'Ghost Stories' - Finals

These were produced for the Folio Society - collection of ghost stories. We had to produce a full page illustration for two of their stories along with a full cover (front, back and spine) I actually found this brief really difficult as I just couldn't seem to connect with the stories at all, but I got there in the end!

Illustration for 'an empty house'

Chosen illustration for 'The treasure of Abbot Thomas'

A spare illustration for 'The treasure of Abbot Thomas'

Front cover

Back cover

The whole cover together with spine and bleed.

'New Scientist' - Finals

We were asked to produce a full page illustration, a spot illustration and a banner for an article for the new scientist magazine.  The article focused on the find of 'our closest link to Eve' and the spread of the human mitochondrial DNA from Africa around the world.

Banner

Main Full page illustration

Spot illustration

"Born Free" - Final.

"How can the bird that is born for joy, sit in a cage and sing?" By William Blake. We had to produce a working thaumotrope and a poster to accompany it, in a decorative style such as the kind of things that places like Etsy, Folksy and Paperchase sell. I opted to do this with pyrography, underestimating the time it would need due to the size of and the complex pattern but hopefully it was all worth it in the end! I also managed to find William Blake's signature too...

"Born Free". Pyrography on Baltic birch ply, A3

               The bird cage on one side of the thaumotrope. Pyrography on Baltic birch ply, 25cm disc.

And the bird on the other side - Spin this fast enough and its an optical illusion where the bird should end up in the cage. (It worked!)

"A Good Crowd" - Final.

Here is the final piece done using a number of characters from the book of faces that we had to produce over summer. The scenario for my audience was watching a horror movie and instead of putting them in a cinema i opted for a living room...

"A Good Crowd". Coloured pencil on blue stock - A3.

'The company of Wolves' - Final.

Here is the first completed final of year 3. 'The Company of Wolves' is a short story from the book 'A Bloody Chamber' written by Angela Carter and is in effect Little Red Riding Hood written for adults. This is a previous competition brief from the Folio Society & The House of Illustration.

                                    Coloured pencil and acrylic on black stock (9.5" x 6.25")

Because I have been absolutely useless...

...at updating my blog, here is a very quick update with images of the final pieces from some of the projects done over the last few months. Year 2 is now complete and we have a huge summer project on the go to prepare us for the final year. I really must keep this blog updated from now on!

'Loot' - final piece. Hand waxed roses and coffin completely made and painted by hand also.

Kirt Schwitters - Final. the Folio society illustration.

And a poster to accompany it.

Colour illustrations for the Macmillan prize.

Project - The Secret Thoughts of...

This brief has asked us to illustrate what we cant see - thoughts. My secret thoughts had to be those of a puppeteer. I did lots and lots of research into puppeteering, and much of its history is very deep and psychological, so I decided to go down that route. After a few very rough sketches of ideas, I pinned it down to a choice of two.
We had a group crit' and both my lecturers and the group chose this one as the strongest. My aim was to try illustrate the split personality and sometimes confusion of a puppeteer, his thoughts wanting to cut the strings...

 

The sketch above is the one that my group chose, after further input and advice from my lecturers like making the character more fluid and floppy, and to add more interest such as the Victorian suit with tails and Victorian curve blade ornamental scissors, I redrew and messed about with it using layout paper and trusty lightbox. The final image ended up like this...

 

"The Secret Thoughts of a Puppeteer"

 

Close up of the head...

 

And the bottom half.

A dull starting point - Final

Well, here is my final piece for the project where our brief was a till receipt from Waitrose. After much messing around and some excellent advice and input from the lecturers, I finally pinned down my layout as shown in my previous post. During the initial feedback sessions one piece of advice really stuck with me and that was to "try and make a really good sandwich with just a few ingredients, instead of a big pot of stew with lots of ingredients where I'd be forever adding bits of this that and the other to get it right." (A strange analogy but being a big food lover it really worked for me, ha!).

On the back of that my visual completely changed and simplified, and I needed to move away from it looking so much like a logo. So instead of using the symmetry and 'altering' Darwin's tree of life to look like cracks in the egg, I used his sketchbook page complete with his scribbly handwriting, not changing anything at all. Making the page almost translucent I laid this over the the egg. A clear portrait of a 'thoughtful' Darwin and sardines swimming over the image is all it needed. I dropped the idea of using the Quantum Leap statue completely.

The deadline and feedback was yesterday, and it got a very positive response and I am overall very happy with my illustration - its amazing what can come from a simple till receipt...

 'A Dull Starting Point'

 

The Blue Pet - Finals

Here are my finals for the baby board book illustrations of The Blue Pet. This was my first every try with guache - much more practise needed and possibly better quality paints! I am happy with the flat colour I acheived with the sky, but really struggled with some of the other colours...

Project - Family fun, Final.

A 10 page concertina book at just 10cm square. The brief stipulated no words allowed and it must stand up on its own! I chose the zoo, and used foamboard threaded with ribbon...

Project - social conflict

Our first project given at the start of yr2 - the brief asked us to take some or all of our characters created over the summer and place them into one scene. The image needed to convey some sort of 'social conflict'. With my characters being so very very different, I'll admit to struggling a little with this, but finally pinned down an idea that I think worked quite well. The feedback on this was positive, and I have taken on board the critique given; I must try not to control my work so much, loosen up the lines and not be afraid to take it further - if it goes wrong I can always wind it back a stage...

                                          Sketching

                                           Visual

                                          Final piece.

A character...

One of my characters from the 1st year summer project

                                              Draughting pen

                                             

Rubens Reboot (1st year project)

This project asked us to 'reboot' a painting by one of the masters. Once I got into it I really enjoyed it as I picked one of my all time favourite paintings, "The Abduction of Ganymede" by Rubens. Taking the time to really study it, take sketches of certain details and elements made me find things within it I'd never noticed before.At first however, I got a nasty artist block though (just like the block I got doing the 'recon book' project which I'll post up next) because... well... how do you improve/alter/change such an amazing painting?

Well I didn't improve on it at all, but I did manage to produce my first ever oil on canvas painting. I then got this scanned and reprinted onto a fresh canvas to turn into my reboot because I was scared to ruin it!
Out of a box we had to pick a phrase and then a film genre. I picked the phrase "He never realised probing was so good..." with the film genre being sci-fi. The end result was to be a movie poster.

                                The Original

                                            My oil on canvas painting.

 

                                            My final sci-fi movie poster. (poor quality photo...)