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.