Winter inspiration

Here are a few pictures that I took as I was walking through Kelsey Park to get some inspiration for my winter prints. 

autumn

After the start of Autumn and the change in the weather I started on a new piece inspired by the poppy and September/October time in general. I've been trying to channel the spirits of John Nash, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravillious: the big names in the linocut game. I'm totally in love with these pieces

Post Design Festival

Today I was in Copenhagen attending the great Post Design Festival,  run by Jody Barton and with some great talks, panels and workshops. Unfortunately I couldn't attend all the events but the ones I could get to were really funny, insightful and had everyone really excited about design and illustration. The talks by Lawrence Zeegan, Paul Davis and David Foldvari were especially good. 

I also got to explore the David Samling museum while I was there and had a great time looking through the very extensive Islamic art show: Shahama. it was full of textiles, carved buildings, ceramics, painted stories, medical instruments, painted ancient Koran pages and highly decorated coffins. I could have spent days in there. I also came across these beautiful paintings by Vilhelm Hammershoi, the name sounds familiar but I don't think I have ever seen anything by his before. His capture of light through corridors and rooms were absolutely captivating.

AOI private view

Had a great time moseying around the AOI World Illustration Awards tonight, I thought there was some exceptional work from David Foldvari, Diego Becas Villegas and Jimin Kim.  I very much recommend going.

Robert Searle

Having a look at Searle's Refugee sketches, hoping some of it will teach me not to over work things .

Martin Groch

Amazing! this is who I wanna be when I grow up... minus the Nobrow references. Martin Groch's blog.

Paul Smith Designs

These are some interesting conceptual designs from Paul Smith for the film, I'm not overly impressed by the unclear concepts of some of these pieces but they look nice, especially the typography piece with the red over grey text. Overlaying text is something I have been thinking about and could look really interesting, however it may look a little fussy if I couple it with my paintings/drawings. decisions decisions.

Gert & Uwe Tobias

Hey havent posted in a while I've been getting on with some linocuts, but once I've printed them prepare for some major blogging. Anyway I saw this and just had to post it. These etchings are delicious!

Made by the Romanian- born German Twins Gert and Uwe Tobias, more commonly known for their woodcuts (recently shown at the Saatchi Gallery). These Echings have been made in collaboration with  Jacob Samual for the MoMA Print/Out exhibition. "Samuel taught them the basics of etching and helped them translate and adapt motifs from popular culture, Eastern European folk art, and, in particular, reproductions of nineteenth-century drawings by schizophrenic patients."

 I'm absolutely blown away by their darkly abstract figures, their so morbidly fascinating I can't look away. It's interesting that most of the figures are smiling with gaping round eyes that communicate very little. The lovely aquatint textures give these etchings the feeling that these are something impulsive and unplanned, as well a lot of richness and interesting depth. Love it.

Little White Lies brief

I plan on taking on the 'little white lies brief' in D&AD, just to try and make something interesting out of a simplistic portrait for a film. there have been some interesting covers for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy already but not much art work done for the recent film. Matt Taylor did these six covers for John Le Carre's books.

Eda Akaltun has also made this illustration for the BAFTA award programme

really nice.

My chinese family shrine in Hujian

When my chinese family had their reunion in Xiamen this year, we visited the house where my grandparents raised the family. In this house there were 4 closed rooms on each corner of the quad, an entire family lived in each room. The big open room housed the family shrine, before which, everyone prayed for past family members by burning prayer sheets (sometimes with the family member's name on), so that they may be released into the afterlife.

Chinese shrine mood board

Here is a look at images for potential ideas in the first project in third year. My Project will be about my chinese family and trying to make sense of a history in different cultures. A very important experience for me when revisiting china was honoring our ancestors memory in font of a shine by burning incense and pray sheets, so I would like to incorporate those customs somewhere in my project.

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