A1 Poster - Sign 5

With a view to create an A1 black and white photocopied poster with our visual kit, we had to choose one out of a list of ten bits of text taken from already existing posters. I picked 'Rat in the Skull', and began looking at different ways to portraying the same thing.













I had difficulty deciding between these two final ideas:





I think the first is a better use of my visual kit, but the image is not simple and strong enough and quite an obvious even cliched responce. The second is far more simple but clever, with the rats wearing skulls rather than existing inside them. The concept has possibly been taken too far away from the original text though (especially as there are plural 'rats') so perhaps just the skull masks that they are wearing would be enough...

Paris sketchbook work

This is some of the observational drawing I did on our Paris trip, on the streets, on the metro and in museums like the Picasso and Quai Branly.

Headline - Sign4

Had to choose a headline from a newspaper on one specific day and do an A4 landscape double page spread illustration, yet again using our visual kit.
My headline: BANGLADESH SENDS WARSHIPS TO BURMA OVER GAS ROW.
In my sketchbook I looking at the structures of offshore gas stations and warships and combining the two.




This was the final image I came up with, expanding the more structural stitch patterns of my visual kit and using them to create the architecture of the gas stations.

Binnorie - Sign3

Yet another extension to the sign project; we had to choose a fairytale out of about 5 without looking and then make five images to sum the story up. My story was about two princesses and the older marries with hunk of a prince and then he falls for the younger more beautiful princess with rosy cheeks and gold dress, so the older throws her in the river of Binnorie and she drowns. Then some guys who work at the mill pull her out, she's dead, but a travelling harp player makes a sweet harp out of her breast bone and her hair, plays it to the royals (including the older princess and prince etc) and it starts playing on its own and sings about how did died, grassing the older princess in. Started in the sketchbook...









The catch here was that we had to use our 'visual kit' that we had been compiling right from the beginning with our universe. I saw my kit as being collected tectures and fabrics and materials because I like to use that in my work, but instead of actually making with the real things, I began photocopying all these textures in black and white and collaging with them. As I began this stage of the project I built up a huge collection from fabric and weave and knit and felt books in the library and used them to portray swirls in a river or stone buildings or trees. Keeping the shapes and figures etc simplified I think it worked really well and was a useful experiment.

Alphabet Book - Sign2

This was an extension to the universe project - a personal A to Z book that was 'peculiar and local to us'. I decided to use the quirky, dark humour I use in a lot of my work, and made an 'Unpleasant Alphabet' in a tiny little book I bound myself from types of found paper. I was much more chuffed with this cos I could do what I wanted more and so I worked faster and so I wasn't so precious with the images and most actually came our better for it. Job's a good'un!