images by pixels because it's a vector based program. By using Photoshop I could not resize the pixels so I did a painful process on Illustration using grids.This ended up taking hours because of the process I chose but I'm happy with the outcome!
I started to try out some visual work for my video game project by exploring how to visual the facts I'd found out. I created the posters in InDesign and tried to play with the words on how I presented the facts. So I tried to make the "Sharpen" seem out of focus on the poster about eyesight and for the gender I did a male and female video game counterpart. The font along the bottom was not a successful choice for silk screening as it would dry out too quickly and result in it not printing. I also think the screen was either too exposed or there was something on the paper because it would print grains. The grains did go after the screen dried out with some ink on but then so did the font along the bottom. I'll have to change the font if I want to print these again.
This one I haven't made into a screen yet because it needs to blur with half tone dots, using an effect blur won't come out on the silkscreens.
My new project, Social Awareness, is looking at how video games affect children both positively and negatively. I tried to think of a way that I could portray the message for both children and parents but using video games to represent my message. The most popular video game for children is Minecraft, it also offers a lot of positives to video games. So I created a paper Steve and a friend to represent how playing online allows you to make friends. I want to do a series of these posters but putting the characters in real settings not game ones. It just so happens to be very wet at the moment restricting my use of outside.
Upon doing some research into some artist for my Social Awareness project, which I'm looking at video games, I found this artist who draws video games but as children books. He manages to give the game a new title that makes it seem more suitable for children. He also creates covers for TV series and movies. I really like these illustrations!
