First Uni project! Finished!

This week has marked the first project of uni finished! Essay handed in last week, awaiting my feedback on that! And tomorrow we have our first assessment crit.

My poster that we had to design for the unit turned into a animated projection! All we were given were the theme and target audience, my theme was black & white TV and an audience of 'the suits' I decided to give my poster the purpose of thought provoking so with a tag line of 'life is not black & white' I created a series of images in a combination of indesign and illustrator, about 9 in total these were then made into a slideshow and projected on to a wall. 

Try the link below and hopefully you see a video clip of it playing.

The colours on the last few parts of the show are a metaphor for difference. 

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204314513358035

First project at Uni - Impact

Our first project contained a mini 1 week brief with the title Impact, this was to follow on from our visit to the London Design Festival at the V & A, we were divided up into groups, I was in a group of 5, we were then told to create something that had/said Impact.  After a bit of discussion we decided on a anamorphic projection, which is basically a piece of work that appears distorted or broken up unless viewed from a specific view point, a bit like the channel 4 spinning logo that's sometimes showed in between programs.
We then had a debate what the the design should be and finally settled on a lightbulb, to represent thought and for that moment when "oh I get it" (lightbulb moment) we then worked out a design and set about creating it on the wall with the chosen tape, we wanted to paint it but wasn't aloud!

Visit to V&A Design Week

Induction week at Uni!  Started off really stressed and nearly changed course to Fine Art but decided to be sensible and at least try the course before i changed!

So after enrolment on wednesday we had a nice little coach trip to London on thursday to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Design Festival exhibits.  I have to say the piece that most sticks in my head was what i saw from the coach window as we went past the tower of London, all the ceramic red poppies spilling out of one of the windows and slowly filling up the moat, just a carpet of red.  Beautiful and quite moving.

Once in the V&A there was loads to see, the permanent pieces and the ones that were on show as part of the London Design Festival.  Can't say i liked all of them or understood all of them!

I think the favourite had to be the Precision & Poetry in Motion by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, 2 gigantic mirrors suspended from the ceiling in one of the galleries.  They made the ceiling almost look 'magical!' They didn't seem to make it any lighter they just created lots of different angles to view the paintings and gave the ceiling a very mesmerising look.

The first room i went in was called Disobedient Objects, which was a series of pieces varying from posters to pin badges, art made from rubbish, to items made by prisoners and demonstration placards.    All the pieces were to show how creative people/designs can be in the area of political activism and were people are trying to achieve some kind of social awareness or change.

Anti Apparteid badges

Far to many other exhibits to go into detail on, if you get a chance to visit its well worth it.

The Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, each poppy represents a fatality during war.  Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper.

Well summer is here! yippee!

Like many of my college friends whom have carried on with there artistic studies i too have been given a summer project to help introduce me to my chosen course -Graphic Design: Visual Communication!

The project brief is called - A Ball of String

My first thought was, how longs a piece of string?  Then i had a thought after reading the brief which was, well in that case an idea is also a ball of string with many threads!
Thats getting a bit deep isn't it?!  Well with these thoughts and many others that will no doubt pop out of my spinning mind, i will start!

We're encouraged to travel with the idea and experiment, there's no real limitations on what the final outcome must be other than it should be our personal view or interpretation of the title!
And of course it being a visual communications course, the outcome should communicate in some way(?)

We must of course do some research and keep notes, lots of notes and comments! 

I'll do my best to use this blog to show the journey on the project as well as my sketchbook.

Back soon  :-)

Today's paintings, recycled some glass! Took a sander to the edges so they're nice and safe, then had a little play with some paint, the blue/green one has had the auto paint randomly poured on and then moved around with the airbush, the second one I thought I'd see what it looked like if I actually put the paint on with the air brush, I did use parts of my leaf stencils just to give hints of shapes. Really like the effect, as you can see by the photos with my hand in, they're not very big.

My latest work, todays little creation!  Maple leaf stencils i made and some auto paint through a airbrush. rather pleased with this one!  The only thing is i'm wondering if i should given it more of a background colour(?)  

I just love the colours of Maple leaves and autumn leaves in general! i like the warmth of summer but the colours of Autumn!

Autumn Leaves

I started this picture a few months ago and left it, i started it off in acrylics but it just wasn't working for me.  So today i decided to return to it, first i sprayed the whole thing with aerosol PlastiKote Metallic Silver, that looked better straight away!  Then i dug out the stencils i cut from the leaves i'd picked up before i stuck them to the canvas! I first started with some dark red/brown through the airbrush, then went in with some golden orange, this looked much better, i thought it needed some hints of green though so i mixed 2 different greens together.  It may now be finished, but then on the other hand i might go back over with another shade???
Much happier with this version though.

                                                    Before the respray 

After the respray, possibly finished!

Well its been a while!

Its been quite a while since I've added a post on here so I thought it was about time!  A lot has changed his my last post, i've moved house from Scottish Borders back home to Kent!
Slowly starting to get creative again, been taking a lot of photographs down the near by beach, started painting probably one of the biggest canvas's I've done so far, not finished yet but I've started! Ive also applied and accepted a place on a Graphic Design course at the University for Creative arts at Canterbury! got offered Fine Art too but after much pondering and deliberating i finally decided to take the Graphics place, can't wait to start now, such an inspiring arty place to study, surrounded by fellow Arty people :-D
Anyway heres a few of the photo's I've taken an edited/enhanced and one of my work in progress, hopefully i'll be adding some more on soon.

The sea wall at Dymchurch that Paul Nash drew and painted.

                                         our very own easter bunnies born on Mothers Day

Sunset over Dymchurch on Saturday 19th July

Martello tower in silhouette