KUNIYOSHI

Today I went to the Kuniyoshi exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts with some of my friends from my MA course. We'd seen a poster advertising the exhibition last week and it looked very interesting.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) was a Japanese artist, who created thousands of colour woodblock prints. While he was working in a very different medium than I am, I was struck (as were my friends) by the similarities his work had with my own. His work demonstrated a great economy of line and was possessed of a real sense of energy, which are two aspects I have been working to incorporate into my own drawing.

Kuniyoshi also demonstated a great deal of humour within his work, especially in a series of images featuring various animals acting out very human activities, which my friends said made them think of my illustration for the alphabet we produced as part of a group project for the MA. I was interested by a line in the catalogue for the exhibition which said "Kuniyoshi has no other ambition than to make viewers laugh", as earlier this week, I was writing an Artist's Statement in preperation for our forthcoming Degree Show and said "I want to create images that make people smile".

Inspired by the days events (which also included continuing the Japanese theme and having lunch at a Japanese restaurant), I created my own illustration inspired by one of Kuniyoshi's prints, Hatsuhana Prays Under a Waterfall, c.1842.

Illustration Friday: Poise

Here's my latest entry for Illustration Friday. This week's topic is Poise. This seal is demonstrating a great deal of poise in balancing all these objects on his nose. Go seal, go! I drew the image by hand, and then used a combination of marker pen and Photoshop to colour it. I liked the idea of creating a vertical image.

A Portrait of The Artist

I've been playing around this morning with some new techniques, drawing using pencil and adding shading, then scanning and colouring on the computer, but keeping the initial drawing. I combined this with a photograph I took of my desk (now that I spent the last two days clearing it up!). I quite like the contrast between the hand-drawn and photographic elements. I will explore this process some more...

Play Room exhibition, 10–24 March 2009

For the past 2 weeks, I've had the above piece of work exhibited at the DreamSpace gallery near Old Street, as part of a group exhibition with 20 other students from MA Visual Arts courses at Camberwell College of Art. The title of the exhibition was Play Room, and I chose to illustrate a scene of two children playing and creating an imaginary world. I drew and coloured the image completely by hand, using marker pens, and am happy with the final piece.

Here are some photos from the exhibition...




And a photo from the well-attended Private View...

Illustration Friday: Subtract

The following is a record of my thought process while trying to think of something to draw for this week's Illustration Friday topic:

"Subtract... take away... subtracting organs...operations...Operation!"



Obviously I didn't really have the stomach to draw an illustration of a real operation, so I opted instead to draw a pair of surgeons playing the popular children's game, Operation (other medical-based recreational games are available...).

I'd like to go back and produce a more finished piece at some point based on this idea, but for now I've done quite a rough, sketchy illustration, just to get the idea across.

"The Geeky Collector"

A group of us from the MA have started up a discussion group, with the aim to meet once a week and look at each others work, and decide upon a subject to use to produce an illustration for the following week. Last week was the inaugural meeting and the subject selected was "The Geeky Collector". I had a few attempts at coming up with something for this title, and finally decided upon depicting the wall in the home of a Collector who collects different types of Geeks, a literal Geeky Collector...

Illustration Friday: Legendary

So, some of my friends have been taking part in Illustration Friday, and I decided to join in. This is my first image created especially in response to the weekly topic, which this week, is "Legendary". I decided to produce an illustration of a mermaid, but to create a character that is the opposite of the usual portrayal of these legendary creatures.

Birthday Bonanza!!

Everyone is having birthdays recently, which means I've had to create a lot of cards!

This one was for a friend with a borderline-psychotic obsession with squirrels...


Here's one for a friend who's really into climbing:


And finally, incorporating all the national stereotypes I could think of for a friend from Russia:


(I'd better get a lot of hand-made cards when it's my birthday... hehe)

What? No alien?!?: Watching the Watchmen

Apologies in advance if this blog post isn't entirely understandable to some of you, but I went to see Watchmen last night, and had the idea for a comic strip with some of my thoughts about the film. Those of you that have not either seen the film or read the original comic may not quite get some aspects of the following strip, but hey, this is my blog after all, so I guess I can be a little self-indulgent now and then...

11/03/09: Wednesday Morning Lecture Fun...

Play Room Exhibition

I have a piece of work currently being exhibited in the Dreamspace Gallery, as part of the Play Room exhibition, along with 20 other students from Camberwell MA visual arts courses.

The exhibition is open from 10–24 March, Monday–Friday, 9.30–5.30.

Sketchbook doodles 3

A couple of sketches I did today of a few of my fellow MA Illustration students...

03/03/09: Universally Challenged...

So, it's been a few days since I drew a Daily Strip – I've just been feeling a bit tired and sluggish the past couple of days. Today's strip is my attempt to diagnose what may have been the problem! Hopefully that's all behind me now, and normal service will be resumed...