Harlequin - Art inspired by a paper bag!

Here is my latest illustration that started life as a paper bag :)

Available to purchase as a greetings card at www.createtoday.com 

Toilet Roll Sculptures!

 I'm loving these sculptures made from toilet rolls! How creative!

Images found at: 

http://villageofjoy.com/weird-toilet-paper-roll-sculptures-by-junior-jacquet/

http://www.greenparenthood.com/blog/2011/03/29/beautiful-mini-sculptures-inside-a-toilet-paper-roll/

First Editorial Piece for Negotiated Project

Here is the first final piece for my negotiated project specialising in editorial illustration. It really didn't take all that long to produce - coming up with the concept and developing it took the most time with this part of the project..

The illustration focuses on the part of the article that mentions the U.N's recommendations to go vegan for a month in support of wildlife. I'm quite happy with the final illustration, at first I wasn't sure about the highly contrasted areas, but seeing it in context really helps put it in perspective...

I created this layout using inspiration from an actual issue of The Guardian. I researched a lot into the style guide of this newspaper and this is the closest I could get to making it look like a page from The Guardian. I found from my research that a font was specially designed for the redesign of the newspaper called Guardian Egyptian. I'm a bit gutted I couldn't download the actual font without spending ridiculous amounts of money! However, I think the mixture of fonts I found come pretty close to looking like it.

This first layout took flippin' ages! Hopefully the next two won't be so difficult as I now have this one to work from and can just re-shuffle the sections of the article about.

Mr. Willy Wonka

A personal illustration and yet another distraction from my dreaded dissertation! I've been looking for an excuse to use my collection of vintage sweet wrappers for ages; who better to illustrate than Mr. Willy Wonka :)

Finished Christmas Cards

As promised here are my final christmas designs for this year. All three are available to purchase at www.createtoday.com! Order now in time for christmas! :)

New Puppet Style and Christmassy Distraction..

Today I decided to finish off my christmas card designs by creating the characters. Here are the puppets so far (rubbish photo quality!):

I started off trying to make the puppets the same way I've made them previously but after a problem arose while thinking about making the body, I decided to try something new and use different types of card and paper instead of sewn fabric. I never imagined they would look the way they do! I'm so happy with the results; I think the characters look much more neater which will really make a difference when I photograph them properly.

 I've really enjoyed the assemblage aspect - I love the method of finding the perfect materials to use...My favourite has to be the angel; this one took the longest as there is much more detail to the character. The use of vintage photographs is something new that I've been meaning to try out for ages and I think it brings an eerie beauty to the pieces. 

I've enjoyed this way of working so much that I don't think I can go back to my old ways! I've decided to bring this character style into the editorial work I'm doing for my uni project as I think it's a very different style that will set apart my work from most other editorial illustrators...

The christmas designs will hopefully be finished on Friday and available to purchase on www.createtoday.com :)

A Fish..

Next step in the development of my illustration about the BP oil spill..

Today I've just been experimenting with media. I sculpted this incredibly basic fish out of Das clay..The final will of course be much more detailed, this is just a practice piece :)

Using my dummy fish, I photographed and have experimented with photoshopping the texture of the scales and the tail on..

This is a rough experiment, and I think doesn't look great because of the quality of my original sculpture...I like the idea of photoshopping the tail on as it makes it look a bit more realistic..I also love the texture of the tail..

I tried painting the sculpture and I imagine this would also look better with a much larger model as I'd be able to paint more detail onto it..

The main part of this is of course, the oil..

I placed the sculpture onto a piece of cling film, then mixed PVA glue and black paint so I could pour it over the fish and achieve a really gloopy looking texture.. 

When this dries, hopefully I will be able to peel it off the cling film and the blob of "oil" will keep its shape..

END!

3rd Year Project: Editorial Illustration

Not posted about my uni work in a while so I thought I'd share my current project..


At the moment I'm working on my negotiated project, exploring editorial illustration. For this project I chose to look at three issue based articles that I feel strongly about; environmental issues, optimistic art, and consumerism.

At this stage, I have chosen three previously published articles from The Guardian which I am working on illustrations for:

* The first is an article about the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, and it's damage to surrounding wildlife: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jun/13/bp-spill-animals-cruelty-gulf

* The second is an article about the benefits of using art therapy in schools: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/nov/13/schools.uk3

* The third is an article about the recent UK riots and questions the psychology behind the looting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-psychology-of-looting


My main aim in this project is to show that I can apply my own visual style to editorial context. I want the final outcomes to have the same style even though they are written in very different tones of voice. This will be done through choice of media.

Anyway, I am currently developing my idea for the environmental article...

The article talks about the effects the BP oil spill had on wildlife, and the main point is to tell people how they can help make a stand against the cruelty by changing attitudes as consumers. One of the ways recommended by the U.N. was to "go vegan for a month"

So this is the initial idea I had for "go vegan" and some of the development:

The initial idea is a plate of fish and chips..the fish is dead and oil-drenched..and there is a bottle of "BP Sauce" on the side..

I'm really happy with this idea as it is quite humorous as well as stating the point of the article. I'm thinking of experimenting more with collage for this project for a few reasons; I think collaging photographs of my 3D sculpture and using lots of found materials will look really good and perhaps a bit different in the context of a newspaper article, and also with editorial illustration, you are often required to produce an illustration in a very short amount of time and this is a really quick way of working.

The first part of my development has been the sauce bottle. I knew straight away this will have to b photoshopped and I am very confident in doing this. Here was my first attempt at transforming the product:

As you can see I've altered the logo and replaced the parliament image with a map of the gulf of mexico, however I'm going to experiment a bit more with using different images instead of this to see what works better. I'm also going to try using different colours instead of the blue background. This is just a rough experiment - for the final illustration I will most probably use my own photograph of the product as I'll be able to get the right angle in relation to the rest of the objects..

Anyway that's as far as I've got! More updates soon :)