Collaborative work placement

I personally know a writer called Robert Jackson who has asked me to do a leaflet promoting his ‘writers evenings’ at his local bar. I will be using photoshop to produce an A5 leaflet with simple information about him, the location and the time and date of the event. Apart from these he gave me complete freedom to include anything else I like in the booklet when it comes to fonts, hex codes and images.I think the final product turned out well, Easily printed onto A5 but I made the file in A4 so it could be printed as a poster whilst maintaining quality. My client was very happy with the result as the black and white kept the piece classy and elegant whilst delivering the information needed directly. I used the font ‘Zaphino’ For the title and the bottom text and used ‘Helvetica nue’ for the description, as it is easy to read even when the font is small, it is also a favored type face of mine personally.

Overall the work between me and my client went well, because we were already friends it was easy for him to get across exactly what he wanted to me in an informal working environment whilst i could change it to how he pleased whenever he liked. In this case he liked the first thing I came up with and saw no need for change.

‘Time’ Evaluation

I used my macbook pro to film the video, standing it against a shelf to get a top view of the table. I used final cut pro to edit the video. I changed the settings so it played backwards, then flipped the whole clip horizontally and then sped it up 630%. I saw some digital image making on youtube that took a long time, the speed was increased to fit it into a video. This is my inspiration for the time video.

Time Video

Time

For my video on ‘time’ I will be recording using my macbook’s photobooth program, I will be turning the machine itself to a side to get an above view on a slice of paper. Then I will proceed to write the word time on it, then destroying the paper in any way that the college code of conduct does not prohibit me from doing. I will then reverse and speed up the video so the overall outcome will be the word time coming from a scrap of paper.

Final Piece

With my final work I tried to mix together all three artists, using my opinions on each of them to create my own inspiration. Making a piece that I wouldn’t usually be able to create when I play around with photoshop in my spare time. In my work i have tried to incorporate the aspects of Philip Gurrey by making myself imperfect and what the normal person would call ‘ugly’. With Alexa Meade I have tried to create a surreal character in a normal environment. Keeping my background the exact same as the room was before I edited the picture but making myself look like something, possibly a creature, that you wouldn’t usually see. To make myself this creature I had used inspiration from Alex Pardee’s work, his seemingly endless stream of characters created no end of ideas and inspiration for me.

Here is the original image:

I used a burn too and changed some of the levels to make the image darker, then used the clone tool to create more of a smile on the left side of my face. Then I made the image black and white changing each of the CYMK levels to my liking and also put a light red tint on the image. After which I used a brush to make my left eye a little darker. Finally I got a black and white image of a skull, set the layer to multiply and used a soft eraser tool to get rid of everything apart from the slight detail around the left eye. I then flattened the image, opened a new A3 file and moved the image across, resizing it to A3. The original image was taken in photobooth, which is an application for mac.

Here is the final image which I will be printing off in A3 and handing in.

Artist Three: Alex Pardee

Brief Information:

Alex Pardee (born February 5, 1976) is a freelance artist, apparel designer, and a writer born in California, USA who is best known for illustrating The Used’s album artwork. He has also done works for Hurley International, Twenty Twenty Skateboards, Bay Area rapper TopR, Upper Playground, Street Drum Corps, Aiden, Kid Robot, and lately the cover of In Flames’s ninth studio album, A Sense of Purpose, and its first single, entitled “The Mirror’s Truth”. He is a member of the groups Cardboard City and Zerofriends. He runs the website EyeSuck Ink which includes links to his blog and store. Through his art he has admitted to overcoming depression and anxiety disorders along with emotional struggles. He uses pens, ink, watercolors,dye, and is trying to use more acrylics, oils, and latex. Pardee is currently working on a motion picture for Chadam (often confused with Chadam Mihlberger) as well as various art shows and products. Pardee released his first official art book, titled Awful Homesick in October 2008. Recently he has started to donate his proceeds to needy charities, including Purple Heart and To Write Love on Her Arms. He also designed the artwork for Zack Snyder’s movie, Sucker Punch.

Opinion:

I love Pardee’s work, Due to his mental history of depression and having a harder-than-average life, his work shows this in a whole bunch of ways. The deranged characters really show who he is as a person and the way he paints is like something i’ve never seen before apart from in street art/graffiti. As he used to be a graffiti artist, like myself, I find it easy to relate to some of his work, not the mental state behind creating it but in the techniques he actually uses by throwing ink/paint onto a wall or canvas and creating characters with outlines around the different size paint splats. As well as showing his creative talents he has also shown his capabilities of mainstream work such as album covers. Personally this is my favorite artist of the three, I can relate to his work and love to see the deranged, strange and down right awesome characters he comes up with. All from his head.

Artist Two: Alexa Meade

Basic Information :

Alexa Meade is a 24-year-old artist whose work lies at the intersection of painting, photography, performance, and installation. Rather than creating representational paintings on a flat canvas, Alexa Meade creates her representational paintings directly on top of the physical subjects that she is referencing. When photographed, the representational painting and the subject being referenced appear to be one and the same as the 3D space of her painted scenes becomes optically compressed into a 2D plane.

Opinion:

Personally, I think her work is amazing. As well as the extremely original idea of painting onto live human flesh, she also creates the visual effect that could never be done on any image editing software. The features that aren’t painted tie in so seamlessly with the painted parts. The first time I saw the images I thought nothing of them other than that they were standard paintings done on a canvas or paper. Look closely and you can see every fine brush stroke intertwining with the extremely detailed and well shot photography. Combining photography and art in such a way that I had never seen before made me think that even if the art isn’t a self portrait. It still shows a lot about the person that created it, the way the subjects are painted paired with exactly how the photograph is taken combines to make an fierce combination.

Artist one: Philip Gurrey

Brief information:

Philip Gurrey (b.1984) studied ‘A’ level art at York College from 2000 through to 2002. He gained direct entry to Glasgow School of Art and graduated in 2007. Having sold £11,000 of paintings in his final year degree show and had two works of art stolen from the same exhibition, Philip was immediately picked up by a London gallery, Madder 139. The gallery took Philip’s work to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In March 2008 Philip won the PULSE Prize in New York, a cash prize for emerging artists of distinction, selected by a panel of international curators, gallerists and dealers.

Opinion:

From a first glance you can clearly see that Gurry paints his subjects with many imperfection, from scrolling through his artwork I can’t help but think that he paints his subjects personalities, using their faces as a base model. Showing their emotional and personal experiences and in some cases showing who they are as a person. One could speculate this by saying that, most people would be painted looking ‘ugly’ as most people have a dark interior. So much would be true about most, if not all of his models, if this was the case.

Another theory is that he shows the experiences of the individual through the paintings. He shows the bruises and scars left by physical/mental batterings throughout the course of the subjects lives. Saying this, none of his paintings seem to be, well, for arguments sake let’s say ‘pretty’. If i were to put this theory into practice in my own work I would show some subjects with enhanced qualities. Making them seem ‘fake’. No scars/imperfection/bruising could also show the models as having a sheltered life. Not being subjected to the hardships of a standard lower-middle class existence paired with constant praise from loved ones would lead me to create the subject with no imperfections, perfect complexion and a joyful if not meaningful look on the face. Further showing that the model is happy, content. I think I may include some of the aspects in this opinion in my final work, Using artists to gain inspiration from opinions on their work is often a fun way to find something you haven’t put into practice in your work before.

Expressive Image making

For this assignment we have been asked to research different artists and write about them, I will be showing you which artists I like, ones I don’t like and other work that I have done myself. At the end of the assignment we should have a portfolio of work filled with 2D image making that shows our skills and capabilities with different programs. As I have done a diploma in Graphic design I have had to teach myself how to use photoshop. Most of the images I do in my spare time are self expressive so I will be showing some of my previous work in this post. After which I will be writing about three different authors then submitting a final  image in A3 size.

Here is some of my previous work done last year in my own free time:

Multiphoto of a mac

For this assignment we have to take photos of a mac from different angles and merge them together in photoshop to look as the different effects we get. Because of the current lack of equipment i have, I used my brother’ SLR camera, 6mp. It’s quite old but it does the trick. I opened the images up in photoshop and merged them together with a shot of the back of my mac in the background with the glowing apple in the center. All i did was change the size of each layer, put them into position, used a soft eraser tool and smoothed the edges. Finally i flattened the images and used a filter over it, not a strong one but it added a slightly more old school look to the over all image, and merged the images well where there were signs of lighting changes.