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 :) 

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