Inspirations - Geoff Grandfield

Dancing like a wheel 

Geoff Grand fields style of simple silhouette shapes and limited colour use was my inspiration behind my creations. I love the figurative style of his work and the story you can tell behind the image. Every image he produces has a story behind it and is compositionally very well put together. I wanted to try and emulate this beautiful style of work. 

Limited Colour Palette

 

I had the very challenging situation where I had to create two images with these two colors, teal green and red. These are very difficult colors to work with in my opinion as they are both quite strong colours, so it was a test to see if I could work with them. It altered the way I thought about my designs as I had to think about block colours, this made me change my design to something more silhouette like. 

Pablo Picasso ( Blue phase)

Here is an example of an artist who used a very limited colour palette. Im used examples like this to help with my own work and designs.

Type Matters

John Williams "Type Matters" 

University lecturer John Williams came in for this weeks lecture talk. He's a university lecturer and professional graphic designer, who has worked for some huge magazines such as the Chase. He came in and told us all about the book he produced called "Type matters", which sets out the basics of typography, the history and the intricate aspects of type. Creative review advertised his book and students all over use it as a useful reference point. 

Not being a graphic designer I thought this would be a unique experience of learning  about something other than illustration. It has opened my eyes to type and producing professional standard type. I have struggled with incorporating type within my work, especially compositionally.

I had no idea when producing type to think about positioning of letters, letter height,spacing and John really went into detail about this, and was very adamant you have to spend as much time and care on the type as you do the images. I will use this book and his advice to help me create meaningful type that looks professional and is the correct format. 

Editorial Research

These are a few modern propaganda/advertisement posters I found on Pinterest. What I like about these is how smart and clever they are in trying to get a message across. The quirky text really helps to bring the image together, so I may possibly use text to help produce a clearer message. The images themselves are quite simple concepts and clearly illustrate the theme. I like the layout of them as well thinking about what colours and composition. I will use this research to help me make a better decision myself. 

             

Censorship

Todays student lecture was all about censorship within Illustration and the struggle artists have now creatively with ideas and being unable to express their ideas.

• We also looked at issues about racism, sexism and gender stereotyping within advertisement, with ethical issues historically,being racist wasn't an issue, and people did it to advertise their produce and it wasn't a big deal to people, but now it's frowned upon, it's the same with sexism and stereotyping, with how most adverts with woman in them are mostly naked or cleaning. 

• Newspapers censor curtain subjects just for profit, to make more people buy the paper, also as an illustrator should we censor out work, depending on what our views are of the brief/ subject

Chapter & Illuminating Verse

Chapter & Illuminating Verse 

http://tumblr.hblythco.com

During the meeting we learnt more about the book of poems " Chapter and Illuminating Verse", which is a series of poems created by Ray, with each poem having an image that responds to it. 
The Images above were created by artist Ghislaine Howard. 

"My studies of the human figure in movement continue to explore the particularities of individual modes of walking. These can be seen in a variety of works, some of unknown passers-by but in particular, a sequence charting my mother’s fight to overcome the effects of Parkinson’s Disease and her very distinctive way of walking."

She tried to capture the movement in people with the disease. I really like the way you can clearly see the  movement in the figures and the way she's used paint to create marks and strokes that imitate the movements. She described her mother as being like a ballet dancer, I can see that in these images. This is the way I love to work, especially with paint.

Parkinsons Equip

Parkinson's Equip 

http://parkinsonsequip.org.uk

An Introduction to Parkinson's Equip /Meeting Ray and Ghislaine 

The new brief we were given was my first live project where I would be working with a charity. The brief was to highlight and create awareness of a charity called Parkinson's Equip. Its a charity that focuses on giving people with Parkinson's support and improving their quality of life, particularly through sport or art. As soon as this brief was an option I decided to pick it, its a very emotive subject and something that effects a lot of people, but I felt like it was something that I feel strongly about and wanted to try and make a positive difference for people who suffer from the condition. I also found the link with art and creativity quite interesting.

In the afternoon we as a group were able to meet Ray Wegrzyn, who is affected with condition and Ghisliane Howard, who is a painter- producing work about her mother, who has Parkinson's. Both of them run and help raise funds for the charity Parkinson's equip. They explained what the charity was about and what Parkinson's is. It made me quite emotional as a person to learn about the effects it has on people  and people who are close to them. I was quite inspired by what Parkinson's equip were trying to do in terms of  help and support. 

I was inspired by Ray someone who had the disease. What got me was he was such a nice bloke that wasn't old ( who you usually associate age with parkinson's`)  and lived a normal life. Some of the facts and figures about it really showed me how much this is having an effect not only on the people affected, but also people around them, the societies we live in and much more. 

Ray is inspirational to me how he used creativity to come up with some beautiful poems for the book "Chapter and Illuminating versus". Despite losing lots of things like movement and speech, he came up with these poems that reflect the emotions of him and the illness. 

Editorial Images

Research 

I thought that to get a better understanding I would look at how editorial illustrators produce work. These are really interesting ideas below and it made me look at different ways that I could produce work, they don't just have to be hand drawn images. I knew as well that I had to create images that would fit in with the article and fit into the intended space so that would affect the size and dimensions of the images I would create.

Don't Indulge Be Happy- Sunday Review 

The Ice Cream Wars - Bloomberg Business

Building a Green Economy- The Times

The Hobbit ( Film review )

Being a fan of Lord of the rings right from the beginning I admire and will love the films and the books. I've read all the books countless times (including Hobit) and when I saw that Hobbit was I was so excited to see how Jackson would adapt this children's classic.

A reluctant hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, sets out to the Lonely Mountain with a spirited group of dwarves to reclaim their mountain home - and the gold within it - from the dragon Smaug.

Movie review 

 Given that he had a lot of material to work with, I imagine it was quite hard to put everything together for the scenery, I felt like the film was to much like lord of the rings and need to get away from that. There was to much crammed into 3 hours I felt and to much of the gimmicky links to lotr. He captured the feeling of the book and transcended it onto a screen. The acting was amazing - perfectly fitting into fantasy style, especially Ian McKellen ( famous for his Gandalf adaption). The chemistry between actors was more than just the obvious - you could actually feel their interactions and live the story.

I have no need to begin writing about camera work and all that comes with it; locations were beautiful, effects and colors were mixed perfect, a soundtrack that followed through pattered with what was going on perfectly. I didn't however like the go pro camera use as it made certain scenes look tacky and fake. Overall though I feel like the film was a success and captured the adventurous spirit of JRR Tolkeins Hobbit book. 

8/10

Ebola/Isis Research

Research 

Throughout every brief I feel like I have to fully understand and know what it is I'm creating an image for. I want to best relate what the story is about and research like below will aide me in that. The videos show the spread of Ebola and Isis being attacked in Iraq. Both have opened my mind to what is going on in the part of the world.