11. Argg!!

The text is different in every post... WHYYY!?!???

10. Another week, another huge entry.

Hello again! As I’ve got in to the habit of posting a large one at the end of each week, I’ll begin with what I’ve been up to since the last post. On Monday I went to web presence again and finally managed to fill my first gallery with pictures. I’ve also changed the menu bar and repositioned a few things, I posted it last time but here it is again with the latest changes.

Also this week, we finally had another meeting about the identity for our degree show and catalogue. We’ve completely moved away from the initial idea of a theatre/circus theme and it’s been decided that our theme be the studio, as not only is it the last year we’re there but also the last year for that space as it is being moved elsewhere. We now have a clear wall in the studio, which all third years will draw on/attach illustrations to.  I think it’ll be a good representation and celebration of a lively and laid back creative working space. Although I thought that our initial idea was a good one, in retrospect it did get a little out of hand and I know that a lot of people had concerns over its ambitiousness and the possibility of it becoming a bit of a mish-mash of ideas that didn’t make a lot of sense. I think that changed a little it could still work, but I’m really fond of the new theme as it’s simpler, more meaningful and we still keep (what I consider to be) the most important element of the last theme, which was everybody getting to contribute to it.

     Having found a gallery for our possible London show I called a meeting this week, but only a fraction of the people who expressed an interest in it going ahead actually turned up! It was decided that we need at least 25 but preferably 30 students to contribute work to the show and as the deposit for the gallery is £300, we have outlined a two week period in which everybody who wishes to be involved has to put £10 in a named envelope and hand it to Pete. I’m disappointed that there’s not more of a buzz about it but I really hope we can still get it together. I will view the space next weekend and if we have enough people by March 10^th I will pay the deposit and we will then have to concentrate on fundraising, planning transport and everything else both Southampton and London degree show related. Talking of fundraising (and I forget what I have and haven’t mentioned here) but the next one I’m planning is well underway. I’m really hoping for a lot of support from everybody as there are a few more expenses involved this time. We also delegated out the production of the poster to a second year student, which is looking really good and as soon as that’s finished I can get promoting it.

     Talking of promotion, finally this week we had our self-promotion work in progress meetings! I have now finished the project and I have printed six copies on thick matt duo paper on the printers in the photography suite. Printing double sided is complicated, even when it’s only one sheet but the colours came out brilliantly. This is what it looks like now:

  I also completed the work I was doing on the envelope. The first thing I did was to print my selected images on to the envelopes. It took me a few attempts to get them in the right place and the desired size. I then covered my fingers in fake blood/brown ink/white paint and smeared it over the envelopes. Finally I made myself a stamp. I bought a rubber designed to look like a £20 note from Hawkins Bazaar in town and cut in to it with a scalpel and it worked pretty well (I had initially started doing it backwards but luckily somebody pointed this out to me before I’d got too far…) I then covered it in fake blood and stamped it on to my envelopes.

     I’m pleased with the way it turned out and although it would have been nice to create a short booklet in order to represent myself, I believe that this does the job of representing my work well, and it’s on it’s merry old way to Pete (unless somebody at the sorting office finds the envelope offensive and burns it) …Fingers crossed these tales of Colin Mchenry whom we’re being critiqued by next week throwing the stuff he doesn’t like in the bin are just horror stories!

   Anyway, with that out of the way I’ve been able to make some more progress with my final major project. I’m still about a week behind schedule but I’ve finished my character development and can now move on to experimenting with media and making some solid decisions before completing my page layouts ready for the final illustrations. I’ve been continuing with my newfound technique of using ink and thick brushes first and homing in on details later rather than fussing over them primarily. I have also spent some time drawing settings and environments, which is something I slightly overlooked during the last project. I have been drawing things I’d usually avoid, some I’ve conquered and some I still have to work on but either way I have made a lot of progress. I also realized during this process that as it is set in a different time that I would need to think about what things would look like a lot more, and I have been researching a drawing things suited to the era my story is set. Here’s some examples of what I’ve been doing in my sketchbook:

     
Also, I forgot to mention in the last post that I had made a to scale mock-up book. When I’d made it however, I decided that painstakingly measuring and marking out the boxes just to fill them with more vague scribbles like in my existing storyboards seemed like an absolutely absurd thing to do with my time (and may or may not be another thing I did last time round…) I was also going to photograph it for the sake of this blog but then I realized it is fundamentally just a stack of blank paper, and would be incredibly boring and pointless to behold. Despite all the stick I’ve just given it, it was nice to produce just to get an idea of the physicality of it, and didn’t take very long anyway.

     I’ve also finally got round to starting the comic for an online anti-bullying magazine that I’ve been banging on about this week. I’m not blown away by what I’ve done, but I’m really in to getting stuck in to the Final major at the moment. Still needs a lot of work but ‘ere’s what I’ve flopped out so far anyway in case it’s of interest:

     So I guess ‘that’s all folks!’ for this week at least. Next week I have a tutorial with Johnny and a couple of lectures, I shall also be facing the appraisal/wrath of Colin Mchenry. Hopefully I’ll also be stuck in to getting my portfolio together (buying one being the logical start on that one). I hope to have finished puzzling over medias by the end of next week too, and perhaps even catch up by whacking out my layouts! Once the posters finished I can get the ball rolling on promoting the next fundraising event, and not to mention I get to pay our potential degree show gallery a visit on Saturday!

Cheers for readin’ guys,
Quim out!

9. Wot I've been doin' since last time.

Hello! Okay so this week I had my portfolio tutorial with Louise, which was helpful and enjoyable. Since I’ve been collecting all my work together for web presence I’ve been really looking forward to getting a portfolio together. We decided that A3 would be the best size as opposed to A4, which I had been considering before. She gave me an idea of what things should go in and things that perhaps shouldn’t, also an idea of how many pages and what sort of order and flow. I now have to buy a portfolio, decide on what images are definitely going in and do some editing/mounting. I have a couple of weeks before the next portfolio meeting so I want that done by then so I can make any necessary changes that would improve it afterwards.

     After the tutorial I met the girl who I’m doing a comic for, we talked through it and its 2 A4 pages and she will provide the story but I can make any changes. It shouldn’t be a huge job and I am looking forward to doing it but there’s also so much else to think about at the moment! A good thing about it though is that it should get a lot of exposure. I was disappointed to see the Mark Wigan lecture was cancelled. I’ve also been getting stuck in to contacting galleries about the London show; I’m determined for it to happen as I think it’d be a great opportunity and a lot of fun. The best offer I’ve had so far is from a gallery in central London. They will have our show for a week in June or July for only £1,188 but there’s still a lot to consider and organize, so next week we will all need to speak about funds and fundraising.

     Now for the FMP; Still cracking on with my character development however I'm a little behind ad what I’ve been concentrating on the most is the self-promo project. After spending a lot of time thinking of about it, I decided that I would use some images I’ve already produced in the context of a simple two-page booklet. After going through my images I chose a bold and bright piece for an attention-grabbing cover, inside I have two of my favourite pages from my last comic: ‘Keth the Manosaur’ and on the back I have another arresting image with my contact information overlaid. I went for colour in the end, as even though I did think it would prove slightly less economical- that was when I thought it would be a longer document, and colour definitely represents me better. I think that this document is a good way to represent my ability to produce a good image, but also my passion for narrative imagery. I will now have to print these on a decent printer and slightly thicker paper, double sided (which should be a lot easier this time given it’s only one sheet!)

Front and back covers.

Inside.

     I also thought about the envelope as that’s the first thing they’d see. The envelope would be A5 as the work itself is a folded piece of A4. I think manila would be better than white, as white is too boring and crisp. I would like a stamp reading ‘Quim Illustration’ although I’m not sure I can afford a custom made one! Instead I might experiment with making one from rubber, polystyrene or foam. I will use fake blood to stamp this on. I had debated using brown or white ink instead to look like other bodily fluids…) Instead I think I will just smear this on as stains. I also messed around with drawing pictures on the envelope but then thought it would be best if I could print images on to it. I tried this on my home printer and it actually worked really well. I now have two or three images I intend to print on to the envelope in varying sizes. I will produce the final envelopes once I have made a stamp.

Front.

Back.

     Next week I will be finishing my self-promo and my character development for the FMP, also starting some media experimentation for it. I will also be working on my website and thinking more about my portfolio. I also have to job of working on the web comic and getting the ball rolling for the London show and fundraising!

Ta for reading,
Quim out!

(I'm also thinking of transferring all of this over to Tumblr because Blogspot seems to have a mind of it's own! Very frustrating.)

8. Paris and past week.

My apologies for the lack of post-age over the last couple of weeks, but unfortunately since my return from Paris I had been feeling rather ‘under the weather’ (boo hoo). So once again prepare for what will probably be another loooong post, as I’ve got a lot to catch up on!

     Firstly Paris, and what a terrific week it was! We stayed in St. Christopher’s Hostel near tube stop Crimée, and on the first evening we were pretty beat so stayed around the local area. We stopped out for pizza and a rather large (1.5l to be exact) plastic bottle of what became an instant hit, ‘Vin de Table’ for only 1 euro 84. (I later found out from a lovely French chap who was horrified to see us all drinking it that it is in fact wine used exclusively for cooking, and imported from Spain.)

     Anyway, that’s rather irrelevant. The second day we walked to Notre-Dame where we saw some awesome gargoyles and in the afternoon we went to Musee D'orsay.  There was a room towards the front left which had some very strange things in which I enjoyed, however I think I definitely would have appreciated it more if I’d not have been so tired, as there was some lovely work in there. On Wednesday we visited the Centre Pompidou. Apart from popping up the very top to admire the views I spent all of my time on the first floor, and judging by a lot of other peoples reactions I may have been one of the very few that enjoyed it! It was mostly modern/fine art and although most of it was vastly irrelevant to the work that I would create myself, it was probably more my thing than a lot of the paintings upstairs. Don’t get me wrong though, some of it was dire… A black canvas with a white line down the middle!? What’s that about? Anyway, there was also a lot of very interesting feminist work on show, including a whole wall of Guerrilla girls which I thought was great as I really admire their work. Their book, ‘The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the history of Art’ was a brilliant read that also helped me with my dissertation a lot. (Girls, 1998)

     On Wednesday afternoon we took a rather long stroll from the Louvre area to the Arc De Triomphe, stopping on our way to go on the awesome Ferris wheel of course! Where we had a lovely view over the city. Thursday was possibly the most fun day, starting off at The Louvre which unfortunately you can’t possibly see all of in one day! Even just the building itself is extremely beautiful. Although you’d probably more likely find me enjoying a feminist rendering of a spread vagina in The Pompidou than drooling over an ancient and vast hyperrealist painting of a priest loping baby Jesus’ nob end off, I thoroughly enjoyed everything I saw, From Franz Xaver Messerschmidt‘s metal sculptures of extreme facial expressions (Messerschmidt, 1871) to simply getting a little kick out of seeing something you recognize from a textbook. I really enjoyed the sculptures as they just looked like such classical and dated objects but they had these really over the top unconventional expressions on them. I think they were pretty 'a-head' of their time. (haha, getit!?) Anyway, after a few hours there we went on our merry way for a bit of touristy fun to the Eiffel Tower. Despite the very top being shut, this was great. We walked up to the first level where we were extremely surprised to see a free ice-skating rink, with an ice-bar and huge speakers playing Michael Jackson... so naturally we passed a fair bit of time getting involved with that. Afterwards we commenced to the second level, which I believe is about half way up, and had a look out over the city. It was lovely, and we had timed it just right to see the sun setting too. (Awwwww).

     As we went down the lights were coming on and on our descent the tower was fully and beautifully lit. After a rather odd experience with an illegal street trader (whom I may or may not have bought a horribly tacky light up Eiffel tower from) we headed back. On Friday we took a trip to the Catacombs, this underground maze comprised of walls of human skulls and bones. It was amazing, chilling and macabre. We then decided to cheer ourselves up with a jolly old trip to Paris’ famous ‘Père Lachaise’ cemetery. Many famous people have been laid to rest in this graveyard including Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and a great number of famous Painters. There was a mixture of beautiful old and contemporary graves and mausoleums juxtaposed with the odd assumedly ancient and long abandoned ones. The one I was most keen to see was Jim Morrison’s, which was well kept, relatively busy and fenced off from the rest to prevent (further) graffiti. Also, the tree next to his grave was covered in graphitised messages from fans.

     That evening (and sadly our last) we sought out some traditional French cuisine and found a charming little French fish restaurant on the river behind our hostel. After returning and consuming some more ‘Vin de Table’ and Jose's home-made Sangria we called it a night! (…at about 4am). Saturday morning we went to a bookshop near the hostel, where I bought a really cool comic called, ‘Poisson Gélatine’. (Tarabiscoulle, 2010) It has a screen-printed cover and the inside is all sequential black and white line drawings with no text. Also, and unfortunately right before we had to set off home, we found a flea market just round the corner! Although I did find time to get a brilliant vintage suitcase for only 3 euros! (Would have been about £40 quid down Camden, get in!)

The inside of the book has some really interesting experimental layouts and it has inspired me to make sure that I don't let my book become too conventional and boring when it comes to page presentation. I also really enjoy the cover, because it's screen printed it just feels really special.
Here's an example of an inside page:

  Oh, and this is a little art instillation we made for the tutors to enjoy in our room:

I don't think they liked it.

    Anyway! Onwards forth to this academic week… Monday I had a tutorial about this very blog with Pete, who said it was lookin’ good (wheeey!) and also web presence with Chris Arran. I’ve been looking forward to these sessions as I’ve wanted to get a website sorted for ages but I’m not exceptionally good with computer stuff, especially when I don’t know what I’m doing. I did actually make one last time, however I never finished it. As good as my intentions were to do so, by the time I did finally get round to it much to my annoyance it had deleted itself._. I spent a long time getting my images together for it so all I achieved by the end of our introductory session was to have my basic pages ready and next time I’ll be adding my images (which I must remember to ‘save for web’ prior to the next open session). I intend to attend all of the open sessions. Oh, one other thing I did achieve though was to make a pretty gnarly gif image for my homepage:

(Which I can't figure out how to post here... Nor can I figure out why when I post this half of the text is bold and formatted completely differently to the rest... but anyway, here's my website address instead! http://quimillustration.moonfruit.com/)

Now all I need for that it a really disgusting sound byte to accompany it and we’re in business.

     Also this week, we had a session with Alexandra, again about our presentation document (mine being this blog). I got the impression that it is seen as preferential if our presentation documents are hand-written or presented as a physical object, highly decorative and visually pleasing. I think that for me, keeping a blog is an easier and more effective way for me to clearly document my progress with the final major project, which I also believe shouldn’t be allowed to become secondary to the actual final major project itself. I am also enjoying keeping this blog, and finding it useful. Plus my handwriting is thoroughly appalling and I wouldn’t be able to read what I’d written at the end, let alone anybody else! I was surprised to discover that we are also expected to have a time plan for when we will update our blogs, I hope to write in this as often as possible, but think as long as I have atleast one thorough and concise post each week that should suffice. I did learn that we will need an Introduction, contents page and bibliography with our final printed and bound version of our blog for submission. So I will ensure that I leave time for the inclusion of that.

     Unfortunately, I missed the portfolio seminar and visiting lecture due to illness. I am really looking forward to my portfolio tutorial next week though, and have my images ready to go for that. I am also anticipating next Fridays guest lecturer, illustrator Mark Wigan after having checked out his website, it's seriously impressive! (Especially if you enjoy bright colours and dinosaurs, like me). I need to start my self-promotion project this week, as it’s only a week until the deadline to post it. I am almost definitely going to do a short comic/zine type thing, probably black and white, as it is more economical. I have confirmed the date for another fundraiser and also, some students who run an online magazine have asked me to produce a two A4 page comic for them which I am having a meeting about on Thursday. It’s all go!

     Finally, (and probably most importantly!) I need to talk about the progress of my project. After having completed my time plan, decided on my story and planned out each image the next step was to commence storyboarding. While in Paris, and admittedly even after my return, I kept finding myself without a printout of my proposed images so in this time I did some character development instead.

     It takes me quite a long time to perfect a character. I began with a pencil, trying to create all my characters with a very specific and precious approach, hoping to get them all spot on first time. I think that it is important to be loose in order to create good work and characters, and after getting frustrated with using a pencil and not getting it right I started using a brush pen and ink. Once I had done some large and undetailed images of characters (that are also pretty bad) I was more able to get out what was in my head without stressing about the specifics. When I had a good basis for a character I could switch to dip pen and get a bit closer to what I wanted them to look like. I now have vague character designs for Firm Turd before and after ‘The Burning’, his wife and also the creepy criminal he apprehends near the beginning of his story.

     Once I had my proposed images printed out I could begin storyboarding, which is now almost finished. Once I have completed it I will quickly knock up a to scale mock up book, with the measurements so that after I have completed the character development and media experimentation stages I can begin my final images. Technically I am a little behind my time plan, but as I have started my character development I figure it’s pretty much on schedule!

I'm also currently in London and have to pop down to Foyles bookstore to enquire about costs regarding exhibition space, for the possibility of presenting our degree show there. So I'd better crack on!

Thanks for readin’

Quim out!

7.