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