Transatlantic Sketchbook Project 2012

So this post is a tiiiny bit personal but it's still related to design so thats okay right? Anyway this is The Sketchbook Project 2012. Pretty much the sketchbook project is participated by hundreds of artists and designers all over the world. All the books are sent by a given time to New York and are put on display in various art galaries throughout the US and Canda. It does actually come over to the UK but only to London (booooo!) I did email suggestions of The Baltic and Tullie House but I doubt that'll happen. I signed up to do this in the summer and chose "Transatlantic" as my subject. The sketchbook is of horrendous quality and I have rebound most of it myself. To be fair I haven't even started the project but I will when I have free time (lol, free time?). If you want your work on display over the world and would like a fun project to do then sign up!

http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

Illustrator fun!

I'm not much of a illustrator by hand but I love getting on a computer and playing in Adobe Illustrator. Graphic work is so much stronger for me than freehand. I find Marcs sessions very informative and interesting.

Design in Context

This is my work for Nick Dodds and my group for our 70's game concept:

Artwork by: Yvonne Kennedy and Kraig Mitchell.

Memories of China

So I'm finally back to the land of the living and seem to be (hopefully) out of the woods with this illness I've been having problems with! I've been given a new brief on composition to play with which I can easily say I'm enjoying quite a lot I feel very unrestricted to play with colour and imagery. The first concept I am looking at right now is "Memories of China". I feel quite in touch with Memories of China as my boyfriend is Chinese and I've spent quite a bit of time immeresed in various aspects of his culture. I have quite a thing for chinese paper lanterns that you can find hanging up in any chinese supermarket.

One artist I've been looking at is Jing Ling and his paintings on nature such as lotus flowers;

I was thinking of doing something similar to this for my literal representation, I'm thinking of abstracting using the idea of Chinese Lanterns in various compositions with pattern.

Finally here are some pictures I've played with using composition to create something intresting and different. I've also played with the focus to give a contrasting effect. To continue the theme of Memories of China I decided to use the Lucky Chinese Cat (which infact may be a Japanese version but they are very similar).

Jenny Saville

 

Jenny Saville has been one of my favourite artists since I was introduced to her work while studying on my access course. I feel like her work is appropriate for my colour brief. Her use of colour is amazing it is raw and challenges all our perceptions of what is beautiful and what is grotesque. To achieve this effect she uses oil painting and scrapes parts of the paint away to achieve her raw fleshy tones. This is probably not something that would be easily emulated in my own colour work as oil paintings just take far too long to dry.

Black & White Type (Project 1)

So my first crit wasn't that bad, infact it was really helpful. I've been laid up in bed all week with flu, even typing this I feel sick. We have been given a new brief to do with Colour and moving typography which I will be attempting to start tomorrow and thankfully I do have some ideas. I'm excited to get my watercolour paints out again.

Research

 

Isn't this pretty? I wonder if I can work with a similar shape for my "Pioneer Aviator" all attempts as of yet to make something visually intresting have fallen flat.

Now medieval torture for example has many different idea paths to explore for example stretched type, spikes etc. The only problem I seem to be having with this project is how restricting black and white is I am resisting the urge to throw a massive splodge of bright red into my medieval torture ideas. On a good note I may have found my perfect idea for one of my final ideas. It was actually bought up by my lecturer Tony and it was intended to be a medieval torturer. This has given me a fantastic idea for my final piece.