Academic Progression

Minimalist Art During my time out of uni timetable I have been experimenting with various art styles to broaden my personal portfolio and develop skills with digital art programs such as Adobe creative suite and Cinema 4D. Primarily my recent work has focused with exploring the features of Adobe programs, my most recent studies have been using Adobe Illustrator to create minimal art of characters and objects in favoured games movies and fictional works.  Minimal art is the process of creating a piece of visual art with minimal detail, be that colour or visual graphics. An interesting example of this is the portrayal of characters either fictional or icons of popculture, by simply drawing out particular features such as the subject's hair style we can recognise the who it is. I tried this style out myself with 2 characters from the popular tv show Futurama, the characters I designed in this style were Fry and professor F...

Typographic Transcription Part 1 The fifth and final physical studio workshop with John Kelly will extend over the course of a couple of weeks leading up to the final month of the first year. The subject of study for the duration of these studios will be typography and type transcription. Due to typography not being my strong suit when it comes to design I was eager to get started with this studio. To begin with the class were provided with a selection of studies from varied artists and designers as a form of inspiration to create letter forms out of five selected letters, the selected letters were 'ANSEG'. The studies I chose as my inspiration consisted of bold disorderly artwork, each sharing a similar colour palette of black with a red contrast. Out of all the studies I found these to be the most appealing. The artists of the studies were, Wolfgang Weinhart, El Lissitzky and Lauri Rosenwald, below are scans of the studies I chose as inspiration.  With John...

The Ideal Room Richard Hamilton was a painter and a collage artist who created the collage  Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? in 1956 for the catalogue of the ' This is Tomorrow ' exhibition in London as a comment on rising consumerism.  Hamilton subsequently created several works in which he reworked the subject and composition of the pop art collage, including a 1992 version featuring the female body builder, Bernie Price. For our workshop we were tasked with recreating Hamilton collage that represented the current decade. I decided to use Adobe Photoshop for this task so I had more freedom with the collage. Being able to play around with various items to produce an "ideal room" was rather interesting, there were so many ways I could experiment with this such as having a particular theme or set during a particular time.  To begin with I wanted to create a really silly 'Ideal room' using popular internet topics ...

Still Life Drawing During our workshop session with John Kelly, we were provided with a brief and we were required to undertake still life drawing. After entering the studio, the group was greeted to four tables, each table contained various source material that differed from one another. Over the course of the afternoon we were to produce a study from three of the four tables rotating at 45 minute intervals. The three tables I chose consisted of: Letters and numbers that vary shape, size and texture Objects ranging from cameras and binoculars to three necked glass flasks A cluster of boxes and textured material such as package protection bags and crumpled up paper. I chose these tables because I found them to be the most interesting of the four, the final table was a multitude of boxes, to me that table seemed to be more line work and perspective orientated, I personally wanted to challenge myself with more difficult objects that combine straight lines, curved edges and re...

Interior Sketches For the second studio workshop with John Kelly, we were tasked with sketching the interior of the creative arts atrium at the university and explore unique patterns and shapes in the architecture and structure.  The creative arts atrium has a rather modern and open interior to it, with visible support beams and columns, these are great to draw because it provides interesting sharp shapes combined with sleek surfaces. I found this task to be enjoyable because the design and architecture of the creative arts atrium especially the main hall fascinates me, the use of large windows and daylight as a main source of light during the day gives the atrium a brighter and open feel to it. Below are my sketches for this task, I decided to incorporate a sketchy style which I believe worked in my favour during this session.

Location/Urban Drawing The first workshop task for John Kelly required us to undertake a location and urban drawing task using the town of Huddersfield as source material. Over the course of the afternoon we were advised to produce the minimum of four studies and cover at the very least four of the following subjects. Type in context (examine various fonts displayed on billboards, windows and signs) Reflections (examine reflections through windows and bodies of water) Architectural themes (Themes such as door knobs gargoyles windows etc) People and places (examine the populous in an urban environment such as coffee shops and stores) Skylines (explore the skylines of the architecture and document the variety of shapes visible) The whole group was split into three smaller groups in order to prevent overcrowding within the town centre and we were provided with A2 sheets of paper, some tracing paper and a wooden board to use as an improvised table as we ventured through Hudd...

Fallout and Retro Futurism The Fallout series is one of my most favoured Sci-fi franchises, it is a brilliant rendition to the 'what if?' scenario. It  takes place around the 23rd century in an alternate reality where the culture of the 1950s just wouldn't die, but most of humanity does. In this reality, the cold war was prevalent until the bitter end. After nations began to run out of resources in the 2050s the world plunged into a global conflict that ended in 2077, when the then nuclear powers decided to launch their arsenals at each other, enveloping the world in a new apocalyptic dark age, this was called the 'Great war' and lasted only 2 hours.  However, 'Lucky' people survived the great war thanks to the sanctuary of underground fallout shelters called vaults, designed by the vault-tec corporation they officially provide "better living, underground" when in reality they were part of a series of experiments orchestrated by the united sta...

Josan Gonzalez The most inspirational artist that I follow the work of on social media is an artist called Josan Gonzalez. More commonly known under the alias of Deathburger, Josan creates vibrant, bold Sci-fi Cyberpunk and post apocalyptic art that features a mixture of rich and pastel colour palettes that makes his work stand out remarkably. I absolutely adore the work by Josan, it has always been a favourite. As a fan of the subculture and genre of the Cyberpunk movement, I personally think that his work captures the feel of what it means to be 'Cyberpunk' perfectly, this bond of flesh and metal is brilliantly portrayed consistently. I frequently get a 'Judge Dredd' or 'Ghost in the Shell' vibe when discussing his artwork. A piece that I like in particular is the following image. Being able to incorporate a fisheye lens effect into his artwork gives an amazing perspective, the piece has a feeling of depth because of this effect. Although out attentio...

Callum Watt Calum Alexander Watt is a conceptual artist that I follow on Instagram, his work always consists of detailed, diverse character concepts usually with futuristic theming. As I personally find creating futuristic concept art to be an enjoyable exercise and activity, artists such as Calum Watt are certainly inspirational.  The colour palettes that Calum uses are very appealing. His more recent work consists of artwork that uses 3-4 colours that contrast with one another, such as greyish whites combined with vibrant blues, reds and yellows. using minimal colour palettes is typically a common approach with my own work, giving it a really clean and simplistic approach. A concept piece by him that I really like in particular is one called 'Big Red'. What I love about it is how bulky the suit looks due to using a rounded and curved look. Additionally the fiery red really pops out on screen in contrast to the cool grey background.