This week we are required to choose a selection of images, ready for print for the Final Major Exhibition.

I am finding myself struggling to choose between the first half of my images (which contained a very colourful aspect) and my second half (where I had handcrafted the image, and tend to be in much more neutral tones). This week I am going to edit my handcrafted images and see if I can fit them into backgrounds. Hopefully this will help me towards the end of the week when we will hand over our digital images.

Monoprints

Here is an example of one of the Monoprints I had made. I photocopied an image that I had used in my work, enlarged it and recreated the shape using the ink.

I chose this print because it worked out the best, even though it was unexpected. I like the way the linear pattern doesn't quite fit into the shading aspects of the image.

The effect of the miss-print is a quality that I have always admired and used throughout the course of the foundation year. I hope to use these images when editing my handmade images.

Below I have selected a few of my handmade images - I have a collection in a sketchbook which work as final images themselves. Now that I have this selection I can use them for editing in Photoshop.

I found that working in this way was much more effective, and I also really enjoyed making each image.

Each image alone symbolises a certain aspect of Britain, before I have even had chance to work on them.

handmade images

Martin O Neil

O Neil's work has inspired me to work in a more handcrafted way. This way I can produce many images in my sketchbook before I can edit them in editing programmes like Photoshop.

His use of pastel colours and black and white show off a really delicate way of working. Although this is very different to the way I have started off the project.

Fish and Chips

I am analysing my surroundings everyday to see if there is any scrap images/typography I can use within my work.
Here I have collected newspaper headlines - stuck them into my notebook as a basis to an idea. I am starting to use paint mixed in with this so that I have that "mixed media" effect.

I really think this way of collecting "random" paraphernalia for my project is a successful way of working.

As the deadline is getting closer, and i am finding myself getting more and more flustered, I feel that I might run out of time to get all of my ideas down in a visual format. So i have decided that before I continue doing any more digital editing, I should get down as many collaged/visual images into my sketchbook - at least then I will have the body of work I hoped for. From that point I can then go back and edit these images easier.

I believe the process of digitally editing images in Photoshop takes up too much time and I should do this once I have a variety of works to choose from.

For the past few pieces I feel that I haven't really designed anything truly British.. so I intend to focus more on the traditionally British aspects from now on.

Playing In The Park

I am finding it difficult to incorporate typographic elements into my designs. This is something I am going to work on from now on.

Ideas I have had to help do this:

• find out statistics.
• photocopy passages about the topic.
• create my own fonts and use within the designs.

To help my project along I will also plan ahead and create my backgrounds for the next theme - giving the paints time to dry so I am able to work straight onto it.

Using the idea of having a main motif within my designs I begin to produce more detailed and interesting ideas. I am making more use out of my sketchbooks as I begin to build up ideas for each theme.

These images are of the British holiday culture: I want to use ideas such as tourism, photographs, Butlins and swimming. When making decisions about my next theme, I gather my imagery together and organise them into my sketchbook so I can then use these ideas many times.

I have decided to choose a theme for each time I am in the studio, so I will eventually have a diverse range of work available to choose from when it comes to printing my favourite for the final piece.

I believe that working in this way will work best and I really enjoy coming up with new, fun ideas. I plan to carry on working in this way.

Coronation Street (British Culture)

I have moved past my starting point of "Tea" slightly, mostly in fear of being stuck on the same theme for too long. I have started to look into other parts of the British culture - this design focusing on the TV dramas. The English have a huge interest in watching TV as part of their leisure time; I thought this would be an interesting topic to design around.

After doing some more artist research I found myself eager to gather the imagery I had collected and make the design fit - using what I already had, rather than searching for the right images. This way I am able to create a collection of contrasting images which I feel can often have the desired effect I am looking for.

I used photoshop in this design to piece together the imagery - this gives me the option to rearrange aspects of the image easily. What I would really like to focus more on in the next few designs is the concept of typography. I feel I am getting more involved with the image when it comes to this as finding the relevant language becomes a task in itself.

Teatime (British Culture)

I am starting to put more of a focus on certain motifs within my designs (As with these ones it would be the imagery of the "tea ladies"). I feel that this is the best way to continue working. When expressing a certain topic I am able to put the focus onto this motif and then work around the image to get a different design/perspective.

I am hoping to move forward from the "Tea" motif soon but feel I could always come back to it and make changes or build upon new ideas.

Now I will begin to focus on more British stereotypes/British Culture.

DIY is a Man's job

The idea behind these sets of images was the stereotype that men do the DIY around the house. It's an idea I wanted to test out with the materials I already had. 

I find this image worked very well as I like the style of photography and the abstract imagery of 'changing the lightbulb'.
This image has potential as it represents a message - however I feel it could have more to it. This is something I will look at in the future - where I could fit in typographic elements etc.

I tried adding in another background to the original image and also changing the colours - by doing this I was able to learn a few new skills which I can continue to look at in Photoshop. With these edits I find that the added background was maybe too busy and maybe took away a few elements from the image. Next time I can look at new elements and see how these work.

The British Home

I made these designs as a starting point with a few materials I already had. The idea behind the design was based upon the 'stereotypical english home'. By using key aspects of furniture, I was able to construct an interesting approach to this view.

With this piece I created a background into my sketchbook which represented the layout of a room - by using different papers - in a similar way to Richard Hamilton.

I used this time to simply try out working with what I already had. The images don't directly represent the British culture in the way I would like, however the process I used of selecting and editing really worked well and I will continue to work in this way. For the next images I will focus on a more stereotypical aspect to see whether I can make the image fit in the same way.

Friday 30/03/12

My plan for the next week or so is to gather all the information I have on the "Typical Englishman" such as typographic elements, photographs, labels etc and organise them into my sketchbook to create some sort of image-based message that I can then use to make a more graphic illustration.

I then plan to move forward from that and look at how I can use these elements on created backgrounds like Michelle Thompson:

 

Decision more or less made that I am gonna be looking into the 'stereotypical englishman', including things such as Tea and Toast, Fish and Chips, Wimbledon, Pub, The Mini, Caravans/Camping, Telephone Box, Police etc.
And designing this in my own way.

(Britain Yesterday & Today - Janice Anderson & Edmund Swinglehurst)

"Everyone's trying to be someone they're not"

This is a quote I could use for one of my stereotypes, as it is often something I see a lot in people..

Anyway, true or not, it's still interesting.

A good artist for this would be John Stezaker:

The idea is that people are hiding behind a front plenty of the time - masking who they really are

if the last part was unclear...

.. what i meant was that i can use the imagery of "the typical englishman" by setting out and taking my own photographs that I could then later use in my designing.

Martin Parr - Signs of the Times

To create his bookSigns of the Times: A Portrait of the Nation's Tastes. (1992), Parr entered ordinary people's homes and took pictures of the mundane aspects of his hosts' lives, combining the images with quotes from his subjects to bring viewers uncomfortably close to them. The result of Parr's technique has been said to leave viewers with ambiguous emotional reactions, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

Biscuits

Brew

Caravan Holidays

Deck Chair/Union Jack

Granny Shopping

Old Men/Bowling

Reading Newspaper

Martin Parr set out to complete his Signs of the Times by taking photographs of strangers typical daily routines. For my theme of Stereotypes I could set out to do my own photography with the same idea. However I would then use my photography in a typically illustrative way using graphics and typography to express the specific stereotype.

Cindy Sherman - Untitled Film Stills

Sherman began making these pictures in 1977, when she was twenty-three. The first six were an experiment: fan-magazine glimpses into the life (or roles) of an imaginary blonde actress, played by Sherman herself. The photographs look like movie stills—or perhaps like publicity pix—purporting to catch the blond bombshell in unguarded moments at home.


The protagonist is shown preening in the kitchen:



and lounging in the bedroom:



On to something, Sherman tried other characters in other roles: the chic starlet at her seaside hideaway:



the luscious librarian:



the domesticated sex kitten:



Other artists had drawn upon popular culture, but Sherman's strategy was new. For her the pop-culture image was not a subject (as it had been for Walker Evans) or raw material (as it had been for Andy Warhol) but a whole artistic vocabulary, ready-made. Her film stills look and function just like the real ones—those 8-by-10-inch glossies designed to lure us into a drama we find all the more compelling because we know it is not real. 


In the Untitled Film Stills there are no Cleopatras, no ladies on trains, no women of a certain age. There are, of course, no men. The sixty-nine solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America—the period of Sherman's youth, and the ground-zero of our contemporary mythology. In finding a form for her own sensibility, Sherman touched a sensitive nerve in the culture at large. 


So really the inspiration I get from Sherman's work is yet another way of looking at stereotypes - I could look at the way the stereotypical celebrities act/pose/live and reinvent it into everyday life with normal people? just an idea...

STEREOTYPES

... Or something that relates to how Pop culture / Fame makes us perceive things.

STEREOTYPES

One way to go about looking for stereotypes could be to devise a list of different groups/types of people/person and go around asking people what the first images come to mind.

Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch was an artist of the Dadaism movement; post WW1 Germany experienced a new form of government backed by American money. Moving away from imperialism to capitalism opened the door for rapid industrialisation and consumerisms. This created an explosion in two areas: first a rapid growth in media, second, a redefinition of social roles of women. Dada painters questioned the political situation.

Hannah Hoch created a group of photomontages using images from magazines and juxtapositioned the modern German-woman with the colonial German woman. By doing this she challenged cultural representations of women.

Hoch was one of Linder Sterling's inspirations as a contextual artists. You can see the similarities between the two designers and how they looked at contextual imagery and re-arranged it to express a different idea. Through her images Hoch creates an unsettling view as she addresses the fears and hopes for new possibilities for the modern German women.

Art historians suggest that Hoch represent a scene of anger and frustration, arguing that the modern German woman felt a threatened by the rapid industrialization and modernization of their society.  

 

In Dada Ernst Hoch questions the role of women in the new society. A pair of legs with money and a man's eye placed between them are the main focus of the picture. A bow like machine links money with a gymnast who symbolizes the modern athletic woman. At her side a bare backed woman playing a trumpet symbolizes women's femininity.

Hoch juxtaposes the modern images of mental (symbolizing machinery) against the woman's flesh (symbolizing femininity) raising questions regards women's sexuality in the modern world under the watchful eye of the male gender. 
 

 

 

 

The Secret Public: Linder Sterling and Jon Savage

Secret Public pgs. 6-7, T.V. Sex, Linder Sterling, January 1978, offset printed fanzine




She-She, words by Linder Sterling, 1981


Go-Go, Jon Savage, photo montage, early 1977

FMP

After completing the first part of my Foundation course, i have had many chances to research various artists/designers which have helped me to progress throughout. Most recently I have studied Linder Sterling - a late 70's Punk graphics designer who pushed to publish a set of montages that expressed the stereotypes of being female. Her work really interested me as it always had a message behind it.

This is where I came up with the idea to use a similar approach when beginning my Final Major Project (FMP).
I would like to present something that helps express the stereotypes of the modern day. To do so I am beginning research into various artists who have done similar things - and also start to open my eyes in everyday life to see what stereotypes inspire me.

Poster

BRIEF: The poster has been and still remains an important and powerful means of communication both in commercial, political and artistic settings. It is a vehicle that has carried the visual language of some of the greatest graphic designers, artists and illustrators to the masses.

For many, posters become iconic symbols and they adorn the walls of bedrooms across the country. The artwork of the poster becomes by association the visual representation of everything a film, a band, a political message, or a lifestyle embodies for an individual.

You are required to design a poster for the Roman Polanski film Cul-de-sac.

Your poster should reflect the feel of the film and the dynamics of the characters relationships.

As always consider the interaction between type and image and also consider the 'hierarchy' of type.

Draw upon everything you have learnt so far this year and utilise the techniques and processes you have developed.

No imagery from the film to be used.

Sharon Jones was my inspiration for this poster. Her printed works gave me the idea to present all three main characters in one. The bare legs represent the woman Teresa and her flirtatious personality; the top hat represents Dickie the Gangster; and the cigarette represents George. Although from the poster it isn't clear what the film is, it rises many questions of what it could be about - which in a sense is what i spent a good amount of time doing before and after watching the film.

When researching for artist/designers for inspiration for this project, I came across Nate Williams. His silhouetted shapes. obscure patterns and simple colouring really leant itself well to the films mysterious style. Although i am happy with the link between Williams' style and the film, I wouldn't choose to continue working in this way as it doesn't express my strengths.