Advertisement for 'Giant Pocky'

My idea for the advertisement for giant Pocky. I've painted each element with gouache and put it together using Photoshop. I played around with this a lot to find the right saturation and overall look of the advert. It has helped me gain confidence using materials I haven't used very often so far, that I feel I can use from now on successfully.

Appropriate for Halloween, too!

Size = 200 x 290 mm

'Madness of Crowds'

My idea for the article 'Madness of Crowds', explaining how because of the recession, Las Vegas is becoming a holiday resort to make money, meaning more children are going there while adults gamble.

I used gouache for the Vegas skyline, and collaged everything together using Photoshop and put it all on a graph to show the decline of Vegas. In feedback, it was mentioned I could make the skyline more like a graph showing a sharper decline than it has here, definitely something I could change.

Size of Illustration = 115 x 105 mm

Mail Art Lincoln

I put this postcard together in a short space of time because I wanted to mail my artwork for the 'Mail Art' exhibition happening in Lincoln now on Sincil Street. I flicked through a small book I have which is based on postcard artwork and made this. It's basically a wheel with the zodiac signs on it, with a bit of collage added to it. I used gouache, gold paint and inks on brown parcel paper. I used an actual postcard and painted over it so that it would be sturdy enough to withstand going through the post.

I have heard that the postcard was put up in the exhibition with my name next to it too!

Tremors Blog

I was asked to create a logo for a new website created by students studying Journalism. The website has been made to inform people about live music happening in Lincoln. It needed to be appropriate to this theme and with the title 'Tremors' and this is what I came up with. I created it using Photoshop.

You can see the logo on the website: http://tremors.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ 

'Sun, Sea, Sand... and Sniffles'

My illustration incorporated into the article we were given, this time about getting ill on the first day of your holiday due to working hard and finding it hard to relax.

I painted the background using gouache and then played around with it on Photoshop. The foot is taken from a photograph and again changed on the computer. I added bacteria to the swimming pool and replaced the sun for a yellow paracetamol. 

I tried to crop the image down a bit further but then it lost detail which I wanted to keep. I haven't worked in this style before so I'm quite pleased with my progress there! After tutorial it was apparent that the germs in the water need to be bigger, especially in the printed version they merged with the water too much.

Size = 120 x 120 mm

'Why Small Victories Matter.'

My idea for this article, which is about overcoming big challenges by completing small tasks can be most rewarding. 

I chose to take the 'v for victory' sign and put the hands together to create a star, because stars are a symbol  and given for achievement. The background was painted using gouache and a photograph of the hands were rotated and changed using photoshop. I'm very pleased with the result, particularly since I've not used photoshop much.

Size = 100 x 95 mm

A Social Gathering...

My collage for the brief entitled 'A Social Gathering', combining all our characters from the summer project into one piece of artwork. 

I chose to do a roller-coaster out of a few ideas (including a street corner and a kitchen), because I could distort it to look disproportionate and less like an average scene. Creating it in collage also contributed to this.

The majority of the characters I created are not people that you would expect to see on a roller-coaster, and I found it very difficult to make them relate to each other. The psychiatrist and old man are looking to our left   at the soldier, who in turn is looking at the scientist. This is the main correspondence between them. I didn't change the poses much at all, they all look in different directions etc. The rabbit was the odd one out, so I made it the girl's toy that she is clinging onto.

The map in the background is not significant, although it makes it impossible to know exactly where the characters are. 

Inspired by Gary Panter and David Hockney

Size: 250 x 360 mm

'How To... Decorate'

My artwork created for an article about people 'decorating' themselves. The text began talking about military decoration and referred to the peacock several times, so I combined the two ideas in this editorial illustration.

I used gouache for this (with ink for detail afterwards), which I feel overpowers the medals which have been collaged over the top. Perhaps I should have used watercolours to make the medals the dominant decoration in the image. Despite this, I was pleased with the way the paints merged in parts of the image, particularly the 'eyes' on the peacock's feathers.

'Self-Portrait'

For the next part of the project (following on from the Characters project) a self portrait was necessary to include into one piece of artwork involving all of the characters designed over summer.

This is my 'self-portrait', a collage on acetate made up from fashion magazines and a photograph of my face. Because I made it on acetate, it looks very lifelike and almost like a photograph, so hopefully this will contribute to the surrealism of the final image, as this will be the only realistic character, the rest being unrealistic and animated.