Ben Newman and Jim Stoten: Big Heads

Wow. So Ben Newman and Jim Stoten were a couple of characters. I'll be honest, neither of their work really appealed to me but what I found interesting was their take on illustration. To them it seems that you can both be very and fun yet very professional at the same time.

Progress Tutorial

This morning I had another tutorial with Fred.

Here we discussed several things but started off by discussing my attendance. As the academic year has wore on the travel from York to Leeds every day has taken its toll on me resulting in my attendance dropping. I need to work harder to be here. I want to end the year with 90%+ attendance if possible. That is a goal I plan succeed with.

We also spoke about the direction my practise is going. I have felt for a while that I am more comfortable with shape rather than extensive technical drawing so it was good to hear Fred repeat my thoughts. I felt somewhat disheartened by my lack of line skills but knowing that is okay I will begin to embrace shape more!

Horse Gif

Today I made a Gif image for my niece's birthday. She is a big fan of horses so I used my knowledge gathered from Visual Language and Visual Communications to create this Gif;

I don't think the piece is anything special. The movement of the horse is juddery, the lighting varies in each frame and the framing is too tight, however - as a bit of fun/practice I feel it does the job.

Etching Tutorial

Today we had an introduction into etching. Etching is a very interesting process, albeit quite a time consuming one.

First the metal has to be coated with an oil to etch over. This prevents too much of a groove being inflicted into the metal which can cause blotching when the inking process occurs. After allowing the ink to dry we etched into the metal using a sharp object. Then we wiped the excess ink off carefully and placed a sheet of paper over the metal on a printing press. Here is the piece I made using the image I created in Visual Language last week.

I really enjoyed this process, however there are several drawbacks to these. Firstly, if you make a mistake, you can't undo it - this isn't a problem if I take into account Ralph Steadman's belief that you can never make a mistake. Secondly, the process is time consuming as stated which is a complete change of pace to my drawing process. Despite this, etching really interested me and I would like to try again at this method of illustration.

Ralph Steadman: Big Heads

We were extremely lucky today to have a Skype conversation with the legendary Ralph Steadman! He was completely different to my expectations and is actually a very friendly and likeable man, somewhat akin to a grandfather figure.

I could talk about the experience exhaustively so will cut what I learnt today down to the important things:
- Be naughty! I shouldn't be afraid of making something risqué if it isn't intentionally designed to offend someone.
- Don't use pencils. Try making work that is permanent and irreversible.
- A mistake is impossible. Make what I would consider a mistake into part of my work.
- Work relentlessly.
- Ralph Steadman doesn't think much of the term 'illustration'…

Where Am I Now?: Presentation

This morning I presented my responses to the 20 questions put forward in Study Task 4. They were well received and it was interesting to note that some other students felt the same way about their growth and practice. Examples were people enjoying new image making processes, receiving critical feedback and the importance of a message in illustration.

It was interesting to see where there was differences too. For example - Aaron isn't to keen on using Photoshop and didn't feel like he had progressed in that area much and Orlaith didn't feel her time management had improved a great deal. Despite our different opinions on such matters I think its safe to say we've all changed greatly since beginning this course.