Midpoint review debrief...

.... or art in the kitchen.

We had our 'mid-point review' at college on Monday and Tuesday. Out main tutor, Jan, assures us that we are half way through the course, a terrifying thought! (although we think her calculation might be slightly out). Anyway, it was the first chance to see a 'finished' piece of work from each student along the lines of what they are planning for their big project and for them to get constructive criticism from tutors and the rest of the group. There was a bewildering variety of stuff and it was a little hard to keep track after a while.

Here's my piece.

I'm relatively pleased with how it came out, mainly because I was trying to bring together some techniques that are new to me and rely less on the computer for colour. There's digital trickery in there but only to bring the other elements together (printing with acrylics, watercolour and ink on tracing paper). There are a few photos below that show you some of these elements in progress.

Tutor Dave didn't seem to think the composition works. He described it as looking like everything was on a bus, the bus suddenly stopped and everything splurged up against the front! I can see what he means but I think I'm OK with the composition as it's intended to look monstrous and unbalanced, like the city is leaning sickeningly to one side. (Hope I'm not just being stubborn!) I will definitely try some of his ideas though, about working bigger and then cropping in to decide on the composition later.

Still need to work on my drawings of buildings and experiment with how I incorporate text. Lots to do!
Bye then!

Powerpuff Girls!

Illustration's all about collaboration and I'm very excited about this collaboration with my nephew-in-law, Mimmo. We gave our version of the Powerpuff Girls an abstract expressionist slant, think Cartoon Network by way of De Kooning.

Mimmo hasn't actually seen the cartoon yet but has decided that tPPG is clearly the best thing ever. I tend to agree.

COLLEGE PROJECT

Can't say too much about this yet as I don't sufficiently understand it myself, but here's a bunch of sketches etc from my big project for my MA.

It's very much Work in Progress at the moment, and is something to do with the idea of the City as a centre of financial (mis)management.

This is playing with an idea of Debt as some kind soul-sapping louse or parasite.

Sketches from the documentary Inside Job.

LEVIATHAN STRIKES!

This joke is obscure even by the standards of comics geekery, but I had to get it out of my system.

(As some kind of justification, it references two of my favourite writers, from very different forms of comics, Grant Morrison and Peter Blegvad). 


Hm, I'd better do some work for college, eh?

ETCH A SKETCH!

I got to try some etching towards the end of last year, but as the results ended up as Xmas presents I haven't been able to blog about them until now.

I got to try two slightly different techniques, with a soft and hard ground (the waxy stuff that you roll on to the metal plate and actually etch into).

Here's my first go, on a soft ground on a steel plate. The soft ground picks up lots of texture so you can use it to get patterns from material, or, in my case, thumb prints!

It's the legendary and late Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz trumpeter and presenter of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. My lucky Dad got this picture.

The hard ground gives you a cleaner, more cross-hatchy style, more like I'd thought of as an etching, so I decided to do an etched interpretation of William Blake, Taxi Driver. This is William on a hard ground on a zinc plate.

I thought it would be interesting to experiment with hand-tinting the Blake prints with water-colours (as Blake did in some of his illuminated books) but it's a lot harder than it looks!

It all went a bit clown colours on this one so I had another go with a calmer palette, thus!

Much happier with this one, so I gave this one to my Mum.

So, a really interesting process. I'm looking forward to getting back in the etching studio, trying out some more and figuring out how to incorporate it into my BIG PROJECT.

Happy New Fear...

I've been trying to think through my BIG PROJECT for college and wound myself up into a bit of a state, something like this:

I think I made a bit of a breakthrough today so should be more positive stuff on its way! Got a lot of drawing to do over the next few days...

Spiv Hop Pop Art Print

Here's the final Hitsville UK print, featuring Spiv Hop pioneer Jack Spatz. 

We can't get all the prints on our web shop at the moment (hopefully they'll all be up there in the future) but if you'd like one of Mr Spatz printed on lovely posh paper for £10 plus p&p then let me know.

SCARY SANTA!

My tutor saw my big red faces and asked me to do a scary Santa for our class Xmas do.

Here he is. He ended up on a skateboard. 
That's  how he does it all in one night.

I've gone back to college...

...it's like one of those episodes of Neighbours where someone's Mum goes back to school and really embarrasses the kids. Well, it's a bit like that, I should have waited until I had offspring.

Anyway, as opposed to the first time round, I am not, thus far, spending all of my time drinking myself into a slough of depsond, I'm actually making work!

Here are highlights so far: twenty faces on a sheet of A1 paper, followed by another sheet of A1, concentrating on one face. Faces are my thing so this was right up my street, so I decided to muck about with some new techniques, loosening up my drawing/inking style and having a right laugh with some really basic printing techniques. The kitchen looked like I'd murdered the cat*

I'm in there, with current Movember lip slug, and there's the obligatory reference to William Blake in the form of his Ghost of a Flea, top right. The big face turned out like a particularly angry Aleister Crowley, not sure what happened there. We put our A1's up in the corridors of Camberwell on the day that a bunch of prospective students were visiting, so I hope I didn't scare any off!

This Monday, Chloe Cheese took us through some more established forms of those printing technigues, in the form of mono printing. Brilliant fun! It was like primary school art class all over again. Potato printing for the artistically ambitious! Hoorah!

Here's the culmination of my day's experimentation, Hitsville UK's Gwillum, in process and finished version.

I'm really enjoying trying out these new techniques, and I'm really keen on incorporating some of them into my big project (which I am writing the proposal for now, I am I am honest!) 

I get to try out etching tomorrow, hope William is watching over my shoulder.

*I did not murder the cat.

Mo-town 'tachebusters vol. 1

John has been bullied into taking part in Movember and, not to be outdone, Ruthie from The Carrie Nation's Revenge has followed suit. 

That's Feminism in action!

If you can spare a few quids/dollars/euros/yen please donate at http://mobro.co/johnriordan