Colourful

LWL dev

| Rolo

I’d like to start this post by saying that I am so happy I have chosen House as the film I’m creating art for, and that we’re exploring editorial illustration. It is giving me the opportunity to explore materials and art styles that I have never done before, or even though I would ever do. The fact the visuals are so naïve and childlike has led me down the road of trying childlike materials such as crayons, and their adult cousin, soft pastels, which I’ve surprisingly really enjoyed doing. I feel as if this project is making me grow so much as an illustrator, more than the previous ones because I am so far out of my comfort zone, and thoroughly enjoying being so, that I’m considering keeping these materials in my illustrative arsenal and looking more into Editorial illustration as a potential path for me to go down, whether it’s side projects to add to my income or as a full time career. I need to research the field a lot more before I make any sort of concrete decision but I didn’t really think about it before this project and I feel as if my eyes have been opened up to the world of editorial illustration and it’s definitely got my interest.

  • Flowers painted by me using Photoshop, too clean and perfect for House.
  • Flowers drawing with crayon by me, I like them but they just aren’t bold enough for House.

Over the weekend I started what I hope are my final spot illustrations, having chosen soft pastels as the material I am going to use for them because of their boldness, messiness and ability to create interesting textures that I simply could not achieve with watercolour paint or digital painting. I also used a Japanese brush pen to draw linework around them to make them stand out more, I feel as if this is the best way for me to create them because I have used pens in my art pretty much consistently throughout my life and they also help me to contain the soft pastels a little bit and make the designs even bolder in the process. I still have a long way to go with using soft pastels, I need a lot more practice with them before the illustrations can be considered ready to be presented on my final design because I don’t have much experience with them prior to this week and they are difficult for me to get used to.

Pastel and Brush Pen Spot Illustrations
Decollage Attempt

As well as creating some spot illustrations at the start of the week, I have taken a bit of a U-turn as far as my front cover design for the LWL project goes, I was initially heading down the path of developing my cracked mirror design, and even went as far as creating a few media tests with decollage while I tried to figure out how to achieve the effect I wanted, but it just wasn’t working out. I realised that design was something I would feel comfortable doing and not necessarily something that would fit with the overall tone of House. Instead, I have chosen to develop my design that focuses on Blanche as the main character because I feel that she is the most recognisable film and focusing on only one character for the film fits with the layout that LWL magazines use on their front covers. I am worried that changing my mind about the front cover this late in the project could jeopardise the rest of my work because I am going to have to change the aesthetic a bit from what I was originally going for. I am hoping that this isn’t going to be much of a problem because my development piece has been done in soft pastel and brush pen, alike the spot illustrations I over the last weekend so at least there is some consistency with them. I haven’t really thought about how my spot illustrations are going to be presented on the page at this point, I’ve been focusing a lot on creating the art, rather than the layout which I realise isn’t a good thing because the layout of a magazine is just as important as the art inside it. Next week I really need to spend a lot of time creating potential layout sheets and thinking about where things should be placed on the page.

Front Cover Development- Soft Pastel and Brush Pen

Pollution Apocalypse- An Illustrated Response to the ongoing Climate Crisis

| Rolo
Pollution Apocalypse Initial Sketch

It’s Riso print week next week, which will be interesting considering how iffy my one-page zine went. We aren’t doing it this week like I thought as one of my tutors wasn’t in so they’re giving us more time to get our sketchbooks up to date and do more of the prints we have already.  I’m hoping that my risograph print goes better this time, at least the one-page zine experience taught me what not to do when it comes to risograph printing. I am still sceptical though of whether or not I’ll be able to achieve a good result though because the last riso print was only a 2 colour one and I’ve decided to be a bit more ambitious this time and try a 4-colour print, which might be my downfall, but  I’m really happy with what I have designed so far so I really, really hope that I am able to create a good print out of it.

For the design I have once again decided to stick to the Lovecraftian/climate change theme that I’ve got going on right now, only this time I have made it blatantly clear that this is the issue I am trying to tackle, compared to my previous designs which were more subtle in tone. I have written ‘Pollution Apocalypse’ around the outside of the main design so that there is no confusion to the issues I am trying to convey. While apocalypse may sound a bit drastic and exaggerated, scientists would disagree given the fact 11,000 scientists have declared a global climate emergency, which sounds like the beginning of an apocalypse to me. The main focus of the design is a heavily polluted city that is pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere, causing the city to flood and attracting all manners of monsters to its’ centre. The creatures represent the end of life as we know it, as well as mother nature fighting back against the destruction that we as a species have caused.

Pollution Apocalypse Photoshop Design.

11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of ‘untold human suffering’.

Weston, P. (2019). 11,000 scientists declare global climate emergency and warn of ‘untold human suffering’. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-emergency-scientists-emissions-letter-climate-change-a9185786.html [Accessed 5 Nov. 2019].

I’m going to Poland for Christmas next Thursday and I’ll hopefully be visiting a lot of galleries, exhibitions and also doing art with my girlfriend’s dd who is a full on, free spirited artist and actually makes a living out of it. So I’m hoping that I’ll be able to write a lot of interesting blog posts while I’m away because I feel like my blog is a little bland right now, I haven’t really had time to go to exhibitions and things like that because I’m so invested in each project that I don’t get out much. But yeah, anyway, hopefully a lot of interesting posts and photos of Polish art and inspiration happening in the coming weeks. I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in all sorts of different art that I haven’t seen before, and hopefully seeing some of Van Gogh’s work because he is one of my favourite artists of all time and I’m pretty sure some of his work is on display at a gallery in Krakow. The only thing I am slightly concerned about is the fact I am going to miss 2 days in college before Christmas which could potentially set me behind in the project before the hand in day in January, however, I have already done a lot of printing and my sketchbook is almost up to date so I should be fine, as long as I do some work while I am away.

Week One, The Return

| Rolo

I have recently finished my first week back at university after taking a year out in London and as I mentioned in my last post, I have been given 8 weeks to fully realise the project that was set to me during the summer. I am so relieved that we have been given this much time to do it because I really want to do the character of Skaadi justice and finally develop and finish a comic which is something that I have hoped to do for years. This week was a lot different to what I thought it would be, I had fully expected to immediately be thrown back into chaos, that I would have to start fully realising my character, story and finish the entire comic from the get go, this was not the case however, instead we did some peculiar group tasks and a refresher session on how to use Illustrator, which is something that I found rather useful as I hadn’t used it that much during my time away. The tutors also came around to have a look at what we had achieved over the summer and to offer advice on where to take the project next, this was also very useful as I did have some doubts about what I had done and I wasn’t entirely happy with the designs of my characters as they all seemed to be drawn in different styles, my bad, really. After speaking with my tutors, I had a much clearer idea of what I was going to do with my comic and agreed that I needed to try and stick to one style.

Overall I am rather surprised and also happy about being back, the project side of things hasn’t been half as stressful as I expected it to be (so far) and it is nice to finally have a direction for me to go in with my art. I lacked direction when I wasn’t in university and it was something I was struggling with… not anymore! The only thing that I am really concerned about is that fact that everyone on the course is new to me, I’m kind of an outsider, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because I want to solely focus on getting my degree this time around. I just wish that I didn’t have to be around so many people, it is a bit of a culture shock and isn’t making my anxiety any easier. I should really talk to them about it at some point.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit off track here, during the Illustrator session we were asked to create a face which a variety of different moveable facial features so that we could construct a range of expressions. I ended up creating a random character called broccoli- face and primarily focused on different eyes and eyebrows while keeping the rest of the face the same. Even though I only changed a couple of minor features, the results were far from minor. His facial expressions ranged from; angry to scared, from psychotic to painfully sad and just outright weird. I was amazed at how much difference the eyes could make, although it shouldn’t be too surprising as the eyes are the windows to the soul.

I am looking forward to the rest of the year and I am sure that I will find a way around my anxiety so that it doesn’t interfere with my work in anyway, I’m going to try and keep a low profile because I feel socially awkward around people and this is my last chance to get a degree with funding from Student Finance and I am determined to make the most of my time at uni.