'The Birds' film poster

Haven't posted on here for while - mainly due to settling back into the uni routine. But anyways, here's my first piece of Year 3. 

This was supposed to be a 'quick' exercise... adapting, using or creating a new piece of our work for a new context. I decided to do something new but using a previous technique I'd used  and practise it. This is a film poster for Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'. This was done using watercolour and colour pencil with a bit of collaging. 

The original work scan

Edited image on the poster layout and text added 

Happy Meerkat

Today's drawing - a happy meerkat. This was adapted from a photo I'd taken in Florida of the meerkats at Busch Gardens. There was one particular meerkat with a big smile on his face and I wanted to draw him.

Tiger Cub

I wanted to practise drawing some more animals in pastels, so today I decided to draw a tiger :) I exaggerated the eyes... I wanted to make them big and shiny. I love drawing eyes :) 

Patterns of the Sea

This is the illustration I've been working on recently. It was based on a sketch I did last year for our location project in my first year of uni. The location I chose was the aquarium and I did a sketch of as many patterned fish and sea creatures as I could fit on the page. I wanted to do a colour version and this is it :) (though it differs slightly from the original sketch as I made some alterations). I haven't worked with inks in this way before so this was new for me and I really enjoyed it. I'd like to continue to practise with this.

Rough sketch

... and the final colour version

New stuff!

Finally got myself motivated to work on some new ideas and new drawings (it's so easy to go into a summer holiday slump). I've just finished a piece that has taken me a few days to do (on and off). I've been working with inks which I've really enjoyed. Will post as soon as I get it scanned! :)

Figure Collograph

I was sorting out and tidying up some artwork recently (that until now has been unceremoniously stashed under my bed) and I found these figure collographs from my first year of uni. I liked the way these turned out and the various marks that came out onto the prints.

'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' cover

This was another book cover I did for the last module of Year 2. The book was 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'. I decided to experiment with yet another medium for this one, cutting the image (and text) out of card and collaging it together.

Some life drawing

These are some illustrations from my Year 2 Life Drawing sessions. These were done in pastel and charcoal.

Collograph Print

This was an alternate idea I had for creating my 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' image. I'd assembled some tiny metal cogs onto a piece of card to create a collograph. I wasn't sure how it would turn out (or if it would turn out at all) but in the end, I got some interesting prints. I decided not to use this image in the final cover.

Penguin Design 2012 entries

I've been away for a while so... no new posts up til now. This is some more Year 2 uni work. These were my entries for the 2012 Penguin Design awards. The adult book was 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' ( a very interesting read) and the children's book was 'Grimm's Fairytales'.

I had many different ideas for 'Cuckoo's Nest' but eventually decided to go with the idea of a tangled head image (representing the chaos of the mind) with a bird (a recurring symbol in the book) escaping on the back cover. My original idea was to have the tangles as wires coming from a machine... but that eventually disappeared as the idea developed. I decided to create the image using lino block print.

For the 'Grimms' cover, I used the same medium and developed a decorative wolf design.

Both prints were then scanned in and tweaked on Photoshop and the text added.

This was my first attempt at book covers and the Penguin Design competition and it was something I really enjoyed doing.

Wolf

This was a wolf drawing I did in a book I'd made for Angee for her birthday last year. 

The Big Draw

Last September, some of our course members took part in The Big Draw event in Plymouth, which was held at the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. We were asked to choose objects from the museum and create strange creatures from them for the children's 'Treasure Hunt' activity, where they were given a sheet with our creature drawings on and had to find the object from which it was drawn from within the museum.

These were my contributions. The objects they were drawn from (if I remember rightly) were (from top left to right): one of those old-fashion music horns, the next two were designs from the same object which was a tribal style bag, a jug and a cat head off of an Egyptian cat sculpture.All of these were drawn in fine liner.

 

Mask Etching

Drawn out design

and the etching.

This was the second time I had done etching. I enjoyed doing this design... I'm tempted to do some similar designs again at some point. 

Plastic in the Sea

This is also a first year piece. We had to do an editorial cover design on a topic or issue. I chose to do mine about the build up of plastic rubbish in the sea and how it could potentially get into our food chain through marine life ingesting it.

'Bluebeard'

This is some work from my first year at uni. For this project we chose a fairytale and illustrated a chosen sequence from the story. I chose the tale of 'Bluebeard' and this sequence I illustrated is when the girl is about to open the door to the forbidden chamber.

'The Timid Tiger'

This was my final major project for my Foundation. I re-wrote and illustrated a story I had written when I about 6 about a tiger who was afraid of everything. These are some of the pages.

Metamorphosis

Just going to start with putting up some older stuff. This was a project I did back on my Foundation course on 'Metamorphosis'. I thought about how people often wear animal prints, patterns, fur, leather, feathers etc. and thought about how I could make it into a drawing, morphing a human into an animal. These were done in charcoal with white pastel.

Finally...

Finally got round to starting up a blog! Yay! :) This is something new to me but... ah well here goes...