A Snippet From My Final Outcome

Here is a finished set of pictures – I made 4 stories in total, so this is just one. I’m binding all four stories into a neat book as we speak (and trying to get PVA glue off of my hands!)

A quick re-cap of the brief: I had to buy an object from a charity shop (my object was a model of a canoe – I think!) Then I had to create a set of 10 drawings with the object in mind for the first week. For the second week we were presented with two briefs that ran alongside each other. One was to find some facts out about the object and really explore it in-depth. The other was to then (hopefully) use this found information to create a narrative. These last two briefs ran for 2 weeks (plus an extra ‘reading week’ where ‘technically’ we weren’t scheduled to be in/do any work-ish).

I’ll put up a couple of pictures once I’ve finished the final outcome !

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Half-Finished Final Outcomes

I thought I’d just put up some pictures of what I have at the moment. Each individual page has been mapped out and hand drawn separately. It’s taken the best part of 3 days to get this far, and I still have to colour them all in!

I’ll definitely be putting up some pictures once I’ve finished the outcomes. What d’ya think?

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Screenprinting & Mythology

This is my first ever screen print, so it was mainly to get a taste of what it is, how it works etc. I had so much fun, and it’s so hands on – I love it!

I used the drawing from my current project (see below!), and added a few block colours to it. Maybe I could’ve done a better job with the colour combination, but I’m just glad I managed to get through my screen printing workshop without any disasters! I definitely plan to use this technique in the future, and hopefully I’ll get a bit more confident and experimental with it as time goes on. This is quite a short post, so I thought I’d tell one story from this picture which I will eventually make into an illustrated book along with other myths, legends and tales.

Xtabay Women

One Mayan legend is the ancient tale of the Xtabay women. If you were a young man walking through the forest at night, you must make sure you don’t come into contact with these spirits. Any soft whispers and sweet songs must be ignored so as to not be drawn in. It is also advised to keep your eyes firmly in the centre of the path, for if you catch a glimpse of the beautiful lady’s eyes you will render yourself helpless to her. If you are unfortunate enough to gaze into her eyes, you will be overwhelmed by love. She will beckon you over, and you will not be able to resist. You will feel her embrace, only to then fall into a deep hypnotic sleep.When you wake you will find you have  fatal wounds, and realise that you have been embracing a spiny cactus. These wounds can be fatal, which will cause fever and often death.

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Work-in-Progress [At Last!]

I said I’d be putting up some work halfway through this project, so here it is! I had hoped to put some work out a little earlier, but it’s been hard to come up with something I’m content with. I had better explain this before you loose interest:

This is still a continuation of my ‘dugout’ canoe object, but I’ve steered towards the material aspect of it. I found out so many interesting facts about the wood my object is made from (Kapok tree) and I felt it would be a waste to disregard this! I’ve looked into what the Kapok tree is in relation to mythology and beliefs from various cultures. There’s a handful of tall tales that would work out great for the 3rd brief (to create a book/narrative in relation to the object). I did a bit of research and found a good use of squared shapes alongside curved edges in some Native American art, so it would only be right to follow tradition.

I’m not a massive fan of working in an illustrative way, and I really doubt my drawing capabilities (you will see no fine detailed drawings here I’m afraid!) But I had a lot of fun coming up with this. I used a full black marker pen outline filled with some pencil blending to get to this. As far as I can think at the moment, this is how I’d like my final outcomes to be produced, entirely from hand – no computers!

I have so much to do, but I’m hoping if I get a move on I’ll be able to finish up here and revisit some past work to develop that some more! I have (my last :’^\) workshop tomorrow – screen printing! I’m hoping to produce this design as the outcome, but we’ll see what happens. I’ll try and get the outcome posted up at least by the start of next week.

Have a great weekend,

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Old Project, Continued To New Project/s

I posted last week that I started a very interesting project; well here it is! We had to visit a charity shop and buy any object we wanted. (There was a £5 limit, but I don’t think anyone would’ve past that budget anyway!) I’ve had a brief using this object for the past week which I’ve just finished (see below! ..Once you’ve read this!) I’m now onto another 2 projects, both use my object, and both need to be handed in on the 28th. They run together and also compliment alongside each other.

One of the briefs is to find out more about our object. This could literally be ANYTHING. I’ve gone from researching the material to finding out how any pencils I can fit inside (don’t ask). Then we have to create a book of some sort, including a type of narrative about our object. This is wide open, and the possibilities are endless. I’m excited to see what I’ll come up with – I’ll try and put up some work-in-progress in a week or so, and then I’ll post up the final outcome !

A little bit about my object: To me, it resembles a ‘dugout’. As far as I know, it’s definitely not made from the wood of a tree in Europe. It is likely to come from rain forests in South America-ish. This is interesting in itself, but I think I’ve also worked out which tree it could be from! The name is a Ceiba Pentandra (Kapok). It has many interesting uses too; it can be used as a diuretic, an aphrodisiac, a painkiller for headaches, a treatment for type II diabetes, and can be used as an addition to a hallucinogenic drink called Ayahuasca! I have plenty to go on, so we’ll see how far I get!

This is an incredibly sketchy outcome, but the brief was to create 10 drawings from inspiration from our object. I went on the fact that dugout canoes were made many years ago by Native Americans. I researched into this and found out the process they went through to create their dugouts. I also saw some images of their cave paintings, and figured that would be a good direction to go.

Each page is a separate process of making a dugout, but when they are all added together they make up a cave painting in itself. I love the idea of this, but I reckon I could go into the drawings with a little more detail. They’re meant to be cave drawings anyway, but I feel it just looks like I rushed through it (I didn’t I promise!) Hopefully I’ll get a chance to come back to this and carry out a quick re-do.

This was a massive post, but thanks for reading through it. As I said before, I’ll post up some work-in-progress when I’m at a stage where something looks decent enough to photograph. Have a good week !

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Letterpress Workshop

This week at uni I had a one-day brief where a letterpress had to be used to create the final outcomes. It was tons of fun, and I learnt so much. I’m hoping I’ll get the chance to use the letterpress facilities again later in the year as I’d love to do it again now I have a better idea of how things work.

On to the brief! – My group were tasked to pick a book from a small selection (all of the books supplied contained a mainly typographic cover). We had to either copy the book as it was, or we could change it how we liked – this workshop was purely to get us into the knowledge of the process. I chose to stick with the original type, in this case it was Times, but I wanted to change it up a little to give myself some freedom and creativity.

I should’ve taken a picture of the original cover, but the thought didn’t strike me until now (sorry!) It was the same as what I have here, but ‘Problems’ was written out normally. I just wanted to explore this and see what basic stuff could be done, so I tested with spacing and letter orientation. When it came to printing, I only inked up parts of the word to see what effect that would have.

I really like the result, and I will hopefully be posting up some more letterpress work in the very near future !

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Chinglish / Englese

These are my final outcomes for my 3 week typography project. In short, the brief was to design a handwritten type with inspiration and ideas from Peckham. I steered towards how there were so many different languages, and not all were eligible (sometimes not even the English words!) I found that I liked the shapes of the Asian words, so chose to develop this a bit more. The letters I created here are actual parts ripped apart from real Chinese words that I found in my research.

I originally came up with my first type, Chinglish (half Chinese, half English). But it is obviously a little tricky to work out. I loved that about my work, but found there are alternatives to this – so I created Englese (half English, half Chinese). This still takes a bit of working out, but it is a lot easier to understand. I like both outcomes, and think they both go together really well.

Rather than work in a sketchbook, I wanted to work on separate sheets. I then bound all of the pages together, and created my own book from all of the work I had done purely for this project. I really like this, it looks clean, crisp, and I’m extremely happy with the results. My plan is to create books for each separate project I do, with each project having a different coloured cover. I can imagine a shelf of my hand-bound books at the end of the year, which in itself is a great drive to get me through these projects!

Currently working on a couple more origami kusudamas, so might  put up a group of them later in the month. I’ve also just started another very interesting project – I can’t wait to get stuck in! I’ll explain all in my next post with some work-in-progress!

[I apologise that the pictures of the two final outcomes are a little bad, I don’t have access to a scanner, and the lighting in my flat is awful! If I get a better set of pictures I’ll update this post.]

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