Friday, 22 March 2013
Latest Litho
A stage by stage photo documentation of my latest litho print - stone litho with a key layer made using offset-litho.
Guardian Project
For the last month we've been working on an external project alongside our other work. I chose to do the brief set by the Guardian - an editorial illustration brief for either the money section or the literary review of the Saturday Guardian.
I was illustrating the money section for an article called 'Ten Ways To Greener Spending' - making an illustration for something relating to eco-friendly, 'green' subject matter was pretty challenging as it was hard to avoid cliches of 'green' imagery - trees, recycling symbols etc and also of money ' pound- signs, coins, notes, and piggy banks.
My three initial roughs were: an office from an aerial view - full of plants and signs of recycling etc, an office cubicle with paper forming the furniture and plants etc, and an aerial view of a residential neighbourhood with one house that is green - representing that one person or family has made a choice to spend their money in a greener way.
I was illustrating the money section for an article called 'Ten Ways To Greener Spending' - making an illustration for something relating to eco-friendly, 'green' subject matter was pretty challenging as it was hard to avoid cliches of 'green' imagery - trees, recycling symbols etc and also of money ' pound- signs, coins, notes, and piggy banks.
My three initial roughs were: an office from an aerial view - full of plants and signs of recycling etc, an office cubicle with paper forming the furniture and plants etc, and an aerial view of a residential neighbourhood with one house that is green - representing that one person or family has made a choice to spend their money in a greener way.
In our interim crit at the Guardian offices Sarah Habersham, an art director at the Guardian who was running our project, liked the the composition of office from above and the houses from above. However she did say that they try to avoid using imagery of offices and computers in the money and work sections as they are already quiet dry reading. Therefore I didn't develop the idea of the office close up as it was too 'officey' and Sarah said that for an article as broad as 'Ten Ways To Greener Spending' it was better to have an illustration that was less specific and covered the topic more generally. She also suggested that I make the office cubicles all grey and dull with one picked out in green to suggest, like with the houses, that one person made a choice to go 'green'.
I decided to develop both ideas and see which came out better. When developing the 'houses' illustration I started out with the grass around the houses although once I painted it I had to repaint it as the green was too bright and I needed the green house to be the most prominent part of the image. Also after a tutorial I realised I needed to add some features to the blank houses to show the scale of them - I added streetlamps and windows.
When painting the 'office cubicles' illustration I struggled with what to put in the cubicles as I wanted to avoid painting computers. I tried to make it clear that the grey cubicles were full of paper whereas the 'green' cubicle was mainly fileld with plants and a positive looking graph and recycling bins. I also tried to add the presence of a person by including the top of their head.
At the crit for our finished illustrations Sarah said that she thought the office cubicles were too specifically 'officey' and so would be more suited to the 'Work' section of the paper. She also suggested that the green should be brighter as the whole image is still quite desaturated. So she would choose the houses if she were using one of these illustrations for the article.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
New Painting References
Window by Richard Diebenkorn (from here)
Cityscape #4 by Richard Diebenkorn (from here)
by Wayne Thiebaud (from here)
by Wayne Thiebaud (from here)
Twilight by Howard Hodgkin (from here)
and lastly (although not a painter)
I had a good tutorial this morning and discussed my paintings and use of colour and choice of media. Which led to being given lots of great references! I have so much energy for making paintings now - I've been thinking about trying oil painting but the technicalities kept putting me off. But having looked at the work of Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud and Howard Hodgkins I have been inspired to just get on with making some work and see how it goes! Also I really find William Eggleston's photos interesting - the way he captures a space, its almost nostalgic which really fits into the ideas behind my Personal Project.
Updates of work to come soon!
Updates of work to come soon!
Wednesday, 20 February 2013
Huge amounts of scanning
After 4 months of painting and an entire day of scanning I've finally got all the material to make my book of every house on La Jolla Road, Palm Springs, CA, USA. I also miscounted the amount of paintings numerous times but the most up-to-date count is 94!
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Existing Darwin Book Covers
More inspiration from existing book jackets - this time I am particularly interested in how texts by Charles Darwin have been represented by book covers and made to look current and interesting.
I'm beginning to think that I don't necessarily need to stick to using Dante as the typeface - maybe it would be better to update the book with a more modern typeface. Although serif typefaces are easier to read as a larger body of text. The existing covers of the Darwin books all seem to be quite clinical and white - suggesting science. However the illustrations I have made in response to the book are almost the opposite; I was trying to lighten it and give readers a rest between the dense chapters of scientific text.
I'm also concerned that as my endpapers are very bright and show a scene of animals walking across the page, maybe it would be too much to have another bright scene across the whole cover. However if I make the cover too clean and graphic it will be at odds with the brightly painted illustrations that are spaced throughout the book.
I'm beginning to think that I don't necessarily need to stick to using Dante as the typeface - maybe it would be better to update the book with a more modern typeface. Although serif typefaces are easier to read as a larger body of text. The existing covers of the Darwin books all seem to be quite clinical and white - suggesting science. However the illustrations I have made in response to the book are almost the opposite; I was trying to lighten it and give readers a rest between the dense chapters of scientific text.
I'm also concerned that as my endpapers are very bright and show a scene of animals walking across the page, maybe it would be too much to have another bright scene across the whole cover. However if I make the cover too clean and graphic it will be at odds with the brightly painted illustrations that are spaced throughout the book.
Patterns from paintings
I had a quick tutorial today and we discussed making patterned endpapers or a repeat design rather than having a scene as the it is too involving for an endpaper design. Then I watched a youtube tutorial teaching me how to make a repeat pattern on Photoshop and I played around with this process for an hour or so.
Here are my initial tests - none really work but it has made me think that maybe I should paint a dusty landscape (with no sky) that looks like a repeat pattern or that I could turn into a repeat pattern? I also think that the patterns I've tried so far are too small and busy and so might be more successful if I allowed the images more space.
Here are my initial tests - none really work but it has made me think that maybe I should paint a dusty landscape (with no sky) that looks like a repeat pattern or that I could turn into a repeat pattern? I also think that the patterns I've tried so far are too small and busy and so might be more successful if I allowed the images more space.
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