Wednesday 22 February 2012

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!





Friday 3 February 2012

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.