Relationships between wild animals and humans

This image goes along with the previous post, it was for the last unit of Level 4 at AUCB (Functions of Illustration). I wanted to show the how tame the animals were on the safari I went on in Longleat. The animals are well treated however they are there for our amusement, they defying nature, by being so tame and comfortable in their restraints.

Old drawing I found from before summer

Just found this, something I made for the last unit of the first year, looking at relationships between humans and animals. I drew this using pictures I had taken on safari in Longleat. I was taken then by my man on valentines day. What I think I like the most is the paper that I drew on, it was paper I used while I was printing, sort of a happy accident.

Ink, chalk, pencil.

Honeycreeper Plasma

This is it in it's original form, the colourful, trippy version might not make it onto Threadless because you are only allowed to use 4 colours, but what do you think of it in just plain black and white?

New Zine and Threadless

The second issue of Alkoholik Robotik is out there and being enjoyed by many, and I want to thank everyone for their support! If anyone is looking to get their hands on a copy just leave me and comment and I will get back to you.

I've been considering whether or not to send in one of my drawings from this issue into Threadless. There's an opportunity to make a bit of cash and get my design onto a tee, so keep a heads up for any links I post because I will need all the votes I can get! Here's the drawing I'm thinking of submitting so please let me know if you can think of any improvements I can make or if you've had experience with submitting artwork to Threadless let me know.

Bookmarks and Trumpets

I've been searching the net for some new inspiration for the next year, and found some pretty cool sites I thought I'd share with all of you lovely folk.

http://pinktentacle.com/2010/07/macabre-kids-book-art-by-gojin-ishihara/

http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/004480.php

http://www.jamesjean.com/

I love his insanely talented illustrator, I'm going to see how many times I can use James Jean in my artist research over the next year, so far from last year I'm on 3.

http://www.thierryvanbiesen.com/#

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php

http://www.aiyanaville.com/

and finally an oldie, but a goodie.... who has this incredible new website http://www.sylviaji.com/

Purple Flyer

This is the flyer I did for the 2nd issue of Alkoholik Robotik hype. It's inspired by a little video clip I saw the other week, you seriously have to check this out!!

http://www.ravetalk.co.uk/anyone-you-know/ - enjoy!!

Alkoholik Robotik Zine 2nd Issue

Out Monday the 4th Oct.

We will be selling them outside the Illustration block at AUCB during lunchtime. If you can't get down there contact me on 3204369@aucb.ac.uk, only for very special people we can arrange something a bit more postal.

We've spent some time over summer reflecting on how to make this second zine so much better than the first. The issue is focused on colours, and we've all represented a colour through imagery, also the issue itself will be in colour this time. Month by month this zine is really going to grow to watch out as we get some 'Botiks' on board to add some more diversity to the collective.

The flyers were some promotion we did for the zine during freshers week, many thanks to Rob Smale.

Silent Disco Poster

I saw an email from Uni asking for fresher posters and thought as I had nothing to do I'd give it a go.. although saying that I did actually do this on Friday when the deadline was Saturday, so it ended up being really rushed. I didn't put much thought into the design and illustration, it just kind of happened. Originally it was going to be for a pub quiz but after sending it off I got an email back saying it was better suited for the silent disco at the Sherbert lounge.

Here's the original (very rushed) version..

It was lucky I had a second chance at it because looking at this now I can see that the text doesn't seem to stand out that well and the placement is off. So this is what I did for the second poster.. please let me know what you think/

Warriors Dance

I have never seen anything like this in my life! The one good thing I found in Milton Keynes is the Bowl, this incredible venue holding 65 thousand people was the settling for the best gig ever. Seeing the Prodigy for the second time this year has definitely made up for the lack of festivals so far this summer. The laser show was incredible, the top picture was taken during what I believe to be their first playing of weather experience at a gig. Totally epic! I'm guilty of taking one or two photos during their set but what's with everyone watching the gig through their camera phones here... baffling!

The one moan I will have to go into is the bar staff were totally incompetent! It shouldn't take 2 hours to get served at any event. To que all that time only to find 2 staff members out of 10 or 15 serving was outrageous. It doesn't take a genius to work out that at an event that size you need better organization skills for the bars. Whoever was in charge of it all is an utter plonker!

Desperately want these!

http://www.find-me-a-gift.co.uk/t-shirt-graffiti-fabric-pens.html?utm_source=froogle&utm_medium=free&utm_term=T-Shirt+Graffiti+Fabric+Pens

I've tried that paper that you print your designs onto and then iron into your tee's but they always crumb apart like one messy flake. I mean they are alright and have served me good in the past, but only one wash will mess those things up. I want to be brave like Marcus Oakley told us that time we did the tee shirt design crash course, and just draw start onto the tee's with no sticky, papery, flakey mess. When I get these awesome pens just send in your requests as I'll be boshing out very new and exciting range of drawn radio illustration clothing.

Alkoholik Robotik Zine Launches Friday 7th May... Get Ready...

What a beautiful exquisite corpse this is..

(In Order of Appearance....) Glen Clothier, Rob Smale, Maria Midttun, Jessica Durden

have produced a lovely little zine that can be purchased at a very reasonable price. It features all of our best recent work (this really is cutting edge Illustration at it's best!!!)

Alkoholik Robotik launches Friday 7th May 2010, @ 60MillionPostcards, Bournemouth. If you come down you will also have the catch to buy some of our work as well as some other lovely poor students art work.

Informative Illustration

Recently I've been stuck on what my Informative Illustration would be.. and today I had a bit of a brainwave. The image above is just something I drew to go in to Zine I'm making with my course mates, Rob, Maria and Glen. (We are showing our work and our new Zine at 60MillionPostcards Bournemouth, 7th 05 10, so please swing down and buy something :)

I like the tribal markings on her face, and only chose to include them last minute which i feel has given the whole drawing a deeper meaning. The fox on her head has mange, thats why it's missing an eye (its meant to be an urban fox but i think i need to make it look more gross for that point to come across)

But back to my brainwave.. I was thinking about my Dad and how he's given guided meditations helping people to find their spirit animal. Also my brother, sister and me all have spirit names which he's given us. I thought it could be quite interesting asking him more about this as what happens during one of these guided meditations. Perhaps going through one myself, and then writing about it and producing informative illustrations about what i had experienced.

I've conducted some research already, in preparation, as i was wondering about what kind of animal the fox was in the spirit world...

Symbol of camouflage, quick wit and cunning, agility and magic..

Foxes are seen as power animals/ totems throughout the world. The Chinese believed foxes could take human form.

In Egypt the fox brought favour from the Gods.

There was a fox God in Peru and Foxes also aid the dead to get the next life in Persia.

The Cherokees, Hopi and various other Native American Indian tribes believed in the foxes healing power, the Apache credited it with giving man fire.

Fox is amongst the most inquisitive, skilled and ingenious animals of nature.

Being a creature of the night, fox is often imbued with supernatural powers. Foxes start their day at dusk and it ends at dawn, when the world of the magic and our everyday realities cross paths. Foxes can be a guide into the faeries realm.

Freaky Figurines

I started expanding my chosen topic to looking at relationship between people and their pets. The natural and unnatural elements of it and exploring the human denial of animal nature and our obsession with being the dominant species.

This is a bit of a jump for my las post, however i felt a little stuck with just focusing on urban foxes and found progressing onto exploring the relationship between pets and their masters allowed for a lot more choice, and urban foxes can come into that. I would through my illustrations hope to accomplish a deepening into our perceptions of ourselves and our animal friends.

Above are two figures, only i swapped over the heads. It looks a little bit freaky, (and the one on top reminds me of the old woman owners of the bath house in Spirited Away) This i feel best fits into the decorative illustration category - as it doesn't really say much but it could fit in with a piece of text and just provide a visual pleasure. I made a lino print of the birds body and woman's head, which i experimented with in the print rooms with different colours. Yet i dont feel it's as bizarre and beautiful as the figurines above.

Functions of Illustration - Idea Generation

Functions of Illustration

Our Brief was to chose our own topic and produce 3 illustrations falling under the categories, commentable, decorative and informative. I was spoilt for choice and found it difficult in the beginning picking a topic that i was happy with, here is are some of my ideas which didn't get chosen..

Iceland - volcanic eruption, monumental downfall (picture of Iceland with a sad face)

The great Spring gamble - the long, cold Winter hasn't necessarily been bad news for all out flora and fauna.

Social Issues - Survailance, Social Paranoia, Mental Health (statistics)

Free Parties and the War on Drugs - making a guide to partying (hard)

Home Surgery Parties - looking at people that like to inject themselves a lot with plastic and the people just at just a little bit gross, cutting open their heads when drunk for a laugh... (that was my very close second)

However all of this didn't attract me as much as an article i read in meat magazine and in the Vice magazine about Urban Foxes. There were 2 very different sides to each article - one a story about how London had benifited from have urban foxes and how people were letting them into their houses and feeding them by hand.

Whereas in the other magazine the article titled kill the foxes was about how some young boys in London were hunting the disease ridden foxes, (whose piss causes blindness and saliva that carries e-colia and meningitis) Not just hunting, but had dedicated their lives to torturing and killing urban foxes with cricket bats, pellet guns and snooker cues.

So how can this topic be translated into image - complying to my brief functions of illustration?? I began by producing a mind-map of all the ways i could do this:

Keeping a scrap book full of inspirational images (related to theme)

Do an animation on the wall (using Photoshop)

Spray paint my bin/ wall or floor

Photocopy one image in one colour and then put it back through and photocopy another image in another colour

Henna Tattoo

Make Stamps

Installation

Draw on /shave on an animal

Prints - screen, lino, mono

T-shirt designs - print on tees or just draw straight onto them

Draw using toothpaste

Draw on stickers and badges

Scarification/ Body Modification

Spinning disks,

Zoetrope

Leave your work black and white and get someone else to colour it in

double expose film in a darkroom

Pinhole camera

etc......

And it doesn't end there... I then went on to linking these ways of making images to ideas related to Urban foxes...

Spinning disk - Foxes like to eat cheese, peanuts, rice pudding, grapes, cat and dog food.

Zeotrope - Animals morphing

Word and Image Research

I've been researching 50's advert's and typography as a reference to my word and image project, i this will help me when I write text to form objects that signify Frank Sinatra such as hats, microphones etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFbCGT_AWBI

Word and Image

To better understand the time Frank Sinatra was in I've been watching these 50's and 60's tv adverts. It's been visually helpful, seeing the style and design and how idealistic they are. The advertising techniques are simplistic and very amusing.

Digital Image Final Piece

Corporate Sponsorship of Conflict.

For the Digital Image project we had to produce a series of 4 images representing a part of 'the noughties' I chose to look at globalization.

The Life and Music of Frank Sinatra

The new brief at AUCB is word and image. we were split into groups and given a famous musician to research into and illustrate their life or songs. We were given Frank Sinatra, which I am thrilled about because he's just amazing, I love both his music and films and thinks he had just the most amazing life.We found out quite a few interesting facts about him already, such as, There's a fan group in Bournemouth that make their other magazine called "perfectly frank" and we've gotten our grubby student hands on a few back issues.His alleged organized crime links led to him being under the surveillance of the FBI for almost 5 decades starting in the 1940's. Sinatra suffered from senile dementia in his final years and had a heart attack in Jan 97, he died from another heart attack on May 4th 1998.Throughout his life Frank Sinatra had mood swings, bouts of depression and symptoms of bi-polar.I find his life so fascinating and it's been easy finding out information about him because he is a well loved icon. We have come to a point now in our group that we've done a lot of research and need to start developing initial ideas. We were taught today how to make a stop-motion animation using Photoshop, and so we just set up an area and started painting away anything that came into our heads basing it on the life of Sinatra. It's a bit random, but it was so much fun to make, we all took it in turns drawing and moving bits and taking the photos so it was a really speedy process. We haven't done any editing on it yet, but i like how it looks at the moment, just really rough and fun with our hands coming in and out of shot. The drawings were really quick so it looks almost childlike - but I think that's what makes it work and makes it look really homemade.

Take this waltz with the clamp on it's jaw

Our new brief is word and image, today's task was to pick out song lyrics from the tombola and illustrate them. The song is called 'This Waltz' by Leonard Cohen.

My response to this song at the time was just to write on these post-its and stick them up around uni, but seeing as we learnt all about stop-motion animation today I thought I'd test it out. I'm pleased with the end result even though its rough and very jumpy, it would have been nice if I had more time to have the post-its coming down above her head and crawling over her head and face, hopefully this is something I'll be able to do next week. In hindsight I didn't really consider the very depressing spirit of the song, with its slow beat and dreary voice and didnt't take into much consideration of the letterforms but I enjoy it none the less.

Another Poster

Best of Biro Tonight!!!!

Valerio Carrubba

Anatomica Delights by Valerio Carrubba

This Italian artist also relates to my chosen theme and way of working, this image is particually fascinating as I did work today that was very similar, I used old anatomical diagrams that I found in an old book from the library and overlapped it with sketches I have made of my housemates faces. Then I later tried making their faces using other objects and used the anatomical diagrams as templates.

His subjects are literally having their flesh peeled away by what I guess can only be the hand of God or some other me-levant being. I love seeing the insides of bodies and Valerio Carrubba makes it especially gruesome showing bone and an array of vital organs, muscles blood and guts. Very well detailed drawings and a double painting technique and overlapping of brushstrokes.

Vania Zouraliov

Vania Zouraliov is freaking illustration god.. This Russian artist's illustrations are exquisite and so detailed, and layered with symbolism. So much so that I've stared at this image now for about an hour and still amazed. I'm using this child prodigy in my artist research as I love how some of his images shows chunks of the characters bodies missing. I'm really interested in this at the moment and have considered doing something similar for my subculture drawing approaches brief. I'm still looking at my housemates and what makes them unique and individual, my plan is to make large (ish) portraits that represent both the physical and the metaphorical sides to each person. Have parts of their insides showing, and at first glance they just look like organs but as the viewer looks deeper they will realise that the organs are made up from other objects. Constructed through associations I make between the subject and particular objects and symbols.

Bits and Bobs

Hair Eye Balls

This took me a ridiculously long time to complete but now that I have I'm quite happy with it. Although I don't know how I'm going to use this in my work, I just like drawing eye balls and tiny detailed lines.

I was working out new ways of drawing someone's face and I remembered the scene from the Labyrinth where Sarah walks through the wrong door that leads to certain death, but is caught by the helping hands. I love this scene.

Drawing Approaches

Drawing Approaches

I am currently working on experimenting with different drawing tools, methods and techniques. The theme I'm working on is Subcultures. I was initially drawn to looking at quirky subcultures all over the work such as the Bills, Rolingas and the Zapatistas. It's interesting learning about their fashions, slang and the history behind it all. I loved the Zapatistas, most people know of them because of their leader, Sub Comandante Marcos, smoked a pipe while wearing a ski mask. They are an anti globalization revolutionary militia that appeared in the 1994 as a response in NAFTA.

The project took on a new direction a

s I started researching Fetishes, the best

website I found was torture garden, loads of crazy cool images of folks dressed up in gimp suits, corsets, uniforms, bondage, and being hung from the ceiling by their nipples. however the clubs require you to join a membership before you can go, it was too expensive just to go for primary research so I had to go back to one of my original ideas.

I am living with 4 other girls and 2 guys and noticed how we all have our own unique styles, musical influences and slang we've picked up from all over the country. I started wondering how much of this information you could get from just looking at their faces. This lead me to some observational drawings of each of them, by including any scars, piercing. jewelry and hairstyles I started captioning who they are.

This is an etching I made from the observational drawing of my housemate James. I feel it works quite well and it was included in the final piece which was displayed in the Illustration exhibition before Christmas in a beach hut. I experimented with scratching into plastic the faces of my other house mates.

just a little history

I am studying at the Art University College and Bournemouth, just finished my first term of the first year and things are going well so far. I would be more than happy to help out anyone with any kind of creative project if they feel they can utilize any of my skills.