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#4 28/11/2016   'lakeside willow'

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My cover design for Magi Mojaxx's yet-to-be EP.. Some months ago I was approached by a member of Magi Mojaxx (and a friend) and asked to do a cover for their yet-to-be-released EP.

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Polaroid photography project, #6 18/12/2016   'daydreaming'

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Polaroid photograph #5 16/12/2016   'among my swan'

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One day years ago, as I was going about my business online, skimming through images and articles in dismissive boredom, I stumbled upon something truly extraordinary. An artist whose work made my mind completely blank and quiet and what I remember feeling was an outward wave of tingling energy from my heart all the way to the tips of my fingers. It’s a similar feeling to falling in love when your eyes meet someone else’s.

It was an image by Jean Giraud, also known as Moebius, comfortably nestled amongst the piles and piles of whatever Pinterest had to offer at the time. “Esteemed by Federico Fellini, Stan Lee and Hayao Miyazaki among others, he has been described as the most influential bandes dessinées (comic strip) artist after Hergé.“

I was mesmerised by his use of colour, composition and detail. It is apparent in each and every image of his, instant awareness of space and scale. Simple, yet so complex it spins your head. It is an experience in itself of another world, another universe, and it all originated from the mind of this one person.

Jean Giraud (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012) has since been one of my absolute favourite artists and I whenever I find myself looking for inspiration or ideas I always seem to find the perfect piece. It was too soon after I discovered his work that I found out he died after battling cancer for a long time.

Many artists have since paid their tributes, including Paul Pope whose Adventure Time Moebius-styled short comic strip was featured in AT Issue 5. I took the liberty of putting it in just below.

Out of This World / Mœbius One day years ago, as I was going about my business online, skimming through images and articles in dismissive boredom, I stumbled upon something truly extraordinary.

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Before the academic year was over I was working on an important side-project. The second book by author Vera Petrova called Vortex, about to come out.

After the success of her first book 6 years ago she wished to collaborate once more to create a second boutique publication, this time with illustrated chapters rather than just a cover. Saying I was excited would be an understatement.

What happened was quite interesting – Vera had had a look through all of my work online and liked several pieces which she thought would fit the esthetic she imagined for her book. I suggested making new work in accordance but she was set on several sketchbook pieces from the beginning days of my final year project ‘Cosmic Genesis’. As they were no longer of any importance to the outcome of the project, I felt they would fit well for the occasion. Thus they became chapter illustrations.

The cover artwork was chosen in a similar manner. Vera wanted her second book to carry on the layout of her first book (‘Instead of a Book’) – a short but wide image which flows from the back cover to the front cover as one long piece. A very fitting image I had done was, again from ‘Cosmic Genesis’, the 3.3m-long animation concept. She felt it was illustrative of her entire idea behind ‘Vortex’ so she had me send it over to her visual editor (Rumen Dimitranov), who shortened it wonderfully so it can fit the format without losing meaning.

You can see the finished cover below, as well as some of the illustrations inside.

Ether Compounds

Aerial Spirals

Two Again

vortex / cover & illustrations Before the academic year was over I was working on an important side-project. The second book by author Vera Petrova called Vortex, about to come out.

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aftermath / after hand-in

Some reflection from the time after hand-in, three months ago. More to come!

It’s been a while since I thought to write anything on here. The summer’s almost gone and perhaps the reason is that so much has happened in the space of three months. Sometimes it’s more important to enjoy the moments, to live, and let it all happen before you know what’s worth recording and writing about. First things first – I am no longer a student. The last few posts I wrote were published…

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critical

This last week was the most insane, action-packed, work-filled, will-fuelled week I’d probably ever experienced since the start of uni… (a little part of me says probably ever). There was just so much to do that I hadn’t thought to sort out before. The past two months felt like a speedy blur, there was too much to do and not enough hours in the day – I’d catch myself still at uni in the latest…

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The last two weeks before the deadline (6 May) were specifically dedicated to building the degree show spaces.

After the negative response of last year’s degree show, we were determined on several things – one was to do with the fact that Illustration in general is not technically in the main art building. This time we were adamant that we should have our exhibition with everyone else’s. Thanks to our course mate Maelle’s efforts we got a number of spaces in the main building in which to build our shows – two spaces on the first floor and two of the glass boxes you see when you walk up the main stairs on the second and third floor.

The whole exhibition module for us is called ‘Encounter’ – its main focus being how illustration may be encountered in the world. Since the start we were told again and again that we should not think of it as an exhibition, which was a bit of a contradiction, especially when we got to building the actual spaces.

That meant building and putting up all the walls in order, painting everything white and making plinths. We were all suddenly working together, a huge team of illustrators, building their degree show, helping each other and communicating – somehow it felt like a lot of us connected more than we’d had in the whole last year, or whole three years really.

As it happens, the materials we could use were limited so that resulted in having to wait for people to finish their task so you could borrow whatever you needed and continue the work. That resulted in some people not showing up, thinking their help wasn’t needed.

The start was strong and we’d done quite a lot of work by the end of the first week, with a bit of a slowdown around the second, and a quick intensifying around the last few days. We were meant to start putting our work up around Thursday afternoon and all through Friday.

It was hectic and stressful for the whole of the two weeks, but we managed to get through it with  hard teamwork!

planning exhibition The last two weeks before the deadline (6 May) were specifically dedicated to building the degree show spaces.

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After some hard thinking and work I finally finished them. These are the pieces I’ve chosen to put in the exhibition.

Due to unforseen technical difficulties I’ve lost some of the scans and these are the only ones I managed to recover.

All of them are painted with acrylic onto MDF covered in black acrylic. It felt amazing to be able to finally paint, rather than plan and do technical things like scanning, editing and blogging.

These will be suspended so they hang at eye-level, arranged so they form the backwards narrative of the creation of our universe.

cosmos

development of the earth

formation of the earth

formation of the solar system

formation of the milky way

the cosmic tree

the cosmic sapling

the plan in the eye of the creator

the divine mind awakens

final pieces After some hard thinking and work I finally finished them. These are the pieces I've chosen to put in the exhibition.

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website

Part of our professional practice included creating an online portfolio which could also be referred to as our personal website. We had several tutorials with Dan Peterson about what works, what doesn’t, what we should look out for, how to make it easy to navigate, visually appealing and all sorts of bits and pieces of the sort. He was showing us examples of both successful and relatively…

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finally finally finally!!!

I started painting my final pieces, after a wait that just felt like a small eternity. Annoyingly enough, I had to first prime the boards, so I can paint them without damaging the wood – that was resolved by a quick solution of watered down PVA from a massive tube in the studio. Next up was the black base – now that was tricky because I was running very low on black acrylic and I didn’t have money for supplies at the time. I had to turn to my friend in Fine Art, Arthur Jarvis, whose work pretty much focuses on dark and sticky substances and for it he uses a lot of black paint. Fortunately he had some left, which I thought would run out quite quickly but miraculously covered all the boards and there was even some left to spare.

After having experimented with wet on wet painting I started thinking of how to do it well with acrylic. The process of making the Space piece and the Cosmic Tree piece was the most satisfying experience – watching mesmerised as the paint flows through the watery layer, plays, settles, moves, swirls and makes unexpected shapes and mixtures. Such things cannot be achieved by the human hand but only induced by it and I liked having that idea add to my work.

Finally painting finally finally finally!!! I started painting my final pieces, after a wait that just felt like a small eternity.

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Initial concepts 

 At first I wanted to represent the idea that the bubbleverse was in fact all the particles of the body of the primordial creator god. I ended up drawing this guy thinking, I shouldn’t limit myself to a strictly human body shape, even if it’s massively simplified. if it’s an entity of unfathomable dimensions then I can just let my mind go crazy and see what comes out. I was especially pleased…

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So, the final decision was to have my pieces painted onto circular boards. A hard surface with weight to it for the hanging, which could easily be laser-cut into the right shapes and sizes. MDF. Yes.

After speaking to my tutor about it she advised me to talk to a specialist and I sent her an e-mail as soon as I could. After not receiving an answer for about four days, I got quite worried, as I needed the time after to prep and paint the boards. It was nearly a full week before I was induced in the magic of laser-cutting. I managed to fit all the circles onto 3 thin MDF boards and so create the platforms for my final pieces.

Because of the restrictions and considerations of the laser, the hanging holes which I hoped to be quite thin, had to be a lot wider which I wasn’t too pleased with. The other thing was that since I wanted my pieces hanging without turning, I had to have two holes on each. It was either that or getting perspex sticks which I didn’t want to do for it would have taken away the floaty bubble idea.

Finally after almost a full day sorting that out in uni, I was ready to get to work and star painting.

Laser cutting So, the final decision was to have my pieces painted onto circular boards. A hard surface with weight to it for the hanging, which could easily be laser-cut into the right shapes and sizes.

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I’d been doing a lot of concept pieces before and after the exhibition in Bristol and when I came to a final decision about the degree show and what I wanted my project to be, I redrew them all to what I imagined they could look like as finished pieces. In a sense, final concepts.

I was using watercolour, as I wanted a certain density as well as a transparency to the outcome. Knowing that the final images would have to be painted on MDF was a bit worrying because I knew they weren’t going to come out looking the same. I could visualise the changes to an extent but I still couldn’t fully anticipate the outcome.

    Concept drawings I'd been doing a lot of concept pieces before and after the exhibition in Bristol and when I came to a final decision about the degree show and what I wanted my project to be, I redrew them all to what I imagined they could look like as finished pieces.

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Field year 3: Encounter (PDP)

Field year 3: Encounter (PDP)

  In Illustration they don’t appreciate exhibitions in the same way as other courses do. The whole idea is that the work we do is not the type one would see in a gallery, so there is no emphasis on shows, and that makes complete sense. As illustrators, this isn’t something we have to worry about, while our friends in Fine Art actually get assessed on it. Since first year a few of us have felt…

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Subject year 3 (PDP)

Subject year 3 (PDP)

Since the end of last year, throughout the summer and the whole of first term, my focus has mainly been on the idea of gods, goddesses and their visual representations. The dissertation proposal gave a lot of weight to the subject and in my mind it was like a seed which slowly but surely started poking out of the ground, becoming my main focus for the start of my third year of Illustration.…