Digital

                                                                                   
In Brief four, we worked digitally, using photoshop on the Wacoms. Our goal was too produce 4 finished digital pieces.

I've had a little bit of experience with digital art before, using an app called Procreate that's sadly only available through IOS. It records every mark you make on the screen so when you have a finished piece you can export a video, in time lapse.



Here's Pongo from Walt Disney's film "101 Dalmatians"
Neither character or music belong to me, they belong to Walt Disney and Disney animation studios, I used the character as a quick example.


I looked back through old briefs of Animls and reportage and chose my 'Smoking wombat', an Irish Staffordshire bull terrier and Egypt, a friend of mine.

The way I colored the Smoking Wombat was not too dissimilar to the way I use procreate, though I used photoshop, by using the pen on the wacoms to blend. I first scanned the image of the Smoking Wombat into the computer and I was away.

I chose one of my reportage pieces to work with, simply changing the hue within the image to bring out the green tones within the black an d blue ink. I then selected and copied and pasted certain parts of the image by using the lasso tool on photoshop.

Group Work; The wall

As preparation for working with other artists we had a group module, the main focus was interesting characters. People on the streets, or friends, we had to document them, well as incorporating five prints into it. This would then become an open night, for parents and friends on bonfire night (free wine YAY!) My group’s main focus where the outlaws and rebels of society, such as my friend Emily, a piercer who is big on self-body modification, she was joined by Nigel the biker (bikers are a pro rebellion poster if you want to look at it like that) and bob from Uni with his dreadlocks. The aim was to capture and document the people that older generations would perhaps frown upon or judge straight away because of their dress code or however much metal they want have in their skin.
Our group consisted of Frazer, Egypt, Eve, Lewis and Harry (of course myself), it was a brilliant mix of talent as each person differed in artistic skill.

As a group we ran through ideas of what we could do, an interactive wall, where those who visited could draw on our section of wall, or somehow be involved. After discussing this over a period of three days, we decided on creating a wallpaper, covering it in drawings, sketches and paintings of the people we knew and had met on this module. All though a few characters where strictly imagination.

The other wall was drawn straight onto, with marker pen, colouring pens and different lead pencils so we had a range of texture. The prints where linocut, which is where you take a sheet of linoleum and cut into it using a scalpel or sharp implement. It works in negative (good way to describe it) as the places carved away remain naked as the ink does not touch the detail, just the negative space remaining on the linoleum. Ink is rolled onto the sheet and the printing can be done by hand or press. Frazer pressed straight onto the wallpaper and wall. I used a much more primitive technique. I painted my fingertips and created a pattern around Nathaniel (skinhead rolling a cigarette.) Our five prints where three lino prints, smoke coming from the ginger sailor's pipe, a woman on the wall paper, a man on the wall and two separate finger prints.

I enjoyed working in a group for a short period of time, with it being such a large project you know you have a team to help or advise- and that's useful, getting a fresh set of eyes to examine your work and give constructive criticism, just as a client would. What I didn't like was the small amount of space we had, though we managed it well.

Animalia

So as brief two, we studied animals, movements, structures and characteristics. I was excited for this brief, I love animals and they are my favorite things in the world, they show beauty, grace and aggression all at the same time, and have a much broader range of characteristics.As well as having animals brought into the university, one of these creatures being a super cute Meerkat kitten named Merlin, we visited Flamingo land, with a wider spectrum of animals.
Sketching from life was in some ways easier, than taking from a photograph and later studying it as I could see the ripple in the muscle and how their joints work, giving me a greater understanding of how that particular animals biological motor works.
I also looked at photographs I had taken at Chester Zoo in my personal time and worked from them later on.

Though looking at wild animals was great fun, a major source of inspiration was my own four legged friend; Reethi my Hungarian vizsla. Whilst working on this brief I took my aged and tattered novels out when walking him, working in fine liner on the flip pages, though this proved to be a problem as he didn't slow down for anything, so eventually i gave in and had to work from photographs.

During the brief I experimented in mediums, water colour, acrylic, gouache and fine liner.









As well as completing four sketchbooks, we had to come up with four mythological creatures, from our own imagination.

My first creation was the 'Sea Lion' but instead of being completely fabulous, it's a marine animal that would work, the tusk on its head acting like the mane of the land living Lion, the bigger and more fully developed the tusk or mane, the more dominant is the Lion/Sea Lion, also giving the animal the ability to move quickly in the depths, cutting through the water quickly.