Reflective 2

Following on from the gross studios banner my love of drawing has increased. With a new approach of a more developed version of my line drawings I had confidence in trying to put this into practice with some live briefs. When choosing live briefs I always look for ones that i will find most fun. If no fun ideas come to me when i  brainstorm then i scrap the brief. Usually the  breifs i like to chose may involve character design and naivety so anything for children always caught my eye more then an editorial or book cover for example.
Some of the live briefs i did:

- Children's Tennis clothing company (lion mascot)
this brief i knew would be easy for me to come up with an outcome as i draw lions on the regular and the mane gives me a lot to play with in terms of texture. I sketched out so many lions until i got one that felt like it had a sporty aesthetic  and from what i learnt earlier in the year with the orgy that a analogue drawing coloured in digitally can make it look more professional and finished. For a logo especially a sports one it's important to have strong bold sporty colours.
I was happy with the final outcome as it was a sporty naive looking lion with bold colours and nice playful textures. However, I'm not sure if it works well as a mascot as the texture may be hard to transfer onto a lot of different products. This is something that in the future i would like to team up with a graphic designer to help me out with making a mascot more versitile for products.

- t shirt LAU T SHIRT
this was a brief for the new student union t shirt at LAU. For this brief i wanted to design something with limited colour and a simple design. Doing something very immediate seemed like the best option. I did this very lazily but ended up enjoying the image. It was a product of me just testing out brushes on photoshop but it ended up creating a character with some charm. This design came as a happy accident and although contained little thought sometimes a quick idea can be the most effective choice. Especially when i feel like i am spending too much time thinking about the process of making the image i have in my head. It's fun to go in with no intentions and let the work create itself sometimes.

- Lau tote bag
For this one i just wanted to do a very simple design of loads of small things involved within the courses at LAU and put happy faces on them all. small faces is the easiest way to make your work look fun. This design does the job but it doesn't excite me as i don't feel like it's anything original however, it works well commercially.


- Nest submission
For nest i had an idea of a genderless person looking scared and knew that paint would of been perfect for this as recently I had been getting into paint more. Painting is a fun way to show immediacy as the brush strokes offer lots of texture in the colour. I was happy with the submission and glad that it made it within the magazine however, when i look back at my submission it works really well in the context of the magazine but if i had to critic it myself i personally think i can do better humour wise. The joke feels to "Shrigley" to me and this is something i want to avoid at all costs even if i do consider David Shrigley as an influencer I think it's important as a Humorous illustrator to keep my jokes and drawings as original as possible and this piece feels too similar to me even if i never intended it to be originally.

from doing live briefs this year it made me realise a very important thing and that is that i much prefer my own set briefs. A brief that is already set gives me to much limitations even if the brief isn't limited. Perhaps it's more that i feel less confident to approach a serious live brief in a completely silly and stupid way  therefore i keep it commercial with less effort and fun as i would if set it myself.

Reflection 1

From starting the year again I have been looking for new ways to develop my image making. I have been experimenting through cop with cakes and this has really left me wanting to explore on making fun and naive work in different ways. The development of this is early as I feel like i need necessary briefs and ideas in order to achieve this.
One thing i wanted to develop from the start was how i developed my illustrations, i felt confident  in my quick line drawings as they weren't seen as final images to me more like early ideas. However, the process from the original drawing to the finished product can always be challenging as i can't decide on the best process on taking the drawing further. A brief came a long that gave me the opportunity on to expand my practice. It was from a student initiated group called GROSS studios in which a couple of students in our class help organise an exhibition at Hyde Park book club. The theme was 'gross' so, obviously I had a lot of fun thinking of ideas for this project and naturally i settled on the idea of making a large orgy involving pretty much everything in order for it to be more humorous then erotic.
I wanted this large orgy to be more then just a line drawing I thought for a playful charm it would work well if it was all brightly coloured (again trying to further it from being serious and erotic). Therefore, i wanted to experiment different ways on colouring it.
I tried screen printing it first but realised that this didn't create the boldness i needed maybe it was within my registration or the colours chose but i decided that hand printing it didn't bring any charm to it if anything it just made the image more distorted. One thing that got really lost within hand printing it, was the textures on the characters. This is something i recently developed to helpt make the image look stronger then just from a line drawing.
I chose do this Digitally instead as I had more control with the textures and more freedom with the colours. I decided at this point that the piece would be more presentable large at the exhibition therefore, i needed to figure out a way to print it large scale. I came to the conclusion that fabric would work better than paper as I have always wanted to test printing on fabric plus it would give it a more tapestry feel which i think fits the aesthetic and theme of the image. from earlier experience with colouring i decided that printing it digitally on fabric would be a wiser move as my registration was bad with paper therefore, i had little confidence with screen printing large on fabric, a process i haven't yet tried.
Printing it digitally again gave me a more safer bet that the final outcome would be safe and with the deadline of the exhibition around the corner i needed this design secured.
I was really happy with the final outcome of the banner I think it represents a nice development within my illustration practice and shows the more complex details i'm putting into my immediate drawings. Giving the characters a wobbly and naive look making the sexual theme of the banner feel obviously like a joke. I think the colouring of this helped I used the colour schemes of doctor Seuss to help me decide this as i wanted it to have a similar FUN, bold and erratic style.
The banner got some good feedback from the exhibition and it was lots of fun showing it off.
I think the struggles involved within this project has helped me learn that the right process can achieve the right out come.

WHO AM I ?

for my presentation i wanted to highlight my humour within my practice and how i would like to develop my illustrations and image making to make fun creative work that everyone can laugh at and understand. I talked about how my main focus is making people smile with my work and how i want to try new and creative ways to make people smile through image making. For example i show my cake at the end which is a start in 3d image making which i hope to develop more. I talk about how i am influenced on most things outside of illustration. Humour is obviously a big inspiration to my practice so i look for anything that makes me laugh to help me create work. I have recently been getting into filling as many sketchbooks as possible in order to store ideas for later, i have alos been trying to develop these drawings digitally however I am still deciding on effectively doing this.

Reflective Reflections

 Reflections from past works. What worked for you in the past and what did not?
I've dropped paper craft to focus on printing and 3D work paper craft help me realise the importance of shape and colour and gave the humour a simple and naive way to display my ideas but i'm ready to expand into new realms. I have filled many sketchbooks of silly ideas to then hopefully develop them furhter
- Contextual inspiration. This can include works of others from all disciplines. 
hard to pin down
wonder showzen (tv) trash art, general sad life 
- External interests that have an impact on your practice. 

-Your aspirations and goals.
i want to go big
big 3d sculptures
big 3d paintings
kind of a fine art edge to my work and humour
make big jokes 
-The audience of your work.
anyone up for a laugh 
-What do you want to say with your work? 
i only out here to bring smiles to even the most ugliest of faces 
-Finish your pitch with an image that you have already produced that you feel captures your current aspirations with a one liner that underpins your creative practice. 

Studio Brief 2: Individual practice

I chose to work within adult publishing as i wanted to do something a little explicit with this project for example an adult style kids book. i initially decided to do an Anti - joke book but decided that writing the jokes was taking over the illustrations. I was fixated on drawing a dead dog like this one below. Therefore, i thought it would be beneficial for me to transform my project into something based around all these dead dog drawings. Which is how i acquired my idea for a book of roadkill.

 It was hard for me to realise how i wanted to present this as a book as i wanted it to be violent without being so disgusting it no longer became funny. Therefore, i orginally thought to make it informative like an observers guide.
From my early sketches this is the direction i was going for however, once i developed them i realised i would find it easier if i just had a book of cars of dead animals.





From my experimentation and research of this project I have found effective ways of paper cut and adding texture to it.

Here is an example of it.
The process started with the cars. I found it a really effective way to create a detailed car as most paper cut cars looked the same once put together. Adding pencil crayon helped me add the details and texture to create specific kinds of cars.

I then used this method for the animals and felt less satisfied. I think more development on the animals may of ended up with better results. However my early sketches really helped me chose the level of gore of my book.
Once i started doing the experimental animals with pencil crayon the gore of it was decreasing. Probably down to the crayon on the paper cut looked very cute.
Therefore . i went back to my old sketches i realised i found it funniest when the animals where completely splattered.
This made me get out the red gouache cut up all my animals i had made and it instantly increased the image into a more disgusting but stronger image.

For my other pieces i tried to think of humorous promotional gifts to apply my drawings with.
I had ideas such as cooking untensils or a raodkill salt and pepper shaker to push the element of cooking with roadkill.
However, in the end i decided to make car accessories such as an air freshener and bumper sticker.

 I think I developed my paper cut skills within this project and i will enjoy using this method for any other detailed images in the future.
Overall, i like the book produced However, I don't see this as a finsihed project as i still think it could be much better and might take this on personally in my own time to get a book like this together as the naive violent images have a dark humour to them that i like.

Studio Brief 1 : Live brief

Hookworms

These are my final posters for the hookworms brief.

When doing the sketches and the initial ideas for this project i really wanted to steer away from doing worms. I think it's easy to get carried away and take something as easy as a name and make a poster from it as from research i realised a lot of band posters have nothing to do with what the band is called. I did many sketches of worms and birds but none of them felt good enough to become a final outcome. I started to just think of something that would go with the aesthetic of the band therefore, i created this image of a burning limo  which not only visualises a worm in a form of a limo but setting it on fire makes the image more fun and goes with the vibe of the band.

I also created another 2 more from finding some images in an animal book that i thought would make for interesting collages. These ones didn't take me as long as the first 2 as it was mainly just playing about with found images. I think the humour behind these is good and i prefer them. However, I think i would like to develop my graphic design skills in order to make posters like this look a lot more professional. I would also like to collage more with these images and develop having fun with them for further projects.


Animal Farm






When it came to my animal farm project i had similar difficulties as hookworms as i didn't want to include a pig in my final book cover as it would seem pretty obvious and i think it's about time animals farm had a cover without a piggy on.
I was very conflicted in any ideas that explained the book without making it look like a Russian farm.
Towards the end of the deadline i took the idea of just the farm and developed it into a paper cut image.
this late became the final cover for my book as it was most subtle as an idea

I would of liked of had more time to develop this idea even further and used the form of screen printing to add more texture and craft to it. However the deadline pushed me for time.

Summative Project report