helenharlow-blog

[helenharlow-blog]

HENRI ROUSSEAU

When researching other artists work, I found that Henri Rousseau’s work was quite inspiring. I think that the colours are more appropriate to the more dark tone of the book than other botanical illustrations. Also the layering gives an illusion of depth and 3D which I find to be really interesting.

[helenharlow-blog]

My pictures from the botanical gardens in Amsterdam are quite fitting to the themes that I identified from the description of the book, in the plants but also the way that organic and man made things interlink. I’m going to try making some work based on these images.

[helenharlow-blog]

For the first project, I have to chose one of four books to create a poster for. I read a synopsis of each book and chose ‘The Drowned World’ by J.G.Ballard. Of the four books I found that this one was the one that appealed to me the most as themes in the book resonate with topics that I find interesting. It’s about a dystopian future in which the world is covered by tropical lagoons due to global warming. The world mirrors the collective unconscious desires of the main characters, as a theme in Ballard’s writing is that human beings construct their surroundings based on their unconscious. I think that this is something I could use to create some interesting work.

Above are some examples of existing work for the book. Some routes for exploration are tropical plants and landscapes, architecture, science fiction and characters. I need to learn more about the book and the themes involved in the book. 

[helenharlow-blog]

FINISHED SELF PUBLISHING, COLLABORATION AND REFLECTIVE ESSAYS

[helenharlow-blog]

[helenharlow-blog]

[helenharlow-blog]

[helenharlow-blog]

COLLABORATION INDUSTRY REPORT RESEARCH

GUERRILLA GIRLS- I thought that the Guerrilla Girls were an interesting example of a collaboration to research following the introductory lecture, as it demonstrates the reason behind forming a collaboration. Their work tackles sexism issues and more recently other political messages such as the Trump campaign. These artists put the focus on the political message and artwork rather than demonstrating their own personalities and work, which makes their work very successful.

PATRICK BRILL- I thought that Patrick Brill was a good artist to research following on from the Guerrilla Girls. He also goes by a pseudonym and much of is work revolves around sending out political messages. He obtained the name from a short time when he worked with his sister, Roberta, but continued to go by this as he retains more social stamina. He now has an OBE.

LAURA CARLIN- Laura Carlin made some interesting points relating to collaboration that I could see linked in with my own work. Her example demonstrated two people with different skill sets coming together to create work. I could see this in our own collaboration as many of us are confident in different areas, and when this comes together you are able to create much more diverse and mature work. 

NOUS VOUS- The points that Laura Carlin made led me too explore other collaborations, and I came to Nous Vous. On their website, and an ‘It’s Nice That’ article (http://www.itsnicethat.com/news/nous-vous-illustator-in-residence-house-of-illustration-040816) I learned that the way they collaborate enables them to find new ways of working, use new materials and push peoples understanding of what Illustration can be. I therefore thought that this was a good example to use as it demonstrates how illustration is developing as a practice due to collaboration. 

[helenharlow-blog]

RESEARCH FOR SELF PUBLISHING ESSAY 

EMILY GILBERT- The Laura Carlin lecture and general research that I conducted on the internet led me to Emily Gilbert, as I started to understand that the pros and cons of self publishing seemed to be very much related to advancements in technology. By chance, I had seen her advertise recent work that she was selling on Etsy on her social media, and I thought that this was good support for the points that I had found on the internet that seemed to say that the rise in use of social media and free advertisement makes traditional publishing less attractive to modern artists.

SALLY GARDNER- I did follow up research on Sally Gardner’s eBook following Bee Willey’s lecture. It is about a character with dyslexia, and the eBook contains interviews with Sally, animations and political talking points to teach people about dyslexia, what it’s like to have dyslexia and to put it in a positive light. I thought that it was interesting to see this different method of publishing and how it can be used for different purposes. 

ETEL ADNAN- Etel Adnan’s website has a lot of information about her self published poetry and books. This makes her a very solid example of an individual who self publishes. What drew me to her however was her art zines, because they are far closer to the work that I produced as they are made on a one-off basis. 

CHARLOTTE REEVE- I met Charlotte Reeve at a zine fair in Norwich and conducted this information in a conversation. She spoke about her book about Greece (an in the images) which she self published. She wanted to print this publication on really thin newsprint, which would have been too much of a risk for a publisher to take and so would not have bee allowed. Self publishing this publication allowed her to take this risk, which in this case paid off. 

[helenharlow-blog]

FINISHED PUBLICATION

Here are pictures from the inside of our finished book. We weren’t able to print on the exact same paper as we used for the previous one, which was a shame, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. I also find the boundary lines of the images against the paper really annoying, and these somehow weren't as obvious on the previous one that we made. Had I had more time, I probably would have spent a bit longer editing the images on Photoshop to make it closer to the colour of he paper.

Having said this, I’m really happy that I made this.I do think that it does still look in keeping with the design of the other publication that we made and I think that it is a nice reminder of the project and Illustration event. I also think that it was a good idea to take the collaboration process to another level by not only collaborating within our group, but also with the people that we met and who interacted with our work at the Forum.

[helenharlow-blog]

MAKING PUBLICATION

Me and Ellen went to the studio today to put together the publication. Shauni dropped off some collages in the studio so these were included in the publication. We worked in a similar way to how we created the previous one, refining our choices and making an order (as shown in first 2 images). We then put this together on an InDesign file by scanning in the images. 

We tried printing this out at first in colour to see how it worked as the green colour was a key feature to these prints. We didn’t think that this was successful because the background colour was a pink tone which wasn’t very fitting. For our real one, we will use the same paper as we used in our previous publication and print in black and white as it will look more in keeping with the style of our other work. 

We included a little bit of text as shown (in the same font as in the previous publication also) to give a bit of context as to what the publication is about.

[helenharlow-blog]

COLLAGES

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, my group decided to make a second publication from the prints made by the public at Kaleidoscope. 

Above are some of the collages I made from the prints. Some of the images had nice sections, so I simply cropped parts down to make a neater and more abstract image. Other prints were really messy, or didn’t have a nice composition. With these ones I cut them up and made new images, trying to keep them similar to the images and shapes that we created in our previous publication and other work (see first and last images).

We intend on making the publication in a similar style to the previous one so that they look good together. Instead of having text in it, we want to put pictures of the individual lino cuts on the blank pages for breaks.

[helenharlow-blog]

KALEIDOSCOPE EVENT

I really enjoyed the Kaleidoscope event yesterday, and think that our stand was really successful with the public. I particularly enjoyed interacting with members of the public, and I tried hard to talk to people about our activity and to get them involved. I found that I had some really interesting conversations with people not only about our stand, but about art in general and learned a lot about other peoples experiences in art disciplines which I found to be really interesting. In general, we received some really positive feedback about our stand and the event. People understood and liked the visual language of our stand as a kind of mini universe. The trees drew a lot of attention because they helped to make it recognizable and because the texture was interesting.

Despite my concern that my tool didn’t look good painted, when they were all together I do think that they looked good and really helped to communicate that they were farm machinery. On the day, the lighting in the Forum really played to our advantage because it created shadows in the sand which exaggerated the shapes made (as shown in the photo). As an activity, the sand box did work well and people enjoyed using the tools and making patterns in the sand. We had anticipated that because they were small, a lot of stones would get take away. However, this was perhaps something that didn’t work so well as people liked the concept of digging up the crops but preferred to hide it back in the sand than take it away. Because of this, half way through the day we reduced the number of stones in the sand pit and put more around the side so that people knew what to look for, and meant that more got taken away.

Although they were a bit of an afterthought, my group was really glad to have made the postcards as they were a really popular freebie. Feedback for them was really positive (one man even said he was going to frame one), I think because they worked well visually and because they were less messy than the other activities. We ran out of them before the end of the day.

I think that the printing activity was a more successful activity than the sandpit on the event day. I think that people found it fun as it took them back to their childhood. This activity didn’t go entirely how we had anticipated, as we didn’t consider that the paint would take time to dry. Because of this, people didn’t tend to take away their work, or that people would work on top of other peoples marks which made some quite interesting outcomes. Because we had so many prints out to dry, we decided to try Matthew’s idea from the previous week and stuck peoples work on top of our poster. When they were dry, we also stuck some around the sides of our stand (as shown in the photos). I think this was really useful to people as they could see what the activities were from further away, and give them some inspiration with how to interact with the activity. Because we had so many sheets at the end of the day, my group decided to make another publication by collaging and cropping the prints made by the public as a kind of “collaboration with the public”, which should be a nice thing to have as a memory of the day as well.

[helenharlow-blog]

MAKING POSTCARDS CONT

To make the postcards, we decided to leave some plain white with just the lino print on top .We then set up a production line of myself and Shauni painting backgrounds (we did a variety of stripes and circles) and Ellen and Beth lino printing. We tried to keep the lino printing more minimal on postcards with backgrounds.

Overall, my group was really happy with how these turned out and we think that they will be a really good as an additional thing to give out on the day.

[helenharlow-blog]

MAKING POSTCARDS

To start making postcards, we began by experimenting with layering the lino prints over paint. Initially, we weren’t sure whether the prints would look better alone or with the coloured background so we tried a couple of different things as shown in the first few pictures. We liked the textured look of the paint on our poster and I think that it is quite appropriate to the theme. The examples above were far too dark and would have had to be a paler green to provide a contrast against the lino.

We also tried with ink. My group decided that this looked far better as because although it is perhaps not as appropriate to the theme it looks far better as a background to the lino prints. 

[helenharlow-blog]

MAKING PRINTING TEMPLATES

My group made a variety of farm themed lino cuts between us and worked together today to print templates on A3 sheets for people to print around in the activity. After discussing paper size with Matthew during our crit, we settled for using A3 paper instead of A2 as this should make an interesting looking print without being too big. This should encourage people to take it away with them, and we can also have more people participating at one time. We made the decision to print them all in black for continuity, and also because we are using colour paint for the activity so this should fit in with our colour scheme nicely. We made sure not to overcrowd the sheets so that there is enough to provide context, but that there is still plenty of room for people to make marks.

After finishing the templates, our group felt that we were finished with the work that we had to do. Therefore, because we were really happy with the way the prints looked, and had some spare time before the event we decided to have a go at making some postcards. We were thinking of making them in a similar style perhaps using the linocuts and techniques used in our poster as an added freebie to give away on the day.

[helenharlow-blog]

Above are pictures of my painted tool. If i’m honest, I think that the wooden version did look better. However, I do think painting it was necessary for the reasons stated in my previous post. I also think that next to the other tools (and inside the sand pit) it will look better and more appropriate for their purpose than wooden ones would have been.