Illustration

What Did I Just Watch? And Other Thoughts I Had This Week

| Rolo
King of The Cats sneak peak

Well, I didn’t manage to watch all of the movies over the weekend because I was busy finishing off the King of The Cats illustration for my aunts’ book, which I’m trying to do alongside my university work; I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be difficult but I just need to get better at managing my time.  I watched Blade Runner and House though, I’ll post my reviews of the movies separately because there is just so much to say about them, especially House which is basically a drug fuelled nightmare in all of the right ways. After watching these two I have decided that House is the movie that I am going to focus on creating art for this project, it’s been a while since I did any horror based art and I think House will really challenge me it is far from a normal horror movie, the style, tone and atmosphere of the film are unlike anything I have ever came across before. I think choosing House for this project will really push me as an illustrator and take me far out of my comfort zone which will be a good thing to show in my portfolio.

Double paged spread House moodboard

On Monday we were asked to create a mood board for one of the films that we will be able to refer back to for ideas during the course of the project, I actually ended up creating two because I just couldn’t fit all of my ideas for House on one page. On the mood board I have included images of the main protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters, as well as images of some of the many bizarre scene changes and special effects that are plastered throughout the film. I watched the movie on my laptop, so I was able to get reasonably high quality screenshots of key scenes in the film which I cut and stuck into my sketchbook.  I also used the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to take samples of the main colours that House uses so that I have an idea of what colours to use in my development and my final illustrations. The whole point of the Little White Lies front covers is to capture the themes, atmosphere and visual tone of the specially selected movie, this can be done with the use of linework, colour and composition of the illustration, the colours used should reflect the movie in order for it to be successful which is why I sampled the colours directly from the movie.

LWL House thumbnail sketches

As well as creating a mood board, one of my tutors kindly created a worksheet that contains four blank Little White Lies front covers, we were asked to sketch 8 different front cover variants as part of our initial ideas and development. So far, I have sketched out four out of 8 designs, taking inspiration from the House movie, as well as some illustrators that have previously created covers for LWL to do so. I have found it really difficult so far because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get any of my people portraits to look right, I also can’t decide who the main character in House is, and I’m supposed to be creating a portrait of them. The plot of House is so confusing that I think 3 characters present in the film are all the same person by the end and one of them isn’t even human. I have tried to combine fragments of all 3 of their faces to create one unified portrait which hasn’t went very well either, trying to show all three characters was too much, it compromises the appearance of all of them. I also tried doing something similar using two of the main characters faces instead, which worked a lot better because half of the portrait is a cat which is something that I am much better at drawing. I used the iconic mirror scene from House to frame the design which really works to me compositionally, so far, my second design is the strongest and the one I want to develop further. Speaking of cats, I’m going to create a wholly separate post at some t point talking about my King of The Cats illustration because I am unbelievably happy that my art is going to be published and I want to talk about it.

Insanity Psychopus- Not #2Cute2Fail

| Rolo

It’s weird for me to say but I actually kind of enjoyed creating a character for the 2cute2fail challenge, it ended up tying in with another project I’m working on, illustrating a book for my aunt by association. One of her friends and her have been running a blog for years where they write about weird history, folklore and the sometimes supernatural, it’s a really cool blog full of bizarre and sometimes horrific tales and historic events. Anyway, they have decided to publish a book featuring a collection of their best and most bizarre posts and they’ve asked myself and my girlfriend to illustrate it, which is amazing, my art is going to get published! One of the posts they need an illustration for is about a folk tale called ‘The King O’ the Cats’ in which a blissfully unaware cat is comfortably sitting in front of the fireplace when he finds out the previous cat king has died and he is now the new crowned king; the thought of a cat with a crown is adorable so I decided I’d kill two birds with one stone and design the King O’ the Cats for both the #2Cute2Fail contest and the book. I tired many times to get the design right but I just kept struggling to make the kitty look cute, it’s so unlike anything I’ve ever tried before, the first lot of designs looked too realistic and not cute at all… the 2nd batch were a step in the right direction but still weren’t right, it’s safe to say I got a little frustrated while trying to design the King O’ the Cats.

The King O’ the Cats pencil sketches.
Insanity Psychopus- Fineliner and pencil

One night, when I was feeling particularly annoyed at my inability to draw something cute, I decided to give up and just started drawing a creepy cat instead. I wasn’t sure what it was going to turn out like, I wasn’t trying to make it good or cute, I was just drawing. I gave it 3 eyes, a terrifying grin and Cheshire cat stripes and it looked amazing. It wasn’t stereotypically cute, not by a long way, but it was my kind of cute, all dark and a bit ropey. I entered it into the #2Cute2Fail competition immediately and called it Insanity Psychopus, a feline Psychopomp that takes your sanity away. Sure, it might not get the best reception and probably doesn’t quite fit the criteria for the call for entries, but everyone has their own idea of what cute is and I wanted to enter something that really came from me, weird, unadulterated, unaffected by university me. Of course, I did then go on to submitting a more stereotypically cute King O’ the Cats too, one that was made digitally because hey, more chances to win right? The 2nd illustration was cuter in the traditional sense and resembled a normal cat, if that cat happened to have purple skin… like the one I drew. It also more closely depicted the folktale from which my original idea came from with the cat sitting peacefully in front of a fire.

I’m glad that I entered two different pieces into the competition because it just shows that I am capable of doing more than just one style, though I do much prefer the ropey one. As for the book illustration, neither of the designs ended up being fit for purpose but I did create a lot of sketches during the process of designing my #2Cute2Fail submissions and there’s one if particular that I think I’m going to develop further for the book, I may not have killed two birds with one stone but I have made the book illustration process easier than it was before and without knowing about the King O’ The Cats I probably wouldn’t have had an idea for the Pictoplasma competition at all. All in all, it’s been a pretty productive week and I’m weirdly looking forward to starting a new project at uni next week, and finding out my results for the previous one.

King O’ The Cats- Photoshop and Wacom tablet.

The Printed Project Hand In

| Rolo
Save The Koalas Black And White Variant.

I had a bit of a stressful week the past week when it came to getting my prints ready to hand in, the screenprinting process wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Printing two colours is definitely a lot harder than one because you’ve got to perfectly line up each colour layer. I originally made the mistake of screenprinting the black layer before the orange layer, so when I tried to print colour over the black, parts of the design just got enveloped in the void. It also became a lot harder to line up each layer and I ended up creating a lot of offset prints. The same thing happened a while ago with risograph printing, but I was certain that the problem woudn’t be repeated with screenprinting, I was wrong. I kept getting unlucky with mesh screens too, both of the ones I used had marks on them which stopped my design being transferred properly, so whenever I tried printing a layer, a small part of my design was missing, a problem I just had to work with. Nevertheless, something good did come out of printing the black layer first, I realised just how good the design looks on it’s own without colour and all of a sudden I had two different print variations I could sell to raise money for the Australian Bushfire support. I still needed to create the colour prints that I originally set out to create to make my project successful so I started a different series of prints where I printed the orange layer first and then the black one on top; it was a lot easier to line up the colour layers this way so the 2nd batch of prints ended up having a lot less offset which I was finally happy with.

This project has been a huge eye opener for me, there were times during screenprinting where I wished I had just let the risograph machine do the work for me, it would have been a lot quicker and potentially easier than manually lining up each layer. But I would’ve definitely got an offset with the risograph machine, no matter how quick it is, at least with screenprinting I have more control over how much offset my prints are. I can unequivocally say that I will do screenprinting again in the future and hopefully, with a lot of practice, the process will be even more successful next time. Overall the quality of prints could be better, but they could also be a lot worse and I still intend to try and sell the prints I have on Etsy to raise money for WWF Australia which is what their original purpose was, so ultimately I think I have done a good jo this project, no matter what grade I end up getting. I have handed in the project now so I guess all I can do is wait and see what grade I get, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit worried because the prints didn’t turn out perfectly, there are some inconsistencies and the brief asked for 10 perfect prints which I haven’t really achieved. I can always fix the inconsistencies manually with a paintbrush when it comes to sellng them so that they are of a high quality, but it wasn’t something I could do before handing them in because in a way it would be cheating and my tutors had already seen the inconsistencies so they’d know if I fixed them before handing in. I just hope the fact that the meshes I used were fault doesn’t affect my grade because it was completey out of my control. Agh.

https://pictofolio.com/news/8d6d9741-de19-4dea-99b6-c2a45b9b7dfc

On a slightly less stressful note, I think… we’re off for the next week again while the print projects get marked and once again we have been given a task to complete we return. This time we have been asked to create a cute character and enter it into the Pictoplasma #2Cute2Fail competition, now if you follow my art then you’ll know that I don’t really do cute, more creepy and macabre so this is definitely going to be a bit of a challenge for me. I’m up for it though, it’s never a bad thing being taken out of your comfort zone so I’ll do my best to create a super cute character, though I can’t guarantee it won’t be a bit on the creepy side.

Save The Koalas

| Rolo

It’s been just over a week since I returned from my holidays in Poland and Edinburgh, and after spending 3 weeks away from the course, I have been finding it quite difficult to readjust to university life. I didn’t draw enough when I was away, instead I focused on going to galleries and exhibitions in Poland so that I could try and get some more inspiration for where my project and coursework is going to go next, as well as enjoying myself because hey, it was Christmas and new year’s. While the time away was really nice, it has meant that it’s taking me a while to get back into the flow of things, when I returned, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do for my final print, despite seeing so much amazing art abroad. It wasn’t until I was scrolling through Facebook and watching the news at home that an idea hit me horribly, the Australian bushfire crisis.

Please donate to help save the animals in Australia!- https://support.wwf.org.uk/australia-bushfires

Image source- https://pixabay.com/photos/koala-bear-tree-sitting-perched-1100469/

So far during the print project, I have been creating art that tackles topics such as climate change and pollution, two things that are having a horrific impact on our world and wildlife, yet to me, aren’t being tackled enough. I wanted to try and change that, not necessarily on a large scale, I have to be realistic, but if I could reach just one person with my art it would be something. Having tackled these issues so far on the project, it was obvious to me that I needed to stick to similar themes when it came to be designing my final print, I just wasn’t sure what issue to tackle, there are unfortunately so many. For a while I considered tackling the meat industry, but this seemed too hypocritical as I was still eating meat, albeit little, at the time. I have stopped eating meat fully now and have for the past week, but still, I didn’t feel as if it is enough to start hitting the meat industry now. When I saw the horrors of the bushfires and just how much of the environment is being destroyed and how many animals are being killed, it made me feel sick to my core, it’s so upsetting that (at the time of writing) one billion animals have been affected. Having loved animals and nature since I was a child, sometimes more than humans, this topic hit close to heart and I just knew that I had to try and do something to help.

Now that I had an idea of what I was going to illustrate with my final print, I started sketching ideas of just how I could show the Australian bushfires and the impact that they are having. I made a few rough thumbnail sketches in pencil to get out some of my ideas which included:

  • The world being consumed by fire with a koala’s face emerging out in fear because the bushfires are the latest of the wildfires that have devastated the planet in the past year.
  • A Donald Trump earth laughing at the fires while a koala fell off the face of the earth, symbolising the risk of the koalas going extinct and just how little Trump cares about the environment (I thought this might be a bit too political so I didn’t take this idea forward)
  • A koala’s face on the Earth as it melted away in the flames, which would show the impact of climate change and how it is causing the ice caps to melt, as well as the impact the fires are having on the koalas.
Initial idea sketches for my final print.
The sketch I decided to take forward.

All of these ideas seemed a bit too wide, they focused on the entire world, rather than just the area and the animals that are being affected by the fires, on previous projects I did focus on showing the environmental impact of climate change, but I haven’t really focused on the impact it is having on its inhabitants, with one billion animals being affected by the horrific blaze, this time needed to be different, the animals needed the centre stage. I kept the idea of having the flames framing the illustration, but instead of showing the whole Earth, I drew a lonely koala clinging to a tree for dear life amongst the oncoming flames I showed my sketches to a few people to get their opinion and to find out which one they thought would get the most attention, and they agreed that the lone koala in the tree was the saddest of the sketches and would get more of a reaction from the wider public.

Digital Koala Development

With the design picked, I developed the thumbnail sketch further by drawing it out in a larger scale in an a4 sketchbook before scanning it onto my laptop and going over the line work and colouring it in Illustrator/ Photoshop so that it looked more professional ahead of college on fast approaching Thursday. My tutors liked the design but pointed out that I had two styles going on at once, with the fire and text being done in one style and the koala being done in another. I had struggled with how to depict the koala, I went with a rather realistic approach because I didn’t want to do a cutesy cartoon koala that would take away from the seriousness of the situation, but the realism clashed with the rest of the piece so I agreed that I needed to redesign the koala. The problem I was having is that the koala isn’t a monster, it’s a victim and up until that point on the project I had been depicting climate change in the form of Lovecraftian creatures attacking the planet and reclaiming their home. This time however I was trying to show how vulnerable the animals in Australia are right now, they needed to be cute and upsetting, to evoke feelings of sadness and vulnerability so that people would do their best to help them.  I redraw the koala 3 or 4 times before I finally came up with a design that felt right.

I looked at Australian aboriginal paintings of koalas as a source of inspiration which really helped me to figure out how to show the koala without making it too realistic. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the design right until the end of the day on Thursday, meaning that it was too late to send my design off to be prepared for print, which means that I am going to have to wait until next week to do this and come into college on a day that I am not scheduled to be in so that I can finish the project before the deadline next Thursday. This is fine for me though because I want to raise more money for charities to help save the animals in Australia, no matter what, and in order to do that, I need the prints. I just really hope that I am able to get everything done in time and that people do buy the prints when I try and sell them, this is the only way I know to raise money for the charities without having much reach in the field of illustration.

Final print design

Disclaimer; I am aware that Koalas are only one of the thousands of species that are being affected by the bushfires and I am not ignoring their struggle, but koalas are more well known and loved by many so I feel that they will help to get the attention of more people, which means that I have more chance of selling the prints and donating the proceeds to charities that are fighting to save all of the animals that are being affected by the wildfires.

Poland, Posters and a bit of Protesting

| Rolo

The past couple of days have been something else, and somewhat unexpected; upon arriving to Krakow to meet a friend of my girlfriend’s family, we were taken on a walk through the streets of Krakow at night and came across the beginnings of a protest against the government for plans to make the judges answer only to the right-wing, nationalist, conservative, Christian party that rules the country currently, which would potentially devastate the country, demolish the justice system and also risk Poland being kicked out of the EU by violating European law. I fully support the protests, despite not being Polish myself, my girlfriend is however and it is important to her and I also believe that judges should be allowed to make fair judgements without political interference and in any way that could allow guilty people walk free, so I am glad that we were taken to this protest, however, it was made slightly awkward by the fact that I still had my suitcase at this point, it was definitely a spontaneous affair.

As well as attending the protest, we finally got to go to the Krakow Poster Gallery which I had been hoping to go to since arriving in Poland, when I arrived I must admit that I thought the place looked quite small, that did not however affect the sheer volume of posters that was inside. I was left stunned and amazed walking through that small building, seeing posters from all different generations and commercial avenues such as film, tv, theatre, music festivals, food, gigs and so much more. I could have spent so long in there staring and taking photos of all the posters that interested me, but as I said, the place was quite small and there was a few people inside so I felt quite awkward standing there and taking photos, I only managed to get a few of the ones that really stood out to me. It was so nice seeing so many different styles of art and it gave me a plethora of ideas of how I could layout my final poster design at the end of the print project. Being in such polluted cities and seeing first hand the effect that it is having on peoples’ lives has also given me ideas of what my design is going to depict. I’ve been doing my research on which industries contribute the most to pollution and one of the high flyers is the meat industry… now, at the time of writing I do still eat meat but I’ve cut back a lot and I have been thinking for a while that I want to give it up, I just knew that I had no chance of doing that over a Polish Christmas (there’s loads of meat and fish and barley a vegetarian option in sight) but I still feel as if I could take a swing at the meat industry this project, I may be vegetarian by the end of this trip.

One of the posters that really stood out to me, especially as inspiration for this project was a one that said, ‘Hunting in Poland’ and depicted what I assume is a deer standing over the body of a hunter with its’ hoof on his chest. I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the sight of this, the role reversal is just spectacular, and I find it really refreshing to see something like this in a country where hunting is rather common and animal culls have happened numerous times in the past. My interpretation of the poster could be wrong but to me it is saying that the animals rule and not those that hunt them, that the hunters become the hunted and to be honest, that’s just karma.

Poland, Pollution and a few Presents

| Rolo

I’m finally in Poland! And I can’t breathe! Okay so I was surprised at how polluted the air in Warsaw is, I’ve been here before and didn’t have any problems last time, but this time, I feel as if my lungs have shrivelled and died. The city looks nice and I’m having a great time chilling with some amazing friends, but I feel ill at the same time. Being here is just making me realise even more how much of a problem pollution really is, I’ve seen locals wearing gas masks, there’s warnings about when it’s safe to go outside and nobody seems to drink the tap water because it smells funny. This has resulted in people either using water filters, or, for the most part, buying bottled water, which isn’t good! It’s just contributing to the ongoing plastic problem, I mean yes, the people I’m staying with recycle and so do many other people, which is great, but we still need to cut back on plastic; especially in a city that has highly toxic air. I don’t want to offend anyone with this post, I know that Warsaw can be a lovely place, there’s a lot of green areas and I’ve heard that the local government is trying to fight back against the pollution, I’m just making observations based on what I have seen, and felt (in my lungs) so far.

I brought a few of my prints with me to give to friends and family of my better half as presents for Christmas and so far, they’ve went down really well. The bug one went down especially well, which I think is largely because of the design and the fact the pollution message isn’t as on the nose as my Pollution Apocalypse design. I’ve found that some people think the Pollution Apocalypse poster is really heavy, but important still, and it’s meant to be… I wasn’t trying to get a positive response from that poster because it isn’t tackling a positive subject, pollution is heavy and it’s a reality that we really need to face. I’m just glad people have taken the design and have said that they like it at least, despite the fact it evokes a lot of difficult and real feelings, to me this means the design in a successful one which I’m so happy about. I’m going to have to get some reprints of the Lovecraftian bug and pollution apocalypse when I get back to college because they have been well received so far so I’m hoping that’ll be the case outside of people that I know and that I’ll be able to get myself out there more and maybe sell some on Etsy or something like that. It’d be nice if more people saw my art and what I’m trying to do because I really want to help make the world a better place, even if it’s just in a small way, but it’s hard to if nobody sees me.

Poland so far!!

I haven’t had the chance to go to any galleries so far because we were tired and have mainly been chilling with friends so far, but I’m hoping to either at the end of this week or next week when I travel to Krakow, I’ve done some research and there’s a really interesting poster gallery there that is run by a family, they’ve been collecting posters for years and their collection features posters from Polish artists, as well as artists from around the world. I think it’ll be invaluable to me to see poster art from different cultures, especially for the print project because I have been making posters so far and sometimes struggle with how to layout my design, seeing how other people have done it will definitely be a beneficial venture. I am really enjoying my time here though, I have some amazing friends here and wish I didn’t have to move on to the next place.

Print, Prints and Printed- A Gallery of My Riso, Relief and Screen Prints

| Rolo

This week has been a fun one, we’ve done so much printmaking, including printing an unexpected one-page zine on Monday. I kept with my Lovecraftian theme and created a bestiary of his monsters, I was really happy with the designs I drew, but the finished zine did not go to plan at all. I think I rushed the background a bit and I hadn’t done risograph printing before, so despite having researched the process, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would work in practice. I drew my monster sketches in pencil and scribbled the background in pen, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea because when it came to printing the zine, the background overpowered my illustrations and the risograph printed wasn’t able to pick up much of the detail of my pencil sketches so the final zine looks like a bit of a mess. It was a good learning exercise though, at least I know that next time I riso print, I need to make my line work bolder and the background needs to be done in a lighter tone to the foreground.

The zines were only the first part of printing we did on Monday, in the afternoon we went to the print workshop to make our screens for screen printing the 2nd of our designs. It cost £14 for the screens which is a bit on the high side for me because I’m having some money issues in the run up to Christmas, but after actually using the screen, I know it was a worthwhile investment because I can print that design as much as I want now and also change the screen and use the same frame for any other designs I make in the future. I managed to do a design that I am really happy with, it depicted one of Lovecraft’s monsters, a Mi-Go, perched over a power-plant and feeding off of its fumes. I chose to depict this because in Lovecraft lore, the Mi-Go awakens from its slumber when it gets warm and power plants heavily contribute to global warming. I wanted to show how horrible and horrific the world could be if it keeps heating up at the rate it is, using the Mi-go to depict the horrors of what life would be like in a scorching, desolate Earth. I’m once again not 100% certain if my illustration conveys the message that I want it to though, I know what it means, but I’m not convinced that other people will, they’d probably just a cool giant bug creature so when I do more designs this project I need to make the climate change and global warming message clearer, while still using Lovecraftian creatures so that I stick to the theme that I’ve chosen for this project.

  • Sketched in pencil, refined in Illustrator and finished in Photoshop.
  • I screen-printed this design on to 200gsm paper.
Relief printed with an acrylic block and ink and put through a roller press.

I had to send my first design back off to the wood workshop place to be re- laser cut because I made a mistake with the formatting when I send it off the first time (no surprises there) so some of my design was missing from the acrylic plate, this all got sorted by Thursday though so I managed to create a lot of prints of both of the designs. I’ll post photos of the prints next week once the ink has all dried. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed printing so far, I’m just not sure about risograph printing yet, probably because it is the one that went the worst for me. I totally get the appeal of risograph printing, it’s so easy to create a huge run of prints, I just haven’t quite figured out how to make the process work for me yet, hopefully over the weekend I’ll be able to create a design that works because we are creating an A3 riso-print on Monday. It’d be great if I had another design to add to my permanent print collection. I already have some ideas of what I’m going to depict, I plan on showing a modern polluted and poisoned world with buildings that everyone should be able to recognise, inspired by Lovecraft’s short story ‘The Colour Out of Space’, I’ll leave a link to the story on this post. I’m hoping that I can make my message clear this time, hopefully 3rd time’s the charm.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx

Achievement unlocked!

| Rolo
Mural painted by Iga Pencak for L&S Gifts in Wallsend.

I’m so happy with myself right now, I got a high merit (or a 2:1) on my first university project in almost a year!! I was so worried that I’d only get a pass, but all of the work I put into the Character Design project finally paid off. The mural that my girlfriend was commissioned to do got finished on time too and the woman commissioned her loved it, I was so happy that it worked out and the mural is now displayed in Wallsend, hopefully forever. I did struggle to get all of the research done on time and to be honest, I still have one form of printing to research so I am a little bit behind right now. I’ll catch up though, now that the mural is out of the way. I would love to get a distinction at the end of the course, the only reason I didn’t get one this time is because I had an idea of what Skaadi would look like from the start and I stuck with that design throughout the entire project. In the future I need to explore different designs and develop my characters and ideas more. I do struggle with this to be honest; I think too much about what I want to achieve and once I have a solid idea, I just stick to it. I really should sketch out multiple designs first and be a bit more adventurous with my development instead of just keeping my ideas exactly the same from start to finish.

First print design , 2b pencil on paper.

Since last week I’ve managed to finish researching all of the artists that were set to us by the tutors, including Hokusai, Liv Rainey-Smith and Jack Davis, and I’ve researched relief printing and risograph printing, all that’s left to do as far as the research goes is screen-print research, technically we we’re supposed to have finished this by now so I have made things a bit harder for myself but I’m not too worried; I like the writing and research side of things so it shouldn’t take me too long. As well as the research I’ve also completed my first design for printing, I opted to draw Cthulhu riding a plastic polluted Hokusai inspired wave, with a trident piercing a skull and water bottle at the moment the wave crashes over Big Ben. It sounds like a lot I know but I don’t know how else to put it, I chose to do this design because alike the Skaadi project where I made my design depict the Amazon Rainforest crisis, I wanted to make my designs this project convey some of the horrific issues that are facing our world today. I chose to depict the ongoing plastic pollution problem that is threatening our oceans because it is something that could and probably will wipe out much of our known world if we don’t do something about it. My design serves as a warning, with Cthulhu symbolising the horrors of pollution and the great wave that could flood the world if the ice caps continue to melt and the sea levels rise.

Initial print design idea. 2b pencil on paper. Inspired by Hokusai.

I struggled with designing this because I knew what I wanted to convey, I just didn’t know how, I’m not even sure if my final design is effective at getting the message across, my original sketch was far too derivative of Hokusai, it took me a couple of attempts to get something that I was happy with. Time was against me though and I had to settle with what I had, it’s not that I don’t like the design, it’s just missing something where the white space is. I guess can always paint over the design once it’s been printed or redo it in my own time, but the main thing is that the design has been sent off to the right place for it to be laser cut onto acrylic ready for printing. Speaking about sending the file off, I once again struggled with formatting my design correctly to be laser cut, my tutor told us how to do it but a lot of the information got lost to me in my head, I don’t know if it’s because he was throwing a lot of information at the class really fast, or because I wasn’t paying attention enough due to the fact I get anxious in clss. Either way, I need to work on my ability to format things, I keep meaning to take a notebook to class with me so that I can take notes on how to do these things, but ironically, I keep forgetting to do so. I will try to take a notebook next time because I am sick of feeling kind of stupid when I have to keep asking the tutors to help me send files to certain places to be marked or printed. I don’t see many other people needing help with this and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to have to either. I think we are printing the design on Monday which I am looking forward to, it’d be good to finally have a design that I can print over and over again, it could be something that I end up selling on Etsy which would be nice. We’ve already been asked to create another design for a different form of printmaking that we’ll be doing soon, which is great because I’ll have a lot of reproduceable designs in the near future. I’m probably going to stick with the Lovecraftian take on modern day issues theme that I’ve started with the Cthulhu design, so I guess I’m going to need to look for a more obscure one of his creatures, I don’t want to only use Cthulhu in my designs. I love H.P. Lovecraft though, so the next weekend is going to be quite fun.

Don’t Panic, It’s Only Hand-In Day

| Rolo
I need to take my own advice.

Well… Today was a bit of a mess, the good news is that I finally handed in the Character Design project, the bad news is it took me the entire day to get there. Today was an anxiety day and a bad one at that, I ran out of anxiety meds and barely slept last night trying to make sure everything was perfect and ready to hand in, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea; no pills and no sleep makes me a stressed boy. All throughout the day I watched as people rushed to finish their project, spend a few minutes handing it in digitally and go home, whereas despite having my project done before going to uni, I was still the last person to go home because I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to format my artwork correctly to send off to the submissions dropbox, nor could I figure out how to print out my character boards and final illustration, despite having done this many times before. My brain just was clearly on vacation today. I guess it is over now and I can rest easy knowing that I have handed in the best I could do at the time. In the future, I am so going to have to manage my time more effectively and prepare for the fact that things are most likely going to go wrong on hand in day. I need to have everything sorted and ready to hand in a whole 24 hours before hand in day so that I don’t end up having to stay up until a ridiculous hour before going to uni. Hopefully this way I can be properly rested and in a better mental state to deal with anything that goes wrong on hand in day, because to be perfectly honest, the more things went wrong, the worse my mental state got, and I basically had a complete breakdown which could have been avoided.

As I expected, we’re off next week and have been given a research task for the upcoming project to be handed in by Monday. There are a lot of artists and companies to research on the list, more than we have been given before, which I’m pretty sure is due to the fact that not everyone on the course necessarily does a lot of research, something that has been mentioned in class previously. Hopefully this doesn’t apply to me because I spent a lot of time doing my research for the Skaadi project, nevertheless I will do my best to complete the whopping 11 people/companies to research that the tutors have given us plus another 3 of our choice in just over a week, it’s a good thing I enjoy writing!! The upcoming project looks like one I will really enjoy though, it seems to be a print based project and we’ll be doing risograph printing (something I’ve seen done but haven’t tried before) relief printing (I’ve done lino cut before with varying results) and screen printing which is the one I am looking forward to the most because during the final project on my level 3 course I did screen printing for the first time in my life and managed to get my first distinction ever, so I’ve got high hopes for it this time.

I’m going to spend the next week delving into the world of printing and research artists that I feel could influence my style this project, I’m thinking about going down a more macabre route this time, while still linking it to current world events. I enjoy making sci-fi/fantasy and horror tropes and gothic comment on the modern world. Besides, my main interests generally fall between sci-fi/ fantasy and horror, I did fantasy last time with Skaadi the demon elf, so now it’s time for something a bit on the dark side. I haven’t been doing a lot of my own art lately and I don’t think I’m going to have much time to in the foreseeable future with uni, so I guess I’m going to have my make my own artwork my university work.