Final Major Project - Billy Films

YouTube link. This is the main piece I made for my final major project.

This spring, I went on a puppetry performance course at the Little Angel Theatre.  There were nine weeks of preparation and then a free performance for family/friends at the end.  Our main tutor was Oli Smart of Folded Feather, who specialises in found object puppetry, and we also had classes on shadow play with one-time artistic director of the Little Angel Steve Tiplady, and multimedia puppetry with Nic Rawling (aka Nic Beard) of Paper Cinema.  I was particularly inspired by the two tutorials with Nic, and decided to use the techniques he'd taught us to create my final performance. 

Which looked something like this:

YouTube link.  (Although to be honest, I did re-film some stuff that I couldn't get on the night.  I think film people call those 'pick-ups'.)

I used that puppetry course at the Little Angel as the starting point of my final major project at MK College, and ended up making five little films, which were to be presented on a loop at the summer exhibition.

Here are some of the themes I looked at in my FMP: 
*- Exploring the grey area between animation and illustration.  
*- Taking one of the intrinsic aspects of both forms -- that they're all finished and polished before they reach their audience -- and turning it on its head.  What if illustration could be a live, dynamic, interactive thing?
*- Most art / illustration / printmaking is concerned with mark-making.  The images I've been making, the stories I've been telling, were only supposed to exist in the moment. Does the fact that they're impermanent make them more precious to the audience?  If I have to film everything to make a record of it and have something to put in the exhibition, are the exhibition-goers (or internet viewers) getting something less special than those who were there on the night? Or is it just different?
*- I always try to make things perfect, but perhaps the more slick, glossy and perfected an illustration is, the less individuality and charm it has.  When something is handmade with care and love, it's best to show off and celebrate that.  What you see as your mistakes are your handwriting.  (My key inspirational figures on this note were Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin.)

I'm glad I got the chance to think about these things at the end of the Foundation course.  I'm doing an MA in Children's Book Illustration next, and I expect that'll be more focused on books and creating work that can be published, so the FdA could well be my best chance of exploring these more conceptual / performance-orientated ideas.

I was keen to credit Nic clearly, because the Paper Cinema puppetry style is his creation -- I knew many people visiting my exhibition would never have seen this sort of thing before, so I didn't want them to think I'd completely invented it.  (I haven't mentioned the company in the blurb of my YouTube videos, though, because otherwise my work would come up every time somebody searched for them.)  I also don't intend to make any more films using this technique, although this has sparked ideas for other multimedia illustration/animation work that would be more my own original thing. But do go and look at Paper Cinema's work on YouTube, or better still, see them perform if you can -- they are truly remarkable. 

I hope Neil Hannon would like my take on his song if he ever saw it.  I chose this one to illustrate because I find the story in the lyrics incredibly moving and uplifting, so I hope that comes across.  All along, the ironic chorus 'international business traveller' suggests this suave guy sailing with ease through luxury airport lounges; not the one described in the verses, sweating and begging and panicking, being led astray by rogue Belgians and bossed around by airline staff.  But while Billy's not debonair, he's got his priorities absolutely right.  That swell of strings on the big reveal about why he's been rushing to get home, always leaves me in bits.  I also think Billy's probably missed other special moments in his family's lives, and he's learned from that, so I think it's also a song about redemption.  It's all about knowing that family has to be top priority and trying to be a better dad and person, even if other things get in the way.  I thought that was a very powerful message.  Billy doesn't sprout feathers in the lyrics, but as a frustrated commuter I often wished I could just grow wings and fly home, so that was my little addition to the story.

I'll post my other films here in due course, although they're already online at my new YouTube channel.

Charmed Life Papercuts

Here are the finished papercuts inspired by the lyrics of Charmed Life.  The cliffs were much more complex and took three times as long to do -- I managed to get the wave done in a day.  They're mounted on tiny 4mm card-making dots to make them float above the grey paper, some of the dots needed to be cut into three with a scalpel, that was the most fiddly part, I'd say.
I was going to mount them on black, as my project's been so much about black and white work, but the contrast was so stark that I felt it drowned out (ho ho) some of the finer detail.  This grey paper gives a more subtle effect.  In keeping with the nautical theme, the backing paper is called 'dreadnought grey'.

 

I cut the flowers as thin slits like the slats of the boat, but underneath the glass frame they just disappeared.  I cut out some tiny petals and leaves from printer paper and glued them on (lots of tweezer work), which I think looks pretty and draws attention to them a bit more.

They certainly look restful in their white frames, even though they're tempestuous images.  I hope they go down well at the exhibition! 

Charmed Life Papercuts - Process Shots

Rapidly making two papercuts out of A3 sketch paper, so I can have new examples of papercutting in the exhibition. They're based on a verse from The Divine Comedy's 'Charmed Life', and they're also inspired by two C19th artworks by Hokusai and Monet.

Hokusai - Great Wave Off Kanagawa

Monet - Cliffs at Etretat

Well sometimes this life is like being afloat

On a raging sea in a little row boat

Just trying not to be washed overboard

But if you take your chances and you ride your luck

And you never, never, never, never, never give up

Well those waves will see you safely to a friendly shore.

oops

Ha!  So much for blogging every single lesson.  Oh well.  I'll add more to this much-neglected blog over the summer.

My first project was about the Women's Land Army.  I ended up making a series of badges/medals showing Land Girls doing the most rotten jobs (cleaning out the pigs, rat-catching) to celebrate their efforts and achievements.

My second project was themed around my cats, I did lots of observational drawing.  I also wanted to explore printmaking, as I felt like we'd only scratched the surface in the Taster classes.  I made drypoint etchings, various approaches to linocut, monotype and collagraph, and picked my favourite method to illustrate a poem about cats.

(It was lucky that I had this chance to draw my cat Poppy all the time, because she went missing in April and still hasn't turned up.  It's sad for me to look through this project now, but I'm glad I have so many drawings and photographs of her.)

I'll put pictures from these projects on the blog over the summer, when all the frantic prep for the final project is out of the way.

My final major project is due soon -- the exhibition will open at Middleton Hall in Milton Keynes shopping centre on 26th June.  I'm not terribly sure I'll be ready in time!  It explores puppetry, performance, shadow play and storytelling, and involves a series of little films and paper-cuttings.

Trip to Birmingham

I went to Birmingham to visit the German Christmas market, although first I looked round the city's art gallery.  I really enjoyed their large Pre-Raphaelite collection, and a small but rewarding collection of prints called A Life in Prints: The Tessa Sidey Bequest.  But I suppose like many people I was most charmed by the 1890 painting Dominicans in Feathers by Henry Stacey Marks:

Here are my photos from the day out.  (Edited using the Instagram iPhone app.)

Happy Christmas Birmingham

My new friend!  I bought this big felted Triceratops.  I love his wonky horns.

Painting Methods, Life Drawing

Wartime Drawings

My project is about rationing during WW2, so to prepare I've been doing pen and wash drawings of wartime subjects. 

in the Anderson shelter

nurse and children

fixing a toy car

preparing a cow for the blackout

Coventry Cathedral

Painting Methods, Life Drawing

Today in Painting, we looked at complementary colours and shadows.  I drew a red circle and stared at it for ages, then looked at a blank part of the page and saw that the after-image was pale turquoise.  I tried again with purple and got a pale yellow after-image.

The teacher set up a blue and orange still life, and got us to think about using blue elements in the orange parts, and orange in the blue parts.  I'm happy with this and think the reflection of the oranges works well.  This is only my third attempt with acrylic, and the bottle does look like it's made of glass, and the middle orange's tummy button (?) looks effective, I marked that with the hard end of the brush.  I added a mottled teal background (harmonious with the blue bottle) because I thought the white space looked a bit empty and I suspected it would give me a better idea of how the colours in the main subject were working out.  We were supposed to be experimenting with impasto but I don't like that -- using lots of paint is expensive, and using a little but thickening it makes it a complete pain to handle.  I will tackle impasto at some point, but today was not the day!

Funnily enough, I hate oranges.

In Life Drawing, like last time we drew a full-page figure, trying to get it as accurate as possible.  Then we had to work out where the shading was and build it up using collage, a mosaic of tiny bits of scrap paper and newspaper.  I didn't think I'd like doing this -- I found it tricky to get the figure right and then it seemed a shame to start slapping glue on it.  But I love the effect of the tiny newsprint words creating shading, so I'm going to keep experimenting with it and finish the picture properly when I get a chance.

Photoshop, Contextual Studies

In our Photoshop tutorial, we learned about the stamp tool, effects and filters, liquify and motion blur.

Contextual Studies covered 1400-1500: specifically, Giotto, the Wilton Diptych, Uccello, Masaccio, Brunelleschi and Leonardo.

Fine Art

Fine Art today.  We talked about our Self-Initiated Project, or SIP.  It still needs to be on the theme of Food and Drink but now we're given free rein to interpret that how we like and come up with our own brief.

Project Content
- Mind Map, brainstorming ideas and focusing them into a brief
- Introduction
- Contextual artist research.  6-10 artists, equal split of historical and contemporary.  Keep linking this research with the idea development to show influences.  Do some exercises 'in the style of' if that helps.
- Experimentation with different media: paint, printmaking, collage, stitch.  Observational drawing.  Plenty of primary sources (museum visits).  Interviews?
- Development of ideas.
- Final Outcome - simple but well-executed is better than ambitious/incomplete.
- Final Evaluation. 

I was happy to find out I can use my research at the Imperial War Museum and work on a WW2-themed project.  I made my mind map, there were too many ideas there but after a chat with the teacher I worked out that the thing that interested me was the worry of trying to feed a family on rations -- wanting to protect loved ones against the great tide of history, and the vulnerability of families and ordinary people.  Women having to make decisions about the family on their own, as well as having to do war work.  All the official paperwork and tidy, stoic queuing being the only way to get through a terrifying time.  Still need to finesse it a lot, but that's the key for me.