These are truly weird and experimental, nothing at all that you would relate to Christie's classic aesthetics, and I like that the audience is invited to participate in solving the mystery of what shapes and motifs are on the page. Is it a poison bottle? A train ticket? Skulls? Without light or a piece of white paper between the acetate pages it is hard to see what some of the motifs are and that can be both positive and negative to my original proposal and ideas.
Tuesday, 31 December 2019
Eureka Moment: Agatha Christie Outcomes
These are truly weird and experimental, nothing at all that you would relate to Christie's classic aesthetics, and I like that the audience is invited to participate in solving the mystery of what shapes and motifs are on the page. Is it a poison bottle? A train ticket? Skulls? Without light or a piece of white paper between the acetate pages it is hard to see what some of the motifs are and that can be both positive and negative to my original proposal and ideas.
Monday, 25 November 2019
Live Show: Ghost UK tour
Music and live shows are a huge interest of mine and I've recently followed my favourite band, Ghost, on the UK tour of 4 dates. Ghost captivate me with their intricate stage show, the masks and the satanic-lite hymns sung as their concerts or "rituals"
Ghost quickly became my favourite band in 2017 because of their striking costume design, use of masks, and their inspiration of theatrics, horror and performance akin to Alice Cooper and King Diamond. They subverting ad parodying what we know of the Catholic church and Pope, playfully making their satanic rendition of a "Devil Church" and Papa and Cardinal characters. The stage set-up looks like a church with a stairwell, chequered floor alluding to mastermind Tobias Forge's involvement with Freemasonry, and illustrated windows by artist Zbigniew Beilak. Rock and roll!
Costume design is overseen by B.Akerlund (Jonas Akerlund's wife) and her company, Majesty Black. The Papa characters are dressed in full chasubles and mitres, highly embroidered with inverted crosses. Papa swings a thurible during the song "Con Clavi Con Dio" filled with Nag Champa to start the ritual and there are many costume changes of cassocks and casual wear.
Their record sleeves and merchandise designs also borrow heavily from popular culture, putting a satanic twist on what has come before to create an idea of timelessness and familiarity. Art and movie influences include Salem's Lot, Amadeus, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, A Clockwork orange and Metropolis which are easily recognisable designs to a cinephile.
Music has become incredibly important to me and I want to be able to imbue elements of Ghost into my own practice - combining multiple art disciplines and being playful, subverting what has come before to create something that feels new. Band merchandise has also become a strong interest and the illustrations applied to them and how they can transfer to various other formats.
Thursday, 14 November 2019
Contextual Research - Mary Blair
Mary Blair had a very strong modernist approach to her concept art, animation and designs with bold primary colours. Her strong use of colour and whimsical shapes used for recurring themes of characters, building and settings are what draws me back to her work constantly. There' strong movement and a sense of fun, liveliness and playfulness with her intentional paint brushes adding textures in the process, furthering the feeling of movement in a two-dimensional image. She builds her own worlds - something I would very much like to imbed into my practice. She elicits nostalgia for childhood and innocence. I love her work with Disney and Little Golden Books as those are what I associate her with, my own experiences, and the work I want to create - imbuing the concepts of characters and self-made worlds and creating whimsy and fancy,
Saturday, 9 November 2019
Eureka moment: Designing my Screen Print
Wednesday, 6 November 2019
Eureka Moment: Creating my own Type
Contextual Research - Helen Dardik
Helen Dardik marries both traditional painting techniques of gouache, oil and watercolour with embroidery and digital media - printing her work onto cards, giclee prints, books and other ephemera. Her Russian background and upbringing strongly informs her practice with a folk-art inspired approach to illustration which is apparent in the recurring use of flora and fauna; animal characters and flowers. Heritage and childhood are both strong groundings to her work as well as childlike themes, the celebration of female characters and nostalgia. Dardik has a very jolly and bright tone of voice using bright neon colours and soft, rounded shapes and welcoming, smiling characters. I want to be more informed and have a stronger sense of self and be proud of my upbringing as Dardik is, potentially exploring my Irish working-class heritage and being playful with my background as Dardik is, I like her approach to blending analogue (gouache) and digital - I haven't really experimented with gouache paint before and may like to experiment this academic year in response to briefs