One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Here is one of my original thumbnails, from a selection I chose this idea to develop into a cover.

As you can see there have been various changes and developments along the way. 

So this was my final entry to the Penguin Design Award.... Combining both printmaking and digital technology. This was obviously an uneasy task as printmaking takes much time and planning. I also find that once I  convert a purely hand rendered and crafted piece of work into a digital file, a new perfectionist kind of view of my work appears. Daunting me with new worries and issues that I had never considered before, but I think that this is all down to the sudden unrestrained freedom found in using a computer. However I am pleased with the simplistic design, and hope that it conveys what I was initially attempting to achieve. I added colour after etching, using the offset machine, which was very exciting and efficient... once I had made the stencils!! 

Thanks for taking an interest :)

For the love of printmaking!

Antique Key:

Handmade rubber stamps of keys:

Collagraph of various keys:

Collagraph of single key:

Catch up time!

Hello,

it has been a long while! After handing in for yet another deadline yesterday, I have decided to regain control of my blog! Recently I haven't been able to do much practical work.. due to a dissertation and a big report. However before Easter I was concentrating on a book cover for Penguin Design Award... Spending time in the print room on the offset machine, which was lots of fun! Prior to this I have produced many prints, so I thought it was about time I started posting some of my creations.

TTFN x

Plymouth Uni Christmas E-Card Competition

Well hello, haven't posted in a very long while! I thought it was about time I should make a contribution to my blog, which has been sadly neglected due to a hectic first term of third year. Anyway here is just a quick idea I had for the University e-card Christmas design. The brief was 150 Years with Plymouth University, which began as a School of Navigation in 1862. My design is fairly simple, using a compass as a symbol for the School of Navigation, with a christmas tree pointer, in the direction of the South West. It didn't take too long, once I had come up with the idea. Hope that you like it... and have a merry advent :)

Thanks for reading x

Awesome technology..

Yesterday there was an opportunity to see a new piece of kit by Wacom, over at Plymouth College of Art and Design. So me and a few friends went along, just to have a sneak peek. I wasn't sure what we were in for really, but they had some really cool pieces of technology over there... including the new Inkling (a digital pen) which isn't available quite yet. Once you have clipped the receiver to a page in your sketchbook, the movement of the pen is able to be detected and recorded, this creates a digital copy of your drawing and saves it automatically, so you can transfer it to your computer as a digital file. Check it out on the website here, it's pretty amazing stuff! But I'm into my printmaking right now, so not considering buying one just yet...Definitely worth watching out for though (especially if your into your digital), glad we went and had a preview. 

Thanks for reading x 

Long time... no post!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately... Having returned to Uni for my third and final year (yes, I cannot believe it, has gone way too fast!), I have been busy doing work and enjoying some socialising :) Anyway for our Launch project we were asked to do a variety of tasks, which involved us thinking about our future possible directions. This involved placing our work into a variety of different contexts, to see how our imagery could function in a different setting or for a different audience. Here are a select few (well nearly all..) of mine:

Thankfully I had a lot of good raw material to play around with, from all of the printmaking I did in the last module of second year. As you can see, I used an etching of an old record that I printed and some collagraphs of cassette tapes that I created. It was a valuable exercise and definitely something I would consider repeating in the future, to find other outlets for my illustration. I am pleased with the results and wouldn't mind owning a few of the outcomes, if I may say so myself. Hope you like them too..

Thanks for reading x

Useful Resource

Stumbled upon these handy hints for illustrators! Even if you cannot be bothered to read them all, the advice is a worth a peek .... Although some is contradictory, you can pick and choose what is relevant to you... here

Enjoy reading :)