'Birds of a feather, flock together'

So over the summer, I had to draft a self-initiated brief as my first personal project of my third year at university. From previous briefs, I knew I wanted to draw from my own photographs wherever I could, so I decided to base my project on photographs I already had of birds of prey. I started the project quite realistically, to be honest I just wanted to prove that I could still draw, with changing styles over the past couple of years I just wanted to strip it all back to the basics. Here's one of the illustrations;

The project swiftly moved on from this process, as I wanted to play around with pattern and intricate detail within the form of a bird. I enjoyed this way of working so much that I based the entire project around it and created two final pieces, one a hand made canvas, with the image screen-printed onto calico, and the other was individual screen-prints on calico, stitched together (patchwork quilt style). 

This illustration in particular was to represent 'birds of a feather, flock together'. Each bird is a different breed of the falcon family and the branch is to represent the connection between them. 

I also produced illustrations of birds in flight. The final outcome of these illustrations was created to illustrate this poem; 

Birds In Flight

By Anishinaabekwe

The bird flew, in flight,

Flew, flying, the birds cross paths,

In flight, wings touching,

Hearts connect, but must fly away.

Shadows cast, a glimpse of the soul,

Intertwined, a moment,

Snapshot, in a picture,

Connection to a soul,

Soil signifies connection,

But longing, reaching, broken for home.

Little White Lies

Okay, so over the Christmas holiday, my brief was to design a magazine cover for the London based magazine; Little White Lies. There was a choice of 5 different films to be illustrated; Super 8, The Tree Of Life, Drive, Black Swan and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The front cover had to include the main character of the film, the title of the film and the LWL's masthead and this was my first response..

Just a portrait of Natalie Portman for the Black Swan cover. Due to being away from tutor/university, I resorted to my comfort zone; therefore this piece is completely tonal. However, after completion I decided to Google LWL's previous covers and saw that their Black Swan cover was similar to this piece so I decided to try again...

Natalie Portman again, this time as her alter ego in the film. To change my style a little, I decided to use colour on her facial features, particularly her eyes and lips to create emphasis. I tried to perfect her features as much as I could, to relate to her character's need for perfection within the film. Also the shape of her face itself is slightly thinner compared to my first attempt, this is to reflect the change in weight between her two characters.

My final composition..

In photoshop, I scanned in my second response, flipped the canvas to change the typical portrait and created a mirror image to represent how vain the character is in the film. I added the Little White Lies masthead in response to the brief and I added my own type. I chose calligraphy in particular to reference the ballet aspect of the film. Drawn in black fine liner; to reinforce the 'Black' Swan and feathers added onto the type to reflect the 'Swan' characteristics.

Artist Book

The outcome for this brief was to create 10 Limited Edition artist books, we had the choice of how many pages to include and whether all of them would be the same in each book or different combinations. The title of the book I was given was 'Safety On The Hills' by Kevin Walker (each individual had a different book title). The book itself describes the equipment needed and safety procedures for mountain climbing. 

At first, I felt uneasy about this brief, not due to creating my own artist book, but because I wasn't inspired by the title of the book I had to use. I decided I was going to enjoy this brief if I was to change the topic to fit in with what I wanted to achieve therefore I rearranged the letters of the book (and used some more than once) to create 'This Still Life'. With this title I had numerous ideas, each as strong as each other, however I wanted to introduce a new style of drawing and maybe use some collage techniques to explore outside of my comfort zone. 


I came across the photographs I'd taken during the 'Preston Vintage & Craft Fair' (in my older posts) and decided to draw images based on these due to the fact that most of them were of suitcases and I wanted to base my book on a topic that I hadn't drawn before. I also thought the contrast between drawing something that's usually on the move (suitcases) as still life would be interesting. Working A5 size throughout my book, I started by using just a black fine liner and adopted some of the line techniques used by Escher. Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898 - 1972) is a graphic artist, most famous for his impossible structures as well as his more realistic work. This particular piece of his work was my inspiration for my drawing techniques.

Here are some of my final images in black fine liner.

I really enjoyed creating these images, I liked exploring the mark making techniques for different suitcases and found it quite easy to do. With these images as a starting point, I decided to develop them using vintage papers I'd downloaded and collage them in Photoshop. Here are some of those images. 

After completing both sets of images, I had the decision of either creating my artist book using all black and white images, or all vintage papered images or a combination of both. After different opinions, I decided that the vintage paper images were more successful than the plain black and white, and made my artist book by printing them onto parchment myself. 


My artist book consisted of a recycled brown paper as the front cover, with an arrangement of suitcases and the letters 'This Still Life' as an A4 spread. I then had an insert of tissue paper before the initial first page. Each of my images was printed on the right hand side of the pages and stitched together by hand down the middle fold. I created each book the same however due to printing and measurement errors some are neater than others. I finished the format by presenting each book in button and string envelopes, with an address written as -

Jess Willcox

Artist Book

Limited Edition

TSL X10                                      

(This Still Life X 10)

- with a stamp in the appropriate corner as extra realism.


If I were to develop this project or redo certain aspects, I probably would have had my book professionally printed due to the fact that self printing was expensive, unreliable and time consuming. However the images themselves I am happy with, I liked the topic behind my artist book and the change of imagery, I like the line techniques I used, I think even the plain black fine liner images were just as interesting as the collaged images, I like exploring the use of vintage paper and collage and the fact that I included some typography in there as well. I think I've found another way of working and look forward to developing these aspects in future briefs. 

:)

Dewey Decimal

Dewey decimal is the numerical organisational classification of books in most libraries. For example; Illustration in the UCLAN Library is classification number 741.


In this brief I was given a random Dewey Decimal classification number (808.5) which referenced a book within the university library. I had to select a book from that classification and base a series of images on it, gradually developing to a final idea which can be printed at A1 size. 


My book was 'News Subediting' which describes to a newcomer of newspaper, the process they would have to go through to create the newspaper. After reading through the book, I found a chapter based on typography and punctuation, and I started sketching straight away. After a long winded process within this brief, I finally got to my final idea and printed it professionally. 

As I was playing around with inspiration and typography, I came across a quote by Salvador Dali 'Intelligence without ambition, is a bird without wings'. Initially I started by creating my own type for this quote, then one sketch of a bird, lead to a sketch of a birdcage, to the point where in order to relate the project back to typography, I decided to make the birdcage itself out of the Salvador Dali quote. I created this image by scanning in the best type of the quote, and then duplicating and arranging the layers to create a birdcage in Photoshop. This piece is on plain brown postage paper, however I decided to add to the background by screen printing vintage floral patterns and repeating them alongside each other to create my own wallpaper. 

This is the main focus of the final piece - 

This image is slightly blurred because of my camera, which I had to resort to because the image saved is too big to upload and it won't save on my mac at a smaller resolution. I found due to duplicating the layers and changing the shape of them, the birdcage seems pixelated. If I was to do this project again, I'd aim to make my final piece as hand-made as I could, but at the time of this project, I thought a Photoshop, digital image would be more successful. 

    

Issues And Beliefs

The aim of this brief was to choose our own campaign by researching social, political and environmental issues that already exist and addressing one that we personally feel strongly about.

I decided to choose binge drinking to focus my campaign on, even though it's already been done in various ways before. With being surrounded by a student orientated town with a lot of bars offering the same '2 for 1' drinks, I thought I could create a contemporary campaign to target a younger audience.

After numerous sketches and playing around with the idea of drinking glasses, I found that developing a shot glass idea was probably the best way to go, in reference to all the 'free shot' stickers that are handed out around town.

The final composition was to create 3 image based solutions in an appropriate format;

All in poster format; The composition of each poster is to represent an opticians chart, with the usual lettering being replaced by shots, each poster describing a different characteristic of binge drinking. The writing on each poster is to represent the hours of a night out and the destruction of particular things as the night progresses. The type also relates to what the image is describing. The colour spills in each background are to represent spillages of drinks during a night out/party. I chose particular colours to refer to the colours of alcohol available today eg. apple sours. 

Poster 1; Eyesight

- The shot glasses in this poster are to describe the affects alcohol has on your vision. The shot glasses become faded and harder to see as the night progresses to 3am, to represent how blurred your vision goes as a result of drinking. 

Poster 2; Balance

- The shot glasses in this poster are to describe the affects alcohol has on your balance. As the shot glasses move down the poster they become multiplied and 'off-balance' to represent what happens to the stability of a person after drinking.

Poster 3; Consequences

- The shot glasses in this poster are to represent the destruction of a night out and the consequences drinkers have to face, whether it relates to losing money, breaking relationships, violence and disorderly behaviour. The broken shot glasses represent the later on in the night, the more alcohol as an affect to deliver consequences.

I enjoyed this project, literally because I made it my own, after numerous sketches and ideas I'm happy to have developed this one in particular. I took a step out of my comfort zone by becoming more 'accidental' in my backgrounds however if I was to develop my final pieces, I would create them in a more hand-made process, rather than created and then scanned in and pieced together. 

Elective

At university I chose an elective project to fulfill the first year of my course. Out of a number of briefs, I chose the one that was the most appealing to me which I believed I would be most comfortable in. The brief I chose was to design a tattoo for the first line of the poem Ode. Ode is an 1874 poem written by the English poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy to which the opening line is 'We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.'  

I was firstly influenced by anything I saw that could relate to this project, however after a few experiments I decided to not take the typical route of drawing something musical or music related. I explored several beginning ideas and then expanded them by selecting the best aspects of different sketches and combining them together. I also played around with different typography due to the fact that certain imagery needed a particular font to suit each other. My personal opinion; I'm not really fond of coloured tattoo's so I decided to keep everything black and white, either in black fine liner or using tonal pencils. I worked mostly within my comfort zone, drawing things that I wouldn't neccessarily draw myself however I kept them of a small proportion and quite detailed. I'm uploading a select few which I believe are the better images from the project so here are my ideas;

A key, shaded in using tonal pencils, with additional floral detail in the background.

A rose, drawn simplistically in black fine liner, some broken lines to give a delicate effect.

A skull attached to butterfly wings, the main outline drawn thicker in black fine liner. I was originally planning to use tonal pencils to finish this sketch, however I just preferred it the way it was.

 

A skull surrounded by roses, shaded in using tonal pencils. Added leaves for detail.

A flower (shaded in using tonal pencils) and the Ace of Spades. Decorative swirls to added more detail. I saw something like this browsing online and regardless of whether I was going to use it as a final piece, I still wanted to create this anyway.

A peacock, drawn in black fine liner, simplistically drawn with detail in the feathers.

A different styled key, with added wings.

A peacock again, shaded in using tonal pencils, added swirls at the end of the feathers for detail.

A heart, drawn simplistically in black fine liner, added swirls for effect. Kind of a Si Scott moment.

Previous skull and roses, with typography added to suit the image.

Previous rose, with calligraphy style type to give a more delicate effect.

Second peacock, slight change in detail to the end of the feathers (I prefer this way) and typography added to suit the imagery.

Heart again, this time shaded in using tonal pencils, with a calligraphy style type to suit.

 

Full wings, a tattoo ideally to cover the back. Drawn and shaded in using tonal pencils and the typography was added at the end of the sketch.

Type Brief

My response to a brief during first year of university;

Okay, so the whole idea of the brief was we had to create an image of a person or creature using typography which had to be our own initials, in my case JTW. I quite enjoyed this brief, I like experimenting with typography and it was nice to have a brief within my comfort zone. So here's what I created;

Yes, I'm a fan of black fine liner. I think I was also going through a drawing 'peacock' phase. If you see my response to a separate brief around the same time as this one, you'd completely understand. 

My second response;

A different style than my first response, the obvious difference being I created the first image using my initials, where as this sketch I use my initials to fill in aspects. I think I prefer my second response, due to my influence being an illustrator that I've related my work to a couple of times previously. Stina Persson is an illustrator based in Stockholm, Sweden. Her sketches consist of watercolour, acrylic and inks, cut paper and collage and sometimes photo incorporated. I particularly liked the pose within this image and decided to recreate her sketch using my initials for this brief. 

Check out her website! http://www.stinapersson.com/