'Hello Beautiful' Brief: Potato Printing.

I wanted to expand from the leaf/plants idea but wasn't sure where to go with it. I really fancied doing some printing, but was at home and I don't have a lino kit. So, I decided to use potatoes! A little unconventional, but it did the job! I created really simple leaf shapes and tested them out in all different colours.

I even tried two colours, which only very occasionally worked. I actually really liked the shapes and textures they produced, so I kept going with it. I created a found imagery collage, with prints and shoe polish. Then I started printing off the work in grayscale, and printing over the top of that. 

I think this worked really nicely. I loved the pinky peach colour.

I think this looks great in only two colours, the shadows on the back are prints on the other side of the page. I think this works really well and I want to see what else I can do with it. 

'Hello Beautiful' Brief: More Observational Work.

After doing my found imagery collages, I decided to focus on the other two words I hadn't used, 'Growth' and 'Life'. For this I thought I would do some object drawing with plants and flowers, since I thought they fit those words very nicely, and they're beautiful and resilient! I was focusing mainly on shapes and leaves.

I started with this, still trying to keep the work in minimal colours, I think this spread works because of the masking tape, I'm not sure why! 

Some flower studies in different drawing techniques, I'm particularly enjoying the green felt tip and the black fineliner! 

I wasn't sure about this but it's growing on me! I think the masking tape and cut out silhouettes work well, it was the scans and placement I wasn't sure about. 

I did a very simple plain fineliner study, then picked out details and etched them into the page with scissors, revealing them with shoe polish. I love the texture this creates. I want to keep on this track, as I think there is much more I can do with it and I'm enjoying the outcomes. 

'Hello Beautiful' Brief: Collage Work and Themes.

To generate more ideas, my tutors had the idea of, almost censoring magazine and newspaper articles. picking out key words with positive connotations. This was extremely helpful and I created a mind map of all the words I'd picked out afterwards.

After this I wanted to do something different, so I picked out some key words from my mind map. 'Beauty', 'Power', 'Different', 'Growth' and 'Life' were my favourites. I started creating collage using found imagery, my first was around the word 'Power'. 

I wasn't sure about the one on the left, it's really weak and doesn't strike you in the same way the one on the right does.

'Beauty'

I really like my second image of someone almost drowning in cosmetics.

'Different'.

I think this one works as a spread because of the connection with the text.

I like a few of the outcomes here but overall I'm not that keen. I think I could've used a wider range of media and explored the words a little more. I'd like to work with found media again at some point, and maybe in a little more depth than what I produced here.

'Hello Beautiful' Brief: Observational Work.

Our newest brief is for a foundation called Hello Beautiful. We've been set the task of creating an image for an exhibition in college around the principles of the Hello Beautiful foundation, raising awareness and supporting those battling breast cancer, focusing on positive thinking, empowerment, happiness and healthy living.
We started as a group with word association, then stripping it down to a few key words to focus on, I started looking at hair, growth and healthy living. I did some drawing with objects connected to these words to start me off with the project.

 

I was trying to work in limited colour palettes similar to those stated in the brief, as our final image can only be in two colours. I really like the effect the water has on the lines in the second image.

For the healthy living objects I started working with grounds, I wish I'd done a few more like this, it works well and adds something extra to the image as a whole.

I'm happy with how the majority of these turned out, but wish I'd continued with a wider variety of objects, and continued to work on grounds. I think it's a great way to generate ideas moving forward though! 

'Make Your Mark' Brief: Picture Books and Evaluation.

To finish the project, I decided to go with the picture book idea that I mentioned previously. Constructing these was fairly difficult, as I couldn't decide how I wanted them to open. Having them pop out (like paper pop up books) proved too difficult an idea, so I settled for something much less elaborate. My first one is about the backpack/badges idea. I combined many of the techniques I had used when experimenting with ideas, and picked out my favourites. This included white on black imagery, bypass printing and blind drawing.

For my second book, I use similar techniques, applying my favourite processes to create final images. For the hands, this included more collage, bypass printing, scans and text. This book was shorter, because I felt like what I had was strong enough to run with.

Evaluation.

Initially generating ideas for this project was difficult, I thought I'd have many ideas but I got quite stuck. Tasks like the quickfire questions/100 things I love were very useful, and are simple, thought provoking challenges that I'd do again. I got to try many new processes, including collagraph printing, experimenting with type and working more graphically (which I then continued to do throughout the project!). I'm definitely happy with the work I have produced, although ideas for themes were lacking. Moving forward, I need to push myself to explore further ideas and concepts which will give me a wider range of materials to work with, and generally make life easier!

'Make Your Mark' brief: Observational work.

I'm nearing the end of the project, and have been experimenting with more observational work, and the idea of having all the badges on one page (like previously). I've been working with mixed materials and just trying out different layouts on the page. Here are two badges in continuous line/collage. I really like both of these, I think the image on the right is stronger, with the little bit of black on white imagery.

The next two are mixed, one is all the badges collectively, and the other is a simple observational image of my hands, bringing it back to the previous project idea. I love the card outline in the first image.

This is quite a short post, but I thought I should show little bits of progress in between. I spoke to my tutor about rounding up the project, and we talked about doing little picture books, and looking at both the badges/hands idea (why I included both). I think it's a great idea and finalising both main ideas would be a good way to finish this project for me. 

'Make your Mark' Brief: My Backpack/Badges Continued...

Moving forward with this idea for the brief, I decided to do more work focusing on the badges. I chose one brooch in particular to start of with, I like the shape and it's simplicity is quite interesting. I wanted to do more graphic style work and just focus on the shape. I started just by scanning in the brooch, printing and doing some continuous line and blind drawings over the top.

I tried to stick to really limited colour, the brooch itself is silver/a little pink and green, so I stuck with those colours. I continued to use bypass printing and layering up different images with line drawing over the top.  For the second drawing, I sprayed a little water to make the pen run, so it was less clean cut.

After this, I tried to layer up different cut outs, and incorporate negative space areas. Not sure how I feel about this spread, I think the shapes are interesting, but I'm not sure if it works as a whole.

I wanted to try something different. and I was looking at Simon Evans work -in particular 'Everything I have', where he has created a visual list of everything he owns. I thought this was really brilliant. I'm thinking about doing something similar with this idea, but for now I just created a smaller more illustrative style page with a couple of drawings in black fineliner. I like this style, and I think I'll use the same style of drawing but apply it to something a little more like Simon Evans' work later on.

'Make your Mark' Brief: My Backpack/Badges.

 We're continuing to explore different ideas for our brief. At the minute I'm looking at my little black backpack and my badges. I actually got my backpack at Chesterfield market, since then I've always had badges and brooches that I've attached to it. The problem is I'm always losing or breaking these badges, so they're always being replaced or changed around. I thought this would be an interesting thing to document. I started with a couple of collage/pen/ink illustrations of my backpack and a few of my badges.

I really like how this first piece came out, although for the text ('and all the badges I've loved and lost'.) I wished I had used a sea green/dark green colour. I think it would have worked much better. 

This is two of my badges, one broken and one surviving. It's a shame the colouring on the frog didn't quite work as I think it would have made a nice page! 

Minimalistic collage of a woman brooch I had. This is growing on me. Initially I wasn't sure, but I like the minimal colours and the use of white space.

A quick blind drawing/ink drawing of some buttons and badge pins. I think what works is the limited colour and the mix of detail and basic line.

Same as above really, but with my broken frog pin. 

Another of a pin in ink detail, with collage areas of another broken brooch. I'm really enjoying what I'm doing so far, but I need to expand it further. I'm thinking of illustrating the entire collection, just producing more work. I think I'll do this along with experimenting with bypass printing over my Independent Study days, as well as that I'd like to keep working on the hands idea. 

On another note, this is my 40th blog post! Worth a miniature celebration.

'Make your Mark' Brief: Habits/Independent Study.

At the beginning of the week, we spent the day focusing on one possible theme. From my mind map I decided to start looking at the idea of my habits, specifically the rather bad habit of cracking my fingers and wrists. I started off doing some observational drawings and A3 pieces (using varied drawing techniques and media) focusing on my hands in pushed and strange positions. I also began experimenting with type, referencing the sounds my wrists/fingers make when I crack them: 'snap' 'pop' 'crack' 'click'. My initial experiments were okay but needed more research and exploration, they looked a little messy. I liked the idea of incorporating type though!

After this, we made our own paper to work on out of different pieces left over, or from the collage box. I tried to keep the colour really quiet with a few bits of print. However, not all my materials worked, as one of them had a resistant layer so I couldn't use ink over it properly! I finished all three pieces and they didn't look quite right, they were too busy. Our tutor suggested using block/negative space areas to quieten down the busier areas. This really helped, and I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out.

After this, I looked into more areas of type, I went through magazines and cut out appropriate letters in many different styles, settling on a few that I liked. For our first day of independent study we were to round up our work on this theme. I tried using the scanner and bypass printing to overlap my hands. It worked once, but the colour was too dark and I was wasting ink, so I used the failed ones for collage material.

To finish off this theme, I kept trying things out with the scanner and bypass printing, using my previous work to create new pieces. I wanted to refine and simplify what I'd done and create some more graphic spreads. My first one was more simple, I quite like it but I'm not sure it properly works as a spread. I'm still unsure about how busy it is! 

I prefer my second one, for this I scanned some elements of type over the previous work, and also included some bold block shapes, and more white space to calm it down a little. I think the colours flow better, and it's generally nicer to look at! I really enjoyed exploring this theme, I need to stop focusing so much on hands though, time to move on to another few ideas. It was nice to start having a go with type too, as I've not really done that yet. I'm pleased with my outcomes, however I think I should try something a little different for my next theme.

'Make your Mark' Brief: Collagraph Printing.

We got to try out collagraph printing, one of the ways of doing this is cutting into layers of card, and adding layers/materials to alter the depth and texture. We had to use a viewfinder and pick different elements out from our sketchbook to turn into prints. Keeping with the brief, I decided to use parts of the graphic spreads we did earlier in the week. 

I tried to keep the shapes quite blocky and simple, but have lots of altering heights and bits of crossover. I also added some mesh material to give it texture. The actual cutting was okay, it was remembering which bits needed to be higher/lower in order for it to look a certain way that was the more difficult part!

The printing itself was really quick! I love how these came out, I'm glad I stuck to solid shapes and used the mesh material. I like how in some areas of overlap shapes have been isolated and so are completely white against the background. I think I'll definitely use this method of printing again, and maybe experiment with more colour than just black/white. 

I think this one (below) is my favourite, the lines are quite clean and the overlap worked out really well.