Final Major Project

This particular blog post is probably going to be a long one. I've been working over it for the last couple of weeks rather than just posting little blogs that don't have to much to them. This project so far has been a blessing and a major ball ache. You know when you know the sort of thing you want to do but you don't know how to do it? I've had that. And now I've got too many ideas! So, let's hope tomorrow's tutorial will help!

For the first part of the project, I really enjoyed doing the skills audit. It had been a great task to use to reflect on me as an illustrator - what I like to do, what I'm best at and what I can bring to the table. From this I was able to reflect on roughly the sort of thing I'd like to do for one of my final major projects. I like tattoos. I like making people think. I like writing and typography. I like drawing female figures. From looking at this and also reflecting on my dissertation, which was based on tattoos in modern society, I had a brainstorming session with the two tutors and Holly and Laura.
 I found myself to be in a bit of a pickle. I really wanted to look at reasoning behind tattoos - society's views. I wanted to mix things up a bit. The idea came around of illustrating why people have their tattoos. Although I do believe this is interesting, I don't think it's right for me. As much as I can personally appreciate why someone would get their own tattoo, I don't really care enough to do a project based on it. I think for me, to make a self initiated project work it needs to be something that I really care about - I don't want to do a half assed effort on a project I've set myself to do.

With this in mind I did some brainstorming from this idea of tattoos and identity/meaning to see if anything came up that did stand out to me. I filled pages in my FMP diary with ideas and mind maps relating to ideas, techniques, and generally anything that came to mind in relation to a project based on tattoos. Main ideas stemmed from Women and Tattoos, Tattoos and their owners, Tattoos and the old folk, Tattoos wearing the people, Common tattoos and the common characters who have them, The joy of words and finally From skin to wall: tattoo art.

These ideas all reflected and responded to the subject of tattoos in Britain today. They varied from the sarcastic (i/e looking at the stereotypes in personality of people who have certain tattoos) to the thought provoking (looking at quotes and poems and illustrating them in relation to tattoos). I think that if I had an endless amount of time I would do all of the ideas - but I don't and I don't want to be doing mini projects either. I want my work for this project to be well research, well informed and developed and ultimately  I want create and clever illustrations that interact and speak to everyone.

From these ideas, I've basically sat and had a think about which out of these ideas really appeals to me the most. The one that I really really want to do. The one that makes me go "Fuck yeah, go Kitty!".
I managed to narrow it down to the idea of women and tattoos, Skin to wall - typical tattoo art as "real" art and the joy of words in relation to tattoos.
With these I was at a stand still, stuck on which one to tackle first. Then I realised: The style I do it in could be the skin to wall... The subject matter could be women and tattoos and the joy of words could be what I was illustrating/what the illustration relates to.

Boom. Sorted! Writing this now I'm in the process of developing this project, I cannot express how excited I am for this project. I'm so excited to be doing something that is so.... me. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops. I've yet to write it out formally for the project - I'm waiting for my tutorial tomorrow so I can refine and make sure I'm on the right tracks before I get carried away!

In regards to style ideas and so on I really want to focus on texture and develop ideas from there. In my final project for second year, I really enjoyed the processes and endless pages of experiments I did creating different textures of skin and ink and character. I really want to re explore some of those techniques and work on them more. Re-develop them and refine them for Final Year Kitty.
As I've only just really got a confident grasp of what I wanted to I started texture ideas and experiments - using tracing paper, different pens and water to see how they blended, crinkled and what texture this created.

For these particualr quick experiment I used a pro marker pen, watercolours, Bero fine liner pens and a Sharpie Pen. I really like how the fine liner pen completely blurred out - it gave a really phantom grey/green shade over the yellow tracing paper which made it give a slight feel of decay and age. The watercolours worked really well as they collected in certain areas giving different strengths of colour intensity. The sharpie pen didn't really budge so I know if I needed to use lines and then water over the top it wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon! The Pro marker pen came out lighter on the tracing paper than expected and didn't bleed as much as I was expecting. It gave quite a calm, ghostly tone to the tracing paper which I thought worked really well and was a delicate touch on the thin paper.

One of the ideas that I initially thought about with the project starting up was looking at taking the tattoos physically off of the skin and bringing it "to life".

I looked maybe leaving a plain silhouette on the figure where the design was and then have the full colour design brought out into the illustration - as both background and focal point - working around and with the figure of the person illustrated. (Weather it's more of a stylized person or realistic person remains to be decided, I think it will depend on what type of contrast I want between the tattoo design and the wearer.)

I made a couple of quick concept illustrations so I can confidently show my tutors what I'm trying to say as I've found I tend to struggle to say what I mean but I can draw it a lot better!

I think these concept illustrations - even though slightly tattier than I'd like, demonstrate this concept of taking the tattoos off of the skin of the wearer confidently to help me explain what I want to get across.

While looking at this ideas of taking the tattoo off of the skin I wanted to look at ways of defining where the tattoos was. I wanted to look at ideas that didn't just leave the skin area blank. I wanted to keep colour and text in my illustrations and I thought this could provide an opportunity to experiment with concepts for the skin. 

From this, I had a really simple idea. Rembering the paper craft we'd done in previous years, I simply made an outline of a tattoo design, in this case, a rose, and cut out around all of the outter edge on tracing paper. This left a white shiloutette and the exact design that would fit there free to be moved about. 

For me I think this could be a key starting point looking at taking the tattoo off the skin. Using layers of paper and texture - probably with some experimental "print making" experiments I could find a way of de-flattening the design off of the skin even though the illustration would more than likely be completly flat.

I think this simple idea of cutting out and replacing could be a really good starting point to develop. 

I started to further develop this idea by again sketching a female figure with some tattoo designs. From this I cut out the designs and then photocopied onto paper. This left the white shilouette of the tattoos that were there on a flat piece of paper (for this I just wanted to make it easy for me and this seemed the best way to do it.) 

From the shapes of the tattoos and what they were, I re drew them around the character in full colour, while i left the tattooed areas on the skin plain and the skin colour of the figure in grey shades - shaded and dreary. This created a contrast of the skin without tattoos and the background with the tattoos. I think with these experiments I could really be onto an interesting and thought provoking project - even with just the contrasts of colours and textures in the piece.

From looking at these cut out ideas of colours and texture I had another idea I wanted to explore. It sounds mad - but bear with me, madness breeds genius - or something like that... Anyway, I had this idea. I thought that to create added texture - and have a play with the concept of tattoos and needles - drawing the tattoo design with a sewing machine. Now, I did experiment with this, and it's bloody hard - so I may just use some fabric and hand stitching instead, BUT, I do think this could work. I think it could be a clever play on the tattoo and needle relationship but also be another texture and, especially in a patchwork sense - mixing it around with my make shift "print making" with tracing paper, water and god knows what else - could become a really interesting collection for this project. I had a practice  and like I said - really bloody hard - but, I do think this could work. Even stitching in the writing could work -

 I know what I want - I'm again struggling to write it - I'm going to try and create the vlog soon to help bring my ideas together and make more sense. But, I think I'll leave it there for now, if you're reading this you must be bored senseless! Wish me luck for my tutorial tomorrow and I'll have some more posts up by the end of the weekend, hopefully for FM Project, FM Presentation maybe a vlog or two and my personal work too!

More work on the Holly project

I'm having an awful lot of fun working on this project about Holly. It's very creative and flexible and I'm really enjoying mixing her lifestyle and personality in with my own work and style! I'm still unsure how everything will fit in together as it's becoming harder than I thought but that will come at a later date! For my favorite images of Holly that I'm using I hand drew them out and did a tattoo technique called power lining on the image to thicken up certain lines. I kept these originals and copied them to add more line detail, especially in the hair and eye lashes. I've then rescanned them into the computer and developed them on Photoshop for experimenting to see the sort of styles and colour I could use and work.

My 35 ways to stay creative.

From a meeting in Illustration Applications last week it turned into a bit of discourse near the break where we looked at a YouTube video called "29 ways to stay creative" and there was a suggetion we should write our own lists to help ourselves and others, so, here is my ways to stay creative! :)

1. Create everyday - obvious, simple and the number one!
2. Never give up.
3. Always have confidence in your abilities.
4. Some people are nasty and negative - fuck those guys. Not literally, just ignore them butttt....
5. Welcome negative and horrible comments - and then prove those haters wrong.
6. Have a vice - smoking, drinking, caffine - something simple asa stress reliever.
7. Always have pen and paper.
8. Try new things - food, ideas, experiments, - whatever!
9. Keep up to date with the news.
10. Have oppinions, and stick to them.
11. Always keep dreaming of bigger and better things.
12. Listen to new music as often as possible - not new as in newly released but things you haven't listened to before - step back in time and listen to something completly different.
13. Show of your work and be proud
14. Collaborate and network.
15. Have a lie in every now and a day, be lazy and chill in your slippers.
16. Be organised.
17. Visit new places - even the place you live in will have a hidden gem you've never discovered.
18. Collect anything of interest.
19. Make goals - and stick to them!
20. Study people.
21. Keep journals, diarys and memory books.
22. Check out your past and see what you find - your family and heritage could be a lot more inspiring than you think.
23. Always have "Eye of the Tiger" on every music play list and every music playing device you own.
24. Ask questions - no matter how silly they seem.
25. Collect books - new, old, arts, non- arty - if they grab your attention, grab them!
26. If you have a computers, invest in a printer and always keep it connected, turned on and by your workspace.
27. Doodle
28. Enjoy all your hobbies
29. If you're having a good or bad day - put it on paper.
30. Blog.
31. Draw the mundane - study every day journeys, people, meals and so on. You can do it!
32. Keep calm music.
33. Work anywhere and everywhere you can - any place you feel inspired or just on the bus home!
34. Remind yourself of why you're creative - an inspirational person or show? (Personally for me it's Art Attack!)
35. Keep breathing and just don't panic.

The Joy of Deadlines!

This week I have handed in both my Illustration Applications Module and my Book Arts Module. I found both of these modules really challenging and very difficult at times but also really enjoyed them and I think I have learnt a lot from them both!

With Illustration Applications I thought that it would be a challenge and it really was! I've never done projects that have specific guides and aims - for example to go in Reader's Digest magazine illustrations and so on. From all of the projects I learnt a lot about doing more background research and creating work for a target audience that would work well in a magazine, on a shelf ect.

With the first project I reall struggled to find my feet with it. I found it very difficult to come up with any ideas that would fit in with each subject and I then struggled to develop them. The images below are a couple of ideas that I enitially had - and even though I do quite like the images me and my tutor agreed that they didn't suit Reader's Digest magazine and were much more suited to a younger audience.

With this in mind , I felt that it would be best for me to illustrate the second option rather than keep attempting and getting stressed out over the same thing. With this breath of fresh air I felt a lot more confidence with sketches that I had drawn up. I decided I wanted to use lines and colour to work in harmony and create images that worked together even though they were totally different in content. With that in mind I created final images on Adobe Illustrator and used similar colour to keep them together.

I really liked my final images and thought that hey worked really well together and would suit really well in the magazine. The final step of putting them on to the layout and I really liked how they looked and felt they did work well.

For the Second project I really had a lot of fun experimenting with colour and silhhouettes to create a very uneasy atmosphere that suited the book that needed the jacket design - The Rocking Horse Winner.  I used cursive yet slightly bold fonts that brought a haunting feel to the cover and took a lot of inspiration from Vintage wall papers and old leather books. I recreated textures and colour using watercolour and used solid black silhouettes in various sizes with a repeating wall paper effect and strong scratchy boarders to complete the piece.

Sadly, I wasn't clever enough to get a photo/scan of my work before I handed it in - so that will have to come on a later post!

For the third project I did most of the work on paper as I deceided to stay away from the digital side of illustration and focus on doing some hand drawn work. I really struggled with idea generation but once I had sketches to work from I stuck with them and developed some ideas that I really liked. I chose to illustrate the headers for music, theatre, dance and music for the New Yorker magazine. This task did have a little twist in the challenge as they're couldn't be any colour. I felt that if I hand drew my ideas I could use fine liner pen for both lines and shading to give texture and feeling that I would normally use a lot of colour and paint with.
Sadly, as with the Second project I didn't think about scanning my work before handing it in - so these images will also be on a later post!

Project 4 - tea packaging for Waitrose
I had an awful lot of fun with this project. I focused on using colours to represent the flavours of the different teas and as the theme of the group of teas were cities I used simple line illustrations to represent different aspects of each city - for Harrogate I focused on the flowers to create a little touch of uniquness using small white flowers in certain places with a mixed purple background for the flavours and senses in the tea. For brighton I used green as it was green tea and used swirls on the bottom of the packaging for the fresh sea. With all of the designs I kept them uniformed using each little quirk in the same place and keeping the fonts the same. I also kep the same tea cup design for all of them too. I made them different usuing the colours in the background and the things like the flowers or the sea to add a small touch of the city to the packaging.
I really enjoyed using Illustrator and InDesign as I haven't had the opportunity I'd like to use them and experiment with them as much as I'd like - and with this project I got to use lots of experimenting and tools on both of the programmes.