omnomnicon art: 2013

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Themes

After being at loss at what to do for a bit, I thought about some of my favourite artists and things they have done. I know that I like to draw both people and animals, and landscapes too, so it would be good if I could find a way of combining these elements in different ways.

My favourite artist Mucha has done lots of different series and themes of illustrations, which could give me a few ideas for my own work.

Mucha's Themes:

Flowers (rose, lily, crysanthemum, orchid)
Semi-precious Gems (ruby, quartz, emerald and amethyst)
Horoscopes
Seasons (there were three seperate versions of this)
Times of Day (morning, day, evening and night)
The Arts (painting, poetry, dance and music)
Moon and Stars (moon, morning star, evening star, pole star)
Other Decorative Pairs (blonde and brunette, feather and cowslip, etc)

'Four Seasons'

De Goya also painted a couple of themes, like the 'Black Paintings' and his series 'Disasters of War'.

'Saturn Devouring his Son' from the Black Paintings

print 39 from the Disasters of War series

print 05 from the Disasters of War series

I like working within themes because it gives me a way of containing my ideas in measurable 'portions', so they don't just all try to come out at once, effectively giving me artblock.
As you can see in Mucha's themes, the seperate images are all very different but when put together the series is clear, and it's all very much in the style he is commercially famous for which is another element that pulls them all together.

Themes I might enjoy:

Elements (air, fire, water, earth, darkness etc)
The Seven Deadly Sins (Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Lust, Wrath)
Horoscopes (Aries, Taurus, Capricorn, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Pisces, Saggitarius and Aquarius)
Creatures (sea creatures, land creatures, etc)
Mental illnesses/ disorders (depression, anxiety etc)

At the moment these kinds of things are what I'm thinking of because I actually quite like to do darker, more macabre images rather than really happy, shiny things. I could think of lots of different things to do for some of these themes.

Monday 25 November 2013

'The Book of Drawings'

After all of the mini-projects we have completed within this module, the last is 'The Book of Drawings'.
In this we must create a book totally and wholly envisioned by ourselves of 6 pages (excluding any written content if any and the cover pages), and it should be a culmination of all our work so far.

To do this successfully I will have to research hand book-binding and making and I will have to thoroughly contemplate which drawings and sketches I will use to compose the final copy. It will probably help if I create a few quick mock-ups and try a few different kinds of binding to allow me to make the best decision regarding the way the book should be formatted, and I will have to explore the options I have regarding the printing of the pages and the layout and style of any text I may choose to include.

Other factors will be important here too, such as the size of the book (it should be big enough to allow details to be clear) and the material I will use for both the book jacket and the pages. Will it be a paperback or a hardcover book? How will I make that decision? These are just a couple of the questions I will have to consider while undertaking this project.

My first port of call will be researching existing handmade books by other illustrators in the industry and methods of hand making books. After I will consider the content and then the medium and any text I will include.

Tuesday 19 November 2013

michele bedigian

image credit to www.michelebedigian.com

Michele Bedigian is a reportage artist I like because her sketches are done in a variety of mediums from pen to wax and watercolour.

image credit to www.michelebedigian.com

I find the loopy, quick lines interesting as well as the way she uses wax crayons to add colour to her work. I've found that a lot of reportage artists I like add splashes of colour here and there, like Lucinda Roger's work. I find that it adds more life and character to the works as well as helping to portray the scene reported by the artist more accurately.

image credit to www.michelebedigian.com

RESEARCH ONLY- ALL IMAGES CREDIT TO WWW.MICHELEBEDIGIAN.COM

olivier kugler

Olivier Kugler has done many, many reportage illustrations for many different clients, including French reportage magazine 'XII', the Guardian and New York Magazine.

image credit to www.olivierkugler.com

Like a lot of other reportage artists his illustrations are mainly line drawings, however what makes his style unique is that he leaves a lot of spaces between the lines, letting the brain fill in the gaps.

image credit to www.olivierkugler.com

The thing I like the most about his work is his way of drawing faces and expressions- when he draws them with other little views of the mouth or face alongside the 'real' one, it looks almost holographic to me and I think it's a really cool way of drawing a range of expressions.

Joybeans is also good at capturing facial expressions, although in a different style to this work. I like reportage that focuses on people because I myself enjoy drawing people and looking at other artist's ways of drawing expressions can help me develop my own.

image credit to www.olivierkugler.com

RESEARCH ONLY- ALL IMAGE CREDITS TO WWW.OLIVIERKUGLER.COM

Lucinda Rogers

Lucinda Rogers is a reportage artist focusing on city illustrations, with New York and London being her subjects.

image credit to www.lucindarogers.co.uk

Lucinda works with ink, watercolour and fineliner. I like her reportage illustrations because they almost remind me of architectural blueprints- there's a lot of good draughtmanship in her work and this is one of the qualities I especially like of her work.

image credit to www.lucindarogers.co.uk

The above drawings of London I think have captured the essence of the city well, helped by the way she uses flashes of colour in them and different tones of paper.

image credit to www.lucindarogers.co.uk

However, although the London illustrations are good, it's the New York ones that really stand out for me.
Again she has used different tones of paper which accentuate the hustle and bustle of the city that never sleeps. In the taxi illustration the red paper looks awesome with the ink and fineliner marks and stands out to me as an exceptional piece of work. This also relates to my work in that I tried using paper with different washes on them whilst doing my reportage and really liked the result I got.

RESEARCH ONLY- ALL IMAGE CREDITS TO www.lucindarogers.co.uk

missmessymess

Another deviantartist, missmessymess has an eclectic collection of works, ranging from digital illustrations to reportage done in pencil and other works in acrylic on boards.