Summer sketchbook: Highlights

This summer I have filled a small A5 sketchbook with watercolour, pencil and pen drawings that I have been updating everyday by going on journeys around various parts of my village, Ashover. I tried to emphasise on the use of colour and the way light reflects upon landscapes to create a impressionistic effect to the sketchbook. Over time I started to learn new things about field studies. Such as sometimes it is best to be quick about what you are doing and not to worry about fine detail. I believe this sketchbook represents a journey and a insight into my summer. I started on one side of the valley in the Fabrick woods, then slowly working my way down to where my house is, then to the bottom of the valley where the amber river is and the working my way up the other side of the valley into Hate woods. There is of course certain anomalies such as the time I spent in Tupton and the Cost cross area. But this shows my summer in great detail. Overall I am very proud of this sketchbook as it acts a diary and a account of my summer through art.

Ashover Caves- Watercolour 

Woods at Tupton-Watercolou

Studio Ghibli Wall Design

This is a final design for the piece that i am going to draw onto a wall in my bedroom. I have taken influence from the prestigious anime film company, Studio Ghibli as i find their style of films and art really beautiful. I started this piece by simply sketching out the design in pencil, to get a idea of what i am going to go over in ink. What was difficult for this piece was finding stills from the films that will fit into the composition of the work. There were times where i had to step back a thoroughly think about what should be drawn where. I had to think about using the still images that i was using as reference for the drawing to my advantage and think where it can fit in the composition.

Close up on detail

Once the initial drawing of the piece was done the inking of the piece was easy to do. It added a real professional look to the piece and it showed to me what it would look like when drawn on the wall. I am thinking to use a thick black marker pen to create the lines in need to capture the same effect of the design composition.

I really enjoyed drawing this piece as it was a part of me captured onto the page. These films are but one of the reasons i wish to be a artist because the amount of effort into the animation of these films are truly staggering. I will definitely update this when i have started work on the wall in my bedroom, but it may be a couple of months until i get started. Hopefully, it will be a joint effort between me and fellow artist Belinda Ayres. I am hoping it will suit the room beautifully.

Studio Ghibli finished design~(fine line on cartridge paper)

Alice in wonderland caterpillar

Uncompleted drawing in Biro of the caterpillar from the Tim Burton adaptation of the book. I'm not really too bothered about finishing this particular piece as I believe even though the outcome would look great, I think for the time being it looks good as it is. This piece took a long time to get to where it is now through hours of crosshatch work. If I had more time I would probably have finished it by now.

I really enjoy the overall look of this piece. Its really gritty and intricate in its composition. I had a souce photo for this piece and it was a digital painting by the artist who designed the look for the caterpillar in the movie named Michael kutsche.

Acetate Experiment for Stencil

Permanent Marker on Acetate

Being a fan of the Shaun Meadow's film 'This is England', i thought for my experiments with stencils i decided to use the main protagonist, Shaun Field, as my subject. It was difficult to create the stencil effect because it was guesswork to find what parts needed to be black without overdoing the entire piece. My plan was for this piece be used as a template for a large stencil for street art. Primitive maybe, but i have used this piece on a projector to enlarge it onto a bigger surface so i can draw around it to create the outline of my stencil.

Buster Bloodvessel pen sketch

Bad Manners is one of my favorite Ska bands at the moment so i decided to do this sketch of the larger than life front man, Buster Bloodvessel (Douglas Trendle). It was really fun to draw this, Buster's face is like rubber; he is really great at making outrageous expressions. The best thing about this piece that it did not take long to draw. I felt that leaving it at just a line drawing creates a simple, yet great outcome. I found that using lines to portray form instead of shading gives this pieces a really unique feel to it.

End of Year Project: 'Fall back, Spring Froward'

In this project I was given a brief stating that I should looking at past design eras: Baroque, Georgian, Victorian, 1930’s And 1950’s. From these five design eras, I should pick one that interests me and through using the design cycle, I should create and design a outcome that could be worn on the body or had drawn influences from the human form.
For my research I started by looking at the five eras of design that was stated in the project brief. So I created a two page presentation of each design era in my sketchbook. I used various sources to gain my information. I Used books, websites and photos I have taken on my camera. For some the pages, I managed to find objects around my house that shows signs of a certain design era. For example I found an example of the baroque-characterised woodwork technique of marquetry a method of ornamentation in carpentry that involves the use of different wood-shades and types on a piece of furniture. I also used some photos I have taken in the past to show some primary research, such as a picture of a baroque snuff box that I encountered on my trip to the Victoria and Albert museum in London. After researching the design eras of the project. I started to look at Artists that use the human body in their work. At this point of the project some of my ideas were focused on creating an item that can be worn. So I looked in the work of Rebecca Horn, who creates items that are influenced by the body and worn by the body. I also looked at Artists such as Anthony Gormley and Stelarc. Stelarc in particular caught my imagination as he uses machinery such as robotics to create interactive pieces that are worn on the body. I found this industrial style of blending manmade machinery with the human body made interested in picking the Victorian era as my design choice.
My ideas grew from the research I studied. In my mind I had the idea of blending the world of industry, machines and blending it with something that could be worn on the body. As I have said, I found the Victorian era a great point to use as the industrial side of the ideas I was forming. Because of Industrial Revolution that occurred in the Victorian era, I found this a great way of introducing Victoriana into my work and possibly even bringing in some of the influences of nature that the Arts and Crafts movement used in the Victorian times. After talking to my tutor, Mark, he suggested that I should look at the ideas created by the Steampunk movement- a movement that blends the industrial side of Victoriana and modern day even fictional, futuristic design ideas. This led to me sketching a few design ideas that used these influences. I was originally thinking of creating a Chest piece that was made of copper, brass and tin.
These initial ideas soon developed. The idea of creating a chest piece proved to be difficult to create. After much consideration, the design I was thinking of making would cost too much in materials to make, simply because It was so large. I also believe that the design I made looked incredibly difficult to physically make. After presenting my first idea to Mark, he said I could still have a design that could be worn around the neck and Mayoral Badges of Office would be a great way top start. I went away and researched Badges of office. I found out that these chains that are worn by City and town mayors are passed down heir looms that are many years old. Some chains even had small pictures of past mayors. After this research, I sketched a couple of designs that could be made into a chain of office. When these sketches were complete, I picked my favourite one and started the collect materials that could be used in the creation of the piece. I found a crank cog of a bicycle that I wanted to use as a centre piece and I also found test tubes which I eventually incorporated in the design.

Close-up of Detail on Final piece

My final outcome was created over four weeks. I found this piece out of all my final outcomes throughout the year I have made, the most challenging. This was because I had a lot of various problems when creating the piece. For example, attaching the leather to the band of steel proved hard work and I found a solution to this by welding pins the band of steel than forcing them through the leather, securing it by bending over the wire pins. I also found that when attaching the copper pipe, It was difficult to bend into the right shape that would fit perfectly to the steel band. I had to attach the copper pipe through the use of silver solder and flux. I used a wide variety of techniques in this final outcome. I used sand-blasting, welding, soldering, the fly-press and weaving to get the look I wanted. I found that my piece looked exactly how I imagined it, admittedly, I did have to make a few alterations such as the colour of the test tubes which originally intended to be clear rather than green. But overall I found it very successful.
I believe I would take time in attaching certain items to the final outcome next time. As the piece on a whole is very fragile and I take great care when handling it. Overall, apart from the one area of improvement I would not change anything else about my final piece. I am really happy with how it turned out and I truly enjoyed the project.

Brad wearing the final outcome

Fine Metal Project- 'Calow Hospital'

Fine Metal was a really enjoyable project for me. I found that working with metal was a lot like working with clay; the both can be molded and manipulated into anything you want. In terms of the project, the brief stated that the final outcome should represent something that protects something else, such as a birds nest protecting eggs. As this project was to do with the Hartington unit of the hospital (a wing that offers support and help for those who are under stress of a mental illness) the theme of protection was a great place to start and create a structure that could be made for the outside area of the wing.

To begin with I started looking at microscopic organisms; I noticed that they had a sphere at the center and had spikes or tubes coming out from the sphere as a defense mechanism, protecting itself. I thought this would be a perfect way to start the theme of protection. So I researched about microscopic organisms, partaking to looking deeply into the organisms that hailed from deep oceans and seas. I then expanded my research into viruses as they have a similar form to the microscopic organisms I was researching beforehand. This soon went onto birds nests as the theme of protection was really obvious and strikes a similarity between the other two inspirational forms as some nests can be spherical in appearance.

Test Design 

This is a test piece for my final outcome. After some sketches of possible ideas i settled for this design. I wanted to create a design that took all the elements of the forms and shapes I have been looking and researching into. From this creation I made, I found all of the possible complications that could hinder the physical making of my final piece. I discovered three things; Blunt the edges of the 'spikes' to make it more safe for audiences, make sure everything is secure with quality welds and use the same tool to create bends in the wire to create a flawless look.

Worksheet showing the thought process of final designs

Towards the end of the project. I completed the designs for my final piece and portrayed my thought process through a A1 worksheet. I decided for my final piece it will be three forms in a series of three. Each one of these designs share the same theme of protection; a rough outside protecting a beautiful inside. I named the pieces 'Gemima, Gabriella and Zebidiah. The meanings for thesee names are of peace, tranquility and protecting words that link with the purpose of the work.

Overall, I found that my pieces worked well and showed the theme of protection perfectly. Each piece showed a difference to each other, yet had enough similarities to be part of a series of three.

'Gemima, Gabriella and Zebidiah'-My final outcome