Reinventing Illustration Sketchbook

These are some drawings I did to show the human side of natural disasters. The top one is of a photograph taken in Hawaii in the 1940's when a Tsunami hit the island, and the second is of a victim of the recent Pakistan Floods. I am creating some prints to put onto T-shirts and raincoats about nature. It is something which really interests me and something humans are increasingly having an impact on - event natural disasters. We are not necessarily causing them, but contributing to their often unpredictability. I need to now concentrate on showing the natural side of these disasters such as the interpretation of water, and earthquakes actually occurring.

Print Pathway Aesops' Fables More Printing

These are a couple of prints I created this week. I feel like I'm really getting the hang of etching now, but I still need to develop a good working style in mono printing.

Paul Hickey/ Date 20/10/2010

How many prints did you make this week?

I made quite a few this week. Not all of them worked but I'm still experimenting. I feel like I'm getting quicker at doing them now I know exactly what I'm doing, so I'm not scared to experiment. Before I feel like I held back a bit, because it took me a long time to prepare the etching plate, I knew that if it didn't work, I would have wasted a whole day of print.

How many of these taught you something new?

The etchings was basically carrying on from last time, but the mono printing aught me a lot. Its a very fast way of printing and really gets across my style of working quickly, so I'll definitely be doing it again. 

How many hours did you spend in the print making workshop? 

I spent all day in there. I felt more prepared going in this week so I could start printing straight away.

Competence in practical printmaking techniques - 60-69 - I'm starting to get really confident with printing now. Especially as now I have some really clear ideas down in my sketchbook I really have something to work towards.

Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking - 50-59 - Could have done better here. Etching was the same as last time. i could have applied paper etc on the surface to make it a bit more interesting. Mono printing is still new to me though so I was pleased with what I did. 

Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images - 50-59 - The etchings that I did showed my ideas much better this time. They look more like sheep (although could be better) and the detail on the face shows an elderly element to them. The mono prints are slightly blurred which brings my idea across well. I still want the original animals in it but added in a subtle way so it was perfect. 

 Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work - 50-59- I have looked at a further two artists - Ceri Amphlett and Dave Mckean. Amphlett's work is new to me and perfect for this project, and I think it shows in the printing that I have done.  

 

Print Pathway Aesops' Fables

For this project I have chosen to re-tell the fable 'The Wolf In The Sheeps' Clothing' using the story of Harold Shipman. The moral to the story is that 'appearances can be deceiving' so I think Shipman's story is perfect. I want to keep elements of the original animals, so for example, the elderly ladies will be the sheep. The animals in the fable portray the characters brilliantly...sheep/elderly - innocent, defenceless and the wolf/Shipman - cunning/deadly.

I want to include dark imagery, with very limited colour. I took these images while watching archive footage of the NHS and shows just the kind of style I want to adopt.

 

I will be taking some more images like this soon to work on. I need some of elderly people. I find this still of working is much better than simply finding internet photos as I need some that are a bit more natural and not 'posey' to fit the story. 

Paul Hickey/ Date 13/10/2010

How many Prints did you make this week?

I made a some etchings this week of sheep and elderly people and then combined the two. It seemed to work really well for the sheep as it seems to be a really effective way of creating fur. It also has the potential of making some really dark, sinister work which is good. 

How many of these taught you something new?

I have never done etching before so pretty much everything I did was new to me, but I think the main thing I learnt was just how many different types of mark making is possible with it. I felt I was developing with the style quickly, so I'll be ready to do more next week. 

How many hours did you spend in the Printmaking Workshop?

I spent about five hours in there.

Competence in practical printmaking techniques - 50-59 - I was a bit reluctant at first, but mainly because I didn't really know what I was doing. Once I started I was fine.

Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking -50-59 - Although the images I was printing were the same, I was trying to experiment with negative space and mark making. I feel it was a good basis for next week.

Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images- 40-49 - I don't feel like I did this as well as I could have. I was simply concentrating on actually doing the printing process right. I need to get my confidence up in this first.

 Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work - 60-69 - I feel like I did this really well. I've been reading up a lot on the subject, going through the BBC archive looking at related articles, watching old news footage on it and researching the town it occurred in - Hyde. 

Alex Lucas

Alex Lucas is an amazing artist I found in a magazine. He concentrates on drawing and painting disaster scenes. This is perfect for my project. He takes a strange approach to illustrating these events. He shows the after affect of them (which is quite normal) but they seem empty of people. They seem calm and placid - not what you would imagine!! He uses screen printing and watercolours on book pages. I like using old book pages in my work but I've never seen them like this before!  

T-Shirt Ideas - Reinventing Illustration

Some T-Shirt designs already in the shops I've found. It's this kind of illustration I want on my raincoats and T-shirts I'm designing for the Reinventing Illustration project. They have a faded effect on them which I find interesting. I'm aiming to print them so they fade or distort over time. Hopefully I can find a method of printing which doesn't take to water well, so the illustration will be affected. 

Kon Trubkovich

Trubkovich is a brilliant artist that I recently came across in 'Elephant' magazine. He creates art which visually documents history and the public domain. He records his own footage on a camcorder, then plays it back and paints the outcomes, including the TV disturbance. I find his work incredibly interesting and admire its accuracy. By using the same colours as those found on a television screen and the disturbance, he seems to create a whole new level of mark making for me.

This kind of style is perfect for my 'Reinventing Illustration' project. By distorting my illustrations of natural disasters, it would give it an urgency, and a sense of speed and panic.

Image from http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/artists/kon-trubkovich/

Human Intervention

These are photos that I took while watching news videos and uploaded footage on YouTube of the 2004 Tsunami and and the recent Pakistan floods. This is for my current project, 'Reinventing Illustration'. I've recently been watching 'Nature Shock' documentaries and various others about the natural world and natural disasters. I find it amazing how so many of these disasters' causes stem back to human activity. Droughts, floods and imbalances in food chains, to name a few, always seem to be our fault. I now find it difficult to call them natural disasters!

I'll be making T-shirts and raincoats illustrating what we are doing to our world. My intention is to distort the illustrations when they get wet. So the more you wear them, the more distorted they will become. I think this resembles our ideas of these disasters well. It is not such a simple and easy explanation to understand anymore. Its much more complicated than that. We used to have models of why these things happen within the natural world, but we have distorted our understanding of this with our own contributions.