London

So in November we went on a trip to London and I only just rediscovered them so here ya go

Offensive greetings cards

These are some of my outcomes from the first specialist visual communications project I did (I'm now on the third project which gives an idea of how bad I have been at updating this blog). This was called 'Make Your Mark' and we were supposed to communicate something of ourselves through it. Well I ended up making greetings cards and postcards based on offensive texts I had sent and thoughts I have whilst walking the dog. I was inspired predominantly by Mr Bingo and David Hughes, both of whom are awesome and super funny. Aesthetically I took a lot of inspiration from Victorian embroidery samplers #rebel.

 Also they scanned really hideously ew.

Greetings cards~

This one was just plain inside.

This one has a cover and then an uplifting greeting message inside.

Postcards~

I really liked doing this project because it was quite open to interpretation and I just enjoyed having a bit of fun with it. I like working on quite a small scale so postcards and cards worked well for me. I'd quite like to look at doing more in the future.

Colour Experimenting

So I've been quickly looking at switching the colours up and combining things.. Again these are really rough please don't judge kay.

Combining an earthy colour palette and lots of different elements.. I think this looks too messy and cluttered. But there's elements of it I like, like how the house doors and windows in the print echo the photo slightly. 

Then using the same sketchbook page and adding different colourful backgrounds. I think the yellow one works better, having areas that are very flat and then subtly detailed ones.

Then there's these two... the first one doesn't really work that well but I prefer the second because it's much more varied and interesting. 

 From here I think I need to go on and do some actual drawing rather than just pissing about on photoshop.

Streetview experiments

After looking at the work of Mik Godley, particularly his 'Bus Trips' project where he paints from Google streetviews, this gave me the idea to look at using streetview to develop my project on journeys, as it seemed pretty appropriate. This led me to also discover the work of Paulo Cirio, who creates installations by taking the images of people caught on camera in streetview and pasting them to walls in the location where it was captured, creating ghostly impressions. Instead of taking things out of streetview, I wanted to try doing the opposite, and add my drawings in instead. I've been roughly experimenting with this in Photoshop.

 This one worked out the best because it's zoomed in enough to see the detail. With the one before the drawn sections are all too small and not very noticable. I also like the subtle introduction of colour that can be done through the drawings.

This was one just experimenting with combining the satellite view of a route with the drawn page.. I'm not sure how well this works tbh.. I like the contrasting of textures though.

Just looking at these images and the ones from before, I can see that I could work on changing the colour palettes of these ones to tie in better, although I'm not sure how I'll be able to do this whilst still maintaining realism.

Development from the sketchbook project

This week and last week we've been developing the work we did in our sketchbooks with an aim to come up with four final images. The theme I've been concentrating on is journeys and the impressions got from them. I've been experimenting using images taken from my sketchbook and new drawings but right now I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Anyway here's some of the stuff that I've done so far.

These were just some maps and collage I scanned in and changed the colours on. I like the subtle pattern effect it gives.

These ones were all just playing around with different images from my sketchbook.

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Here's a lino cut that I printed on to a map, based on the drawing of the view from my bedroom window from my sketchbook. I don't think I am a natural printmaker.

More random experimentations ^

This afternoon I was using a map to do sketches of people at college in. This page came out the best but because maps are so strongly detailed they don't make very good drawing materials. Ideally I need to try and tone them down a bit before drawing on them. 

So yeah that's some of the stuff I've done, anyone have any ideas for what I can do next?

Scavenge Draw Record Project

So last week a load of people went off to Berlin for the week (I didn't *cries*). So in the meantime I had this Scavenge Draw Record project to do, where we were given a long list of things to collect and record, and we were supposed to fill a sketchbook during the week. Well I failed really badly at completing the list so I'm not even going to go into that. Anyway here's a sample of what I got up to.

This is a collage of the sunrise I saw on Monday morning from memory. I quite like the simplicity of this even though it's not like something I would normally do. I think the text on the collage materials adds to it.

There's been some good sunrises lately

The first page is the view from my bedroom window showing through the page. I decided to leave it like that because I liked the effect. It makes it look hazy and misty like it was at the time. Then we had to record the weather without drawing or photography so the second page is one I took for a walk in the rain.

This was recording a bus journey without taking my pen off the paper. I quite like this as I feel like it builds up an impression of the route and what it is like, and also of continuity. It's really hard to do though because the bus moves so fast! Also that pink pen is a hideous colour.

Me and Chloe and Vince went bowling and drawing which was super fun and I won two out of three games and these were a group of old men that work at the bowling place. This is still one of my favourite things all week. I like how it's abstract but still gives a good impression of the scene.

After bowling we went to the art gallery to write down our impressions on some art. I started off trying hard to be serious and professional but it kind of just degenerated into... this.

THEN we went to the Winter Gardens and drew people and it was super fun people watching and wondering things about them for example what the shifty old man had in his dodgy bag (there's a whole page of ideas in Chloe's sketchbook) and drank hot chocolate and I tried to draw with the hot chocolate but it went wrong so um I *blamed* it on my dog.

Well anyway I found this project good because it encouraged me to draw a lot and try out different things and draw in weird situations and generally do things I wouldn't have otherwise done. It also showed me I prefer drawing in a looser kind of way. Also I can be funny about using colour sometimes. Also I love people watching and I love trying to be funny and failing dismally. ALSO for any of you tumblr hipsters with 'sketchbooks' out there, all my drawing is from life and done in about three seconds flat so don't feel too superior to me k thanks.