Principles and Practice of Illustration. Trains from the 1970's.

Something I love about this image is the lines and the repetition but also the fact the image is mostly different shades of grey apart from the contrasting yellow of the trains. I find this image very eye-catching and found this is often the case when looking at photographs of the trains in the stations.

The greys throughout the photographs really highlight the industrial areas around train yards and station. Something that really drew my eye to this photograph in particular was the consistent colour theme throughout the whole image which is very astatically pleasing and want to try and incorporate in my own work even if it's only in my sketchbook. 

An image of the Trans-Europe Express I found in a book. I have been researching the trains and the surrounding areas to help me create a poster for my train tickets. Trains from the 1970s all seemed to have a very boxy feel to them and often painted in bright colours that really stand out against the grey of stations. Even if I don't use the actual trains themselves in my project I am really into the idea of incorporating something that is strongly related to them like a train ticket, leaflet or a poster you would find in a train station.

Principles and Practice of Illustration, Manifesto.

I have created my manifesto in the style of Corita Kent. I have chosen the central composition of Kraftwerk and the text bubble used bright colours in the background against the black and white image of Kraftwerk in their dark suits for a dramatic contrast and used small and subtle text within the image just like Corita Kent's does in her work "Power Up". I used a small set of Lettering stamps to create the text.

In my manifesto itself, I have stated that I want my final outcome to require a connection to my piece of music, this can include the history, meaning or structure.

My sketchbook for this project must include all of my documentation and visual thinking which I will also upload onto this blog. 

The final outcome must be engaging, imaginative and use clear visual language. I must also experiment with different varieties of mark making and illustrating with a clear connection to my artist research. 

Principles and Practice of Illustration. Research: Spooky Space Kook

Spooky Space Kook is the episode of Scooby Doo Where Are You? I have chosen to look into because of the storyline and theme of this episode. This episode is about a spaceship crashing in an airfield where what appeared to be a ghostly apparition of a humanoid male (more in-depth, it had a skull with huge, dull, pale yellow eyes, inside of a blue spacesuit) scares everyone away with a high pitched laugh. The reason I picked this was actually because of the spooky soundtrack that comes with this episode and the really deep dark purples and blues that really marry the futuristic space alien robot storyline.

I have decided to stop my research into Scooby Doo for the time being as I feel I have got everything out of this as I possibly could and I am unsure as to how I could take this further but I have found this to be very helpful and I will be taking elements from my research if needed or appropriate for this project.

Principles and Practice of Illustration. Research: Scooby Doo Where are you?

The Scooby Doo Where are you? universe is the most consistent as well as being the series that most long-term Scooby-Doo fans are familiar with. It was my favourite TV shows as a child.  this series originally aired between 1969-1970 and then again in 1978. 

Some of the things I love about Scooby-Doo in this particular era are the painted textured background and grungy colour themes throughout the whole show and I have found that different episodes all seem to have their own colour themes. I am planning on finding a specific episode to look into more thoroughly to try and take elements from it and add them to my own work even if it only ends up in my sketchbook.

This particular screenshot is of The Funland Express at the Funland amusement park in episode Foul Play in Funland. I thought it was very fitting for my current project because of the obvious strong connection with the Trans-Europe Express. I really love the dark colours used throughout this episode as well as all of the different textures throughout the background against the solid colours of the train and even the style of the actual train itself, I know that is suppose to be a fun fair train but it contains lots of elements that would be on a real working train and thought it was a good place to start with my research into the 1970s. 

Principles and Practice of Illustration. Artist Research: Adam Higton

I have chosen to research this image from the artist in particular because I found that it is very different from Adam Higtons other work. I really love the use of line work in this piece and that it's very different to all of the other artists that I looked at for this brief. 

Higtons work is normally lots of bright colours and simple line work but for this, he has used lots of fine lines which has given the image lots of depth and made it a lot darker than his usual style.
I believe this image has maybe been made by monoprinting because you can see all the texture next to the lines and because of my monoprinting workshops and experimenting within my own sketchbook I believe researching this has been very beneficial and inspired me to try adding more finer lines to my own monoprinting.

Principles and Practice of Illustration. Artist Research: Roger Dean

The rocks in this image remind me of a dragon because of the scale like detail within the rocks, the shape and composition of the image. Roger Dean's composition and space in the illustrations are something he uses a lot to create a narrative for each illustration, for example, the piece above he has given the rocks/dragon the central focus point with lots of light in the background but for some of his more landscape based work he has used different tones and textures for the foreground to help create the sense of a much big world he is within the illustrations themselves.

All the different textures within the buildings and trees give the image a lifelike feel within a fantasy futuristic world. James Cameron (The director of Avatar 2009 science fiction film) openly admitted to being inspired and influenced by at least fourteen of Roger Deans illustrations becuase they are heavily futuristic landscape scenes.

Roger Dean has fused landscape, architecture, music and even video games into his own psychedelic style which is consistent throughout all of his work including illustrations for the cover art of Tetris Worlds for lots of different gaming platforms including the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo game systems from late 2001 till late 2002. 
One of the really prominent elements in Dean's work is the strong colour themes, he has really thought about the different colours and tones he will use for each illustration to create depth, atmosphere and meaning. This is something I want to reflect on my own work to help create a link between my artist research and my own visual thinking.

Principles and Practice of Illustration. Artist Research: Corita Kent

“THE POP ART NUN”

Something I find really interesting about this piece is the use of only three colours. One of the most striking things about this particular piece is the composition of the text itself, "Power up" is placed in the centre in a bold red to catch your eye and draw you in and then you notice the small white hand-drawn style text below which is subtle in comparison. 

This piece also contains a really strong central focus point and hand-drawn style lettering which combined with the bold colours and high impact wording is very striking. Both piece's I have used here are very playful, messy and expressive which is something I want to project into my own work where appropriate and possible.
Something to note is the bold contrast between Kent's habit which is a traditional black and white garment against her bold bright silkscreen prints.

According to Donna Steele, Kent’s work is “as important as that of Warhol” to the Pop Art movement. “It stands up there with the work of the Pop Art greats". 

Principle and Practice of Illustration. Mono Print Skyline Edit.

 Mono Print Skyline I created from the Visual Audio of Trans-Europe Express.
Something I really like about the monoprint is the messy/almost fussy lines you can create and how different all the lines can be by using different objects to mark make. This particular image was made with a pencil for all the line work and then a ruler for all of the shading.
I made the skylines at night to keep it connected to the lyrics in Trans-Europe Express.

Here I added more layers of textured monoprint to the skyline.

Adding textures and layers is something I do very often within my sketchbook and I wanted to try and incorporate that into some of my other non-sketchbook work.

Principles and Practice of Illustration. Sketchbook Pages 1-5.

"As Illustrators what we see around us shapes our visual vocabulary and Inspiration."

The first page in my sketchbook is just a starting point for the project. Picking out some keywords from the brief that I really wanted to focus on. 

"Themes include celebrations between reality and appearance"

"Melodic Electronic Style"

"Focus on Sequenced Rhymes"

I have written out the lyrics in my sketchbook so I can see them, revisit them and maybe try and pull something directly out of them. I have also printed out a Youtube comment I found very interesting and put in the sketchbook to try and help find a starting point.

On the right-hand side, I have stuck in some of my Risograph printing from our tutorial. Some of the things I used for this printing workshop include an old train ticket (I thought it would fit well with the Trans-Europe Express theme) and I also used the grid and honeycomb textures.

Here I have taken to audio away from the video and turned it into a skyline. The train-like rhythms really helped created the block liked patterns in the visual audios.
On the right, I was just messing around with the album art from Tans-Europe Express by cutting them out and adding googly eyes to them.

Risograph Printing

Here is my print from my first workshop using the Risograph machine. This was one of my favourites prints due to the textures within the layers. The blue layer was my first layer which I created with a honeycomb texture found in a magazine and some monoprint I had created earlier in another workshop. The red layer was made with a magazine cut out and some squared paper. Working on the layers and adding more or changing the colours was just some of the joys of working with the risograph machine.

Monoprint Workshop: Creating Textures

The image above was created by drawing the image directly onto a flat surface and then the paper was placed on top. 

I used monoprinting to create textures with different tools. The image above has been created using a ruler. I placed the ink on a flat surface and then dragged a ruler over the paper to create the marks. 

Using monoprint to create different textures.