Progress of sorts.

     I did a good chunk of screenprinting this week with very mixed results...

     My image printed onto acetate looking pretty good. I originally planned to print the image onto a denim jacket so this is how I hoped my screenprints would come out.

     Once it was on screen I did a few test runs on newsprint and they didn't turn out too bad other than the pigment wrinkling the paper.

     I decided to move onto thicker, higher-quality paper to eliminate the creasing, which worked.

I decided to try a two-colour print, which also worked.

However, the main bulk of the image didn't turn out as crisp as before.

     This was the best part of that particular print but since screenprinting by hand involves a fair bit of trial and error I thought it went okay.

     I decided to move onto calico before printing onto and potentially ruining a denim jacket. This is the best result I managed  to get out of about six attempts.

     And this is just awful. I think the contrast between solid blocks of colour and highly detailed areas were a bit much for the screenprinting process. That being said I did manage to get a couple of decent outcomes and managed to learn a lot from the day and a half I spent in the printroom.

Portfolio visit in the pipeline.

     I've emailed a pdf version of my portfolio to Kris Sale as he has kindly agreed to have a look through it and give it a good old critique.
     I'm looking forward to getting some feedback.

What is Illustration?

"As our visual language evolves, the playing field is levelling. Graphic designers, sculptors, painters, creative developers, and even musicians amorphously meander across different parts of our creative industries. As a consequence, I often wonder what the term 'Illustration' now means. Maybe as a medium it might need to do more than vocationalise aesthetics and cultivate a broader palate of profundity for its own survival" Michael Salu. Artistic director of Granta Magazine 2012 Varoom.

     When people ask me what course I'm doing at university I usually tell them " I do drawing", mostly because I am a man of few words, but also because most people asking the question are just making conversation and don't really care what it is I do. But the fact is I study illustration, and illustration is much more than that, so here are several words that until now have mainly resided in my head.

     To me, proper illustration is an insight into the creator's understanding and imagining of the world around them. Whether they are portrayals of literal or make-believe subjects is irrelevant, each image is a piece of visual diction, a snippet of the voice in an illustrators head.

     It may not always be entirely coherent or understandable to the viewer, but if an illustration is successful and more than just a pretty picture, this voice can be heard.

     It is this element of subtle human communication that appeals to me, and on which I pass judgment: a strong voice, in my opinion, makes for a strong image.

     I realise as I'm writing this that the reason I have an aversion to overly digitised work is that it seems to distort and dehumanise said voice to the point where, to me, it simply integrates itself into it's surroundings like a piece of Swedish flatpack furniture.

     In short, illustration is quite simply a means of conveying thoughts.

Business Cards.

     Recently I have designed some business cards so that I can display and hopefully sell myself to potential clients in a professional manner.

     The design may change with time but they will most likely retain the simple, clean-cut layout as I feel that much more than an image, name and contact details comes off as desperate: Less is almost always more.

Influences All Over the Shop.

     “It’s just about the fucking pure joy of being who you are – as crazy as you are and taking no shit, taking no judgment from society.” - Eugene Hutz (Lead Singer of Gogol Bordello)

     I saw Gogol Bordello last night and it wasn't until then that I realised how much of an influence they've had on my recent work and the above quote is exactly what it's been about.

Portfolio visit with Ben Jones.

     I met up with illustrator Ben Jones the other day with my newly assembled portfolio and asked him to have a look through it with his eyes. He kindly obliged and gave me some really helpful and positive feedback (which was quite nice) as well as some useful advice on pursuing a career in illustration and a general chinwag.

     All-in-all it was a rather insightful evening.

     

Rafel Delalande.

     This chap travels all over the globe producing top quality work of a uniquely stylised standard. His combined use of dotwork and whip shading result in highly texturised and striking tattoos that compliment the dark, macabre subject matter that they depict.
     This, coupled with the three-dimensional nature of the human body on which they are created, breathes an eerie sense of life into what are in fact two-dimensional images.

     I'm a huge fan of his work (and unless you're a square) you should be too..

Tattoo by Rafel Delalande

Tattoo by Rafel Delalande

     Check out more of Rafel's work here.

Website research.

     Next semester I will be crafting my very own proper website, so before then I thought I'd best look at some existing ones and decide what I like about them.

     I began my research by looking in the favourites folder of my browser (for obvious reasons), however, it turned out that almost all of them were simple social network pages; which I think says something about modern society, but isn't much use to me at the minute.

     In the end I turned to the all-powerful and omnipresent overlord "Google" to aid me in my quest for website-based knowledge, and I found some quite interesting examples:

•      Duncan X's website, duncanx.com, was the first to draw me in. The homepage features a simple, black on white, hand rendered image which gives off an all-round air of simplistic luxury, much like the packaging of fancy, overpriced goods. However, the navigation of the site lets it down. Links are often hard to decipher and occasionally open up new tabs for no real reason.     Aesthetically though, this site is mostly rather pleasing to the old eyeballs due to it's simplicity, which is something I will keep in mind.
•     Shortly after I was told to check out mrgordo.com. Again it features a simplistic layout but is much easier to navigate as there is a clearly labelled sidebar that takes you where you want to go. Similarly, valtastic.com and thequietrevolution.co.uk employ the use of sidebars as a means of navigation and I think in terms of a website intended to display artwork this works very well, as images are allowed to take centre stage while the boring bits are neatly tucked away but not out of sight.

     I plan to continue picking apart websites as I peruse the internet, but so far the conclusion I've come to is this: keep it simple, keep it pretty.