life drawing class

Rather than drawing the shape of the body I tried drawing the basic shapes of the shadows cast over it.

He swallowed him, and went down to the bottom of the lake.

Acrylic, Gouache, Photoshop & Indesign

My final piece for one of the modules at uni.

Rene's Room

For our projects in first year we were often given little day long tasks to finish which at the time didn't seem to make any sense. Only weeks or months later does the value of such things become apparent, such as forcing you to think differently about generating ideas and finding inspiration.

For this task we had to recreate a scene, from the folk story we'd chosen, within a box. I made a plasticine fish, got some tissue paper for debris/seaweed and put the box with everything in it on top of the light box table in the studio, in the hope of getting interesting effects and shadows.

 

I came to the studio when it was dark so I could get shots like this using a torch.  

 

Typography workshop week, with guest teacher (guest star) Gary Day-Ellison

my illustration class

Class photo (tagged): http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=351986&l=2f7dde0b17&id=100000772157570

Back in January - yes, my blog is that far behind in terms of updates (I'm only going to include stuff from this year) - my class had a week long typography "workshop" at uni with a guest teacher, Creative Director for both Pan Books & Decca Records, Gary Day-Ellison. 

Gary Day-Ellison blog post about his experience: http://day-ellison.posterous.com/art-students

(golly, he included a page from my sketchbook!)

It was a great, mad week. With the deadline so close it meant I had to work fast and push myself to think and produce on a tight schedule. Goodbye weekend! :/

For the task we had to produce 3 double page spreads which incorporated typography and illustration together in a creative and interesting way. The subject matter of these spreads were up to us to decide upon, so I reasoned it would help me to focus on a scene in the Brothers Grimm story I was working on as part of the current module, in which the young man claims a favour from the fish.

Many of us had little experience with InDesign, which made things very tough and frustrating (not to mention the setbacks caused by the many problems and bugs I contemptuously discovered in the InDesign CS3 software we're offered on the macs in our studio).

I came up with so many ideas I produced 5 spreads instead of 3. They lacked polish, and some didn't have the correct text, but that's deadlines for you. :P

Thank you Gary for the pleasant and informative introduction to layout and typography.

ideas generation, thumbnailing

-_-' text lines are still shown

I'm not sure why I decided on that particular font :S

random unplanned doodle that became a painting

I was having this weird vivid day dream last night after watching some Doki66 youtube vids... *shrugs*

(Photoshop + Wacom tablet)

Richard Mosse

 http://www.richardmosse.com/photography.php?pid=1&photo=8

I was coasting through blogs and images at 4 in the morning (someone please help me, I need a better sleeping pattern) when I came across these wonderful photos by Richard Mosse.
  His clever use of colour means the jungle is no longer a mere background, a setting: it becomes forced into the forefront of our vision. A marvellous explosion, thundering through the landscape. I noticed my eyes became more focused on the textural quality of the plants - very intriguing. It also, I feel, heightens the sense of isolation, and alienation, of being swallowed up by nature. And of wonder; I want to explore those candy cane mountains.