Brian Dettmer

I found Brian Dettmer in issue 10 of Artbox magazine a few months ago and was blown away by his work. I don't think there's anybody out there that can't be blown away though. He is a conceptual artist from Chicago who spends his time delicately cutting into media that has already been published (mostly books in the traditional sense) to create stunning visuals. He seals the book by it's edges so all the pages are locked in, then using intricate tools slowly carves the pages back out, one page at a time. It has been said that his work is a statement on the vulnerability of the static media forms of that past, saying that knowledge and information is constantly in change making these old forms of information less powerful tools of the present.

I really like this work above because one can appreciate the time and effort that went into creating the pieces, and they are visually mesmerising. But also i like the fact that it does sort of manifest part if Dettmers personality. In the interview in Artbox magazine he explaind how he comes up with the finished result through process of elimination:

"Whenever i'm worknig on a book, i know i can potentially miss several images that could have been great. I don't worry that i'll miss a beautiful image because there will always be more and there is onlya certain amount control i can have over a book that already exists. I try to go to one page, or remove one layer at a time so that i can use the most interesting image of text in a piece. Sometimes i fragment of an image below something i have already carved around and i want to use the whole image. So i go will go back and remove the piece i previously thought i would originally keep."

I like this type of planning where he follows a strict set of rules with his books yet the process will lead him to a different outcome every time, depending on mood, day, current issues, type of book etc. It's like wanting to create a piece of artwork but letting the results come out for themselves, rather than forcefully.

Las Meninas: Final Outcomes

This post is so late in the making! Here are the three final versions from the Las Meninas summer project, where we each produced an image based on a sculpture called Ghost (see previous Las Meninas posts). Generally i think all three of them turned out really well, and i was suprised to see that although we'd all included each others elements in our new versions the end results have turned out so varied!

This first final outcome bagan as Katies piece with the sketch of a figure. Paul then worked on it by adding some really cool-looking characters that appear to be part of her self-conscious, as they all appear to be surrounding her brain. When i got the piece i was confused as to what i could possibly add to the pice but ultimately thought that there wasn't a strong enough relationshipbetween the two. So i played aroung with my limited skills on photoshop and changed the saturation and hue to create a cold blue effect. This, i thought, brought the characters relationship with the figure together. I also added a lens flare to create a more realistic look on the overall picture.

The second picure was started by Paul as a beautifulgirl with half of her face escaping out into a butterfly. I continued the piece by adding the flowers from my original piece and making a montage of them, desaturating the colour and producing a background, then adding a little green colour to spice it up. Then Katiemade the picture more natural by using watercolour, and only keeping some of the flowers. She then used more of the flowers in an isolated position to represent the lonliness of the girl.

And finally here is the final outcome of my original picture. Istarted with a bright and colourful photo/ mirror frame in the style of what i thought the girl might make herself. Then Katie used her original picture of the girl and stuck her in the middle of the frame. She also added a few line drawings to compliment the colours. Finally Paul used my colour scheme to add a border, bird and some typography, which really makes the piece look finished.

Card Designs

For project one of our first brief of the year we had to create a "thing", an object that we could design and actually put into production. We had to come up with the concept, design and final excecution, meaning the the final result was to look professional. As part of my research i found this website full of interesting card designs, and these two in particular caught my eye so tohught i'd share them on here.

Dot. The world's smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Noki...

Here's the stop motion video i saw not too long ago that was probably the main source of inspiration for my narrative project. I was amazed at the amazinglysmall scope and how it affected the overall look of the piece, but that was obviously something i couldn't respond to in less than three weeks. So i used the idea of the character staying pretty much in the centre of the picture and the background reeling continuously, keeping the narrative at a consistant pace.

This cool animation is actually a viral video ste out by Nokia, advertising (as you can see at the end of the video) on it's new device, the Nokia N8 using Cellscope technology that you can get on the phone. The actual animation was created by Sumo Science.

Chris Bachalo

Chris Bachalo is a very popular comic book artist from Cananda. I know of him because i essentially grew up with his artwork, i collected X-men comics since i was about ten, so throughout the 1990's there were a lot of stories where he'd feature as the penciller. He has an extremely distinct style compared to other pencillers i grew up looking at, where he uses angular shaped to draw his characters.I like him because whilst other artists sometimes go for the most realistic look possible, Bachalo goes for a unique cartoony look which does a good job of showing atmosphere and emotion on characters faces. He accentuates the male heroes muscles to make them look more powerful, and focusses on making the heroines look slimmer and more agile. Most of the pictures shown here are from a selection of x-men comics, except picture two which is another unrelated comic.

A point to make is also that he's only the penciller, so always works hand in hand with a writer, editor and inker for story and colours. This combination makes up the feel of the comic. Aside form pencilling for comics he has been involved in other projects in magazines and has had guest appearances on TV shows such as Pictionary. I decided to include this in my blog because of project two of the first brief of the year.