Letterpresss sss ss s

I'm really tired, I'm not going to lie - this post is one of the last missing in my Development Folder - and at this point, it makes me really sad, that no one's ever even going to read those pathetic scribblings of mine - I guess I'll just copy and paste Coldplay's lyrics and possibly put some scans between the lines.


NEVERMIND.

Letterpress!

It was such a cool workshop. Truly. Starting from the primer, to draw architecture - and I omitted it a bit, by not drawing the architecture of London, but soviet buildings from Poland - and it rewarded me greatly - to the last gliph put into the *technical term missing*.
First of all, I thought I am terrible at drawing architecture - apparently I'm not, I've been even told that I'm GOOD! So, encouraged from the beginning, I had two amazing days spent on putting the puzzle together of the picture I've never seen before.

But I'm tired. I'm going to be very brief and let the pictures speak for themselves:

INSPIRATION:

I just loved the juxtaposition of the building and the letters, screaming almost from every corner of this picture. Also, the neon 'Spolem' is one of my favourite designs EVER.

Katowice! 

Old railway station in Katowice. Doesn't exist anymore - I remember, I used to hate that place, now I'm sad it's been replaced with new, shiny and a bit too modern building.

Neons everywhere!

'Big Fiat!'

House of the Tourist. One of the prints was inspired in particular by this building.

Last three pictures are presenting our own Pyramids, the health resort in Ustron. I found them so ridiculous that I dedicated them three of my prints.

Space thingy. You know, the one in which they show you stars and stuff. Too lazy to open the dictionary. 

Also a space thingy, but here you watch concert. Wembley Arena of Katowice. 

Sadly, this building was 'renovated' and painted in beige and brown (yuck!) some time ago. 

WHY, POLAND, WHY? 

And these are my drawings - as you can see, they lack detail, in my own, overthought opinion, mocking the harmony and reasonability of architecture as it truly is. But I tried to catch their character in those few, scribbly lines - I guess I might have managed that. 

(some swearing)

I really, really like those last three drawings. They were made so quickly. I managed to create prints from two of those designs. 

So, now, the final pieces! Posting also the composition of the gliphs, cause I find them equally interesting as the prints themselves! They make such a lovely relief. I need to crop them out later, to give them enough attention. 

Learning outcomes (sounds so academic): good inspiration leads to good outcomes! Also dedication. It was very enjoyable to be limited by the size of the gliphs and the dimension of the print. It also couldn't be set from the beginning how your print is going to look like - therefore we had lovely aspect of accidentality - one of my favourite triggers in the creative process. 

I want to do it again!

Editorial no 2! With Luke!

Nice and easy, shortly presenting the editorial no 2, following the same steps as I described them in the previous post:

Obviously, I am missing the first step, which was the scribbly, quick roughs - but I am not even sad about that, because they were really, really bad - my bad sense of humour succeeded in around 43 pathetic jokes. The only image, where the joke was so badly presented that it was both missed by me and Luke, succeeded to the stage in which you make roughs of your best roughs.

Therefore I mastered it a bit and send it to Luke:

Well, it might be a bit untrue to say that I MASTERED it, because I do remember spending maybe the total of 12 minutes on this illustration. However, I learned something great - with a little bit more of time and with focus! and dedication! and thought! and appropriate technique! I can turn my ideas into something watchable. And quite strong in the message. 

Something quite opposite happen between the two editorials - first one was better in the initial drawings, rewarded in the poorer final piece and the second one was rubbish at the beginning but defeated itself after all.

But enough blabbering, let me show you the Editorial no 2!

If you have a good eye, you'd notice that this collage is almost entirely made of Freddy Mercury - including the sun being just a part of his belly - it cracks me up every time. I don't know why. There might be something wrong with me. 

Editorial with Luke! Editorial no 1! Editorial, editorial, editorial!

Luke is the Best. If you understand that pun, you're either studying at Camberwell or having a really nice knowledge about contemporary illustration.
Nevertheless, time to present what I achieved for Luke's project called:

E
D
I
T
O
R
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A
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in which we were simply asked to make an editorial illustration for the articles Luke provided us with.
To have any understanding about my work, you need to know the articles, but no way I am going to post them here, so:
- article no 1 in short was about property hoarders, leaving empty buildings unused and homelessness.
- article no 2 was general moaning of a fan of surfing who's scared that surfing became too popular and too cool and he will have to suffer from overcrowding of the beaches even more than he is now

The process of making those illustrations was very enjoyable, quick and efficient, something what we, migrant student workers with poor management skills really like!
Simple steps: read the article, grasp the meaning, find the keywords - make roughs, lots of it, try to draw down your ideas, visual sum ups of the article - send the roughs of your best roughs (blah!) to Luke, await feedback - make your amazing, final and shiny editorial illustration!

I do not have all of the steps to show you - scanning is between refilling the ketchup bottles and not being able to use self service checkouts at Tesco in my top 10 least favourite things to do.

However, here we go!

This post is dedicated to the Editorial no 1, as I need to nicely split that for my disgusting Development Folder.

So, these were based on my first, very scribbly roughs - I made like 15 really bad sketches, full of clichés - trying to make my illustrations funny or smart - well, didn't really happen. And then I found out that simpler, but boldly presented ideas stand out much more than jokes of Eastern European moron, who's not yet having enough understanding of the beautiful English language to try to be funny. 

Luke's liked the last one best (ha-ha) - saying, it had the strongest message. Therefore, I made this - basically repeating my idea with more paper and more glue and generally more fuss. 

I enjoyed making it. I think there is some great visual chunks in it. I fell in love with the collage. Nevertheless, it does not change the fact, that the first initial illustration is just stronger and probably better. 

There is a lesson in it - I need to know, when to stop or when I am overthinking a task. 

Off to a Editorial no 2! 

Another cool workshop with Jay!

Short post this time.


So, like I promised, it's time to present another cool workshop with Jay - and guess who hasn't done any pictures? Yes, me!
But I have my final outcome. Let thereupon explain at least how I've achieved this.


I would basically call this workshop an advanced potato stamp printing or a relief printing for poor but creative. We were supposed to bring a sponge, a knife, a black acrylic and some good paper - steps were simple. Choose an emblem, representing the place you've chosen for People&Places project, carve it out of the sponge, smear the sponge with the paint, press on the paper and voila! Your print is ready.

Choosing an emblem was quite hard, especially that Jay and Geoff said from the beginning - FOR ALL OF THOSE WHO HAVE CHOSEN A COFFEE SHOP - YOU ARE BANNED FROM DRAWING A COFFEE CUP.
(and guess who's been half way through their first sketch of a coffee cup...)

So, as you might have possibly (pft!) noticed, the spoons in Brooks&Gao had emblems anyway - and I wanted to depict them!
As you'll see soon, I might have not managed to communicate that clearly, as the prints are quite abstract. I remember I was very grumpy that day - carving a sponge was a nightmare, it did not want to print properly and I needed help from Geoff (felt like an idiot or a kid who's potato was rubbish) - but in the end (it doesn't even matter... No, that's Linkin Park's song!) I managed to finish with some nicely looking abstract figures.
Now I quite like them!

Here you have some range of good prints and bad prints - I kind of like the quality of both, especially juxtaposed together.

Anxiety.

Yo!
It's time for the final piece of the Fact:Film:Poem project with George, which I enjoyed very much.

So, like I said before - for my FACT I've chosen anxiety, generally as a term. Sarcastically speaking: the illness of tumblr people. Honestly speaking: a nightmare for those, who suffer from it.
Why?
I've read once a quote from a writer who's name I obviously forgot that you are only able to truly write about what you know, what you experienced - otherwise what you write can't be good, and doesn't sound truthful and authentic.
I learned about anxiety myself in a quite cruel way - one day it's just crawled up to me, squeezed my heart with its cold, wet palms and poisoned my life. I don't know why I decided to make my movie about something as intimate as my mental health. I am a shy motherfucker and I usually can't even freely talk to people I don't know for less than a year, but somewhere in my head the idea of showing the room full of students how I feel when I am in anxiety abyss seemed legit and I did it.


I recorded most of my movie with my stupid iPod, squeezing some of Anton Corbijn's video clip for Strangelove by Depeche Mode between the scenes or on the top of my footage. I recorded myself because it would be a dreadful experience to ask someone to pose for me.
I deleted all of the colours, I made it look grainy and coarse. The quality of iPod's camera is B.A.D., but I pushed the bar with the contrast to its limit, because I wanted to show that it was my conscious choice to make it look rough, not Apple's mistake.
Through my face, my hands, my bad habit of smoking, the lack of light in an empty room, the loneliness and the grim music of Gesaffelstein I tried to make people feel anxious for a bit, just like I do sometimes.
Did I manage it? People went silent after screening. They said it was disturbing. And they felt unease.

So! I have two versions of my movie - the one I showed at the official screening at the end of the project, and the one I made after the feedback I got from George and my lovely fellow students. You can't see the difference until the last 40 seconds of the second version - I just made it longer, as I was said the first one felt too short, unfinished, I got rid of the written information and used some more of the found images.

SO, UNFORTUNATELY BLOGSPOT'S AN ASS AND DOESN'T LET ME POST MY MOVIES.

I'll just provide you with links then - but it's not as cool as just having a player pinned to your post. 

FIRST EDIT

SECOND EDIT

*sigh*

I will therefore throw some screen shots at you:

Moodboard for George's project: Fact:Film:Poem.

Our next project was called:


FACT:
FILM:
P
O
E
M

And it was much different from what we've been so far asked to do - as we had to make a movie of a length between 20 seconds and 2 minutes - doesn't sound much like illustration, but I've learned a lot - completely new way of creating, as I've never touched Adobe Premier before, nor I've had to consider dimensions such a pace or time - it's not what you usually create your illustrations with.
The topic was meant to be chosen by us - and it had to be a FACT, something existing in our World, something we want to study and explain in a kinematic etude.

I've chosen anxiety. But I'll speak about that in a different post.



On our first meeting with George we were asked to bring images, sounds and movie clips, which we find inspiring and we'll possibly want to use in our movies and create a MOODBOARD out of them.

I liked this task. I am a narcissistic piece of... flesh, and I just adore presenting my own favourite visual chunks. I am also a fan of sticking pictures on the wall - and I like collage - all of that combined together made me create a composition on our studio wall, quite quickly arranged, driven more by the intuition than a conscious choice of hand.
For first couple of minutes, when I've looked around and saw people being ready long time before me, not fussing around like I did, but just putting their couple of A4 printed sheets on the wall, I felt like a weirdo (and it's quite hard to feel like that in an ART school).
Like I said - I like collage. I like outlining pictures, scraping them out of background, separating hand, eyes or cutting faces in half - and I just did it with my moodboard as well.

It's mostly composed of Anton Corbijn's photography (including my all time hottest babe Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode), and it also has my favourite Man Ray's photography, Master Marcel Duchamp's portrait, Witkacy's self-portrait, Eugene Delacroix's amazing painting of an orphan, and well, me. 

I knew, that all of those pictures are having this peculiar type of quality, the roughness and the boldness I want to show in my movie as well - did I manage to do that? I think yes, to some degree. Let's see.