Artist Research: Chad McCail

So when I went to my second portfolio visit with Synergy Sheffield I learned quite a lot, but when the guys had a look at my portfolio itself I was also directed to the work of Chad McCail.

Taz, one of the members, saw my portfolio and was drawn to the work I did for the Heinz Salad Cream advert, where I had line drawings with a lot of block and similar colours. He used McCail in his dissertation so showed me the similarities we have. I quite liked the fact that I was shown another artist that had a similar style to the one I used for the advert because I was at a time of low confidence when I was creating work like, that, so it ws actually a big confidence boost to see that other work like mine had interest/ was being commissioned!

However, I have moved on to a new style now anyway, but this kind of art and illustration is a good reference to come back to for the earlier stages of my work. The development of my images start off with a lot more drawing than printing, so McCail might be a guy to keep an eye on.

However, I think that McCail’s work, for me, is a bit too clean. There is a lot less personality than I have seen in a lot of other artists work recently, so it’s not the direction I really want to go in. It seems to be the kind of work one would see in an instruction manual, almost too robotic.

Final Major Project: Final Posters

I have some final pieces to hand in! I had to leave the whole book idea for marking, but that might still come later on for my show. I have ended up with a series of posters, half landscape, half portrait, depicting scenes of my dreams. They all include some printing technique, some type and some of them also have line drawings, all on an offset white background.

I have to say that after a good few weeks of me being confused with what I was doing, and then settling down on this idea, I am fairly happy with what I have achieved!

I like the fact that I have created a set of posters that represent my sub-conscious and still carry a narrative quality to them, yet seem so random. I’m hoping that my audience will get a kick out of the stories, whether they feel the fun in them or see the sadness in them (there’s a mix of both) and I’m hoping that my personality will show through.

I know that they could all do with some touching up, and a bit more care, and I was hoping to have a few more posters. However, I finally feel a lot more comfortable and confident creating images. I had a lot of fun coming up with the concept, and composing all of the elements, and I think that they’ve turned out ok.

In the future I’m gong to refine my type skills, because I loved learning about this and realize how much more there is to explore. I’m also going to add more elements to my work and focus on making sure my line drawings are better.

Portfolio Visit 2: Part 1

Recently I went to Sheffield for my second portfolio visit. It was with a collective called Synergy Sheffield, who are a group of six graduates from Sheffield Hallam University. The reason I chose to show my portfolio to a collective was because I was thinking about what might benefit me the most after I finished the course, and asking recent graduates who had successfully begun to establish themselves seemed like a good idea.

When I got there, I was welcomed by Paul and Taz of Synergy, and it was a very relaxed visit. I only expected to be there for about half an hour to talk about my portfolio, and ask a few questions about the collective after, but they very kindly gave me about three hours of their time!

First we had a conversation about what they did and how they survived in the world after they graduated. They noted that keeping in touch with your fellow classmates was a great way to keep yourself in the design world, and networking was paramount. They also said that there were people who had graduated who hadn’t done very well in terms of getting their work out, and that was mainly due to the fact that they simply weren’t bothered. It takes effort and care to get yourself known, and you have to enjoy what you do if you want to be successful.

Then I showed them my portfolio, which I was slightly nervous about. I decided that I would be perfectly honest with them instead of selling myself, and after they had looked through I told them how my confidence was quite low. Paul said that this was quite apparent in the work, and assured me that I had nothing to worry about, but that the work in my portfolio was quite good.  He also said that I had to make sure that I kept myself absorbed in other artists work to keep my work informed.

Artist Research: Martin Haake

Another illustrator that the tutors directed me to when I started my new printing technique for my final major project was Martin Haake.

Now here is an illustrator I really like. He uses colour and texture to achieve his shapes, rather than using line, and this is the transition I’m trying to make in my work at the moment, because I rely far too heavily on using outlines. His shapes are really strong and striking though, whereas in my work it’s a little harder to work out where the shape should end, which I’m not sure if I like yet.

I’ve also noticed that where he does line, they are to make patterns and more interesting shapes than to inform the audience, so I think that I should take on board the idea that line can be used for more than just the one use.

Haake uses composition in an inspiring way as well (for me anyway). He includes a lot more elements in his work than I am at the minute but in the future I want to get into adding more and more elements to my work to make it more interesting, so here is a guy I want to be keeping an eye on.

One final thing that I enjoy about Haake’s work is that not everything is perfectly drawn out, there is collage, and type, and they are designed and composed well but… they just have more personality than I see in a lot more digital artists work, and I really like that because I like the idea that an illustration is part concept, part narrative but also part of the artists personality.

Drawing Techniques

During the course of the final major project one thing that I have been having trouble with is my drawing skills. I just don’t know where I’ve been going with my drawing lately and it’s one of the factors that have dampened my confidence, so I’ve been avoiding doing drawing.

This was ok for a little while because it meant I could focus on printing, but there came to a time where obviously just printing wasn’t going to be enough. I needed to draw to give my images more detail, and there needed to be more elements, otherwise I wouldn’t be showing any narrative.

Ian and Gary have both said that they can see something in my more sketchy drawings, that they have some kind of raw quality to them that I need to bring out, but when I try I seem to be hitting a brick wall. I try clean up my drawings for the final pieces, which makes them lose their quality.

To overcome this problem I’ve left the pan alone when doing some of my drawing and moved back to some kind of drawing I did in my first year, and that’s working with ink. It makes me a lot loosed and fluid, and it helps me vary my lines a bit, and I think that this is starting to show in my final work. However, I know that this is only the beginning of my improvements.

When I carry on with work, I think that something I need to take into consideration is that working with different media when I draw can give surprising and fun results, and I should start projects by just draw draw drawing more to see what I can come up with!

Artist Research: Calef Brown

With the beginning of my printing style beginning to take shape I was introduced to Calef Brown by the tutors. The reason they advised me to take a look at his work was so I could take note of how he uses shape to portray things, figures in particular.

Right now in my drawing and printing I’ve been quite careless with how I show a certain shape in relation to the rest of the picture. It might make sense when I look at it because I know what it is, but as a stand alone element, nobody else would have the foggiest!

In Browns work I can see that although the shapes aren’t realistic of real life shapes, he simplifies them so that the audience gets a very clear picture of what the object/ feature is. Sometimes there’s even just the slightest bit of detail to enhance this. When he wants a nose, he’ll show a nose, whereas on the last print I made, I wanted a nose, and kind of made a block in the space where a nose would be in the hopes that the audience would be able to work it out.

I quite like the face that the tutors showed me Browns work as it’s not something that I would normally look at, but it’s a style I should explore more if I want to continue with my printing. He places all his elements in the right places, and exaggerates some things but to the extent that you know what he wants to express. He also has a great colour palette, where the colours are quite surreal but not too vibrant, so you can take in the image with ease.

Final Major Project- Practical Part 1

The practical part of my dreams project hasn’t had much progress in the past 7 weeks. All I’ve managed to get done so far is establish a few sketches from the dreams I’ve had recently, and I even found that part difficult!

I think the main reasoning for this might be that I’m still uncomfortable with the fact that everyone around me has settled on their own techniques and styles and I’m still not ready to make that step. It’s put me off the main part of the project—the “doing” part.

I started off with some sketches from various dreams and put them together to see if there were any stories that looked more interesting than others. Then I set out a few of these stories in rough compositions, making them a little more like comic book stories. I also tried adding bits of texture in them, just to see if they looked any more pleasing at this stage. It was just experimenting really, which was pretty fun and gave me some interesting results.

When I reviewed the work with the tutors, they helped me to realize that just making them into comics would be pulling the dream idea away from itself; dreams are stories in non-linear format, they don’t always make sense, and they blur together to make new dreams.

I feel like what I have so far is a decent starting point but it should have been the starting point for work from about four weeks ago so now I have quite a bit of catching up to do. However, after a week of feeling confused and demotivated, I feel like I can get on top of this quite easily by looking at it from another standpoint. I’m trying out a style I used a long time ago with my James and the Giant Peach book cover, as people always seem more drawn to that than other pieces in my portfolio. There will be a lot more shape than line, added textures, and it will have a more playful and jointed feel about it.

Creative Review- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In retaliation to my final major project I’m delving into some films that deal with dreams and the subconscious so I have a richer understanding of the world I will be creating. I’d heard a lot of hype over this film and had wanted to see it for a while so I gave it a go.

I walked into this film not knowing anything about it, which made it a lot more fun. I really wasn’t expecting a story about a man who undergoes an operation to get his thoughts of a woman he loves removed. It was a very interesting concept, seeing the story in backwards of significant memories that made up their relationship.

There were some scenes in the film that I think were particularly beneficial to my research. About halfway through the protagonist decides he doesn’t want the procedure any more and tells his girlfriend, who is, of course, just a memory at this point. They have a few scenes where they try to run away from the memory deletion by going to a hidden memory in his mind, which almost works, and it’s great watching his reactions to the memories. The feelings he had are still there, he knows it’s a memory but at the same time he plays out what happened. He questions why certain things happened the way it did before he’s whisked away to the next memory and the process almost starts over.

I quite liked this film, it is thought provoking and it tells a really good story. I think if I watched it again I would definitely pick up on points I missed the first time round. However, there wasn’t too much that I could add to my project at this time, apart from the notion that memories can be changed, replayed, altered and that they are not always what they seem.

Portfolio Visit- Lucy Wilson

Lucy came in again on Tuesday to teach the 3^rd year graphics her bookbinding class so I took the opportunity to catch her afterwards and ask for a quick portfolio visit. I know Lucy’s work is nothing like that of mine in the portfolio but I had a feeling that I’d be able to get some valuable information off of her anyway, and I was not wrong!

Lucy gave me quite a few good pointers that I will take on board. The most basic one was to keep my portfolio clean, which is obvious but necessary, and that she didn’t think that my best piece was at the front. I need to do a bit more work to get a decent piece at the front but I know where she was coming from. Maybe I should do some more editorials and see where that gets me.

One piece that she was particularly drawn to, and it’s a piece that a lot of people seem to get drawn to as well (it is quite different to the rest of the work inn the portfolio) is the James and the Giant Peach book cover I made last year. She said that I had a good concept going on with my main typeface on there and it’s a strong point to move forward with. She also liked the texture o the piece. There was some points that she said could have been improved upon, like composition and my handwriting type, but she couldn’t see why I didn’t work on this a bit more.

I’ve been getting told to “just make stuff” for ages now and I think after Lucy has shed light on this piece it’s time I listened to what everyone around me is saying and jump in. I think I’ve just been a bit worried, my confidence has gone out of the window a bit but after the advice I’ve been getting this week it’s high time I got it back!

Graphic Guru- Portfolio and FMP

On Tuesday I had a quick meeting with Ben, my Graphic Guru, because I’d not seen him in quite a while. I showed him my portfolio; he’d seen most of the work before but not seen it in a portfolio style so thought it would be good to get his opinion on it’s presentation.

Overall I think he was quite positive about he layout of the portfolio. The main points he had to make that I should change were factors that I’d heard before in portfolio visits, so I’ll definitely take them on board. He liked the work that was presented in context and said he’d like to see a little more of that, and general layout was fine. A couple of other point’s he picked up on was that I should be careful when presenting landscape/ portrait mixes, because the presentation has to flow, and make sure that it’s clear what the project was for.

Then we moved on to my current work, for my final major project. I told him the idea of interpreting my own dreams and that I was a little confused with where I should go next with my work, and he cleared the air a bit. Ben agreed with the tutors in creating something that isn’t just a comic, but mixes elements, shapes and textures together, so some images might fade and others might stand out more. He liked the concept of some of the stories I’d come up with but thought that by keeping to a more non-linear path the book would look a lot more sophisticated.

I think I agree with this way of thinking and did from the start, but Ben managed to put the idea across a little clearer than the tutors for me (not that thy were explaining it wrong, more that it simply wasn’t sinking in for me). Next time I speak to him will be more fun because I’ll have a lot more work to be showing him.

Creative Review- The Science of Sleep

As part of my research for dreams within the art world there are a few films I want to watch. One of these was The Science of Sleep, which I watched yesterday. I have to say I loved it, I have no idea why I didn’t watch it before because it helps explain a lot of the subconscious so well.

The main character, Stephane, is an illustrator who is fascinated with the dream world (already there are two huge similarities between the main character and me) and this film helps show the relationship between the way he acts in real life and what goes on in his sleep.

The introduction of the film is interesting; in his sleep, Stephane is teaching how a dream is made up. He adds to a potion- a person’s wish, things that they’ve reminisced about that week, memory and feelings amongst other things. This helps show why dreams are so hard to work out—there are so many things going on!

The relationship between the dream and real world is supported by the imagination. Stephane always thinks of creative ways to make things look more fun, he wants to be an inventor, and when he analyses real life events in his dreams he more often than not turns the dream into something he wants.

The reason I love the film so much though are the small bits that a lot of people might or might not pick up on. I have a heavy interest in dreams so feel like I connect with the character quite a lot. There is a fear of rejection, which he uses his dreams to escape from. He can create new worlds in his dreams, which I like to do. He begins to dream when he should be listening. He tires easily because when he dreams he uses a lot more energy than you should. He sometimes has to do little tests to work out if he’s dreaming or not. All of these are me!

There is a lot of inspiration I can draw from this film, both personally and in the creative world. A lot of great techniques were used to portray dreams that I might be able to use in my work, like the exaggeration on hands to show how heavy they are, or a car crash and him not moving when he’s feeling drunk. I give it a 9/10.

Bookbinding

Last Tuesday we had Lucy Wilson come in to give us a fun little workshop on bookbinding! I have done book binding before and enjoyed it so was excited for this, especially since the last time I did it was about three years ago and I knew I’d have forgotten most of the basics.

In true classic fashion, I was late, so had to play catch up a bit, so it was a good job I knew a little bit of information beforehand. The technique she taught us was a nice basic one, that can be applied to any size really, as long as you get the measurements right!

I made an A6 sized book with a card front and back cover, and folded paper inside, giving me about 40 sides to write or draw through. The basic principal of this technique was to fold each sheet in half, put measured holes in each piece, and then sew them together, before finally gluing the spine together and pressing for good measure. The trickiest part of the process was remembering to go back on yourself, to the page below to bind those two sheets together, and then trying the loop at the end, but once you get into the rhythm of things it was quite soothing.

Lucy herself was a great help in the workshop; you can obviously tell she has a passion for binding her own books and she brought some great ones with her. She also gave us a quick demonstration on hardback bookbinding (which takes a bit longer and is a bit more complicated) that I might try out myself.

I’m quite proud of that little book so I’m definitely going to make more of them in the near future and experiment with the paper, cover etc. I’m going to use the ne I just made to jot down all my thought’s, because I’ve been told to stop bottling things up, so it will be my catalyst for release!