Exhibition Review " Tallest of Tales"

The piece I have chosen is a modern acrylic painting by Alison Erika Forde. The exhibition is called the tallest of tales. I was drawn to the piece as it is a very playful and imaginative piece of work. The content of the painting looks very surreal, depicting a conga line of different animals, with swapped heads. This in turn creates a very surrealist, almost dream like image, mimicking in my opinion being in an intoxicated state when your awareness is impaired and everything becomes a blur.

Naturally each animal is prey or predator, but in this image the roles are reversed, with emphasis on them having a good time and even though each animal is linked to each other there is no food chain in this. The marks used describe the vibrant mood of the animals and party. There is no outline on the creature’s only blurry lines, which create a distorted form and again create the drunk like state, which helped to create fun imagery. There is shading on the animals, which helps to define features, using simple brush strokes. These help to describe the texture of the animal’s fur and skin, which enable me to imagine more easily what the animal would feel like. This method of working is very similar to the way I have work in class.

I liked the composition of the piece as it was done over four separated images; however the conga line is joined through each image creating a nice balance to the image. It created a kind of mockery of the food chain and it was almost like a set of photographs, again looking back at a good time. The scale of the piece was quite big, but it did help to create that long conga line, in this almost childlike image.

The End of Illustration ? (Article)

http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00073

Digital media, and specifically the PhotoShop extension, has had a profound influence on the way that art directors and designers currently view illustration. Once graphic designers depended on the rendering skills and conceptual acuity of illustrators. Now they can assemble ersatz illustration-collages by themselves. PhotoShop has certainly not replaced illustrators altogether (and many fine illustrators employ PhotoShop as a tool), but this tool is far more threatening than any previous technological development in the history of illustration.

Steve Hellars article is all about the possible end of illustration or illustrators as a general job. He mentions the rise of computer aided design and the general loss of handmade and handcrafted art skills. He recognizes that "Some graphic designers occasionally used their own collage and montage to bypass illustrators altogether; currently with PhotoShop this is a common practice." This is something that I feel like could have a big impact on my own future as there is no guarantee of job security or a stable future in illustration. 

Saying that trends change, and handcrafted art rather than digital art could become popular again just like it did with artists like Craig Atkinson. Who's hand drawn illustration came back into fashions during the early 2000s. I do feel very frustrated in particular with this issue, having experienced many university open days with barely any hand drawn work, most of it was all digital vector images. I felt like I was looking at the same image over and over again wherever I went. 

Illustration that Moves

http://giphy.com/gifs/art-animated-illustration-yOPFV700MV4hq

Todays discussion forum was an interesting one on "illustration that moves". Myself and Danielle Massam did the presentation for the class. We tried to make the discussion link to the illustration industry. The points that came up were about how as illustrators we have to be adaptable and one way of doing that is to work with animation and animate our illustrations. We all felt as illustrators we had to adapt to modern trends, to be relevant and have a sustainable career for the future. You can have your own style, but its always good to used something that will make your work stand out and be different. 

I personally feel like this is a negative within my own work as I need to make it more diverse, rather than just drawings and handmade work. 

Simon Prades research

Simon praxes is an artist that usually works on editorial images and one that I admire. He uses ink and ink Gillot pens to create fast pieces of work. I want to emulate this style in my own images. I feel like it would improve the sped of my work and its something that I haven't tried before so It could produce some very interesting results. 

Social Awareness Ebola

These were the final outcomes of my ebola images. I have tried to make each one different rather than being repetitive I have used different styles like surrealism from my research, different layouts, and backgrounds used. I scanned in various backgrounds and have included mark making within the drawings themselves. Im very happy with how they turned out. 

Isis Images

Looking back I really wanted to create something that showed Isis for the brutal and threatening group they really are and I tried to reflect this in this image. The article was about Isis forcing young middle eastern men to stay in Isis. I used the ink backgrounds i had created earlier and thought it worked well in the image to give it a darker look and reflect on the darker issue a bit more. Id say one criticism would be that image is perhaps to stark and perhaps not suitable for a sunday morning newspaper. 

I used my own typography here and produced this. Ive never done that before but felt it looked and worked with the image. I wanted to try and recreate the panic that is felt with any terrorist situation.

This is by far my favorite image. I started to do mark making and began seeing figures in the marks and people. So I carried it on and began drawing people with the black figures- Isis figures. The article was about Isis being in the west, I think I have adapted a surreal look to this article. 

Ebola Photgraph

I thought why not mix up what Im doing and create a photograph. I thought of the idea of ink being squirted into water in slow motion for this. With the idea of blood being poured into water. I think this was a great success and works really well with the typography. I like the harshness of the image and the way the type is made to fit around the edge of the medical test tube. The tube being another thing that works really well with the issue.