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Artist research - Junji Ito

Junji Ito  is a Japanese horror manga artist. He focuses on typical mundane fears and amplifies them tenfold. His artwork has gained a cult following over the years.

He combines supernatural elements with suspense and horror, utilizing manga format so that turning the page builds suspense. He explores cosmic horror, in his manga Uzumaki, a town becomes obsessed with the concept of spirals. It's reminiscent to the work of H.P Lovecraft, grappling with peoples descent into madness as they deal with horrors beyond their comprehension. I really enjoy his writing and art and I'm hoping to further reference his work.

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Oil pastel pieces focusing on chronic pain.

More of a personal piece to myself, I suffer with chronic pain to a point it disables me. I wanted to focus on how I view myself through my own perception of my pain- like a string of muscles fused together. The blue shootouts of light is just a visual representation of the pain.

I recently had a flare up throughout my whole back that rendered me immobile for a few hours, so I was feeling a little annoyed and made sure to make the blue as aggressive as I could. I intended them to reach off the page as it helps to visualise the scope of pain chronically ill people experience, sometimes you cant put a scale to how bad pain is.

Variation with filter.

Second piece focusing on the same back pains.

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Zine Production.

This week I was In the publication station, working on the Zine Publication workshop.

We learned how to make an 8 Page Zine. For my Zine I wanted to create a Zine that has inspiration from preaching signage. Often I see they use vague threats to almost fear monger people.

(Images taken from the preachinggear website)

I find this vague, almost manipulative type of preaching interesting. I wanted to replicate it to a degree with my Zine.

Initially for my design, I wanted to create a drawing on the background that could only be seen if you undid the whole zine. I wanted it to also show that unless you know a person as a whole you can never get the full picture of who they really are and what their struggles internally are.

This is the initial sketch I had planned to use as the background. I revell in creating amalgams of flesh and bone, no references used for this, I came up with it myself.

Here's the final creation on the page for the zine.

Next, I worked on creating the content of the zine.

My main idea was to create a piece that'd help people achieve their perfect body, regardless of how grotesque or visceral it looked. As long as it was true to them. Asking the question 'Are you desirable?' would cause people to question how they view themselves and how other percieve them. I suppose the inspiration came from detrimental types of body dysmorphia, often leading a person to self harm.

Obviously, I wasn't going to outright mention it/draw it as its a sensitive issue. It's an underlying tone I was thinking of while creating the zine.

'Become all you can be.' is a phrase I thought of that could be interlinked with preaching. It offers a goaless hope, luring you into a false sense of security, I also thought about gym culture. People constantly striving to be the best they can physically, often pushing themselves way too far for the detriment of their health.

I started with somewhat clean lettering, and have it deteriorate as it repeated. It can represent bith how this kind of preaching ends up meaning nothing in the end, and how constantly striving for a goal that's seemingly impossible. I see it as people wanting to become their best self physically, constantly wanting to improve and change themsleves but never being able to achieve such goals.

Finally I had finished all 8 panels.

Quote I used "-And from his rib, a flute to play that merry tune of marrow took." Is taken from a cosmic horror podcast called The Magnus Archives. The quote comes a completely fictitious book called 'The Boneturners Tale' The fake book itself, grants the reader the ability to shape and take bones from people without breaking their flesh. I thought the quote would be fitting to include.

The secondary layer just includes highlights as the zine is getting printed in a risograph.

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Some "anatomy" practices I did. Main focus was getting used to drawing a body and preparing to warp and disfigure it. I didn't want the pieces to be super anatomically correct, so I took liberty on the definition of muscles and how and what formed to create the bodies. No specific references were used, all imaginative pieces in relation to my project. Warm up sketches to get me back into drawing the human form. I enjoy working with graphite as I have a lot of control with thickness and shading. I really like how the veins came out on the torso. I like how the shading came out on it. I'm thinking of drawing something similar to these again but on a bigger scale. Possibly linking it to old anatomy diagrams but with way more of a focus on my project idea.

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Work in progress - Inner self

I wanted to create something that focuses on dysphoria. It's unfinished at the moment as I'm a unsure on where I want to take this piece. Entire piece was freehand without reference on what I want to say is an A6 sketchbook. I may scan it and try to finish this digitally, I have ideas to do with it that involve brightly saturated colours I'd really only be able to achieve digitally.

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Leigh Whurr - Artist Research.

Leigh Whurr is a British surrealist artist that focuses on oil and digital paintings. (found on Instagram @/LeighWhurr) I really enjoy the type of art he produces. Each is so individually twisted in its own way but, he offers insight into the meaning of some of his pieces.

This is 'Balance' Quoting from his explanation of this piece " -represents the kind of psychological pain that might result from distorting ones inner world to coincide with external image, to which the slightest imbalance is fatal." I resonated with his work alot as it fit with my project idea almost too perfectly.

This is 'The Ambiguity of Language' It focuses on how both language and intertwine and bring us together, but also how language can distance us from each other. I really enjoy his style of painting- both oil and digital. I definitely want to attempt a digital piece inspired by his work.

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Scarecrow person. Inspired by 'Balance' By Leigh Whurr (I'll do a post on him after this) I wanted to quickly sketch up a little scarecrow person. They're not actually a scarecrow, more linked to someone's distorted self-image and longing to be something they cannot be. Something unachievable, or If attempted to be achieved can be detrimental to them. This 'person' is facing away, basking in a light we cannot see. Their body tattered and their limbs rendered useless. You could question if they're happy. Maybe they've become what they wanted and are satisfied. Or they could be horrified of what they've become but helpless to change themselves as they went too far. So they're stuck. Immoveable and being scorched by the hot sun that beats against them. You can also see this as a link to crucifixion based on the pose, but I personally wouldn't, but that's the cool thing about art. It's subjective. Ill definitely attempt this drawing again on more textured paper.

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viscera!

I bought a frame that I wanted to cover in viscera-esque material. Using hot glue I placed a layer on top of the frame. I tried to keep it looking as fluid as possible to make it like gore strung up/ dripping blood. After I applied a VERY generous layer of white acrylic to help build a nice thick texture onto it. After waiting a day for it to dry- I attacked with a hairdryer to speed up the process. I won.

After the white paint dried. I used a multitude of red acrylic paints to help better show depth and mass with blood. I wasn't trying to be precise with anything while painting. There was this crimson colour I used I liked a lot, so it was my base paint for the majority of it. I mixed a tiny amount of black with the crimson, and using a horsehair-like paint brush- I dry brushed the top and crevasses of the paint coating. It gave a really nice effect I think. I'd like to try using a super glue mix soon, as I've seen it can help to create a more mucus-y texture, which is honestly something I'd love to mess around with. I have an A3 frame that Ill more than likely try to do something similar, maybe with papier-mache. I'm unsure of what I want to put in the frame. I'm caught between a painting or a broken mirror. Probably the latter.

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During the Photoshop workshop we had. I researched into the game 'Carrion' By Phobia Game Studio. Carrion plays as a reverse horror game where you are the monster. I looked at the games logo and images taken from in-game. Using the transform tool I selected a one pixel wide area on the concept art and stretched the selections made to create a colour pallet. I looked at the concept art produced by Bożenka Jelonek, and attempted to use their similar painting style to try and create some fleshy masses. This helped me to practice painting something similar to what I want to achieve with my project. I really enjoyed working on this. Mainly because I work on digital art personally, but also because I helped me to understand colour more when I was shading certain parts. I do want to focus more on figuring out lighting with more wet textures. Finally I drew up my own creation. Initially drawing vein-like lines, I realised it reminded me of intramuscular fat seen on meat. I wanted to draw something do to with veins but after realising I painted pseudo muscular segments instead. I did it all on one layer, which I thought would be challenging- found it to be fun and almost therapeutic. I enjoy drawing weird, fleshy things. I get gratification from being able to figure out how or why a body or piece of meat would contort in a certain way, and being able to properly draw it. 10/10 would draw this freak stuff again.

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Second batch of MDF board prints I worked on.

Again, choosing red as my ink. Also adding some minor elements of play to my second print.

More main focus on contorting and warping a body to fit a suited need/purpose.

Designed a humanoid with a link to trees. I considered focusing on turning bodies to suit a purpose more suited to the natural world but after consideration I've decided against this.

I'm going to focus more on people suited for purposed more linked to how we perceive ourselves. I want to focus on how people view themselves and how this is often warped due to personal hatred or outside influence.

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Tried out the print workshop. started with a sketched of a ribcage on MDF board then using carving tool I created the impression.

My project focuses on assembling the human body so I felt a ribcage was fitting as an initial start to my prints.

I used the colour red as my choice of ink, linked to blood.

After my first couple of prints I added some elements of play to my pieces. I attempted a sort of faded/exposure effect with one print that I'm satisfied with.

Overall, very happy with the outcome- I'll be keeping the board for future personal projects.

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Progress shots for images. I used different layer effects to create a negative image on the first image

I used clipping masks to keep the images in the red rectangles.

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Started some photoshop classes this week. So using the skills I gathered form the workshop I complied some images together of old vintage diagrams of the human body and used them to make little graphics to do with body parts.

Progress shots will be posted soon.

My inspiration for use of bright, high saturated colours comes from twitter artist @/ttantantan04

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The beginnings of current next project theme - Assemble.

I want to focus on the assembling of a human body but from my own perception of what I want to be.

At the moment I'm only just sketching references taken from Grays Anatomy and the Encyclopaedia Anatomica