Invisible Cities Project

At this stage of the course we have been put into our pathways, I have chosen Graphic and visual communication because I want to peruse illustration. Our First project is based on a book called invisible cities, a collection of made up stories told by Marco Polo to the emperor of Asia of the lands he owned which are all based on parts of Venice. The story I received was of a place called Baucis, city on stilts in the forest.

I looked for source material of fantasy cities and preconceived ideas of Baucis and from these pictures I began to draw changing a few details and adding my own style.

I then moved onto looking at scaffolding and structures with stilts to understand how to represent them with line.

Again I drew more structures with scaffolding.

Using Photoshop I merged the pictures together, this isn't the final outcome but it is the kind of random interconnection I want in the city I create.

I took Photographs in my garden of structures that all ready existed and ones I created with odd bits of wood and drew from them so that i could gather some primary sources.

Pathway Projects

At this part of the course we went into the product pathways phase where we spent one week in each each of the areas. Fine art, Graphic communication, fashion and 3d design. and produced an outcome based on a quote that we had chosen. My quote was the"only real enemy to have ever existed is an internal one"form the road to suicide.

This outcome was produced in the 3D design phase, we where tasked with creating a chair based on the quote. A chair is some thing we sit on so we could use a stable as a chair or a stall or even the floor. I decide to create a box chair using wood with perspex plastic to create a display with an apple core mounted on a nail. the idea that the apple is the internal self eating away at its self as the apple rots.

For the fashion brief we had to bring in a shirt, we put it on in different ways and then deconstructed it to create an new outcome.

For the fine art brief painted two red circles, one bigger than the other the idea that we all have a bad side with in us represented by the red and if we let it, it will consume us.

For the graphics pathway we experimented with typography.

Thomas Grunfeld And Misfits

Thomas Grunfeld is a 3D artist who works through misfits, the combination of different animals preserved through taxidermy, combined to create new animals. Bellow are example I have created using Photoshop.

The combination of a stag and a stag beetle, the back legs and horns have been change. I have used blur effects and change the contrast of the the stag's fur as well as the stamp tool to blur the two better.

combination of an elephant and an eagle.

Lion and a chameleon 

Eagle and a dog

Here using only the parts of a dragonfly I have recreated a flower coming back to the idea of repetition in nature using the wings as the petals of the flower.

Ephemera Project

Ephemera- things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time.

Following a trip to the natural history museum we were tasked with drawing in charcoal from a picture we took on a large piece of paper as a class. When we finished the drawing we where told to rub it out and then move to another spot and draw from another picture that we had taken. We where then allowed to take any part of the drawing that we wanted to develop our selves. The idea behind the rubbing out was that a part of the drawing was still there like fossils in the museum but not the whole thing. This would then become the platform of a new drawing or new life. The remaining part of the drawing was torn up, some was burnt, shown in the series of photos bellow and the rest we made into paper.

Here we can see the burning of the paper, the paper is a fuel for the fire a release of energy; heat, light and sound and the paper is transformed into ash. To me this is symbolic of life, death being just a human word for a transformation, a transition into something else. For instance the paper has become ash, but the ash could be drawn with it has transformed from the platform to the drawing tool.  

Ink Experiments

As well as exploring concepts I have explored mediums in more depth one I chose in particular being ink. Looking at tattoo and Japanese I wanted to explore the potential of ink for myself.

As one concept I have been exploring is nature I decide to photograph how ink acts on its own by dropping it in water and capturing the iteration. It is interesting to see how fluids interact with each other especially if we are used to seeing liquids of the same type where we can't distinguish between the two.

For this picture I moved the camera in closer shone a light trough for better contrast to capture more details the ink as it transitions to equilibrium. 

Moved the camera back and dripped more ink in.

Took a vertical diagonal view and moved in closer where I captured more wisps and and areas of varying density where it was darker and lighter. 

This time I began with red ink, it looked like blood dripping into water, I waited for the ink to mix and then added black ink, it reminded be of oriental films and artwork in terms of the simplicity of the images the interaction formed, creating black clouds in the red sunset sky.

While photographing the experiment I notices the shadow cast on the table as a result of the light refracting through the glass, the glass and water acting as a prism, creating the increasing angular light strip but also as it was translucent the colour of the light was filtered by the ink. It also gave a ripple effect at the ink moved trough the water.

Inspired by Japanese style techniques I used a Japanese brush to paint some nature related pictures using the iconic swishing motions in ink. I like the contrast between the red and black and how it fills the space created by the solid black lines.  

I moved onto splashing and blowing the ink painting a rose and then making it look like the ink is running out or as if it was thrown at a window and the force caused the colour to leak out.

Nature Mixed Media

To continue with this idea of repetition and pattern in nature I pushed further into collage and mixed media.

If you made the world 2D and took out all the lines you would be looking at a big mix of colours, so I started with this.

The next stage was to add the lines I wanted so using a scalpel I cut out the desired shape that resembled leaves but could also be feathers or petals. I kept the cut out skeleton that was left behind because of the interesting shape it came where the lines where coloured and the negative space became the object. 

I repeated the process again with a more muddy coloring and gave the cut out pieces a more even petal shape.

I combined all of the cut outs I did including another one where I repeated the process for making the fish scales. This was a great experiment for me as I rarely use collage and mixed media and as I result I have found new ways of adding new dimensions to my illustrations.

This final mix media experiment was inspired by the spirals in a snail shell, and using a mathematical set of numbers called the Fibonacci sequence where the following in the sequence is a result of the sum of the two perquisite numbers e.g 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13... the sizes of the spirals stay proportionate. I filled the spirals with parts torn from magazines.

Nature Illustration

From all of the drawings that I had done before this with an outdoors nature theme trending the area of my experimentation was going to related to nature, how can I represent nature through illustration and how can I enhance illustration through things we find in nature.

To start off I did a concept illustration of nature, the style inspired by Japanese tattoo artwork for its bright colours with my own twist to it. To me nature is wild, random and bursting with colour. If you visit a florist or a nature garden your senses are overloaded with colour and smells. My picture dosn't make much sense because water is unlikely to come bursting form a tree trunk with a giant coy carp riding a huge wave but what I was trying to get at was how nature is interconnected just as this drawing is. Nature is made up of hundreds of eco systems each animal, plant and insect playing its part like cogs in a pocket watch to keep it ticking. 

While drawing the concept of nature illustration I noticed something, Repetition. Flowers have many petals, fish many scales, and birds many feathers. Contrary to common belief of nature being random, it has a habit of repeating its self. I took this as an opportunity to to further explore illustration, first by  drawing the carp again and giving it a black outline only.

I added colour, only to the scales as this is my point of focus using one colour as this emphasises the repetition. 

Here I brushed a piece of paper in black and red ink to give an interesting pattern, I cut the paper into scale shapes and stuck each scale on overlapping them. This gives a scale textured effect so now the illustration is more than just something to look at, you can touch it as well.

Using some brown paper form a gift shop which was decorated with cherubs and music notation I did the same thing again, this has less of a texture and the edges of the scales are less defined. 

For my Final experiment I gathered leaves from outside the front of my house. Using pva glue I stuck them down. This doesn't have nearly the same amount of repetition to it except for the colour of the leaves. what is interesting the the overlapping of the smaller pieces leaf and the edges formed that are almost scale like.

Instillation

Using only the A2 drawings that we had to draw accurately we had to create an instillation, we could photo copy it, invert the colours, enlarge and make it smaller but we had to use the drawing and could only cut along the lines be had draw. Folding was allowed.

 

Here are a series of pictures of the instillation that I created it has a bit of a Polynesian feel to it, some of the parts looking like totems and masks, the wood grain of the sling shot contributes to this. 

A2 Drawings

Drawing is effectively just making lots of marks until you've created something. The question is which marks do you make and why. These are some drawings I made using charcoal and pencil.

In this picture I represented nature through mark making. How do you perceive nature? For me it is free flowing, quick random marks, swoops and swirls, swishes and slashes nothing straight and rigid.

I took an item from my assemblage project, the sling shot and did two pictures trying to represent it  though to different contexts, the first being childhood. The end picture is the one bellow.

Young Children use scribbles, strong marks, bold with more of an emphasis on the main features as oppose to details.

Here I tried to connect the picture to nature, the item is made of wood so I gave it roots at the bottom. The handle of the sling shot still has that trunk like shape which is why I made the connection to a tree.

The next challenge was to do a drawing as detailed as you could, measuring with a ruler and scaling up to get the size accurate as possible. next we had to find a object that related to our original one, I chose bark.

Box Art and Assemblage

The First project that we started for Art Foundation was the Assemblage project where by we had to fill a box with items that had significan value to us, memory triggers, things that gave us nostalgic flash backs. For the purpose of this I decided to make my own using materials at home, partly because I didn't have a good enough box but also because the act of making things with odds and ends is something I did a lot when I was younger. Wether that be tree houses, barricades or other amusements, the act helped me to connect with the past. The items I filled the box with where photos from a holiday in spain, youth football team and my Army Cadet Force detachment about 4- 5 years ago. Hanging a bag containing a rosary, im not religious but my uncle brought it back from Brazil when he was on a retreat while he had cancer, he is still alive and when ever I see it I remember all the times he visited as I was growing up. The wooden object is a sling shot without the sling and elastic (it broke) but this is another link to my child hood and what I used to get up to. The poppy, I made when I was 7 at school during remembrance, I dedicated it to my grandfather who served in WW2. He died when I was 5 or 6 so this is a trigger for some of my earliest memories and moments I shared with him. I wear glasses so they where something I had to include as the are part of my identity and are a vesel that I use to see the world. The rank slide shows the final rank that I achieved in the ACF, when I look at this I remember all that I have achieved from when I joined in 2008 and left in 2013, every thing I learned and the friends that I made as well as the person that it made me. The ps2 memory card still holds memory of games I played when I was younger from about 10 years ago, I have a great love for gaming and the worlds it allows you to explore as the people that you meet and play with around the world online. This is also for me a representation of how things evolve, technology and experiences both virtual and real, communities around the world becoming one who in the past where at war, enslaved, persecuted and isolated because technology doesn't discriminate. 

Evaluation of Prep

My journey began with the idea of a dark and twisted side to the alice in wonderland franchise. I was trying to find the sinister undertones that are present in the books and films, the idea of a young girl lost in a world that she had wished to be true, an escape that children often dream up and play in in their mind. Initially I thought of the idea that Alice was insane, locked in an asylum where she explored wonderland inside her mind. the world of wonderland and the characters from within it would appear to burst from her head as Alice looked on with menace on her face emphasising the idea that wonderland was normal to her, even though if you explain to someone about the world you vista in your head and described wonderland, they would thin you where a rambling mad person (that is how you would appear on the outside). This would make the viewer the in-between viewing what is inside from the outside and appreciating the world she conjured but understanding that it wasn't normal. Other ideas where to explore the "hippie" idea that Alice was on drugs, giant psychedelic mushrooms, opium and wild trips with strangers, living free and wild with all the cares of a child (none other than having fun). Exploring wonderland from a secondary point of view as if alice was taking you on her trip again putting you in-between by not being on a trip but experiencing hers. Another was the idea of the monsters that where created for wonderland, put the viewer in the place of alice and let them experience the fear that Alice would have felt when she came into contact with the jabberwocky or the bandersnatch. Though I realised that this was far off from my original brief which was to illustrate scenes from the book. I found one particular scene being the little crocodile poem

To find inspiration and guidance I looked to the original illustrator of the world, that being John Tinnel to make my on versions of his characters. As all of the illustration in the book where black and white I looked to modern illustrator. I wanted colour. I found Raphael Vicenzi. The vibrant explosive colours in his work where what I needed bring my illustrations to life.

Through the project some digital experiments which where a big help in the find of a composition of my final piece. I also looked into the defining features of characters, that being the face an looked into tutorials on how to draw things like lips and eyes as they are not my strong points.

In conclusion I was a little disappointed at the end of the exam as i wanted to do three illustrations and managed to finnish two because of my decision to do the little crocodile illustration as an A piece. This  do not regret as as the extra size allowed me to add more detail and rendering giving a more fuller picture. I liked the project but would have enjoyed it more if the brief was more flexible to let me develop my original ideas.

Digital experiments (illustration Brief).

I began to experiment with pictures using tutorials from the internet. All in completely different styles and representing different emotions, scenarios and a multitude of different layering, drawing and picture editing techniques done in Photoshop.

First off I explored a tutorial created to show how to make a digital collage, working in the style Miles Donovan using layering and blending techniques. The tutorial was very different to my outcome in the sense that it was a lot more regimented linear and was based on London. I on the other hand based mine on Alice in wonderland and tried to recreate a darker more overwhelming world with the focal point around Alice from the perspective that she had just arrived. I decided that the images of mushrooms that I obtained where too life like, plain and realistic, so decided to first off change the contrast of the background of the bottom image making it brighter, breaking away from reality. I used the blur tool to give a mirage/ hallucination effect. I did the same with the rest of the mushrooms I used to make them more vibrant. I crammed the images together to give the idea off being surround and emphasise the lost feeling that at Alice would have been experiencing. The dark colours give the idea of despair and being lost to the world. I placed the mad hatter looking down on her and the Cheshire cat above her shoulder to give the idea that they are tormenting her.

The second was a Chris Ede inspire illustration tutorial except instead of using a bird I chose to use a caterpillar to relate the piece to Alice in Wonderland. The caterpillar is blue and as Chris Ede uses varied shades of the same colour, I did the same using varied shades of blue. I used postures effects on the caterpillar to turn the shades into blocks of colour. I change the contrast an the lighting on the mushrooms to give more of a negative like effect as if they are getting brighter and eventually will turn bright white giving the piece a buzz about it. For the rest of the foliage  used roses poppies. The use of the poppies relates to the pipe the caterpillar smokes, most likely opium which comes from poppies and was a popular recreational drug but was also legal at the time sand so I began to make giant dense garden the surrounds the right hand side of the caterpillar. I used the selection tools to allow me to delete the shape of the flowers from other pictures. The other pictures were blue butterflies which allowed me to get caring textures of blue and shade on the picture and by layering and rotating the pictures and changing the fill and opacity it gives the "garden" some depth and makes it look like a a lot is going on in there. I then began to trace over the original pictures with the pencil tool so that I could obtain the details of the pictures. I then put the traces over the top to give the effect you now see. I made a copy of the rose trace and placed it on its own so there was no colour to fill the empty space, making it look as if fading into the mist of the dissolved background.

This tutorial that I followed taught me how to make a vintage collage poster using a few layering techniques and the pen tool. Originally it was for a flying woman but I decide to add a little humor an incorporate the vault boy from Fallout, a game based on a post apocalyptic world which occurred in the 50s. I put a nuclear explosion in the background and in the foreground wrote the words have a good day in the typical "perfect American white picket fence" style where there is an emphasis in remaining ignorant in the face of danger.

Photographers Gallery trip

The photographers gallery is located on rambles street, around five to ten minutes from Oxford Circus tube station and is the largest public gallery dedicated to photography in London and it allows visitors to explore photography in all its forms. When we visit the exhibition the work of Laura Letinsky, Geraldo De Barros, Jan Svoboda's, Peggy Franck, Nicole Wermers', Batia Suter, Anna Parkina, Roy Arden, Clunie Reid.

Geraldo De Barros was a Brazilian painter, photographer and industrial designer and he is considered a pioneer of modern artist photography as well as for a generation of contemporary practitioners. Born is Sao Paulo in 1923 Geraldo first established himself as a painter and a founding member of the expressionist painting studio Grupo 15. In addition to painting he began experimenting with photography and in 1946 joined the Bandeirant photo club who aimed to rejuvenated photography by bringing it away from the realism in photos which come strait from the camera. Geraldo was influenced by Gestalt theory and the idea of an incomplete form in relation to the complete version. I could see this in his exhibition even though it was unintentional because he died before finishing a collection of work, the picture bellow is an example of one of those pieces.(Link)

This piece is in that unfinished style and is one of the last  in a series that he worked on. I think that the idea  of work intentionally being left unfinished expresses that the true art in in the preparation. The taking of the photo, the editing, developing and presenting of the piece. Using this picture as an example of that, the image looks as if the artist has posted a negative up on a wall to inspect the quality and details but also to compare against the other photographs they had taken.  They could all be of the same place, but on every occasions, one factor could be different meaning that every picture is unique. The Colours present to me the idea of a dream-scape. vibrant unnatural and out of this world. When I think of the significance of this in relation to the time period where there weren't computers with advanced programs like today Photoshop and illustrator and so most experiments would have been done by changing setting on the camera and by hand and most probably outcomes accidental adding o the art in journey idea. As he was elderly at the time he crated this image it would have been unintentional but the colours could be related to the prevalent underground electronic music and recreational drug culture. Psychedelically vibrant colours but also a lot of the music was created through experimentation and by accident.

John Tenniel in-depth analysis

Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and cartoonist who's work was prominent in the later half of the 19th century in England. He is considered important in terms of the social, literary and history of art in that period. In 1893 he was knighted by Queen Victoria for his achievements in his field. Two of his most well known accomplishments are his work as the principle political cartoonist for England's Punch magazine (a weekly humor and satire magazine lasting from 1841 to 1992, drawing its name from the glove puppet act Punch and Judy) and later Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland and Alice through the looking glass.

This illustration is John Tenniel's interpretation of Davy Jones sitting on his locker. This image itself is dated to 1892 and shows Davy Jones reading a chart if the 1789 Ferrol harbour which was home to the HMS Howe which had run aground the same year. Davy Jones itself is an idiom for the bottom of or death at sea. The idea that when a person died there, their body would sink down into Davy Jones locker where it would remain. This satire illustration was making a joke of the incident by showing Davy jones looking for the ship on the map. 

Here is another example of the the work of John Tenniel. The piece was taken from Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland and shows the caterpillar smoking a pipe and talking to her as she peeps over the giant mushroom. When I look closer at the techniques that where used to apply the image, it appears    that initially pen an ink where used to draw the image because of the defined lines and the use of cross hatching. But of course this would be very in-efficient because thousands of copies would have been made. There for they would have created etchings and then put them into a print press.

 
In the sequel, Alice through the looking glass, Alice encounters the Jabberwocky. She first discovers the Jabberwocky in a poem in the back to front world of a looking glass. The Jabberwocky is a large reptile like creature, many features where drawn from dinosaurs, its scaled leathery skin and wings resembling those of a pterodactyl as well as its snake-like tale and claws with talons.