FMP

It wasn't until this point that we were told none of our previous work would be graded, everything relied on our Final Major Project.

Anyway, we were given 10 weeks to complete a project of our chosing which would culminate in a exhibition. I chose a subject that would allow me to tell stories and make books, which I'd been told where my strengths. It was all about the foreign students who rented the attic bedrooms of my house when I was a kid. Over the years we had students from across Europe, Asia and South America, and we accumulated A LOT of stories.

I made 3 books for the show, the last being the simplest - the actual envelopes from the students letters, sewn together. The first book I made was the main focus of the entire project, I had narrowed down the stories to the most interesting and wrote them onto a postcard style page, with a portait opposite. The actual visual side of this book took longer then anything else, in the end the portraits were all different styles from my experiments, arranged on top of layered letters (printed onto tracing paper) with name plates and illustrated objects relating to the individuals. The mechanical side of the book also took a while to sort out because I wanted the book to have a spine. It took 3 attempts but I eventually got the width right and created an interesting ternary coloured spine purely by accident.

The final book I made was just a compilation of the stamps I'd illustrated for the postcard pages.

I was pretty sure from the onset that I wanted a tablecloth map for the exhibition display because I wanted it to look domestic and welcoming. The tutors weren't particularly enthusiastic about this idea, which didn't really change even through to the final week, when they came up with a wide variety of wild suggestions of how I could change, re-do or even scrap it altogether. I took no notice of this because I'd recieved a lot of encouragement about it from literally everyone else who saw it, It was a bit of a confidence hit though.

I made the tablecloth by projecting a world map onto cloth, fabric painting it in earthy colours. I then sewed the map I'd made onto blue fabric and created a red flightpath from the students prospective countries to my house and attached their names.

To fill the extra wall I had intended to write the books introduction onto the board but I thought my actual drawings didn't have enough prominance in the show. I decided to make a few washing lines with the pegged on drawings, which was similar to the setup of my studio space during the project. Eileen suggested that I use the same red thread I had used for the flight path to draw together my work and to contrast the white boards. I also used this thread to hang my sketchbook and envelope book onto the wall.

Excuses, Love and Contextual Studies

During the course of the Self directed project we also were set a few weekend projects, to break up the monotony I guess.

The first was the Excuses Project - the aim was to create 10 different excuses for why we weren't at our desks, so they knew where we were...some people took it more seriously then others...I chose to make completely absurd excuses just for the amusement really.

The next Project was for Valentines and we were told to use the iconic image of the Love Sculpture by Robert Indiana to create our own valentines image, I created a GIF using the shape as a template over images of places I've visited.

Finally we get to the contextual studies essay, naturally as this is art school we had to make a illustrated book of our essay. I chose Levni Yilmaz as my subject, an american illustrator/animator who makes a series of short films called 'Tales of Mere Existence' on youtube, and also released a book called 'Sunny side Down' which is very similar in structure to the 'Life in Hell' series by Matt Groening.

Christmas break and the start of the Self Directed Project

Over Christmas I researched films and the start of technicolour with hopes of illustrating another story. When we came back, I chose to use my research to help me illustrate the book I'd been reading, 'Just kids' the memoirs of Patti Smith and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I found that when it actually came to the illustration I wanted to encorporate the fabrics she described, physically in the book. I also used poems by Rimbaud (who she mentioned often) as a backdrop and scanned quotes from 'Just kids' as the text. However the actual layering of images over fabric distracted from the illustrations to much and even when scanned they seemed overpowering.

   

 So I changed tactic and took a bookbinding workshop, before the actual construction of the book covers I spent all weekend making the books contents. I used a japanese waterbomb structure, usually only intended for 1 page books, to create a series of pages which opened to look like a lantern. The tutors were a lot more responsive to this second book because the illustrations were the focus but it was still complex. I really took to bookbinding and continued to use it in my final project.

Week 8 - 12 Project

The idea for this project was to take a past project (preferably one from after we'd entered our chosen area) and to come up with 12 different outcomes, which had some relation to graphics eg. websites,posters,products etc.

At this point I'd been rejected for Direct Progression due to the lack of development in my idioms work, so I chose that project for this one and the tutors agreed to reevaluate their decision at the end of the 2 weeks. The some of the outcomes I came up with were; political posters, tshirts, candle holders, shadow puppets and most importantly a childrens book.

 

From what I could tell of Eileens reaction I think the book's story board clinched it, and I got the place! She also suggested that I used the use of black and white grain/colour palettes in my next, self directed project which started over christmas. Which I did, to some extent.

Week 7 - Idioms Project

The second illustration project, essentially we had to pick an idiom and illustrate it in an interesting way. After a lot of research I chose a pretty simple one - 'nothing going on upstairs' - purely because I had one unusual idea for it, which meant my development wasnt too exciting. Around this time the tutors were also deciding about Direct Progression places and need less to say it was a stressful week.

Basically my idea was to use a victorian silhouette and fill the empty space in the hat with stairs, a lot of the ideas I had for this project ended up using mechanisms which I realised was because I liked the interaction it caused.

Week 6 - Big Issue

We had to choose our areas (eg. Graphics,3D,Textiles & Fashion or Fine Art), I did have a bit of difficulty choosing at first but settled on Graphics/Illustration. Our first project was called 'Big Issue', we were told to choose an issue we felt strongly about and illustrate it in an informative way. I chose the Stigma of Mental Illness and chose quotes from a mix of people (Stephen Fry,Sylvia Plath, R.D Laing etc.) to illustrate. In this week I was directed to use a system of production - a day each on backgrounds, text and image, which I found pretty helpful in getting work done for a deadline.

I experimented with a few different drawing styles (continuous line, dotted/broken line and vibrant watercoloured shading). I really enjoyed the font experiments as well, and I tried to use photoshop for the first time..which went reasonably well.