letterpress

I had the letterpress workshop today, it was quite confusing to start off with as it's all quite technical with working out the spacing and picas and things. I got given the sentence 'All things are delicately connected', i chose to go with 'cochin' font i believe, my first choice was 'Plantin' but some of the letters were stored away; i worked in 60pt and 30pt letters.

Here is my sentence ready to be printed:

and this is the end result:

I got the hang of it in the end i think, so it will be fun to experiment with type more in my work, as the quality of the prints are great, and there are so many different types to play around with.

publish project

I've been working on the new 'publish' project at the moment, we've been given a list of just over 30 words to draw, using two opposite colours on the colour wheel and a dark neutral colour, so i'm working with blue, orange and black. I'm quite looking forward to creating a large mass of imagery to work with. Alongside this we have various workshops going on, i've signed up to letterpress tomorrow so i'm excited to see what that's like, and I'm really looking forward to the bookbinding workshop in a week or two.
In the meantime here is some imagery that i've been working on:

A1 pieces

We also got set the task to develop an image at minimum A1 size, here is my first attempt:

There are some bits of it i like, like the dean at the centre top and Babette in the centre but a lot of the other areas are weaker than i wanted, so i created another image:

this went better, and i replicated the composition used in this William Blake painting:

and applied some of the ideas used to my own work. I am pleased with the detail of the lower part featuring Babette serving the two sisters, and the image of their father the dean went ok but the people around it are rushed and needed more time to be spent on them.

I also developed a couple of other quicker pieces:

I have decided from this that because i spent little time on a book task that we were set, that i would try to translate these pieces into more sequential work in a book. I have begun working on it:

I'd like to carry on with it, it just depends how i go with other stuff i have on.

The next task we got set was to make a doll of one of our characters, i chose Babette as she is the main character in the book. I chose to recreate how i believe she would have looked when she first arrived at the house. I made the doll out of air dry clay, hair and felt.

set

We got set the task to make a set of one of the scenes in our books. I chose to do the sister's house, and the landscape surrounding it.

here is my set:

Charles Matton

I went over to the Charles Matton exhibition over at All Visual Arts by kings cross about a month ago. The exhibition featured small scale sets, which utilised mirrors to manipulate the viewers perception of the set. Here are some examples of photos i took on my phone:

They were ridiculously clever, most of them were the size of a shoebox but gave the illusion that they went several metres back.

There was also some of his 2D work:

These pencils drawings were so good, a really good example of working with shadow and positive and negative areas of shading.

Some of the sets also featured clay people, this piece shows a series of heads, sort of positioned like an audience, a really nice idea:

the expressions give it quite a weird feel too.

summer work

Our summer project was chose a book from a list of penguin classics, read it and then create 30 images drawn from life, so ten drawings under the headings 'places', 'characters' and 'objects'.

places:

Characters:

objects:

The book i chose was 'Babette's feast' which is a story about a religious community in Norway. It focuses on the lives of two sisters, partially on their earlier lives of past loves and then settles on a cold winters day, where a French refugee 'Babette' comes to their door. She has been sent by one of the sister's past lovers, on the basis that they are very good kind people. They agree to allow her to be their servant, Babette does her best to fit in with their very plain lifestyles, yet when she receives a letter informing of her win on the french lottery, to the sum of ten thousand francs, she pleads with them to let her cook a celebratory feast. The sisters become wary closer to the date over the questionable ingredients and so agree with one another to not speak a word about the food, so as not to overindulge in the luxury they will experience. When the guests and sister's are full, and everyone has left the sisters enquire as to when Babette will regrettably have to leave; Babette informs them that the dinner they experienced was to the value of 10,000 francs and so she would continue as they're servant in Norway instead of going back to Paris.