Native.

Monoprint.

Reworking ideas for my Illustration class’ exhibition publication. Really wasn’t happy with my initial submission (likeness was off, and it was just a rushed, bad drawing in general. Plus, my course leader doesn’t like Nicolas Cage, which I cannot comprehend)

Hopefully this one is a bit better. Need to maybe crop it better, though.

Our Degree Show opens on the 26th June, just under one month (which is terrifying - have a lot I want to get printed/sorted better), so keep that date free! Can’t say I haven’t given you enough notice :)

8:03 am  •  27 May 2012  •  1 note

Drive. Screenprint.

Here’s my final and ultimately unsuccessful entry into this year’s D&AD Illustration Student Competition. The deadline and results were a while ago, but I’m just starting to organise my file folders and clearing things out post assessment hand-in (and competition rules said they didn’t want finals going up online before the results were announced).

The Brief was to create a portrait for Little White Lies magazine of one of the main characters from their list of 5 ‘best’ films of 2011. The choices were Black Swan, Drive, The Tree of Life, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Super 8. I chose Drive. The Brief called for a straightforward depiction of the main character, but I thought that a bit too restricting. I thought that if I just drew an image of Ryan Gosling, and D&AD received hundreds of drawings of Ryan Gosling, there wouldn’t be much to set my work apart. So, I decided to construct his face out of Mustang car parts (apparently I like making faces out of other images)

The character doesn’t have a name, and cars are obviously a huge part of the film, so I thought this image made him seem anonymous, a bit cold, and it contains various other objects from the film - there’s a hammer, a bullet, a watch (and more) within the car parts. I wanted to make an image you’d have to look at for longer than just a drawing of his face.

Unfortunately, I suppose that really wasn’t what they were looking for, so it didn’t get shortlisted or nominated or anything. Disappointed, but to be expected - it was a little bit of a risk. Two of my very talented classmates did get nominated however, and you can see their work on their own blogs http://rupertsmissenillustration.tumblr.com/ and http://staceyknights.tumblr.com/

I was happy with my image, and it will hopefully be up on the wall at my Degree Show, but in a much larger format. I screenprinted a run of 25 of these images, and they’re A2 in size. They will be available to buy (and will hopefully sell) at the show, I just need to work out how much to price them at. I’ve never been good at that. Don’t want to overprice them as I want to sell them, (I have no room for them), but then I would like to make my money back on the expense of having to reprint acetate that the print technicians at uni got wrong.

Here’s the initial A4 print, how the image looked with the magazine logo on it, and a photo of the A2 print. It was too big to scan, and I’ve always wanted to have a photo holding a print like that, makes it seem artier, ha.

7:04 am  •  25 May 2012  •  3 notes

eatsleepdraw:

Alfred Hitchcock.

Portrait of the director, made up of images from his films.

Wow, almost 600 notes?

Really didn’t expect that many people to like my work! Thanks for all the kind words!

9:09 pm  •  20 May 2012  •  1,031 notes

Couple of silly editorials from a set that were part of a uni project to help try and speed up idea generation/output.

Both articles are from SFX magazine, columns by Bonnie Burton. The rest of the editorials I have are also from this magazine - thought it a good way of getting into a routine/habit of doing them. The articles are quite quirky/funny, so I had hoped I’d be able to bring some of that into my work, which I thought was a bit boring.

The one on a left is an article about scifi drinks, so the image is a martini, but instead of an olive, it’s a Death Star. The one on the right is about plants taking over the world, so it’s a kind of venus fly trap like thing. Meant to look like evil teeth.

Original illustrations (not pictured) were by Maria Colino, and the other columns which I’d been looking at (think I uploaded a few a while ago?) were by David Langford/illustrated by Andy Watt.

Big hand-in deadline on Monday. Then degree show prep. Scary. Need to work out what I want to put in/sell (if possible)

5:27 pm  •  18 May 2012  •  2 notes

New York Food Stalls

Screen Print

Did a few more today to round out the set.

12:43 pm  •  16 May 2012  •  5 notes

Conversations with Filmmakers.

Printed my book jackets for assessment :)

Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hithcock, The Coen Brothers.

1:39 pm  •  15 May 2012  •  10 notes

Screen Print

Making *slight* progress with my boxing images project.

Think it’s fair to say I’d lost my way completely with this project. Must’ve had 12 different tutors/guest tutors/visiting illustrators suggest different ways of working/saying they didn’t like different approaches I had been doing. Really didn’t know who to go with, and it left me not knowing what I wanted to do, and I kinda lost sight of what I’d originally intended.

The other day I wanted to screen print a large version of my Drive D&AD entry in preparation for our end of year show, but there’d been a mixup with the printers, and the technician had printed off someone else’s work on my acetate. Seeing as I didn’t have anything with me that day as I’d wanted to screen print, I decided to chuck together some of the drawings I had on my desk, and this booklet type thing was born. I hadn’t originally intended to make a narrative or a sequential thing at all, but all the separate elements I had sort of made a mini story of a fight, I guess.

It got some positive feedback from a couple of tutors, which was surprising, but I’m just glad that I may have found a resolution for this project. It’s not what I originally had in mind, but if it works, I’ll go with it. Really disappointed it’s taken me this long, and got so close to hand in to figure this out, I really should’ve planned it better.

These are my initial pages. Lots of rough drawings and some pages don’t work, so hopefully I can redo them tonight and screen print again at some point this week!

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! What pages don’t work? What kinda do?

Cheers

2:40 pm  •  13 May 2012  •  10 notes

Pretty much final?

Certainly hope so, I want to get them printed tomorrow.

University project - posters/book covers about Film Directors.

Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock and the Coen Brothers.

Using elements from their films to create their portraits.

I don’t often say this about my work, but I’m quite happy how these have turned out. I could constantly tweak little bits endlessly, but for now I think I should stop fiddling… unless anyone points out any glaring things which don’t work!

Changed the back cover of the Hitchcock one, it now features the Bates Motel as opposed to the plughole, which gave the cover a weird perspective change, and didn’t really look like a plughole.

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

1:19 pm  •  13 May 2012  •  8 notes

The Coen Brothers: Interviews

University book cover/poster project. Hoping these are almost final. Need to add finishing touches to Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock, then hopefully I can get them printed on Monday!

Any feedback before I send them to print would be greatly appreciated! Are there any bits which aren’t working for anyone?

4:43 pm  •  12 May 2012  •  4 notes

WIP of my Alfred Hitchcock Poster thing.

Sorry if people are getting sick of looking at this now.

It’s getting to the tiny detail tweaking stage, as I want to send this to print at some point very soon hopefully. I’ve edited some of the faces, and recoloured bits, looking mostly at the lifeboat area, as that was bothering me.

Can I ask for everyone’s advice? Are there any details at all which bother you? Doesn’t matter how nitpicky it is, not matter how small the detail - it’s going to be a fairly big print, so if it looks dodgy small, it’ll look horrendous big. If you wouldn’t mind taking a quick look, I’d very much appreciate it - I’ve been staring at it way too long, so can’t really see a lot of the little bits that are wrong. Fresh outlooks would be fantastic.

Thanks! :)

This will still hopefully be applied as a book cover later, but I’m still playing with type at the moment.

6:59 pm  •  8 May 2012  •  5 notes

Really need advice on colour!

These are the 3 posters/covers that will be in my set (when they’re finished - still lots and lots of tiny details and moving and redrawing to be done) But at the moment, I’m really struggling with how to colour Akira Kurosawa’s cover.

Hitchcock is a blood red to link with Psycho, and the Coen’s are a light blue to link to a snowy feel in Fargo. Really, really not sure how to colour Akira Kurosawa’s one.

Any advice would be very much appreciated! What do you think might work better?

6:58 pm  •  6 May 2012  •  2 notes

WIP close up of the third in my book cover project of Film Directors.

This one is for Akira Kurosawa.

Really don’t like the colours in this, so I’ll be changing them once I’ve finished all the shapes. Really not sure on the background colour at the moment, though.

Any suggestions?

3:47 pm  •  6 May 2012  •  3 notes

Monoprint Boxer.

Uni work hasn’t been going well today. Bad times.

Work very much in Progress.

7:41 pm  •  5 May 2012  •  3 notes

What’s going on in Room 21?

Mysterious.

11:40 am  •  3 May 2012  •  4 notes

… and now for something completely different - screenprinted New York Food Stalls.

11:07 am  •  2 May 2012  •  7 notes