Dialogue Ignites Change (A Self Evaluation)

As part of my 'Dialogue Ignites Change' project I decided to work with Age UK where I would make an illustration based on the memories of an elderly person who may have dementia. I chose this because it's quite simply a personal reason to me, and I feel the best work in life is done with such reasons.

(Above: A man by the name of Pete was one of the few I spoken to, he shared a memory of this place that I took a photo of this week, it's a place where 'Rag and Bone' men would roam by and Pram Races set, so I'm thinking that's how this place should be illustrated, as if it were a set, or a stage of memory).

The most difficult part of this was coming to terms with my sense of efficiency, it takes a lot of patience to have a conversation with a dementia sufferer and although I can be a patient person I was in a situation where I only had a moment to talk and it dawned on me there that it is important to have compromise, stringing a coherent sentence out of them was far and foremost the most difficult thing to do with these people but what I learned was that a little persistence isn't bad if you keep reminding yourself what you want, if I couldn't get what I wanted after going round in circles with the person I had to respectfully walk away and look elsewhere. It's a philosophy I seriously need to apply to how I work.

(Below: Now known as The Queen's Head, this place would have been remembered under the name Turners Vaults by Pete, this photo was found through a search of an online archive, looking at how the world use to look by browsing these archives gives me an undescribable sense of discovery and pleasure)

From the work I've shown there wasn't a lot of feedback, which is good because people know what my goal is with this image. It's only a bad thing because there's hardly anything to comment on.

The project was a challenge due to my bad time keeping (still haven't slept since yesterday morning) however when I think about the opportunity I have had in this one breif I sense a profound resonance. For a moment I was lost in another person's world that use to be somebody else's at one time and I hope my work creates that feeling for another.

Quentin Blake

I found this really meaty interview from the very succesful british illustrator, Quentin Blake. He's been busy promoting himself like this since he started working for the NHS making murals for children's wards and showing off his visual world. Blake believes that the young illustrator should do their very best to draw as much as they can in order to be succesful. The interview is on The Guardian's website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/sep/28/art.booksforchildrenandteenagers

There's another link from that page to this: http://www.campaignfordrawing.org/home/index.aspx

An Eye for Character and a Love for Batman

Everything seems to be going by in a blur recently and I really got to keep up with these blogs, Since I've been spending most of last week just being outside in the wintery cold and soaking up some things whilst preparing for my essay I decided to show some character designs I made a good while back. I'm a Batman fan, not so much a fan of movies and videogames but in the fact that I love to draw Batman, it may seem unusual to some but I never draw the comic book hero as most others.

I find the characters endearing in that it's easily open to reinterpretation, If you think about why Batman has so sucessful a legacy it is because he is actually easy to draw in a archetypal sense, I suppose the same goes for the villians The Joker and The Catwoman. So far I only started to do full colour studies of two of his villians that I deem worthy enough to show off. I've been busy so these studies always take second place above my college work.

Collaboration and Completion of the Wellspring Leaflets

My collaboration project for designing leaflets/flyers for the Wellspring center in Stockport gained a succesful mark. The experience has taught me to have trust in others and to be more lenient about work processes, creating these was very much a gamble and in retrospect there was no real way to change that so it very much demands adaptability, just like Darwin's ideas, strength lies in the power to adapt.

The next step of this is to refine the illustrations, since I wasn't aware of how they would look finished, such as the hatching looking bad when you blow up the image, things like that need to be changed. Five more leaflets have to be made around other topics and the idea that was recenlty given to me has to be explored. The idea was that the back of the leaflets can have an alternate version of the illustration instead of the same on the otherside. something like one illustration conveys the problem and on the back is the solution.

The Mind of a Manga Artist (Takehiko Inoue)

An interview by Takehiko Inoue which focuses more on his daily and momentary feelings and thoughts towards his craft. He is known for his basketball drama 'Slam Dunk' and his samurai drama 'Vagabond'. Another Manga he started to make in 2001 called 'Real' is about wheelchair basketball players that highlights the psychology and mental struggles that the characters face. Another thing to note is how he uses a brush in his art, I've tried to use a black pencil in the past because it gives me the control like a pen but fades like a brush, and by looking at Masamune Shirow's work I can only pontificate that he does that. Yoji Shinkawa uses ink washes and goes over it with white correction fluid, not really the kind I find honestly suitable for manga comics but I find it a beautiful use of black and white media.

See Takehiko Inoue's interview here: http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2012/11/29/human-to-hero-takehiko-inoue-manga.cnn

Making leaflets For The WellSpring Center

Devising leaflet designs for the WellSpring resource Ccnter in Manchester, Stockport. Not everyone who attends this place is homeless and it's much more than the usual stereotype of a soup kitchen, instead it's a place that helps people who are at risk of being homeless. The leaflets that I have to make within a group, consisting of four (two illustrators and two graphic designers), are going to be designed to advertise the services of the place. They are divided into the following topics:

Alcoholism Advice

Housing Advice

Health Care

Narcotics Advice

Employment Advice

Debt Advice

I made some rough sketches (bit too rough, in retrospect should have cleaned it and used ink) that will be the basis of the illustrations, the whole idea of hands just seems to have evolved naturally, I don’t know how the graphics students will accommodate these into the leaflet designs at this moment but I found these to be the best idea in my sketchbook and so I hope they can think of something to make it work. There are ten in total that will be needed if the WellSpring does decide to pick it up. By working in a group I think it's going to involve some give and take, like the 'pass the parcel' game, only with a piece of art and instead of unwrapping it you just add or erase a mark so it looks good in the end, Showing them the above sketches was my turn, so now I'm waiting for my next turn and keeping myself occupied in the meantime.

http://www.thewellspring.btck.co.uk/MembersArtGallery

Something to think about during the project was the stories of the people who attend the place, some are very talented and their art proved inspiring for us as you can see in these links:

http://btckstorage.blob.core.windows.net/site1528/Street%20Stories.pdf

Art of Protest

Sadly it's been a slow week that's passed me but I'm gonna make a promise to show more of my art work in my next post, meanwhile I've been wanting to make something political for sometime now:

http://www.noisefestival.com/protest

The Noise Festival is giving us the chance to make and show protest art, the deadline for submission is the 14th of December, there's a lot of info on it found in the above link.

I think the best protest art has a look and feel of parody and propaganda, it has that connection that it needs in order to establish breaking an audience's apathy. However, it still needs to have the purpose of inspiring people and I can't help but see protest and art having a viral function that is created in order to be adopted by others. Memes seem to be a good way of doing this since their is no real authorship, it's for people by people. I remember as a child how people would draw the stuzzy or batman, they became memetic because they were so easy to draw and that's one fundamental rule of creating an icon. The trick is what every advertiser knows, be memetic and memorable. At this moment I've got a sketchbook at the ready so that I can be responsive to what's going on. Next post, promise.