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