Manchester Town Hall Illustration

This illustration was one of my most challenging images to create. The angle and shape of manchester town hall is very awkward and the building involves lots of symmetry. I was trying to keep it simple and go off my instinct when it came to creating pen marks. I think the tents up the side of the building work really well in this piece as they almost envelop the building. 

Ive followed my original design and tried to show my ideas clearly. The idea of homelessness on the door steps of the town hall, but almost hidden away. Its there in the background, but its always ignored and people struggle to acknowledge it. The only point I'm concerned about is that the image appears blurry for some reason when on a computer, Im not entirely sure why that is. 

My Own Newspaper !!! A Point Of View

I can't believe its arrived and it actually looks like a newspaper !!! a professional one as well. I couldn't be more happy with how its turned out. I did have to improvise with a few pages because I felt like having standard square images made it a bit boring, so for example the magpie page I tried to change the composition and grab a part of one of my other images. Using my research into how newspapers should look and how the pages work together throughout. 

I think the best part of it it is the way the work has been printed, it has an almost faded look, but I feel like its added to some of the drawings especially where there is areas of solid colour, like the blue on my scissors one. Im sorry these aren't the best quality images to show you my newspaper, but I will be uploading some soon. I think things like this will help to push my work further and improve the standard of it. 

The Sea

The aim of this piece was to really highlight that sense of isolation and being far away from anyone else. I made the man on the raft further away and smaller, as if you were looking down upon him. The sea is a very lonely place for a person on there own, inspiration from artist Edward Hopper. I think the landscapes and natural elements within my drawings, work well and help to connect the images together.

Hands - Hands are a huge part of my thinking process and capture the ideals of my work. Hands can represent so many different things, in this case it was the idea of reaching out for help. The black to me is a sign of negativity that often unfairly associated with homeless people, so I tried to counter balance that with making the person as white as possible, to reflect his innocence.

If I do have a negative with this piece is that I could have done more to highlight the person on the raft as he can become lost in the detail of the sea, but on the other hand that could help the idea of this piece of him being a lost individual. Its quite hard to explain this one , but I truly believe in this piece.

Inspirations Rembrandt

I did a post earlier in the year when I went to Amsterdam over the summer and was lucky enough to see Rembrandt's work up close. I love the style of his work, especially the etchings he created. They look so modern to me and the dark and lights contrasts work so well. 

In my own drawings I've tried to use the same free flowing gestural movements as he did, which is very challenging to not make look like Ive just rushed my drawings. I think I've developed my own style now, but you can see the influence of rembrandt upon it. I've not just copied his style, but used it to influence my own.

Feeling Lost

This piece is all about capturing the essence of government cuts, which are having a huge effect on the homeless, especially in Manchester.
My inspiration for this was Salvador Dali's surrealist drawings, where there is always a mood created in the piece. I think this piece is a success because its a more simple design and clearly links to the topic of homelessness, but not in an obvious way.

I wanted space and perspective to come into play, so I made the scissors seem huge in a desert like world and the people a lot smaller. This was to make the cuts almost dwarf over everything in the land. The colour scheme was my own idea as I thought the dark and colours best represented my own feelings towards the whole situation.

There is definitely a surreal feel to this and artists that I've researched like Dali and Henry Derger contributed to towards my final outcome.