Sunday 30 November 2008

Pin hole Photography


For my latest uni project, we are working with photography based around the phrase 'chain store'. We are restricted in the types of camera we can use, and so I thought it would be interesting to get some pin hole photography on the go. I haven't done it since secondary school, and have wanted to get back into it for a while. This is one of the first exposures I made (this is the 'positive' of the negative I got from the camera, edited in photoshop). I decided not to make a contact print to begin with, as my supply of paper is a bit short at the moment! I'm not looking forward to having to cut 3" squares out of light sensitive paper in the dark!

Friday 14 November 2008

Creative Graphic Designers Tee - front



One of my most recent t-shirt designs, for the Flickr group 'creative graphic designers'. All my uni work has taken up most of my time recently, so I want to try and get back into my vector stuff...

Wednesday 12 November 2008

Summer project - Final Pieces




These are the final pieces for my summer project. Incidentally there is a lot of focus on typography, which wasn't really intended from the outset but I'm pretty happy with the outcome nonetheless. They are quite varied in approach, using photoshop and illustrator separately. I still need to get these printed! Which reminds me I need to check online for a decent A2 print service...In the end it wasn't really necessary for us to do all this work, a lot of people didn't bother and got away with doing nothing. I'm glad I spent a lot of time working on the project, it helped me to get back into the feel of education!

Eden Project - Camper Design

This is one of the first images I considered for a final piece in my summer project. I couldn't resist using the VW camper! I really liked the combination of organic, smooth curves and the old rusting, angular van set alongside each other. I think I could take this idea futher, maybe isolate the van from the background elements of the photograph altogether to give it a more graphic look...We'll see if I find the time to experiment with it further. I'll also post the other designs which I came up with, and settled on as final pieces.

Thursday 11 September 2008

Inspiration


I've been playing around with creating text in blender today, and imported an example into Photoshop to mess around with. The whole idea was inspred by the work of Nik Ainley, I really like his typographical work and wanted to try and come up with something slightly different to the usual stuff I throw around in Photoshop. This is my inital attempt, I'd like to edit the text itself further, and try using some different settings in Blender.

For anyone who doesn't know, blender is a nifty little open source 3D program, available free from blender.org.

Wednesday 10 September 2008

Spray painting


My first attempt at using spray paint, more of an experiment in techniques than a proper piece of work. I concentrated on using black and pink spray paint, I wanted a bold image with limited colours. This was created on primed MDF board. Now I've started in eager to do some more, was really enjoyable to experiment with a completely new medium. I'm looking into getting some better paints, possibly a greater variety of colours and cap sizes. As well as this I'll import some of the textures and stencils to use in some digital work...

Tuesday 9 September 2008

A Few New Paintings...

I've been trying to urge myself back into painting, just to do a few experiments and get more work into this project. I primarily use oils, this is a quick rough portrait of Matt Bellamy. I quite like the unfinished look of it, I initially looked at some of Jenny Saville's paintings for inspiration, i like her use of brush marks and thick slabs of paint. i think I have some way to go before I get anywhere near her style. I may well develop this picture a bit further so watch this space for updates on how I'm getting on. 

Eden Project


As part of the uni project I've been set, I was tasked with having a butchers at different events and exhibitions going on all over the place. One of the places the brief suggested was the Eden Project, in Cornwall. My work and final pieces are to be based upon these visits and my own personal reaction to them. Well...Eden Project in itself is pretty much a bunch of plants and flowers in a few massive bubbles, but I'm going to focus on the thinking behind the work at Eden, and the way in which they are helping to reduce the impact they cause on the environment through pretty ingenious engineering and ideas. To be honest, I wasn't overly impressed by the biomes and their contents, yeah it's cool but not very inspiring. Although I did find quite a wicked VW camper sitting in the mediterranean biome which I thought was pretty tasty to use as a source for some Photoshop experimentation, complete with knackered rusted metal and dodgy paintwork. 

I'm sure I can conjure something interesting up from these pics, I love the iconic look of the old VW, who can resist it! Perhaps I can use it to represent the old traditional unsympathetic views on the environment, erroding away...juxtaposed against the natural environment enveloping it on all sides...We'll see! 

Other than that I think I'll focus on the recycling going on at Eden, pencil cases made of old tyres, clipboards made from circuitboards and old squashed down juice boxes. All quite nices ideas of trying to re-use some of the junk we would normally shove in a landfill. The big skeleton-like scuplture monstrosity erected outside the biomes encapsulates these ideas, being made from old washing machines, monitors, vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers which I thought was pretty cool. A lot of ideas going on in Eden which really should be filtering through onto every high street, quite easy to recycle stuff and still end up with something that looks quite funky. meh! 

Anyhow, I'll have a good think about arty ideas that can come out of this, do some work in Illustrator, Photoshop, the old sketchbook and update my website and blog as things develop!