The MA Show is UP!!!
It is crazy to see how much work I've done and excited to see it all in one place. On Monday I had the pleasure of giving Caroline from Lulowrth a personal tour of the show. It was a great opportunity for me to talk about the work and explain my thinking around the guide book. I also had the opportunity to talk her through some of my working processes and plans for the future. After a long year working on various projects, the show has brought together some eclectic and interesting illustrations, so please come along and take a look. The show is running from Monday 5 - Saturday 10 September at the AUB. I was also fortunate enough to win the AUB MA Illustration Travel Award, which means that I can now fund my first adventure as an illustrator. I'll keep you posted!!!!
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Over the latter part of the Lulworth residency I have been collating, drawing, printing and designing a drawing walk or guide with the intention of encouraging people to walk and draw in the landscape. A few weeks ago I completed the formatting for the drawing walk and have used photoshop and indesign to put together a structured introduction to Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door, plus a map and activities for participants to do whilst out and about. Through the design process I have been using my original screen prints as a basis for the 'guide' and adjusting colours, and layout. I've created a font to use for the text, and selected some text from the Lulworth essential guide. The 'guide' format has evolved from concertina, to poster and into a standard A5 landscape. This was mainly informed by how the images were involving alongside the text but this might again change depending on how it is received. As part of the development process I went out to 'test' the guide with 5 children aged between 10 and 15. The experience was great fun but threw up questions around what should and should not be included and discussions around content and relevance to them as an audience. It was clear that drawing was fun and that the most popular materials were watercolour pencils, lead pencils and unsurprisingly mud, leaves, grasses and anything else that they could utilize from what they had around them. Here are some of the pages that were tested out on location. I have decided, as a result of going out to test the book, to rework my drawing 'guide' idea but think about how to simplify the format, add activities and more hand crafted drawings so that the places included are more recognisable. I also need to amend the map and try to encourage those taking part to try and draw within it on their own. I will not abandon this design work completely but try and get back to where I began, using how I approached my journeys and made discoveries on the landscape. This means that my audience will vary, which means the content needs to be more open.
The plan would be to make a journal/ drawing guide to help people understand my experience in the landscape and how I use drawing to respond to it and record things. It will be illustrated with things that I find interesting; plants, wildlife and landscapes, as well as my thoughts and interesting facts. I would then be able to leave enough space for people to complete open drawings, or write or respond in their own way, and make suggestions of how they might do this. I am excited to keep working with Lulworth to ultimately make something that many people can enjoy. Unfortunately with preparations for the MA Show looming I have had to put the completion of the guide on hold. Lulworth have been great in not wanting to rush a final outcome and are happy for me to develop the idea further which is exciting and something I will pick up when the MA Show comes down. May 2 - 13 These two weeks were all about personalities. I have met some wonderful people during my time out and about and spent this week listening to stories and following people. People visit Lulworth for different reasons, and it's wonderful being about to discover what those reasons are. I also spent some time in the visitors centre getting to grips with the geology and history of the place. After a few days of intense study I sat on the beach, listening to the water rush over the pebbles and drawing a group of geology students, keenly carrying out their experiments. I made a couple of feathered friends and hopefully captured their mischievous nature in a few quick sketches.
April 18 - 29 Before I began spending at time at Lulworth I put together a few ideas about how I was going to go about getting the images I needed and wanted. This was incredibly helpful as it gave me a chance to figure out a way forward and then something to work to when actually out and about. It was also great as it set some boundaries that ultimately ensured I was focused and productive. Some of these ideas worked and some didn't but it was fun planning them out and trying them out on location! Within the two weeks I wanted to move away from drawing in my usual way and purely by accident, whilst working alongside a friend in the studio, discovered the joy of watercolour pencils . I 'borrowed' said pencils and went out for a walk along to Dungy Head and beyond. The results were surprising as my images suddenly had a new freshness to them, an extra something which I have gone on and used, working from these rough sketches to inform my printmaking and final, polished images. In contrast to this I worked with monotone watercolour pencils in order to create a similar texture but retain the simplicity of my sketches.
When not out on location I spend most of my time in the studio. I don't actually have a designated studio space at the moment so I divide my time between the print room and the illustration block at uni. My work has developed over the last year in exciting and surprising ways but drawing and printmaking seem to be at the heart of what I do. I am heavily into processes and find the act of making extremely soothing, challenging and productive. I have also been able to develop my digital skills and find that by drawing and making regularly, I have a wealth of images at my disposal for editing, reproduction or reuse. Printmaking is traditionally used to reproduce the same image over and over again. I use print in a slightly different way, preferring to experiment with mono prints and screen printing to experiment with images that can only be made once or to create textures through stencils made of newsprint. I then either draw back into these prints to create mixed media images, use the textures to design digital work or reuse them as stencils or cut outs. I love the ritual and immediacy printmaking allows and feel as though as I am drawing with the medium to create unique pieces of work every time. I have also used mono prints in other projects. In order to create a body of work for the book War Horse, I mono printed whilst listening to the audio book. The final illustrations are made from a combination of reused, photographed and original prints. |
Author.....posts by harry Archives
September 2016
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