Well, this has a been a pretty productive week so far, I’ve done over half of the research and figured out which of my own artists I am going to choose to research once I’ve finished the ones set by my tutors. I found a really cool woodcut printmaker called Liv Rainey-Smith who does some seriously gothic, Lovecraftian designs; her work is right up my alley and is definitely going to tie into my more macabre theme that I plan on running with this project, with H.P. Lovecraft being one of the godfathers of horror, he even has a branch of horror named after him! The level of detail Rainey-Smith achieves with woodcut is mind-blowing too, it’s almost hard to believe that she’s using woodcut to create her designs. I’m getting so excited about this project now; I think I’m going to hone the spirit of Lovecraft with my designs this time too. The only thing I’m worried about is whether or not I am going to have time to finish the research because my girlfriend is working on a large mural commission  that is going up in Wallsend and it’s looking like she is going to need help finishing it before the deadline on Saturday. I may have to put my research project on hold for a couple of days to make sure that the mural gets finished on time and do my best to catch up on the research afterwards. I just can’t let her struggle like this, we’ve collaborated on murals before, we painted a caravan together and work well together so I’m confident that if I help her then it’ll get done on time and then I can wholly focus on the research afterwards, even if it means staying up most of the night on Sunday, it’s not like I have a project hand in on Monday, her deadline is more important right now.

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All of this said, I am still going to do bits of research in between painting the mural, like when the paint is drying etc, so hopefully I won’t have a horrific amount to do on Sunday. As well as Liv Rainey-Smith, I plan on researching the legendary Hokusai, I mean how could I not research him for the purpose of a print project, he literally revolutionised relief printing and took it into a whole other realm. I’m not usually that interested in the historical artists, which I know is bad because we wouldn’t be where we are with art without them, however, there are a few historical artists that I’m really interested in and Hokusai is one of them. I don’t really know a lot about him as a person or artist, only what I’ve seen of his work like the great wave so it will be interesting to research him properly and find out how he achieved so much in his life, maybe I could learn something that I could apply to my own artistic practice.

The third and final artist that I’m going to research isn’t even a print maker at all, which I’m hoping won’t be a problem, I’m not sure if we’re only supposed to research artists that make prints. Anyway, I’m going to research Jack Davis, best known for his work on the Creepshow comics, I’ve chosen him as more of a style reference than anything else, he used to create highly bizarre and macabre characters that I think could inspire my own horror focused style during the print project. I’m really hoping that we get to create enough prints to take home and not just prints for the course during the project because I wouldn’t mind selling some on etsy or something, it’s not exactly making comics but I have thought about selling art prints and getting myself out there for a while, I’ve just never had the resources to do so and I’m hoping exploring all of the print facilities I’ll have access to on the upcoming project will change that. I’m happy that we are going to be doing different types of printing because I’ll be able to figure out which one works out best for me, who knows, it could even be the start of a print business venture for me.