CALM DOWN!

Yes its another update on my skills sketchbook, lately ive been swamped with uni work so i havnt had much chance to do some designs in my own time but just before i thought id be able to have time to do one another project from uni arives, so once again im swamped and more than usual this time because ive got to create an artist book, which is kinda what my skills sketchbook is but it dosnt really relate to birmingham so i doubt il be able to use it. Anyway recently ive been looking at "David Shrigleys" work if your not familiar with it il put a link in at the bottom, but if you are youl know that his work is alot of badly drawn line drawings, but the thing that i love about it is the fact that his work is so funny, this i thought would be an amazing chance to learn something from his work so, here we have my latest piece called "Calm down".

http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=David+shrigley&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=639   <---- David Shrigley link!

I.T.A.P Production for visual communication (THE ACTUAL LAST I.T.A.P)

Principles

• From novice to expert
• The experts

From novice to expert
You can have all of the text book knowlage in the world but you are still a novice, because to become an expert you need to have actualy done these things that you read about. Its all about the experience and getting your hands dirty as it were. Take "the diamond of sutra" this is the oldest book in the world first printed in 868AD and was printed by using silk screens and wooden blocks, as a human race we have learnt over thousands of years how to make and print books, from the 1400's where the koreans were printing with metal movable type all the way up to 1976 where IBM created the first inkjet printer. With all this experiance and getting our hands dirty we have managed to create so much.

The experts
These are people who are in no way novices because they have been doing what they do for manny years and have been through almost every process, however this does not make you finished you can never stop learning and this is whats amazing about the human race because as i have shown, from the first book being printed to the PDF version 1.7 becoming released in 2008 we are always evolving and learning. But some "experts" are "zuzana licko" who works mainly with type and has created manny of her own typefaces one of the things she has said is, "Integrating design and production, the computer has reintroduced craft as inspiration" which basically means everyone uses the computer to find their insperation and not as a tool as much as it used to be, photoshop wasn't launched till 1990, but people designed using the computer before hand, so we mustn't rely compleatly on computers. To tie in with that quote "Hubert Drafuse" once qestioned if machines would one day be better than man, and if we always use the internet as a source of inspiration he will be right.

Task
Here are a few dates that i feel were very relevant to the production in visual communication, 3500bc: summerians use cuneiform alphabet on clay tablets, 105AD: paper invented in china by Ts' ai Lun, 1400: Koreans priniting with metal movable type, 1798: papermaking machine invented by nicolas-Louise Robert, 1948: coulor scanner invented by Kodak, 1971: email invented by ray tomilinson of BBN, 1976: inkjet printing announced by IBM, 1990: adobe photoshop launched, 1992: Tim Berners-lee of CERN develops software for the world wid web (WWW), 1995: Windows 95 released.

Looking at the overlooked final.

I was asked to choose 5 words that i feel describe Birmingham and then just to pick one and create a piece about it, using type but not just any type my own typeface. After using acrylic copolymer on a sheet of perspex and stenciling out my typeface i then wanted to somehow bring light and shadow into this project, so i chose the words "only at night" because i feel that Birmingham's dark side really comes out at night and also this gave me a chance to bring my "grungy" way of working into it. So i began to set up lights and suspended my perspex from some invisible thread to make my photos look even more interesting when i took them. After a bit of editing in photoshop to make it look like id taken the photos in a subway at night my final piece was ready.

The top photo i like especialy because i made sure that the camera caught every detail of the acrylic copolymer to give the photo a lot of texture, aand the bottom photo i blurred just slightly so the image looks rough and it gives the illusion it was taken at night even more.

I.T.A.P Photography (last I.T.A.P lecture)

Key principles

• How can you add text to change an image
• How text can influence our emotions

In photography and image is just and image, without some text to explain what the image is portraying then we have no idea weather an apple is just an apple or if its ment to show us how the recession is harming our economy. For example such photographers such as "John Heartfield" and "Peter Kennard" it is obvious to see what there photography is ment to be showing us.































Avendons work in the american west

This was a book by"Laura wilson" one of "Richard avendons" assistants, now his work was not self explanatory and he only took black and white photos in this book. The book was about "drifters" and how he just took pictures of them, now this is all well and good but the people have no story to them, its really just a blank canvas now text could change this and give you a lot more information but he chose not to do this, and its a crying shame because in my opinion it really ruins these beautiful crisp black and white photos.




































How can text influence our emotions

Now a photo of a murder scene is just a photo if we didn't know that the picture we were looking at was a murder scene, but put a bit of text underneath the picture explaining that manny innocent people died in that very spot would make you think a lot more about that photo. Well this is exactly what one photographer did, unfortunately i canot find any photos at this moment of his work. However i can tell you about photos take from the victims of the "Cambodian killing fields" this was when there was a lot of Communism in that area and anybody who failed to comply with the raceme were taken for "correction" by this they were horribly assaulted and then killed. These photos did have text in the book where it explained all this but without the text you would have thought that they were just drifters like the photos above. 

Update on my skills sketchbook and life!

Well this new design is all about not being silent all your life i guess, and using that voice inside but some people find this very hard. As for the medium i havnt used every bit of watercolor in sight this time and ive actually used my very very very fine pens to make that red as colorful as possible. My next piece is all about not being complete before you die.

Life
On another note ive got a party coming up on saturday, hopefully this will be fun and the weed will be growing out of my ass!

Yes and its time for another update on my skills sketchbook.

This time ive decided to go for something a little more natural and base this design on the Eden project in cornwall, theres not really much to say about this one expect the amount of times ive drawn a hexagon in this piece almost drove me to destruction, but i got through it and finished it off with, yes some more water color using some pinks and purples this time. The thing that probably stands out the most in this piece is the colors used not only are they bright but leaving the actual structure itself with no color really made it pop and its one that im really happy to have done.

I.T.A.P Thought and structure in graphic art and illustration.

Principles

• Over coming mindsets
• Restating problems

Over coming mindsets

This is basically routine, where if you are used to working in a particular medium then you will continue to do so for a very long while, and even though your work may be magnificent you are not keeping your mind fresh and opening your self up to new ideas. These ideas could very well change the way you work forever and give you even greater success in this world as a designer. There are manny ways in keeping your mind fresh but i will name but a few that i use, the most important one is defiantly the environment that you work in, if you work in an environment that has no pictures or creative things in it you will not be able to find that inspiration you are looking for. This is a picture of my work space for example,
it might not be the biggest but it has everything i need plus the things i collect and pieces of either my work or artists i find interesting i stick on my wall. Another way of course is by looking at other artists work that have been in the same situation and find out how they overcome it by looking at their blogs.


Restating problems

As an artist you'l find yourself stuck at certain times, this could be because your not giving yourself enough options, enough room to play around as it were. They say whoever THEY are that any artist should have up to 50-70 different ideas about the design there working on, now personally i rarely have 20 so dont worry about having too manny ideas just try expanding the one you already have, or you could of course if your really stuck adapt another artists work to fit the criteria of your design such as, "Yuko shimizu's" work she took the idea of the great wave of kanagawa by "Hokusai" and just adapted it to make it her own.

However if you feel that this is plagiarism then you could just doodle like i do and this i feel helps me really get into what my subconscious mind is doing and allow my childish side to play.
 Take the notes that i was going in this lecture today, my notes are always like this and they might not look clear but to me they are but its the doodles that i did when i wasn't really paying attention that matters and i could easily turn into a pretty decent design if i kept working onto them.

This lecture has pretty much been on keeping your mind fresh and my one piece of advice i could offer is to always be creative maybe invest in a sketchbook that you just carry around with you and doodle in.

Another update in my "skills sketchbook" and my new love for watercolor.

As you've been noticing with the pieces ive been coming up with in my "skills sketchbook" alot of them have been involving watercolor, the reason for this is because it highlights what needs to be highlighted on that page but in a messy way which i love. Also you can get much more "grungy" colors from watercolor than you could with a flat color from a pencil crayon or colored  fine-liners, because the color is watered down a bit. It is a medium i would stress anyone to try using the same medium i use or even follows my heros in their work such as "Blu" or "John Burgerman"

Ah yes and now to see what ive been up to this week.

Here is my latest piece and it is as you can see based on "facebook", its basically about how people use this site especially your friends to prostitute all their personal problems, and how "pathetic" they make themselves look.

Another update in my "skills sketchbook"

Yes its that time again for another look at what ive been up to this week in my skills sketchbook. This piece is a little more personal to me as it is a inside into what my love life is usually like. As always il put up the picture and il wait for any feedback, that is if anyone reads this thing, hahaha...im serious, i could write anything on here and i dont think it gets noticed by most of the outside world.

Also me and my group of friends at uni have just completed the sweded version of "The fly"
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1427826036
Okay theres the link to my facebook profile where it is currently residing but until i can get it onto my blog thats where youl have to go.
Until next time, stay sexy.

Update on my skills sketchbook.

The newest addition to my skills sketchbook, 

created using pen and watercolor.

I.T.A.P Lecture 6 (Production and Outcome)

Key principles

• Medium

• Testing    

 A medium is what tools you use to create a piece be it paint, pencil, pen ect, and also how you create it. choosing a certain medium can also be how you get yourself noticed in the world, many different artists use different mediums and communicate different things. Take "Banksys" work for example it focuses very much on "war" and "religion", where as the artist "Blu" dosnt focus on anything really but it is the way he works that makes up his medium, such as the lack of coulor that he dosnt use.This makes his pieces stand out a lot more than anybody else's also the sheer size of them dwarfs buildings.

Testing

Testing your work is crucial to how well it performs in the outside world, if you don't test your work how do you know if its communicating what you want it to? There are many ways you can "test" your work one of them is to upload it onto the internet and hope to revive comments and reviews of other people on it, another way is getting your work into a gallery. But the best thing to do is try and promote it as much as possible and in anyway shape or form this will show more people what you do and then you will get their comments on it in some way or another, but it is key that not only are you happy with the work that you produce but so are the clients and others.

Benefits of working on commercial and non commercial projects.

I think the benefits of not working on a commercial project is of course you can do what you wish because there is no client to tell you what you need to do, but on the other hand you don't get paid for it. In saying that and going back to what i was saying previously though it is a good way of getting your work out there as a client isn't going to use your work lets say in a shop window that's going to be an A4 poster which nobody is really going to see.

The benefits of working on a commercial project of course is that you do get paid for it, and not only that the client that you are working for can then pass your name on to another business and then that business might hire you.

Ah yes and before i forget i was going to upload the first piece that ive worked on in my "Skills" sketchbook.

Skills

So today i went and bought yet another sketchbook and almost straight away Ive started a design in it, which will be on flikr tomorrow, just click the large picture above and youl be able to see it as of tomorrow at some point. The reason why i went and bought another is so i can improve my skills as an illustrator, and what i mainly lack in is the ability to draw human like features, now this is a big issue because i cant keep drawing characters all of the time. One of my main heroes in the world of design is "blu"
A page from one of his sketchbooks.

You can see where my idea of using very little color comes from now, plus i love the way he uses very little detail but the lines make it seem like there is enough as well, and one day i aspire to be like this. But in the mean time practice makes perfect.

The fly

At the moment im working in a group to swede the film the fly using stop frame animation, the deadline is this friday so i will upload the film as soon as i can. As for the week itself bonfire night was fun even if there was no actual bonfire.

I.T.A.P Lecture 5 (Moving image)

Key principles: Character and Narrative.

The characer is very important, he or she is the main part of the story they can either be a hero or a villain, the good guy doesn't always have to be the good guy. We call the main character the protagonist, there are many things that you must think of when designing a character, what do they look like? whats their personality like? how do they stand?, walk?, talk?, what is there body language? All these things come into play when creating somebody for a story. Lets take a film for example: "The fly" a very well known film, staring "Jeff Goldblum".
In the film he turns himself into part fly part human and in the end the fly's body consumes his and he just ends up becoming a 185 pound fly, but its the character itself that is interesting in this case because he is neither good or bad but both because he starts of as this scientist working on a way of treleportation, but he becomes to self obsessed in his work and ends up becoming the bad guy, a sort of "jackel and hide" moment. Note also how the character takes a phyical metormophasis and slowly gets more ugly and evil looking.

Narrative
Now this gives the story structure, a way in which to flow if you will, such as a beginning a middle and an end. Without this we would be lost such as with the film "the fly", there is a mad scientist he meets a woman, woman falls in the love with the scientist, scientist wants to impress woman so he trys out one of his inventions on himself, test goes wrong , scientist starts to turn into a fly, woman runs away from scientist, she realizes what she has done wrong and goes back to try and save him realizes it is to late and kills scientist. that is the narrative and it structures the whole film so it can make sense to you and me. Of course everything doesn't happen like that or the film would be boring but it does happen even if we don't realize it

And heres a famous quote for you "Every story needs a begging a middle and an end, but not in that order.

London ect...

So ive just come back from london, ive had an amazing time and also alot of time to collect all the crap that gets handed to you in the street and of take alot of pictures for my scrap book. There is just one thing that il not only take away from london by it will stick with me for my whole life and that is an impulse tattoo to add to my collection :P its a "stick giraffe breathing fire" dont worry there will be pictures of it, and if that wasnt good enough i had to rope my friend into getting one as well so no they can fight to the death! London helped me understand a lot and now i have everything i need to continue....

Oh and there will be pictures of my scrap book up soon.

I.T.A.P Lecture 4 R.V.J (Drawing by hand/ Utilising your creative brain.

Drawing by hand has no limitations like a computer does where you have to use a certain colour ect, also it helps your practice as a designer, but its mainly the limitations that a computer has that is the issue. Plus drawing by hand has been happening for years and years and it is one of the first ways us humans communicated visually, take Leonardo davinchi's  drawings for example,  They weren't very detailed and there was very little text but he understood them and that's another advantage by being able to refer back to them and see where you went wrong or right more quickly.


Utilizing your creative brain
Our brains are split up into two parts a bit that does all of our logical thinking, weather something is a good idea or not, and the other part is our creative side, the side that takes risks its like our inner child. This is the part that we mainly use for visually communicating. It is also a part that we use for working in our R.V.J's because an R.V.J should be seen as our safe zone for our creative mind to run riot, it is only when we come to doing our final outcome that we use our logical and our creative mind together.

Winter..

So winter is upon us and dam im cold but hey im still having fun, and last night was pretty cool to quite literally in fact. now you might think that im stupid because i keep going down there in the cold and then i have to travel back early in the morning but the truth is i don't mind it because it really is worth it to see her, and of course everyone else i mean there's so many people that i used to talk to that i never kept in contact with and now i see them 2 or 3 times a week i finally have actual friends again :)...

Today..

Today i bought a gun, today i lost myself but don't worry i found me again, today i found some tobacco, today i smoked it, today i got high, but then i fell down don't worry i got back up again, today i thought about loneliness, today i got sad.... today i went to the pub, today i saw old friends, today i played pool..i won, today i was happy... tomorrow? ... i don't have a clue.

The right path...(left or right?)

last night was very good but it still didn't teach me much but i reckon im on the right pathway now which is always a good sign, however in the meanwhile im going to have to just go with the wind and try to figure more out, which dosnt help when i dont pay much attention ``/. but hopefully everything well fall into place soon...

Withdrawel symptoms

Well they've hit me and i don't know how im gonna be able to cope with them this time so here comes the nail biting and the itchiness urgh this is gonna be a rough month or so....

I.T.A.P Lecture 3 Graphics. Legibility/Researching the content.

Legibility is a bit part of any aspect of art, i mean how are you supposed to be communicating visualy when you nobody can understand what you are showing them. And this is also the case in graphic design for example if you are using a typeface and you decide to change the color of that type to yellow then make sure it is not on a white background, because this will make it virtually invisible and will also hurt the readers eyes to look at. The size of a typeface is a big part of legibility as well as if a font is too small how do you expect people to read it, this also goes for layout, if your text is thrown all over the place then nobody is going to be able to follow what your saying and therefore making it eligible. You have to take layout into acount with everything that you do in graphic design because lets say your creating a map but then you want to turn it into an app on a phone then your going to need to scale everything down if not it just wont work for the phone and not only will the layout be wrong but it will also be eligible too.

Researching the content.

This is important with every bit of graphic design you do, you must always research into what you are doing or aiming for in your final piece if not your not going to have a clue what your talking about or be able to get off in the right direction. There are many ways to do this by using the internet reading books and magazines ect, but another way to do this is by mind mapping your ideas and working through a design cycle, such as, Do research ---> Reflect ----> Thinking ----> Planning. Also trial and test things there is no right or wrong answer to anything and a mistake is never a mistake but somthing you learn from and can build up to and it always looks good in your work to have lots of research to back up what your trying to create.

Enlightenment

Well today has shown that i am now bored by my girlfriend and we share nothing really in common, i do rush into things way to much, im yet to tell her this though......ah well maybe il learn my lesson next time round ....

Her...

For some reason im compelled to keep seeing her but at the same time i wish to give her space to sort out her own problems, i have a girlfriend and this feels so wrong but at the same time it feels like im doing the right thing. I know if i end it with my girlfriend il regret it .... or maybe i wont, shes starting to notice too she can feel that im slowly rejecting her for the other girl and the worst thing is she knows who the other girl is. I see danger ahead.

I.T.A.P Lecture 2 insperation/practise

The notion of insperation derives from the constant inquiery based on research and observation, manny illustrators do this such as paul davis who collects every bit of information or anything he finds intresting, this is his insperation as he can look at what he has collected and go from there. myself i like to look at other artists work for insperation such as jon burgermans work. He closely follows charecter design such as myself and all of his work has come from insperation too as he collects things just like paul davis. Now practise is built up from all your previous work and you learn from your mistakes to create a more intresting and visualy pleasing peice from previous sketchbooks. some illustrators buy their sketchbooks in bulk sometimes 20 at a time and this is all pracise even if you are only doing simple sketches, this all goes towards your final outcome and it helps alot, just like insperation does if you collect things time and time again, you can go back to what you have found and as paul davis says "he dosnt know why more people dont work like him, as he finds it so easy to go back to what he has found"

No boiler!

Great so my boilers broke so i have to have cold showers everyday until we find £6.000 pounds from somewhere. FUCK YOU BRITISH GAS! but hey hoe a cold shower can be of some use i guess, :P

My lack of observancy

So i look at my timetable take in all the relevant information then put it down, i have to be in Tomorrow at 10 brilliant rush to get all my work done then find out from a friend i passed the information on to who actually took time to read the timetable properly that i don't have to be in till Thursday...i fail.

ITAP

ITAP is a lecture i attend every Tuesday, and it is filled with lots of useful information about art and design. The last one i attended told me about most elements in art and design and explained about to use others ideas without committing plagiarism, because copying is never stealing as we were told. We were also shown many pictures from different artists some dating back to the 1800s and how people have adapted these pieces and made them their own just by using a different medium, for example if a piece is done using sketch and an artist comes along a few years later and then does the same piece but changes a few things around then paints it that inst plagiarism, because they've used some of their own ideas and then changed the medium. Picasso does this alot in his work, he takes many ideas of quite serious paintings then used his medium or shapes to create a much more interesting piece. The next ITAP lecture focus on illustration which i specialize in so hopefully il be able to grab some ideas from that.