Final Project

I quickly decided to go for drawing children in a little bit messed up situations a little bit inspired by the children coloring in book project for Illustration. And also because I have always thought it's quite an interesting thought and very real as well.

A drawing I made 2010 and an exhibition by Vee Spears at the Swedish museum of photography sparked the idea of creating something similar but hand drawn and digitalis-ed and screen prints. My idea in the beginning was to make it all a bit gnarly but went the other way in the end. And as Lesley warned me about since the subject is tabu it's important to think about how you go at it.  

Vee Spears: 

Most of the artists looked at during this research is about the use of color and to create good graphic pictures while using less colors. During my first and second year I into using more shades and a wider amount of color and I wanted to practice else wise which also comes across in my final project for illustration this year. Also the fact that I recently acquired a drawing tablet and done many drawings straight into photoshop and colored in digitally. This has also been helping a great deal with my screen prints for both registration and design. 

First and second year I was bad at creation backgrounds and usually left a character floating in mid-space.

A2, 9 layers, Screen Print

A2, 13 layers, screen print

A2, 24 layers, Screen Print

A2, 3 layers, Screen Print

  

My goal this year was to start getting used to the idea of backgrounds and using them because that's when it all comes together. So through out both illustration and printmaking this is something that I have practiced at and researched and try to figure out what really works for me and what possibilities there are for future art work. 

Some artist I looked at during my research for this project: 

"Vincent Mahé drew these charming, yet slightly voyeuristic views of people seen through their windows for his series 'Neighbors.' The drawings are done in black ink and gouache, and have a cartoon-like feel. The use flat areas of color in a limited, but mod-setting palette. In 'The Office,' a lone janitor cleans one lit floor of an office building. A young couple with a baby is shown through the window in 'The Kitchen,' while an older man carries grocery bags up the circular stairs outside. 'The Bedroom' shows a nude woman, with her hair wrapped in a towel, from behind. The buildings and people shown are from Paris, France, where Mahé lives."

Tomer Hanuka and Asaf Hanuka are two twin brothers who are a big influence for me and also a style both in color choices and drawing skill is something that I aspire to achieve but of course with my style. Found out about them during the research for this project which is probably the best part of this whole project. 

I also think that they are good at getting a political message across in their art work which interests me because I like trying to have somewhat of a message in my art as well. 

I also looked at Andy Warhol's simplicity in color choices and some other stuff with few color choices:

Olimpia Zagnoli is fond of listening to T. Rex, riding a tiny red bike, sending postcards and reading the news upside-down. After years of doodling she became an illustrator and began collaborating with The New York Times, The New Yorker, Google, Taschen and many others. Her style is characterized by soft shapes and chameleonic colors. She lives in Milan in a house with kaleidoscopic floors. 

Illustrator and designer Jan Kallwejt is originally from Warsaw but currently lives in Barcelona. The characters from this series were created for Efes Pilsen One Love 2012, a music festival which takes place in Istanbul. Jan often works with a limited color palate, allowing shapes and curves to speak for themselves.

Illustrator and cartoonist Ryan Cecil Smith lives and works in Osaka, Japan. His work can be found in the men's lifestyle magazine Popeye. These works were created on Ryan's iPad with an app called Brushes. This tool is important for artists like Ryan who like to be able to create work on the fly. 

Inés Estrada is an illustrator and cartoonist from Mexico City. Her colorful 'Bestias' project playfully anthropomorphizes animals into semi-human hybrids, conjuring other even stranger creatures along the way. Estrada writes reviews and post comicsfor Vice Mexico and The Believer. She also manages Gatosaurio, an online shop specializing in zines, stickers, comics and other fun stuff.

Bushby is an illustrator based in London, UK. Using mainly Illustrator and Photoshop to create his illustrations, Bushby's work is graphically bold in its simplicity, often incorporating text and a dry sense of humor. He has been illustrating for over two years now, while working as an Art Director in a top 10 London advertising agency. 

Nate Frizzell is a graduate of LA's Otis College of Art and Design. Using bold, colorful images of girls and children at play and in turmoil, Frizzell creates intimate stories that mask his own feelings of immaturity. Using both highly rendered images and softer graphic design elements, Frizzell weaves stories into his paintings that we can all see ourselves being a part of.

This image project from Daniel Jamie Williams explores that these creatures, while considered to be myths or legends, are in fact real and very much alone. Being a one-of a-kind, man-eating, bringer of doom can really take its toll and sometimes everyone just gets a little lonesome. Each creature based on a real myth is seen in their natural habitat, offering up what they have to a potential lover or friend. The meat rots, the days drag on...but nobody shows.

 Illustrator Robert Carter grew up in Ontario, Canada. He began doodling and sketching anything and everything at an early age. Robert studied art and illustration at Sheridan College School of Art and Animation. Robert's foundation is in portraiture and his unique sense of visual and conceptual techniques creates vibrant and textured illustrations with subjects balancing between the real and surreal. With a background in traditional oil painting, Robert has applied his skills to creating digital art which is a skill he taught himself.

Graphic and bold, illustrator Rudcef's comic book-like works range from celebrity portraits to dark ruminations on identity and mortality. Picking up illustration after the death of a family member, Rudcef views his art practice as a means of leaving his mark on and connecting with the world. He is based in South Korea.

We wish the print was this baby drawing, alas, Wes Lang has released two screenprints with V1 Gallery in conjunction with his solo show at the Copenhagen space, Life and How to Live It. The prints were handmade in Denmark on chalk coated paper.









A strong photo by Jesco Denzel also inspired me taken on New Year’s Eve, St. Jacques, Perpignan, 2006. 

After this I started to gathering reference images, I started online and after one of my crits in class talking to Lesley and Jason Ibinson I decided to use Jason's little brother as a model for my images.

Photos of Edan by me. 

First off I made this image which originally was for Illustrations coloring in book project but it was also a part of sparking the idea for this project. This one exists as a digital a3 print and also screen printed on t-shirts.

Hand drawn and digital.

T.shirts and vests. 

After this one I went on and got inspired by Andres Serrano who bought homeless people's signs for a video showcase. 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/18/andres-serrano-signs-of-the-times-homeless/

The video showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkCHfqnAXG0

The turn

After this my project started to slightly take a turn. I have been homless (by choice and not) in different countries, moving from house to house, occupying a house and last summer - 13 I traveled around europe with no money just a backpack, my guitar and an outgoing view on life. In - 09 I also lived on a beach in Spain under a palm leaf cover for about 2 months. My trips and experiences with busking, sleeping on the streets and in the wild has changed me fair bit so I decided to bring more about homelessness and busking into my final pieces. 

Inspired by Andres Serrano I gathered some carton and made up 9 different begging signs, some that I have used personally and some that I have seen during my travels. 

From these pictures I created a collage that I later Screen Printed with 4 layers. 

After this one I went on and arranged a photograph outside a church with one of the signs that I made and created another collage with. 

After this one I went on and produced the three kind of final pieces for my final project, handrawn, digital drawn, photographs and digital coloring screen printed on A2 paper as A3 print size. 1 at the moment also exists in digital print but more will be printed as some goes to the family of Edan. All three was given as a gift to the family as well. 

Some paste ups of the war kid. 

For me this was a fun project to go through both spending time with Edan taking the photos and in the making. I learned a lot about digital drawing and using my tablet as well as gain more skill in Photoshop and refined my screen printing techniques. 

I started using photography more which is as a matter of fact a big interest for me as well and something that I would like to develop more. Learned more about use of color and how to make "simple" backgrounds combine with drawings look rather good if I can say it myself. 

I believe this project will be of great impact on me for my future art and how I go at things.