Summer Project- Sketchbook

To start my project Me and my group picked a piece of work my Michael Craig-Martin. I started to think of ways that I could re-created this piece, firstly I started to copy sections of the image using a different technique to Michael Craig-Martin.

I started by collaging shapes similar to shapes used in the image we chose, I stuck the simple shapes together and drew in the details with a black felt pen.

I carried on using this technique and I picked out small parts to re-create and create a small composition. I then played about on photoshop to make my piece look less messy.
This piece was my first final piece, I then passed this on to Alex and he then worked on top of this or worked in his own way using this for inspiration.

I next started to draw objects from my own household, again pens. I carried on working in this way as I felt collaging them and drawing the detail in with black felt comfortable and I thought this technique worked quite well.

After drawing a handful of objects I sarted playing with composition and colour, again using the piece of work by Michael Craig-Martin as my inspiration.

At this point came the first switch, I passed my piece on to Alex and Chloe had passed her first piece on to me.

Chloe's Piece.

After Chloe sent me her work, I wasn't too sure where to go with it. I looked again at the piece of work we had chosen by Michael Craig-Martin and I realised that he didn't really leave much space within his image. So I decided to place some of my objects done in my style on top of Chloe's piece, using Photoshop.

This is what I came up with.

I palced my images of objects I had created on top of the piece, placing them in spaces and on top of other objects, using up more space as Craig-Martin does.

The objects created by myself and Chloe were done in very different styles and you can tell which object were done by who, my objects give a slight texture to the piece which gives it an interesting effect.

I again passed this piece on to Alex and Chloe passed on her next piece to me.
I really liked this piece of work, I thought the different shades of black and grey worked really well. I also like that some objects look less flat than others, they look slightly 3D which gives the image more effect.

I tried to work in a similar way I was working using black and grey papers, but It didn't work very well (and I ended up throwing it away). After this I changed the style of my work, I started drawing the objects out with black felt tip and scanning them in.

After this I played about on photoshop with compositions and colouring them in.

I think this worked well, but It didn't really relate to the piece that Chloe had done in black and white. I then thought about colouring my object images in black and different shades of gray as Chloe did, but having the outlines of the images indifferent colours.

After this I started making compositions with my images and using different background colours and scales to see which worked the best.

Jan Lenica

Jan Lenica, Born 4th January 1928, in Poland. He was a polish Graphic designer and Cartoonist. He Also does poster illustrations which i find very interesting and I try to give myself a similar style with in my own work.

I find his Characters very unique and insteresting to look at, I like how the shapes used are not perfect and more 'randomly' shaped, gives the characters more of a personality and unique ness. I also like the block colour used, giving them a silhouette style, which i feel works really well and I have tried to work in this style in the past which I think has worked really well.

Jeffery Fisher

I am a huge fan of Jeff Fishers illustration work.

Pop Art

After looking into the work of Michael Craig-Martin, I began looking at some other pop artists.




The first major pop artist that I could think of from the top of my head was Andy Warhol, famous for many pieces but one of my favourites has to be the portraits of Marilyn Monroe. I love the use of bold colour and black in the shaded areas, giving a photographic look. I also like the bold colour used for the background and how it is a colour that has lready been used with in the piece, I think this works really well and brings out the eyes of the face even more.
Andy Warhol does alot of print work, mostly screen printing which I love to do, though we work in different ways (as I work very rough and Warhol works very neat) I really like the detail and smoothness of his work.







I also love his flower work, the bold colours used for the flowers and the unusual shapes. Looks as if they've been printed onto a photograph which is an unusual techinque but very effective and different, works really well.

Another Pop Artist who I have become very fond of over the years is Roy Lichtenstein. I love his comic like style of working, again bold colours and thick black lines. I also like how in some areas of his images instead of using bold colour he uses tiny circles which is interesting and different from any pop art or comic styled art I have seen before.

Michael Craig-Martin

After visiting the Manchester Art Gallery with my group members Chloe and Alex, we picked a piece which all of our eyes were attracted too for our summer project, which was this piece by Michael Craig-Martin, named "Inhale (Yellow)". The media used is acrylic on canvas sized 243.8 x 182.8cm. This image caught our eyes due to the boldness of colour used and also what caught my attenion was the use of black line outlining each individual object with in the image itself. I love the use of the black line as it gives each object more definition and boldness, making then look slightly less flat. Another thing which i admire about the image is the distortion of scale, making smalled objects in reality larger than other object, this makes the piece more interesting and fun to look at. The random objects placed together work really well, I think maybe Michael Craig-Martin possibly set up a scene with these objects and drew them in different scales. The colours used are very interesting, very Pop Art. Michael Craig-Martin has been named as a Pop Artist for some time now, around the year 2000 he began working with bold colour and outlining, similar to the piece above. (http://www.michaelcraigmartin.co.uk/).

This piece of work was created in 2002 with a group of pieces very similar to this. His other work includes images like these on a huge scale in places such as trainstations and on sides of buildings, very time consuming and you can appriecate the time and effort gone into these pieces.

I am hoping to create some images in a similar way to Martin, possibly drawing objects from my own household and drawing them in my own style of working. I will possibly look into collaging some of the pieces and also printing which I enjoy very much. I will try many techniques and experiments to hopefully interpriate this piece in my own way.