My Life With Art, A Reflective Blog

Hello readers. It's nearly the end of August, which means it's under a month before I move into my flat & prepare for my second year of Uni. I assume that any of my classmates who are reading this are wondering how my summer project is going, & if you must know, I have successfully managed to do everything possible to avoid making any sufficient progress on it. So really, not done a lot, & now starting to slightly panic as my schedule is becoming full of work & final catch-ups with friends before heading back, leaving little time for me to actually do anything. Even writing this blog is keeping me from continuing with my research. However, I do know & can again assume that there are others out there that have done as little as I have, which does make me feel slightly better, but still, it's not good.

Summer project as of yesterday. As you can see, no imagery & not a lot of book filled.

Anyways, enough of that, after thinking of what I could actually blog about this evening, I thought it would be interesting to share with you all a history of my life with art. Why? Well, apart from the obvious answer of "why not", I think it would be a good idea to reflect on my work, styles & influences over the years & see how I've progressed & how I came to the decision to pursue a career in graphic design & my thoughts & feelings on that now. (Plus this would make an excellent research tool if I ever do become a famous graphic designer. Bookmark it for your future children.)

So, without further ado, let me begin:

Like most children, I was introduced to art & creativity at an early age. I used to do the odd scribbles here & there, which some pretentious twat out there would probably call a masterpiece, & the usual drawings of family etc. that children do. One thing I can recall doing were my stickmen scenes which I did when I was about 5- each scene featured a place on a road with stickmen going about their business on it, & all the roads joined together to create a city. My parents thought this was pretty impressive, & it's a pity there are no photos of them as I'd share one. I also used to muck around on MS Paint, doing the typical shape fill drawings, as well as drawing these brown tunnels with green dots in them which I called 'Greenies Of The Underworld'. Any saves I did of these are lost to a dead computer, unfortunately.

Moving swiftly on from my childhood to my adolescence, which is where the story really begins. I've always enjoyed drawing, whether it be sitting down properly to do so or doodling, & my drawings are how I first started to get into art. That, & my love of Harry Potter, which led me to looking at numerous pieces of fan art in my early teenage years, which is what inspired my own drawings. I found it interesting to see how other people pictured things & illustrated scenes & characters. I especially liked drawings of characters & people were my most prominent subject.

Very old illustrations, must have been around 13 when I did these?

I used to draw a lot when I stayed at my Nan & Grandad's house. They'd be watching TV & I'd sit at the dining table drawing away. This is where my fan art influence comes in- I used to illustrate my own original characters from ideas for novels I had. In fact, a drawing that I felt, at the time, was particularly good was a scene I illustrated from a novel I'd written (but since deleted). Here it is, both traditional & digitally done:

Just filled in the outline in the digital version & altered the brightness so it looked like night time. Again, must've been about 13 when this was done.

That's another thing fan art got me into- digital art. I admired things painted digitally, & after doing very well in my SAT tests in year 9, I was treated to my first graphics tablet. This enabled me to digitalise some of my drawings, much like the one above, as well as create entirely digital pieces. Unfortunately, I didn't know Photoshop overly well at the time, nor was I great with other such things such as proportion or shading, so my pieces were flat & terrible looking. I also hadn't mastered the pen tool at this point, so my line art was pretty shoddy.

I was an alt kid in my teens, this came out in some of my character designs. I'm sure this is meant to be a guy.

Something I did to illustrate my tech homework. I have only one response looking back- wtf?! This was entirely drawn digitally.

Septimus Heap fan art, all done digitally.

Weasley Twins done in the chibi style, drawn traditionally, coloured digitally.

Another thing I started doing around this point in my life were stickmen animations. I was into the whole making videos thing & used to go on YouTube a lot & was, at one point, interested in going into animation (I'll elaborate more later on), & often found myself watching silly stickmen animations made with a programme called Pivot. I downloaded this & had a go myself, & one day whilst off sick from school, I compiled a series of GIFs made using Pivot to create my own "Random Stickman Movie", shown below. I also went on to create two more, although these weren't properly 'random', but did show an improvement in my animating.

The original, one of the few things remaining on my old YouTube page. Just looked & this was made back in 2007, so I was 12 when I made this, which is why you should excuse some of the more gross things in this along with my stupid YouTube username.

Back to the illustration side of things. Thankfully, I eventually mastered the pen tool, so my line art was a lot smoother. I also improved my people drawing skills, taking more note of proportions etc. & practicing. I also started to include shading, albeit not the best shading at the time, but it was better than what it was.

This piece is called 'How To Serve Man' & is inspired by the song by Creature Feature. I had an idea for a short story based on this song where a chef's inner demon starts taunting him to eat his lover using the lyrics of this song. This illustrates that. I think I was about 14/15 when I did this?

Did my own single cover design for this song, was inspired by existing pictograms. Drawn by hand & then gone over digitally using the pen tool. Was 16 when I did this.

As well as illustrating & animating, I also got into photo-manipulation. My love of fan art led me onto deviantArt, & on here I discovered photography & photo-manipulation, which I came to admire as much as illustration. I had a very old version of Photoshop on my desktop & taught myself how to use it using tutorials on the internet. I really liked edits of eyes, or things where only one colour was visible. It was this hobby that actually landed me to learning of the course I eventually picked at college, although it was chosen for more reasons than this.

A very early edit of my eye, making it look like that of a vampaneze. If you've read The Saga of Darren Shan/Cirque Du Freak series, you'll know what I'm on about.

One of my first people edits where I was messing around & exploring things. It's of my sister, who was dressed for Halloween in the original photo. My Mum hates this edit as my sister looks evil.

'Industrial Blue'
A rather prominent one of mine. Left is the original piece, where I edited my eye & added a metal texture to it & also coloured it blue. My Dad loved it so much he got it put on a canvas, shown right. I was 15 when I created this.

My first composite photo manip, made using stock images from deviantArt. Inspired by the Breaking Benjamin song 'Firefly' & based on the following lyric-
"Take me hand, we'll be off & then, we'll come back again, to a different land,"
I was 15 when I did this.

I was about 16 when I did this manip, for a deviantArt contest based on Fantasy vs Reality, where the 'real' me is magic & the 'fantasy' me is studying as I'd do in real life.

This is where I introduce my education in art & design, as well as my early career thoughts. Due to my love of The Sims & the fact I used to play on my PS2 quite a bit when I was younger, one of my early ideas as a career was games design, which later changed to going into the animation industry. Prior to my GCSE years, I did do a short course in Art in year 9, which I gained an E in due to lack of annotation. I did, however, create one of my favourite illustrations to date, which is a drawing I did from reference of Kaoru Hitachiin from Ouran.

Did as part of a Pop Art module, I think it was a response to Lichenstein's cartoon drawings so I drew this from anime.

Upon starting my GCSEs in year 10, I chose two creative options. Firstly, I took a GCSE in Graphic Design, which seemed a good option as in the syllabus it said it focussed on character design, which I felt would be good for a career in animation. This was never something we focussed on, however, I did start to learn about things which later became relevant, such as typography, research, & the actual point of Graphic Design. I got to utilise & improve upon my Photoshop skills during this subject & it's where I discovered the joy & satisfaction of designing things.

Photoshopping iPods to make it look like a Bluetooth product.

Blonde Billie Joe Armstrong in the style of Julian Opie

Pretty self explanatory.

My final piece for my Graphics exam, based on the mashup 'Boulevard of Broken Songs' (a mix of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Wonderwall plus another couple of songs).

I also took a Level 2 Diploma in Creative & Media, a qualification which I believe has now been scrapped by the government, but earned myself & my fellow 'Dippy Kids' the equivalent of 7 A*-C GCSEs. I chose this again because of my aspiration to go into animation, & when first advertised this was an aspect of the course that was mentioned, although not done as much as I would have liked. My first project that I did was an animation, where me & a friend did a lego stop-motion based on the story of Snow White.

This is the video, with scenes edited by the both of us. This ended up not being marked, how annoying.

My next project involved creating an image to represent the idea of belonging in relation to the house system that my Diploma's host school was going to introduce. For this I created a photographic piece that I edited to involve the house colours. As I was still in my kind of alt-kid phase at the time, I decided to base my piece on subcultures & them being different but united. This piece was part of the SHIFT exhibition at the Aspex Gallery (plus, it was used on the poster!)

Subcultures L-R- Goth, Chav, Indie, Emo.
Shadows & lighting are photoshopped. The shadows are also meant to represent unity & how we are "all the same".

My Diploma also led me to doing some graphic design work, the first of which was for a side project we had called 'Space To Create'. First of all, I designed the logo for the project, & then a poster & flyers for a series of workshops we ran over the summer holiday. Looking back, the logo was alright, admittedly this was done before I'd mastered the pen tool, hence the poor outline, but it represented the project. The posters & flyers, well, let's just say a 15 year old me was a Comic Sans criminal. In fact, certain graphic design principles such as white space, gradient usage & typeface choice hadn't really entered my pool of knowledge at that point, which led to something which I can now say looks horrendous, although at the time I'll admit, I was impressed.

The logo. The project incorporate music, art & drama, hence the themes. And damn that 'to' typeface was a bad choice...

At the time, when I knew nothing really about graphic design. Now I have knowledge, I can honestly say this is a crime against graphic design. In fact, this is the design equivalent of terrible teenage fashion choices...

The Diploma was also where I did my first programme design, which was for a charity event we held for Comic Relief. By this point, I'd come to the conclusion that I wanted to be a graphic designer, which was why I opted to design the programmes, a task & outcome I was very pleased with! Ok, they're not perfect as I had yet to learn about grid systems, but at the time, they were pretty good. Sold well too!

The logo design wasn't mine, but I did the background & typeface choice for the programme. Was pretty pleased with these. On top are design examples, on the bottom is a photo of some of them. I was 16 when I designed these.

I also took Media GCSE in year 11, which, apart from almost changing my aspiration to going into media, allowed me to design things such as a magazine cover & movie poster.

A movie poster I designed, inspired by the Harry Potter series & based on an idea for a novel I had.

Then came college & onto the course I mentioned earlier. As at the time I was quite adamant that I wanted to be a graphic designer & wanted to focus all my attention to that, I chose to do a BTEC Extended Diploma in Graphic Design. In the first year, this was also combined heavily with photography, which allowed me to explore & learn about this further, which was fun. In my younger years I'd taken a liking to photos with a shallow depth of field, although at that point had no idea what they were. Here I got to learn about it properly, as well as things like ISO, shutter speed & high & low key photography.

L-R- Top- Low depth of field & slow shutter speed. Bottom- Low key image & high key image.

Graphic design in the first year of college was about exploring & learning new skills & research. I got to learn important principles of graphic design, such as composition, colour & contrast, white space & scale. It was very good for exploring creativity, we were constantly encouraged to explore our skills, both with digital & traditional media. My first set of outcomes were based on research into Music & Identity, looking at characters in songs, as I've always been inspired by music & the imagery it creates in your mind. Project two was creating a poster, leaflet & flyer for a charity.

'Can't You See How They Get Rid Of You?'
Inspired by the song '21st Century Slave' by Dope Stars Inc.

'Hypnotized By Jane'
Inspired by the song of the same name by Cinema Bizarre

'The Children Of The Revolution'Inspired by the song of the same name by Marc Bolan & T.Rex

Charity Campaign poster focussing on blindness. My sister modelled for me here, this was inspired by another poster I saw for muscular dystrophy.

Also in my first year, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator & InDesign. I'd wanted to learn how to use Illustrator for ages as I'd been into vector graphics for a while, but only done vexel work in Photoshop. I was really pleased when I created by first piece of vector art, was great seeing the smooth edges. It was great to finally learn InDesign more too- was introduced to it without any guidance during my Diploma & it looked pretty confusing.

First vector piece, text was actual newspaper cut out traced using the pen tool in Illustrator, outer edges were image traced.

Text over the original text on the original image. This was one of my favourite first year outcomes.

I know this isn't vector, but I don't think I could leave first year of college without giving this a mention. This is my favourite photo manip to date, based on the idea of the 2012 apocalypse.
"Repent! Repent!"

Then onto second year, where things got great. Here is where I created some of my best pieces to date, which include my J.K. Rowling Google Doodle, Flash Back Magazine, my typographic conundrums, my Golden Gate Bridge Infographic & my all-time favourite, my New York Guide. These projects also helped me to improve my skills with InDesign & Illustrator as well as more important graphics skills, like grid systems, typography & colour theory.

Examples from 'Flash Back' magazine, which looked back at the work done in my first year of college.

Golden Gate infographic, wish I had the printed version of this. It's doulbe A1 landscape. 

Done as a mini-project, had to pick an event I do a Google Doodle for it, so I chose J.K. Rowling's birthday, referencing both Harry Potter & The Casual Vacancy.

Typographic conundrum- 'Smile Like A Cheshire Cat'

Cover & favourite spreads from my guide. It also has pull-out & fold out elements. This is my best design to date!

It was during my college years that I did some design for a theatre company I was part of. As I was too busy to rehearse & act, I designed two of their programme, one for the the panto & one for their summer production of Henry V. 

Wizard of Oz Panto programme, made prior to knowledge on grid systems. Used the Emerald City & Yellow Brick Road as inspiration for this design.

Background design for Henry V programme & part of the programme design underneath.

My work for Henry V actually brought about another rather prominent design of mine, which some of you out there may have seen before. Whilst taking notes, I doodled a little skull & crossbones with a crown, which I photographed & later vectorised using the image trace tool. This became my 'The King Is Dead' design, which I had put onto a couple of vests for myself & is now available to buy on my Redbubble.

L-R- Original, vector in black, vector in white.

Design on vests.

Speaking of doodles, last summer, when it was quiet at my workplace, I doodled quite a bit & started to make a collection of my pieces, which again, like in my younger years, feature characters from ideas for novels I've had. 

The first lot I kept & stuck in- has since become a collection!

Now onto the final chapter so far- University. Now, when first advertised, my Uni seemed exciting & the course looked great. Turns out, not so much, but I will say there were some things I made that I was pleased with. In semester one, we explored (& I use that term pretty loosely) the four pathways of graphic arts- Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography & Motion Graphics. First topic was a research brief, which I did what I feel is a pretty good illustration for. Then did a zine for graphic design which was based on said research. Mine was about government control & censorship so my zine ended up being the diary of someone living in a dystopian future. The illustration brief was pretty much do fan art for a shitty short story chosen by the lecturer I shall refer to as DC (if you can decipher that then kudos to you, have a cyber high five). Photography was fun & I explored RAW photos, something I hadn't done before. Then in motion graphics we worked in groups to produce an animation based on a chosen given track.

Censored man. I'm pretty pleased with this illustration.

Some spreads from my zine, includes fictional diary entries, illustrations & government documents.

Illustration brief outcome, this was my favourite of the three I did. Is meant to literally represent the metaphor of the guy's inner structures falling away.

4 out of 15 photography outcomes. We were given title to respond to, these are (L-R)- 'Superstition', 'The Secret', 'Tracking' & 'Untitled'.

Then onto semester 2, where I actually specialised in graphic design. First two projects were typography. Number 1 was looking at typefaces & we had to create posters for two we were given, then we had to typographically represent a podcast. Didn't like either of these briefs. Then we had an infographics brief- yay! This I was actually pleased with as I did an infographic based on my hair colours through the years. This was a more technical infographic to the one I had done previously, which was fun, & I really like this outcome. Finally came the book project, where we had to work in groups to create books. Our group's one ended up being a pisstake of something this guy called Joachim Schmid did, & my section showed photos of 34 toilets. Had some deeper meaning behind it but really it was a load of bullshit.

Typeface posters. Not really that exciting. The OCR-A one has binary on it as it was built to be read by computers as well as humans but humans found it more difficult to read. The binary actually translates into information on the typeface. I actually quite like the abstract Bell Gothic design.

Infographic on my hair colours through the years. Had fun doing this, also led to the most vain looking page I've ever put in a sketchbook.

I didn't really learn a lot in Uni, which was pretty disappointing. Software was hardly touched upon & very few skills were learnt. The studio workshops, which were advertised as "fun" & "exciting", were shit, for want of a better phrase. All of this, plus demotivating lecturers & realising that this is possibly a waste of money, has left me in a slump. I've gone from being really sure of wanting to being a graphic designer, to not so sure. Do I continue Uni, or do I quit, get a stable job & do it on the side?

For now, I've decided to stay & see if the second year is any better. It looks it, but I keep my fingers crossed & I'm sure I'll update on here either way.

Although I haven't done a lot with my summer project, I have done things to stay creative, the first of which you've probably read about here. Since then I've done more, so here's a couple more things I've done over the summer:

Jesus of Suburbia/St Jimmy painting, done with pencil, watercolours & ink.

Screenshot of part of an illustration I did for my Uni's magazine. Am so pleased with those hands. I'll show the full illustration once it's published.

Plus some other bits & pieces from the past year or so:

Inspired by the song 'Last Man On The Moon' by SR-71.

Made birthday cards for my cats.

Another doodle from work. Really like this, unfortunately the original is lost somewhere...

Pieces from my little doodle book. L-R- Top- Badly drawn Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, Billie Joe Armstrong (American Idiot era). Bottom- Image inspired by the song 'Strachan' by The Hitchers & a random boy.

A collection of work doodles, includes Robot Boy & badly drawn Simon Monroe.

More doodles based on characters from a novel idea I have.

And that's it to the present day. I do have things I want to do for my summer project & things I want to explore. Curse this summer project for being heavily research based!

I hope you've enjoyed tonight's post, any questions, feel free to ask!

Thank you for reading! :)