WTF

Rant no. 247

contents:

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intro

main rant

cry

summary

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the shit

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I've re-written this intro about 4 times now, not knowing how to start it or word what I want to say..... but long story short, I dont feel like I am progressing/developing and I'm starting to feel like I'm being left behind and as if i'm just tech support for people who dont quite know how to use photoshop and illustrator...

This recent project has really gotten to me... I struggled for days trying to finalise my ideas and then to make them, but I spent more of my time worrying about how to make them, how to make them look and feel and in the end I fell back on my knowledge of photoshop and illustrator to create some shit looking, cheap and nasty, tacky illustrations... none of which I feel any attachment to, except for the sheer amount of time I wasted on them...

now, Im not just being over sensitive, nobody was malicious or overly criticising of my work, but as I sat through everyones presentation during our critique sessions... i saw how people have started to develop their own way of working, their own styles... they all came up with interesting and differing ideas and all produced some great looking stuff... but when thinking about my own, I cant see any change in my work. I havent developed a new way of working... or drawing... i just rely on what i already know and I think it showed this friday.

I have ideas of drawing and creating characters as well as producing clean and concise vector images as I love the visual effect of it, but when I get the chance to... i fail at it... I want to create work that is unique and something that I can really call my own, something fun and possibly humorous but I dont know why I'm doing this... I feel like i should be taking some risks and trying new things, screen printing was one of these things and I love it... but Im not utilising it as much as i could...

I have had many a conversation with friends, peers and staff/professionals about the whole "style" thing and I know that it will eventually develop but I think i'm understanding why no one true/real style of mine is showing through... because I can mimic almost any style I see or because I've often been asked to recreate/achieve a specific effect or style means I'm becoming a mac monkey... someone who has no creativity, just the technical skill...

This is all really depressing for me, purely because I want to be employable when I leave the course... but at the same time I dont know what I want to do when I'm finished... I enjoy working in many different areas and particularly I like working in a studio environment, where I can bounce ideas off of people and develop new ones... being part of an art collective seems more appealing to me along with a little bit of anonymity, where I can pursue my own ideas but also as I dont like having ALL the responsibility... I wouldnt want any pressure on my shoulders... call it fear/cowardice/lack of confidence but strangely the idea of me becoming an art director was suggested a while back... maybe this is because I do enjoy looking at others peoples work or because i can be quite diplomatic when it comes to giving criticism but I cant exactly walk into an art director position straight out of uni can i! :/

Anyway....

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this is the bag of shit I produced.... (the brief was to produce a cover and 2 spot illustrations for an article looking at social networking as well as its application to business and the economy)

the first feels unfinished because I cut a few corners in completing it and then the 2 other illustrations not only look crap but were executed in an equally shite way...
I think they look like a kids drawings, something i might have made years ago and would now look back on and cringe at.... but instead I have the cheek to call myself an illustrator..

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I was going to add a lot of my sketches to this post but I dont want it to be soo long that they are lost at the bottom of the page and never seen by anyone... (see next post)

metabores

with the recent editorial and metaphors work, I've been looking at illustrators who work within these areas and others whose visual styles I like...

Tim Ellis (link)

David Semple (link)

Chris Garbutt (link & link)

Andy Martin (link)

Mick Marston (link)

Back in the 1st year, Jo showed me the work of Mick Marston for a project in order to get me using illustrator... now in 2nd year I feel like I have good grasp of the program and will be returning to Marston's work to start looking at character and shape. Although Marston's work looks like FreeHand vectored, smells like FreeHand vectors and tastes like FreeHand vectors... he has still managed to inject humour and character into his work... he's taken the best points in using digital technology but also stylized it and made it his own...

Also, since I have a passion/need to screen print.. illustrators such as Marston often have a background in other areas such as printing and it's great to see them still using this in their work. Rather than remaining on screen, the crisp lines and blocks of colour take on new life as they become tangible and printed onto stock.

I was also going to mention Stanley Chow whose artwork I really like, but I'm hoping to start filtering out artist's whose work I just like on an aesthetic level when compared to artists who inspire my own work... I just keep worrying about finding my own personal style/visual language.

I specifically like how Chow depicts characters, proportion wise, and I think I could recreate it quite well... but thats all it would be... I could quite comfortably copy any style given to me but it will never look like my work...

Similarly I've been looking at a few more artists, in hope of inspiration and influence for my own work....

stolen from: (link)

"Chiquita's latest ad campaign imbues its audience with an instant sense of wonder. Using playful illustrations on stickers juxtaposed to the iconic Chiquita stickers, the product and brand become more engaging to the consumer—plus they just look cool. We got a chance to ask the Art Director,DJ Neff, some questions about the process of making bananas (even more) fun"

These character are fantastic, in the way that they capture individual personalities but in that they are fun... the are enjoyable, playful and as mentioned above... 'cool'. I love stickers but what really inspires me about these is the limited colour palette... obviously taking reference from the previous/exisiting sticker colour scheme but I'm starting to notice some patterns in what I like...

more to follow in the next couple of days... ;)

things that excite me...

I stole the title for this from a rather rude blog/tumblr thingy I stumbled upon via my new favourite site FFFFOUND

I always seem to be complaining and bitching about the same things recently... that I dont feel as if I am creating any work that is truly my own and that I dont get chance to do the things i want.. (creating characters, working in 3D or screen printing)...

I've finally decided to try and do something about this... (again)... either if it means just taking a couple of hours out of my day in the evening to draw/create something that isn't course related. This has come about since my tutor told me to bring the things i like into my work and to find a way to fit the briefs we're given to the ways I want to work...

I still feel a little bit like I have developed a way of working that is aimed more at professional practice (clean cut graphic like illustrations) rather than the sketchy and cartoony styles I feel more comfortable with.

so I thought I'd put up some reference to things I like and what I feel got me interested in illustration in the first place....

like most kids, i grew up copying my favourite characters from either cartoons or computer games...which is pretty much how i learnt to draw... i particularly remember that I loved to draw Sonic .... and I think this is why I still enjoy watching cartoons at the age I am now... theres something about it that lets me keep ahold of my childhood but also my imagination...

Growing older though, this has spread to feature length animations (both digital and traditional) like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Wall E and Kung Fu Panda... as well as modern cartoons such as Samurai Jack and Spongebob Squarepants, but I'm also now interested in comics... I never read comics as a kid purely because cartoons were more accessible to me but now I find comics more enjoyable than watching most movies due to the stories being aimed at a more mature audience and also on the shallow basis of their artwork....

If a comic doesnt have interesting artwork then I often don't end up reading the story but I keep trying to pinpoint why I like cartoons and comics so much... the only reason I can come up with is they all have black outlines around the drawings... I remember being told off for this in school as things in the real world don't have big black outlines on them... yet its taken me so long to realise all these rules I've been taught about "art" are quite subjective....

Most popular comic artists have also launched successful art careers branching out into fine art and a range of other products such as James Jean, Ashley Wood and Jim Mahfood.

What I'm trying to get at is that all my favourite images, by any and every artist, often includes a black outline around them in a comic book kind of style. This has also been imprinted in my mind through the social scenes I am a part of too... such as snowboarding, and motorbikes and even when I was a skateboarder. The most popular brands and designs during the early 00's employed this very same art style...

not only that, but this has been used for years within the skateboard industry since it made it made its migration for surfing graphics.

Classic companies such as Santa Cruz, H-Street and Powell have been using this style for years, most likely influenced from early comics too...

but even to this day, the work of Jim Phillips is constantly being adapted to modern brands from his iconic screaming hand...

to



I feel using this style I can actually incorporate all the different things I want to do... as in I could firstly draw a design/character in my cartoony way, then refine it in illustrator before screen printing it...

and then I could also reference Mahfood in order to practice more contour drawing :D