Birmingham Art Gallery and Museum

Wandered about a Birmingham Museum a few weeks ago. Saw a few cool bits and bobs...hehe bum!

Street Illustration in Birmingham

Saw these cool illustrations on the central library building in Birmingham and thought they were quite cool! It is this form of work I have chosen for my first project of second year at BCU - Illustration for an Enviroment.

IKON Gallery - Kitagaw Utamaro Exhibition

Today I went to the Kitagawa Utamaro exhibition at the IKON Gallery in Birmingham. The exhibition featured loads of original japanese prints. It was really amazing to see the detail of the prints close up, and crazy how they could achieve such detail through woodblock prints! The show also featured some of the erotic prints too which was quite a sight! ;D

Marita Forss - Exhibition at Leamington Spa

On Monday I went to the private view of Marita Forss' work at Leamington Spa. There was stuff in different media, my favourite though were the small illustrations (above). A lot of the large paintings and mixed media pieces she does are good, they show a dream-like state and it's all very conceptual. Although I preferred the illustrations, she seems to have a good knowledge of what certain media can do and she uses it really well; for example in her use in acryllics is not heavily applied but really thin and she blends the colours really well.

Summer Project - Drinking In Britain

 

For my summer project entitled "Drinking in Britain". After realising there were so manyangles to take in this project, I felt more drawn towards illustrating the effects of alcohol. I researched the long term and short term effects and this is what I came up with.

I created a life size piece which pictures a man drinking alcohol. I took some inspiration from those medical/educational diagrams you find in those school science text books, and also from an incredible illustrator/typographer called Oscar Wilson (check him out).

I created the dark background by photcopying newspaper articles that show the negative side of alcohol and collaging them together, working over them with paint, charcoal and oil pastel to give it some texture and atmosphere. The figure is made of brown paper and each part of the body is done using black marker pen on red painted paper and stuck over the top.

The illustration itself shows the effects of alcohol, and highlights all the body parts and vital organs that are effected when large ammounts are consumed. Such problems such as liver damage, heart disease and mental health problems are illustrated here.

Originally I intended this to be used as some sort of educational campaign against binge drinking but scaled down and photoshop filtered, it could still look good as a magazine or newspaper illustration as I have demonstrated in the last picture. 

Visit to V&A - Grace Kelly:Style Icon

Some (fairly poor quality) photographs I took at the Grace Kelly exhibition in London. I love everything to do with old Hollywood glamour and watching old movies so this exhibition was a must for me. I really loved it; the exhibition featured Grace Kelly's costumes from movies such as High Society to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. 

There were also a lot of her personal wardrobe on display, such as an Yves Saint Laurent "Mondrian" dress and a gorgeous purple evening gown by my favourite designer of all time, Givenchy. The last two photos are of the gown she wore to accept her Oscar award for "The Country Girl" in 1955, along with the actual award itself, and the stunning wedding dress she wore when she became Princess Grace of Monaco.

The only bad feeling about this was the fact that next to each dress there was a photograph of Grace Kelly wearing it, and she looked obviously looked more stunning wearing them than the mannequins did!

"A Tissue!" - Design for Kleenex Competition

My design for a competition to design the box for Kleenex Tissues. This was done using Photoshop.