Areas Of Interest

The areas in Graphics that I am most interested in are:

• Children's Illustrations
• Collage
• Typography

When I start my personal project for A2 Graphics in September, these are going to be the key areas that I will be focusing on.

I am interested in children's illustrations as there is no limit to what you can create - your imagination can be as free as you allow it to be. Although you can do this with other areas too, I feel that it is most interesting in this particular area as your audience is the next generation. Children are attracted to a lot of bright colours and fascinating creatures. They're learning new things each day that they will never forget and they will build on to become better at. Their imagination is the wildest thing that they posses in their lives at this time, which is why my imagination must match theirs to help not only their imagination grow, but themselves grow. The types of children's illustrations that I am interested in are shown on my Pinterest board.

Jim Field is one artist in-particular that I find very inspiring. His work is full of bright, beautiful colours and ideas.

Collage fascinates me. The work that you can produce with collage is so intriguing. One of my ideas for my personal project is using collage and children's illustrations together. For example, I will photograph a person (possibly a friend or family member) and I will photography an animal (possibly a pet that a friend or family member owns). I will then collage them and create a children's character using Illustrator. I will experiment with this over the summer to see if it is a successful idea.

I have created a board on Pinterest to show examples of collages that I find impressive and unusual. I will use these as inspiration when creating collages of my own. A very famous collage artist, Richard Hamilton, is one of my inspirations. His ''Just what is it that makes today's homes so different?'' collage is a very riveting piece of work. If you would like to know more about that particular piece of work, the Tate have written about it on their website here.

I am excited to start my personal project in September as I feel that I will have a lot of potential to create a compelling piece of work.

16th July 2013: Food Typography Lesson

The A2 Graphics lesson on July 16th 2013 with Mr. Cousland was based around food typography. Our first task was to find images on Pinterest of food typography designs and re-pin them onto our Graphics A2 personal study board. Afterwards, we discussed the designs that we found and gave feedback on what we liked about them. I found this task interesting as the different designs were very fascinating and inspiring.

Our second task was to find four pictures of four of our favourite foods on Google images. We printed these images full size on an A4 size piece of paper. We had to write on the photos, trying to find how we could make typography in the shape of the food that we had chosen. For example, I chose stuffed pasta, fish and chips, roast potatoes and strawberries. I tried to design typography around the stuffed paste to create the word ‘’stuffed pasta’’, which was a very challenging but engaging task.

Our third task was to create our own piece of food typography design. My piece of work was a strawberry, with the words ‘Red & Sweet’ written inside of it.

I think that this lesson was captivating for all students as it was slightly different to what we usually do (normal typography designs) and it was fascinating to see how anything can be inspired for typography art.

Artist Analysis (Visual): Ekaterina Koroleva



Ekaterina Koroleva's work

My response

I decided to visually analyse to Ekaterina Koroleva’s work as I liked the style – It looks as though she has used watercolour paint and I like the effect that this material gives. I found that watercolour paint is very interesting to work with and I would like to work with this material more in the future.

I felt as though this work was successful as it looks very similar to the original piece and the same materials were used to create them. To improve this response, I would paint the colours first, rather than the black outlines. When I was painting the colours, it over-lapped the black a few times which made the black colour stand out less.

By creating this piece of work I realized that I enjoy working with watercolour. I will use this information when creating my work in the future. I will practice using watercolour more so that I can improve my skills with it to produce more successful outcomes.

9th July 2013: Typography Lesson

The A2 Graphics lesson on July 9th 2013 with Mr. Cousland was a very interesting experience and well planned. We had four tasks. They were as follows: 

Task 1
Pick a piece of paper at random from Mr. Cousland’s hand, which have the names of all the students in the class. Whichever student you choose, write two or more words about them for each of these sub-headings– visual description; personality; phrases; clothing style/music style.

Task 2
Choose your favourite typography design that you have found on Pinterest. Using the words you wrote down to describe your class mate, draw them in the style of the typography design you have chosen.

Task 3
We are going to have a group discussion, showing each of the student’s designs and try to guess who they are describing. You are a client, receiving your order from the other student who has designed their work based on you. Answer the following questions: Are you happy with the outcome? What went well? How could it be improved? What do you want to see? Is it a successful design?

Task 4
Repeat task one and trade designs with the person that has based their work on you. You must now use the words you have used to describe the second person and design them in the style that you have traded with.

I think that this lesson was very beneficial for all students as it allowed us to design a piece of work that we were comfortable with and interested in, but also designing a piece of work that we were not interested in and uncomfortable with. This allowed us to experiment with something that we may have never chosen to experiment with. Some students found that their piece of work produced in Task 4 was a lot better than their piece of work produced in Task 2, which I thought was very interesting.

Overall, I think that this lesson was very constructive, helpful and valuable to all students.

Artist Response: Alberto Cerriteno

This piece of work was inspired by Cerriteno's cat. As you can see, in Cerriteno's cat (focusing on the cat and not the surroundings), it has used a lot of lines and limited use of colour.
 

Alberto Cerriteno's work

For my piece of work, I have taken his idea of using geometric shapes and limited colours - I have used circular shapes and used three colours (dark blue, light blue and orange). I think that this has worked effectively and successfully as it is very simple but bold. It also relates to what I will be working on in my personal project in September, which is children's illustrations.

By creating this piece of work my painting skills have improved further. I have learned that using only a few different colours works very effectively and makes the image stand out more. I will use this information to help me when creating work in the future.



My work inspired by Alberto Cerriteno

Artist Analsysis (Visual): Alberto Cerriteno

Alberto Cerriteno's work

I chose to do visually analyse this piece of work by Alberto Cerriteno because I liked the limited amount of colours it used; I think it makes the image more effective as it isn’t too over-powering. I was also interested in the patterns used. There are a lot of lines being used in different ways such as straight lines, arrows and triangles. For my response of this piece of work I used acrylic paint as it is what the artist normally uses in his other pieces of work and I think that it is a very successful technique and complements the character well.

Visually analyzing to this piece of work helped to improve my painting skills. To develop this further I am going to create my own character using this piece of work as inspiration and looking at some of Cerriteno’s techniques. I will use a limited amount of colours and different lines/shapes to hopefully have the same subtle yet exciting feel that this piece of work gives to its viewers.

My response