Artist of the Month!

Been trying to get my card designs up and out. Got myself posted in one of the more well known retail magazines called Progressive Greetings.

Feels and looks good!

Anna D.

Black as the colour

Another lovely brief we had last term was the colour brief!
Pick a colour, find out as much as you can on this colour and make a A3 size poster telling people all the essence you find out about this colour.

I chose black just to prove black is indeed a colour!

There is a few ways to describe black depending on what tools you are using. In a print process you use Knockout black as part of the CMYK ink palette and are subtractive colours. C is Cyan (bluish colour), M is magenta, Y is yellow (of course) and K is Knockout black.

So black is an exhaustive combination of multiple colours of pigment.

RGB colour is an additive combination of all coloured lights.
Meaning black is the absence of all light.

Looking at these two explanations I wanted to take the description and add the symbolism black has in culture. For example, a sheep is just a sheep. But a black sheep is not just a black sheep, it brings a new meaning, a cultural understanding applied to a family relationship.

So without more pondering this is what I made:

Anna D

The Last Flower

This was a less popular project we got in the autumn 2010.
I have been having problems with the final video I did but I think I got it in the end.

The project was to buy one flower and do as much research on it as possible. Study all the changes and record them in paintings, sketches etc. Use as many different mediums as possible.

All the material we produced was going to show as if this was the last flower of its kind. How would we show this to the rest of the world so people that grew up without it would be able to
experience it. Difficult task indeed.

I chose a bright orange gerbera. I love gerberas, they are so bright and happy!The research was hard, sitting drawing the same flower in different angles everyday.

In the end I decided to create an animation of the life and death of my flower. I became a very short one using about 48 images to create a sequence. I also added a soundtrack fitting for the occasion. Flight of the Concords "Au revoir".
Saying goodbye to the last gerbera in the world.

Au Revoir!

Anna D.

Typonatomy

This is one of my favorite projects we got up to last term.

We basically had to study as much as we could find on the anatomy on fonts, sounds dull, which it was.
But then we needed to apply all the info we had collected and make a small booklet teaching kids about what we learned! All the ideas, all the info, all the images and text we got to pick.

My first idea was to illustrate the anatomy parts of the letters as real body parts, because a lot of them have the same names. Some of them did not so why not make them as monsters. Monsters have no regular anatomy like a person. And monsters are way cooler!

So I picked the 15 most fitting names to use on the monsters and then just checked which letters have one or two of these.

After that it was easy, I started with a small idea for an outline for every letter monster.
After that I started painting, using watercolour. I absolutely love drawing characters so it came quite easy to me.

After that came the hard part, choosing text and layout. The brief wanted us to make a A5 size booklet so you can't have much text. I decided to write a very simple text, since its for kids age 5-10(?), and it is quite a advanced subject. I never had to learn anything like this, not even in college.

I also highlighted the anatomy names in the same colour as the monster and drawing arrows to the body part.

The end result you can see here!
And also I'm very proud!

Anna D

My Darling Leaves

Last summer me any fellow classmates got a summer brief. We where supposed to do an art intervention. Sound easy enough, but not if you have stage fright.
I had many ideas but nothing that felt doable. Like for example, dressing up as a giant cactus and offering free hugs. Aww..
My general concern with art is mainly to make people laugh, or just show some sort of positive emotions. Please..
I love David Shrigley(please google)! I have no idea where he gets all his ideas.
But as I felt my other projects where piling up I needed an concept fast! And I got it from David Shrigley's leaf!



Lovely!

Anyway, I started writing random comments which I could apply on a leaf(or 20).
I decided to choose 3 that had linked together. LEAF - I'M NOT A LEAF - ARTPIECE
I collected leaves, dried them and used white oil paint for visibility.



The 10th of January 2011 I went to Soho Square with my leaves well hidden in some waitrose plastic bags. It was busier than I had hoped but I started spreading them out randomly, trying to look where they might be visible.
My LEAF ones where spread with the I'M NOT A LEAF, to match the contrast all over the grass and around the paths. some people started to look strangely at me. Feeling a bit light headed, I pretended to be a tourist taking photos of the cottage located in the middle if the park. I didn't work.



Still people where taking photos on their phone off my leaves. Light success!



There is also a statue of Charles II of England in the middle of the park. I took my ARTPIECE leaves and spread them around and on top of the statue. This worked a lot better! The leaves where blowing around and these couple of blokes actually tried to put them back! After failing a few times, they decided to walk off with a leaf.

After this the groundskeeper started to look at me funny, especially since he was raking leaves that day. So I tried to just sit and watch reactions and photograph people.
After a few crappy photos, my nerves gave up and I retreated.



Please don't make me do this again!
Anna