After all the hard work..

We had a successful end of year show, after all our hard work in year two! It looked fabulous with all the work up and it was great to see what everyone had been working on (not always having the time to check out each other's projects during term time). I felt proud of my work this year...

And was even more delighted, after a last minute decision to place some of my prints on the sale table. I received a good response, with some pieces of my work being sold. My first sales :) Thanks to those who bought something... Had a very lovely evening and finished off a great year at Uni! 

Thanks for reading x

Looking peachy!

After finishing two book covers, I had one left to complete... in the shortest amount of time (as I had underestimated the workload and run over my rough schedule on the first two). The last book cover was also the most important, as it was to be incorporated into the Penguin Design Award. Selecting the title to design was easy, when I heard that James and the Giant Peach was an option. Who doesn't love Roald Dahl? And the title was already filling my mind with fantastical imagery, having read the book as a child. I produced many thumbnails of my ideas, here are a couple...

Following the success of my rubber stamps on the Barcelona book cover, I decided to return to this idea of image making. So I selected one of my first ideas, as I thought it would reproduce well using my new found technique, (thumbnail 4) by building up the flock of seagulls.  It is also quite a quick process, once I have carved the rubber stamps, because from then on it's just repetition. However on this occasion once I got stuck into the carving, I was heavy handed and managed to cut my thumb quite deep, on my new scalpel blade. Typical as I'm running out of time! Didn't help the speed of the rest of the project either, cos it wouldn't stop bleeding...

Thankfully maintaining the full use of the thumb on my right hand, I could continue along the same lines (design wise). So the next day I was able to progress and eventually managed to finish my painting. I then scanned it in and added some type that I thought fitted well. It's not my own type, I got it from a free font website and am allowed to post it on here... Hope that you like the final design :)

I was very pleased with it, although tweaks could still be made. I also managed to enter it into the Puffin Design Award, after all the chaos, but I'll post relating to that soon...

Thanks for reading this mammoth post! x

High Fidelity

With three book covers to design, my second choice was High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (a good read if your interested). A story about love and a love of music and mix-tapes. There is also a film adaptation which has Jack Black in it (who I love), which I also recommend...Getting back to the artwork though, after thumbnailing my ideas, the best turned out to be the most simple! Just using 5 cassettes, to complement the repetition of  'top 5s' throughout the book. Here are a few experiments with music related material, prior to my design idea: 

After enjoying using materials physically to create an image, I decided that I wanted the final outcome to be a form of collage, or collagraph from which I could print. So from this I created my final piece by individually crafting my own cassette tapes. I used the collages as they were colourful and eye-catching on the front cover.  Although I would have liked to have the time to print these and observe the results, as it may have improved my final outcome. Oh well, easy to say with hindsight...(if I plan my time better in the future, this may be less of a problem). Anyway here is the final cover and I am happy with it, but improvements could be made.

Thanks for reading x