Stage 2: Final Major Project

English Summer Time

For my final major project I wanted to revisit areas of design which I didn't explore in depth during my first year. I discovered a passion for ceramic design during the complimentary studies module; and felt that I hadn't used my illustrative skills to my full potential during the project. 

These are my first test pots that I had prepared in advance to try out my different design and colour ideas.

These are all my final bowls together. I was so pleased of the outcome of all my bowls and will have all four including the samples as my finals as they all look amazing, bright and beautiful and I can’t wait to use them this summer. To make them better in future I would need to learn how to use the wheel to create smooth and perfect shapes. Also producing molds so that I can produce identical shapes in a mass production if they were ever to be sold to the public (of course this is what id like eventually). The problems I felt were that as they were hand painted from bone dry clay I had to be so very careful not to break the clay where I was painting . There are a few marks on every bowl but I feel that they were uncontrollable and as a learning process I feel that I have improved my building and making skills dramatically throughout the project. 

These are my three final pots for the summer show. As my final pieces I am very proud and pleased with my final outcomes. As the project progressed so did my work and I am happy with the choices I made. I chose to develop my work further by adding the cows to my designs. The botanical illustrations alone didn’t give my pieces that quirkiness that I had admired from previous pieces that I found during the research stage in the project. I really loved how they looked against the colour scheme. The best element of my design would be the red botanical shapes layered amongst the rest of the imagery and contrasting against the other colours. I found this had a reall appealing aesthetic look and worked very well. The only thing they need now to really give them a professional edge would be another layer of clear glaze to smooth over marks.

Task Two: Sweet Packaging

During this task in stage one we had to design a sweet package image to be applied to sweet wrappers containing the sweet of our choice. These images had to be in black and white so the whole classes work is consistent. We were given names of common pick n' mix sweets i.e. pink and white mice, crocodiles, friendship rings... I chose pink and white mice for my sweet wrapper. We weren't shown images of the sweets that will eventually be contained in our packages as it could have effected our idea development. 

I started drawing mice in general to get the feel of the shape and to begin brainstorming for interesting ideas and looks for the package.

I began drawing mice engaging in humanistic activities, as you can see I have drawn a mouse juggling. I started having ideas about the circus and sweet stools that you will find at a fun fair and animals in circus acts.

My first idea was the mouse and the circus tent, I liked this idea as it didn't give away too much idea about the sweets that we didn't initially know much about in the first place. The idea of the mouse by the circus tent worked quite well but I feel like it was missing detail.

I decided to then put a circus style outfit onto my mice to see how it worked with the humanizing technique applied from the beginning. Eventually i came to the idea of the mouse in the top hat and waist coat which worked well.

Eventually i came to my final idea, this was my little sweet cart complete with balloons involving the text we were assigned to involve "sweets".

This cart allowed more detail and my style to come through. 

During this project we had to try different techniques of printing as one the options for our final piece.

Mono-printing, this was my first attempt, using the water soluble ink. even though it picked up a lot of the detail I didn't like the boldness and I feel it lacked a lot compared to previous mono prints I had done in the past. This I feel was due to the ink, I have always used the oil based ink which gives a better quality of line and control. 

I felt that there was no in-between with this ink, it either came up too dark or too light. 

This was my second attempt, as you can see this is from the opposite side of the spectrum as it came out far to light and grainy.

Although I do feel it grasped more detail than in the previous print.

Drypoint printing was the second method I tried. This involved some hard scrapping and scratching into thick acetate with a sharp implement.

I felt I had more control on the design during this technique than the mono printing exercise as my prints look more like the original than the last few did. 

This technique took a few trials though, and I had many varying results for outcomes, some were too dirty and covered in ink, and again too light on the over hand.

This was my best outcome from all the printing techniques that I had tried, and I am quite happy with this for my final outcome.

This was the piece originally submitted at stage 1 for the sweet wrapper. I was generally more happy with my pen and pencil work as opposed to the prints that I had produced. I think this piece is quirky and it will branch out to a wider audience adults and children alike.

Although after feedback I was informed that the final should have been from one of my prints. I chose the outcome that was the best out of all of them which was my dry point. After editing to clean it up as best as I can and then reverting the image so it reads properly I was quite happy with this result and will submit both for the summer show sweet stand.

Task One: Group Zine

PLymouth City Museum: Group Zine Task 1

During this stage of the final project we were assigned various activities and workshops for development into the second stage of our self initiated project.

We were allocated groups and sent to the Plymouth city museum for observational drawing activities, in our groups we explored the gallery and gathered various images and evidence of our trip in our sketchbooks, working strictly in only black and white media for a consistent look and style. 

Our task was to create a zine in our groups, by collaborating all of our work after touching up on photoshop. four pages per person was set as our goal to create a little booklet celebrating the museum.

I started sketching various artifacts, the skeleton section inspired me most as i enjoy capturing natural forms and structures to develop my drawing skills. There were different types of skeletal structures including various species of monkey and human skulls.

I experimented using black pen and sketching pencils for a diverse approach and re-edited my artwork on photoshop. I cleaned up the images and combined them as one final piece as one of the pages for the zine.

My bird sketch was one of my favourite images drawn from the stuffed animal section. I feel i captured the shape of the bird well here and the detail around the eyes and face of the bird looks realistic.

 

As an illustrator I'm very interested by patterns, shapes and decoration, so the cultural sections of the museum held some eye catching pieces for me to draw. Here is my African tapestry which i drew from a piece of ancient African clothing.

 This piece was drawn from an ancient ornament from Greece, I really liked the shapes and the carved detail on this vase.

After meeting with the group we decided we plucked out our favorite images for the zine and started thinking about front covers, titles and back covers. 

My ancient Greek vase pattern was chosen by the group for a front cover. I re- edited this on photoshop using various techniques for repetition .

After my feedback it was noted that my front cover does need fit in with what is in the zine. It also read back that I should have used typewriter font instead of the boring font that I had previously used.

I decided that given the time frame available and taking the second of the project on board that I could re-do the whole thing but instead I could re-edit the piece to change the font to a typewriter style which works a lot better.