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!