A Fistful of Burgers: A Conclusion

This afternoon I ordered my book from blurb.com, it's 52 pages and cost £22 inclusing postage. Ouch. But it should be worth it. Getting my book ordered means I can concentrate on other things:

Gallery Space
Vending Machine
Jewellery
Tote Bags
Mini Comics

I think it's safe to say this project turned out nothing like what my proposal had proposed. I was in a very different place at the start of the FMP, a bad place, I can't really explain why, or how, I was just in a slump. I wanted to go "wah wah wah, this is me, I'm sad, read comics about it" which would have kinda majorly sucked as a project and probably not really helped at all.

Luckily, after going home to get my head together, I don't feel like that anymore. And I didn't wanna be down, I wanted to make art and make people smile. In all honesty, I can't explain how I got to my final project. I don't really like registering my thought processes as I work, I basically draw faster than I can think (which made blogging a difficuly ordeal.)

I guess it could be said that my FMP was a continuation of my Options project. Making comics using some characters from the previous project as well as some new editions. I wanted to extend the project beyond pictures on a page (or in a frame) to me, art is more than that.

Art can be found on a shirt, a bag, a skateboard, around your neck or on your fingers. Art is vinyl toys, or plush toys, it's jewellery, shoes, or even ceramics and furniture. An artist can apply themselves to anything, they're not limited to paper, and so they shouldn't. This is something I wanted to explore within my project. Though I've put it on the backburner, as stuff I'll make for the Gallery shop, I find the non book stuff of my project very important. In fact, if I could go back in time, I'd tell past self to not worry about the book. I'd make an entire project not on paper, on anything but. Gosh darn it, I wish I had a time machine

Paper Fortress: 2009 - 2011 Reflection from Paper Fortress on Vimeo.

Artist spotlight: Keaton Henson

I was just introduced to this artist's work through a fellow student's blog. Which means I know that you, the people reading this blog, have probably already seen all this. Well tough, this is what you get for making us do this.

I think something that always attracts me to an artist I'd their line-work. I've noticed that it's something many artists lack, especially my contemporaries. Sometimes I'll watch someone draw and feel an inner wince as they have little control over the lines, they'll be all scratchy, ragged and quite frankly, ugly.

Henson's line work is beautiful; there's the perfect balance between simple line and shading. There will be colour when it's needed, some times it's a tiny amount, like on the tips of fingers. It works magnificently.










Henson has some very particular motifs that he draws often and make his work all the more memorable and stylistic: triangles, all seeing eyes (as seen on the American dollar) hands, big heads with small faces in the middle.

Artist Spotlight: Olly Moss

I just came across this faaaantastic video on Mike Mitchell's blog. Olly Murs is a name I've heard of, but never really bothered to find out who he is. Watching this video, I think I can tell I'm gonna be a fan of his

http://vimeo.com/23621548

Having gone on his blog:
http://moss.fm, I realised I had come across some of his work before, and to sum it up in the simplest of terms: it's good work.


Olly Moss was born in '87. That means he IS ONE YEAR OLDER THAN ME. And he is making illustrations for Empire magazine and Marvel (meaning he got to visit the Thor set!) In fact, here's his current client list:

CLIENTS: Lucasfilm / Star Wars, Star Trek, ABC / LOST, Levis. The Alamo Drafthouse, Urban Outfitters, Nike, Puma, Penguin, Wired, GQ, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times Magazine, Threadless

Say it with me folks: oh, my, god. OH MY GOD. It's kinda really encouraging but really freakin' scary too.

I'm gonna say this flat out; I don't know what I'm gonna do when I leave uni. And considering that's less than 2 months away, that's a pretty freaking scary thought. I'm always waiting for some ...magic event to happen that will land me with an awesome career as an awesome artist.

As an ultimate goal, for some time in the future, but not too far, is to run a gallery. An illustration gallery.

For years I've been aware of various galleries in America that I would love to one day, have my work in.

Nucleus Gallery

Gallery 1988

Bird and Bear Gallery.

These galleries are all sorts of awesome; they cater to Illustration and graphic design, they're run by young people and display young artists. To sum it up, it's all very cool. And I want one. I don't know if it's just my own naiivity, but I feel illustration isn't very accessible outside of places like London (and possibly some other big cities)

This is the Photoshop blasphemy that awaited me when I returned from a toilet break today.

This is a little doodle I did after Alex joked that, because I always draw him with a hunch, soon he'll just become a face in a hunch. My witty rebuttal was he'll become his hat.

I did 4 pages of comic today, including the first sushi banter page. It happened spontaneously, I didn't really plan it at all, but I thought of a joke, and I couldn't resist.

Here's a couple of the pages I did today, including the sushi banter. The second page was one of my busiest, I wanted to get in a lot of wordless action on one page, I feel it works, ut isn't quite what I originally imagined.

ghost comic

For the project I feel I needed a bigger story to run through the book. I felt it was perhaps a bit too late to try and come up with a new idea, and so thought I could re-do some of the comics from my last book.

Ghost is the longest comic from my last project. It's about a ghost at a party that wants some punch but can't get any, cause he's a ghost.

Above is a screen shot from my progress so far. Visually it's very different from the previous comic, but I really like how it's coming along. I've been making the image 100% in Photoshop using my Wacom to draw. It's been years since I've really drawn with my tablet, and it feels good.

Donkey Progress

Here's the Donkey so far, I emailed it to Pete and he said "MOR GUTTS OMG" because Pete is very immature and not a very good speller, but he had a point. I need to add MOR GUTTS, or more stomachs, in crazy places like the ears and down the tail!!

Donkey

I recently talked to Jonny and showed him my sketchbook (mainly to show I've been doing work) and a certain image caught his eye. It was this donkey digestive system drawing I did that, although I liked the idea, didn't feel the outcome was too great.




Later that night I got passed on a rather cryptic text from no-one other than Pete Lloyd. He wanted to to come in the studio the next day and bring the donkey image. I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty damn scared.

So the next day rolled around, and it turns out Jonny told Pete about the image. They've been looking for an image to represent Solent at the D&AD show, and they wanted me to recreate my donkey image for the show, but using the various stomachs and guts to visualise the illustration course :)

It's pretty exciting, Though rather daunting too. The hardest part will be balancing humour with relevance (and not being too cutting with my humour)




Here's a sketchbook page I did recently. It's following in the 'breakfast' idea and is a recipe for making fantastic beans on toast. Although I like the idea of pictorial recipes, they're quite difficult and not very visually rewarding.

More like Easter Funday!!

I found myself watching some of Mary Poppins on Easter. Unlike many people this film wasn't a big part of my childhood, I've still never seen it all the way through from start to finish. It was interesting to watch though, and I started doing some little doodles on the table (we have paper on there so we can draw)

I was thinking it would be fun to do 'reviews' of movies by sitting down with a sketchbook and drawing stuff that appealed to me. Perhaps I'd have rules like I could only pause it so many times so I don't spent too long on an image. It could be fun, I'd like to do it with older films.

As a closing note, Mary Poppins is totally a babe.

Getting my head together

I did my biggest problem with this project is dealing with my spontaneity; I'll get an idea, push towards it then abandon it for another idea. I'll get an idea for a comic, but it always happens at a bad time, either at the gym or right before I'm about to fall asleep. By the next day the idea isn't that great anymore, or I've got a new idea and wanna work on that. I need to step back and sort out my ideas, write them down and keep to them. Here's a start:

Final things:

A book, made at blurb.com. Accompanying merchandise of sorts.

Comics:

Famous feasts.

Ghost party

Tea

Sushi

British food

Other

Packaging: little food type packaging for goods. Possibly screenprinted.

Possibility of vending machine or or something for at final show.

Acrylic charms of characters

Tote bags.

Badges: done.

Stickers: done.

I'm sure theres more but I'll have to get to it as I remember it. The important thing Is I've got the basics down.

The beautification of the studio and identity

This is the last year illustration will spend in the jm building studio. Next year the studio will be in a brand new building at the bottom end of town. Because of this, we've been told we can pretty much do what we want; draw on the walls, the tables. And so we have.




True love among the madness.




El Peter




Beautiful ghost princess




To honour the studio we decided to incorporate it as our theme for the degree show this year. I suggested a wall where third years could draw to create a mishmash of images that would become our visual identity. Unfortunately my idea didn't translate too well from what I had in mind to what other people thought.




Despite being an illustration course, drawing is not a forte for most people, it's not something that grips them, that controls them as it were. When I was younger I went on holiday abroad with my family; I made the mistake of not bringing any pens or paper. I remember feeling myself going mad, wanting so badly to draw and going insane at not being able to. I imagine it's how addicts feel when away from their vice of choice, be it drugs, alcohol or what have you. I knew from that moment, that I was addicted to drawing. That would forever be my drug. Luckily I got hold of a pen, and then would draw on any napkins and bits of paper I could find.

It seems most people, not even those on an illustration course, feel like that. Many don't even like drawing, which I find difficult to understand. And so the wall became something quite different. It was a pasted wall of already made things. It's nice, but not as... Organic as I had envisioned it in my mind

To vend

Before our fmp ( I think) we had a rather fantastic guest speaker come in and give us a talk about his work: Stuart Kolokavic. it was one of the rare occasions where I was familiar with the artist's work before the lecture. His work is quite simply, stylish and beautiful. Inspired by his family's Eastern European roots it has a folkish feel about it, which a gorgeous contemporary twist. And what's more, as some sort of fantastic bonus, he was a cool guy. Just a few years out of uni, it was good to see how far a student could evolve into an artist. But before I ramble too far, I shall get to my point; at his final show, Stuart sold mini screen-printed comics from a refurbished vending machine.



How simple, innovative, and utterly fantastic an idea. I was inspired. I've always found 'merchandise' important as an artist, for me, art is something that goes beyond media on paper. My first thought was to try and find a cheap gumball/capsule machine to sell items for the show. But eBay didn't yield anything right for my specifications; I needed something that vended at least £1, and even that would be cutting my options short. It was difficult to find a machine like this for cheap. After a few feverish days of searching, I gave up.

About a month later, I resumed the search. I decided to look for small wall mounted machines, cigarettes, stamps or similar.

I often found machines that would be adequate, but there always seemed to be a catch; either they were in America and so shipping was extortionate, they were collection only, or as the machines were old they only accepted old coins. (some took sixpence pieces, and I considered that I could buy one plus buy some old coins, and sell the coins like tokens. However I feared that would involve faffing around, would take time and possibly detract from sales. I wanted it to be simple and straightforward, and a 6d machine didn't seem the way forward.

I came across a small cadburys snack machine. At first glance it was obviously in the toy category, but it seemed more advanced than the standard faire. At £17 buy it now (including postage) I decided to go for it. When it arrived however, I realised it really was too toy for my needs. It would be difficult to have more than one item in each compartment, it would need some sort of case to be kept in and secured to the wall, and theft prevention would probably be nigh impossible. Alas, it was a waste.



The search continued.

Finally, Fiiinalllly, I found the perfect thing. A unicorn self serve vending machine. Aka this:



I also received my limited edition Pusheen (pusheen.tumblr.com) plush. It was a good day :D



And so now begins my vending machine pimping up adventure, stay tuned!!!

Burger tales

Hello blog. Today is my birthday!!







I wanted to share some recent images, of stuff I was just randomly drawing (yes dear reader, this may shock you, but I do draw for fun)

A lot of the time when I draw a story comes up in my head, and I have to start drawing bits and pieces of them.

This was the story of a burger that doesn't want to be eaten. He believes he has a greater destiny than that. He escapes a fast food restaurant in order to find The king burger, the legendary ruler of the burgers that will help little burger find his destiny. Along the way he comes along many obstacles, most of which want to eat him, animals, rabid vegetarians, crack dealers, they all wanna eat him.

To Vend

I spoke before of the fantastic guest speaker who came in and gave us a talk about his work: Stuart Kolokavic. it was one of the rare occasions where I was familiar with the artist's work before the lecture. His work is quite simply, stylish and beautiful. Inspired by his family's Eastern European roots it has a folkish feel about it, which a gorgeous contemporary twist. And what's more, as some sort of fantastic bonus, he was a cool guy. Just a few years out of uni, it was good to see how far a student could evolve into an artist. But before I ramble too far, I shall get to my point; at his final show, Stuart sold mini screen-printed comics from a refurbished vending machine.




How simple, innovative, and utterly fantastic an idea. I was inspired. I've always found 'merchandise' important as an artist, for me, art is something that goes beyond media on paper. My first thought was to try and find a cheap gumball/capsule machine to sell items for the show. But eBay didn't yield anything right for my specifications; I needed something that vended at least £1, and even that would be cutting my options short. It was difficult to find a machine like this for cheap. After a few feverish days of searching, I gave up.

About a month later, I resumed the search. I decided to look for small wall mounted machines, cigarettes, stamps or similar.

I often found machines that would be adequate, but there always seemed to be a catch; either they were in America and so shipping was extortionate, they were collection only, or as the machines were old they only accepted old coins. (some took sixpence pieces, and I considered that I could buy one plus buy some old coins, and sell the coins like tokens. However I feared that would involve faffing around, would take time and possibly detract from sales. I wanted it to be simple and straightforward, and a 6d machine didn't seem the way forward.




I came across a small cadburys snack machine. At first glance it was obviously in the toy category, but it seemed more advanced than the standard faire. At £17 buy it now (including postage) I decided to go for it. When it arrived however, I realised it really was too toy for my needs. It would be difficult to have more than one item in each compartment, it would need some sort of case to be kept in and secured to the wall, and theft prevention would probably be nigh impossible. Alas, it was a waste.

The search continued.

Finally, Fiiinalllly, I found the perfect thing. A unicorn self serve vending machine. Aka this:




I brought it for £80 all in (was originally £120) and a few days layer the world's biggest parcel was delivered to my door




I also received my limited edition Pusheen (pusheen.tumblr.com) plush. It was a good day :D

And so now begins my vending machine pimping up adventure, stay tuned!!!

The highs and lows of British food

Something I decided to look at for my book is the weirder foods that exist in britain. Johnny hannah was rather helpful as it seems some of the weirder food hails from scotland.



But nothing is meaner than Lorne Sausage. Sausagemeat formed into a rectangle and sliced. Jh said if this was a character, it would have a scar over one eye and carry a flick knife. It's probably one of the leading causes to why the scots die young (or so the jokes go)




Some more food; spotted dick, pork pie, tea (yes not british, but loved all the same) and scotch egg.




Toad in the hole, yum yum yum.




Spotted dick quickly developed a mischievous personality with a love for custard. I'm quite fond of the scotch egg cross section

The inspiration of mini books

Recently I stumbled across the work of a very talented artist by the name of Elsa Moran. As well as paper cutting and painting, she mades gorgeous little miniature books that are beautifully presented.






'flower vision' is a one of a kind book with four handmade little papercuts. It ties up with ribbon and is kept in a wonderfully decorated little box.




This book is like an elaborate illustration, in essence it's just two pictures, but by being presented in a book it gives it a whole new meaning. It adds a narrative-esque feel, the sensation of the people's stories being told.







Perhaps my favourite of all her miniature creations; a tiny city hidden away in the guise of an equally small book. The papercutting is very delicate and beautiful.

I find her work very inspiring. It makes me want to make my books more refined and generally better made. The subject matter will be different, but I'd like the quality to be the same.

Artist spotlight: Eleanor Davis.

Eleanor Davis is an artist I happened across through another artist's blog (unfortunately I can't remember who at this time) and I fell in love with her work right away.




Something about her work is very, arg the word escapes me...., raw. (for lack of a better word)In particular, women are depicted quite... Animalisticly, once again, for lack of a better word. More often than not naked, breasts hang down and are moved by gravity in a way not seen in Hollywood or fashion.











By a happy chance, I was recently able to happen across the entirety of Mome publication in a charity shop. It was a Canadian comic graphic novel with a mix of different artists each edition. I noticed them as the first one I saw had an eleanor Davis illustration on the front. I got them all for about £20, bloody brilliant.

I've always admired artists, especially female artists, who are unafraid to depict nudity and especially sexual themes (or even just sex) Davis is one of these artists, she honestly draws women and men as they exist, not as they're warped in society.

Stuart Kolokavich Lecture

Had a really fantastic lecture today from Stuart Kolakovic, who not only is a brilliant artist, but a really nice guy too.

Here'sa summary of the best/most important bits of his lecture:

Graduated from Kingston in 2007.

During his time at Uni he played around with screenprint a lot

Produced a comic about his grandad for his final show that got him a lot of cover.

Rinse your University's facilities whilst you can

Keep your website simple

Don't be afraid to go on the Dole whilst you go show your portfolio around.

Don't be afraid to ask the AOI for pricing help.

Always phone before sending an email, asking if you can. Then phone to ask if you can take your portfolio in.

Be wary of doing work for free

Constantly work in your spare time.

Agents look after you and stop you getting ripped off.

Get a good chair to save your back.

After the lecture I got to talk to Stuart and show him my work. He was really enthusiastic but had some constructive critism for me;

my comics need to be more refined, and looking at them, I totally agree. They look far too handmade, too simple.

I should stretch what my characters can do, Stuart recommended mocking up food packaging for my food characters to go on. I was thinking I could make takeout boxes with the sushi characters on.

Colin McHenry and self promotion

Recently we had been set a goal to create a piece of self promotion; something we could send to possible clients to promote our artwork. It is something that has to be eye catching and interesting, something a client will want to keep.

At first my initial idea was to make a small comic pack titled 'how to be a hipster illustrator' it would include a mocking comic in which aspects such as logo and appearance (big black framed glasses are very important, if you don't need glasses, poke yourself in the eye til you do) outweigh the importance of the art being made (because as a hipster illustrator, you'll copy your favourite artists) it would include badges, a colouring- page postcard (don't conform to society's rules by staying in the lines!)

However, for the best this idea was dismissed by Pete. He felt it wouldn't be a good idea to potentilly take the piss out of a potential clients other artists. Not to mention that i seemed to fall into a lot of the hipster appearance tick boxes, which obviously means that hipsters are copying me.

Another idea I had was for a small comic of dialogue between a man and cat, ultimately it was funny, but too long without much going on. If it were an animation, it would be perfect, but as a comic it was too drawn out.



It was a poor comic idea BUT, as I made a mock up comic it meant I could sort out the page configurations for comics (which page would go behind or
Next to which etc) so that in itself was a good learning experience.

It was finally decided my self promotion should be a observational comic about food, either sushi or fast food burgers. Excited, I set about making drawings for it








Soon I started drawing a little bread character, and a spontaneous comic emerged







I decided this is what I wanted my self promotion to be. The next step was to scan it in, clean it up, and lay it out on 2 A4 pages in a comic format.




This was the end result. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Through the week I made more comics,


Biscuits




Eggplant. Which I coloured in Photoshop to give a screenprintesque effect.




I also made some stickers!




And some badges! I ordered them from ka-pow badges and they were so fantastic!




This was my final self promotion piece (stickers are in the back)

We had a talk from Colin McHenry, who has worked in magazines for a long long time. His talk was good and went over some things that previous lecturers such as Fig Taylor had said, such as find obscure magazines in WHSmith that you could work for.

In the afternoon was judgement time. Colin McHenry and the tutors would judge the third years self promotion pieces and pit them either in the good bin, or bad bin.




It was all very tense.




Everyone was on tenterhooks.

The judging was somewhat haphazard, possibly because there were 6 judges!! Some times things would be commented upon, but other times ignored. It even went as far to judge the envelope and decoration, sometimes even the stamps used. It was an incredibly long afternoon. Ultimately, I can say my piece went in the good bin, so that's good