MONIKER ART FAIR.

I was lucky enough to stumble across the Monkiker Art Fair whilst wondering through the streets of wonderful Shoreditch having just left the Nowbrow gallery last weekend. Probably a bad thing as I left wanting to purchase most of the prints on show, all being sold for a fare few pennies indeed. Set in an old Victorian warehouse (the Village Underground) the building alone was pretty amazing.  

                             

Having stopped to watch some graffiti artists (one half of Dabs Myla) make their mark on the side of what looked like an old tube station I noticed a crowd of people walking through a shady looking entrance so I thought I’d follow. At first I thought I’d walked into a private show but then was approached bya women with a programme. Turned out it was the Moniker At Fair, an exhibition first debuting last year that celebrates and promotes the international scope of street art and more. It differed from most shows I’ve seen including both gallery style exhibits and signature project spaces to suit all tastes. I thought it was great to see what I class as more contemporary, less mainstreamy art in an exhibition as there were lots of designers, artists and illustrators displaying their work that I’ve only ever seen in magazines or online. Very cool. 

 

 The fair showed off many international as well as UK based artists including Shepard Fairey, Dabs Myla, Nate Frizzell, D*Face, BLDG with exhibitors such as Scream, The Garage and Stolen Space. All worth looking at.The Dabs Myla space really jumped out to me as being one of the strongest pieces and seemed to engulf the viewer into their world of fun (pictured above). I was reading about the duo in this months Juxtapoz and seeing their work in the flesh really represented how they came across in interview.

Having seen so many alternative artists doing so well its definitely given me a well needed push to get into gear with my own practise. I think I'd always stereotyped that it was only the fine artists that made a living off their work but this group of work has told me otherwise.

 

NOBROW.

Last weekend it was time for one of my trips down to the “big smoke”, which seems to becoming more and more frequent (something I could get used to). I had a digital surf of the interweb to see what treats London had in store for me and stumbled across that Nobrow had a Ben Newman exhibition on beneath the shop. I’ve been a big fan of the Nobrow team for a good while and spoke to John Boam last year concerning my PDP aspect of the uni course so I thought it would only be polite to have a look. And I’m glad I did, even though it was MUCH smaller then I anticipated.

The upstairs section of Nobrow consists of a small shop crammed with zines, Prints, books, plush toys, stickers, tea towels! (Pretty much anything else you can think of that you can stick a print on). I think I was in the shop for a good hour or so browsing book after book when I know it was time to go downstairs when the friendly staff were looking at me as if to say, “Are you going to buy anything?”

The first thing that smacks you in the face you when you go downstairs is the amazing smell of screen-printing ink which I can’t get enough off. I honestly thought the gallery was going to be on a much larger scale but the quaint size of it gives a real feel for the work on show. MASKS is Ben Newman’s solo exhibition consisting of a set of brightly coloured prints as well as wooden mask interpretations. The exhibition is based around how Newman has looked at ceremonial masks in various countries and combined them with his interests in geometric shapes, folklore, strange creatures and colour theory. Newman (with the help of his father Colin) made the three-dimensional masks as a response to the prints and compliment each other really well.

Its not often you seen an artist experiment with dimensions out of their comfort zone but Newman has definitely hit the nail on the head here as they looked amazing.  The prints alone would have worked well as they are a typical example of how Newman manages to fuse bold shapes and bright colours to create his weird and wonderful creatures BUT along side the masks they really came to life. The masks oozed personality and charm, bringing the exhibition to life.

 Having not been to the Nobrow shop/gallery before I can confidently say I’ll definitely be making another visit next time I’m down.  They always seem to have something pretty cool going on so check out the website for events and publications.

Apologies for the bad phone photos.

GRAPHIC GURU EVENT.

Yesterday afternoon the first (I think there’s more to come) Graphic Guru’s even took place in college, where tutors had selected a small number illustrators that had graduated from Stockport that are now working successfully in the professional trade of illustration. This talented bunch of people consisted of Chris Madden, Ben Jones, Liam Bardsley, Natalie Wood, Rose Lloyd and Pete Adlington. They’d been asked to talk to the third years to open our eyes a bit to what we had to come and share their tales of experiences in the real world working with clients and live briefs. If you haven't already seen their work, have a jump over to their sites as they're all amazing at what they do!

It was a really good experience to be able to go around and casually chat to each of them about what they were currently working on, previous work, what they were interested in and their inspirations and motivations. We didn’t really have massive amounts of time but I still gained some good tips when dealing with clients through their own personal experiences with studio visits and art directors. It was nice to hear it face to face from them and that sometimes it doesn’t always run the smoothest but you learn from the little mistakes and build up more confidence as time progresses (not too much though).

After working our way around each of the illustrators we were then separated into smaller groups and assigned to one “Graphic Guru”. I was incredibly lucky to be placed under the watchful eye of Chris Madden, which I’m massively happy about. As well as being  in reality, really talented he’s a genuinely nice, down to earth person that I’ve met a few times before and be full of quality advice along with …. Criticism. The idea of Chris’ role is to act as a sort of mentor over the next coming months that we’re able to contact in relation to our work, I shall try to my hardest not to pester.

I’m really looking forward to the remaining time in third year and feel that with the confidence of having a Guru to aid my pleas it should hopefully work out just nice.

I WISH I'D DONE THIS.

PDP (Professional Development Planning) is a aspect of the course where I'm required to complete several tasks about other artists and prep for getting a job via the use of my blog. So far I've done all my contact reports and a piece titled "Thing's That I Have Learned". I Wish I'd Done This, is a short piece of writing about an image I've seen that makes me wish I'd made it. Pretty self explanatory really.

 

There's a lot of work out there at the moment that makes me think I really need to pull my finger out if this is the sort of competition I'm going to be up against soon. Even more then that this piece in particular makes me think I really wish I'd made that. The sort of illustrations that usually grab my attention (for the time being) are digital pieces made up of different textures, hand made brushes and subtle colour schemes that make me question myself as to how they've been made. To be a bit different I decided to write about a painting.

 Thoughts of the Future was the first piece I'd seen by Lindsey Carr that made me wish I'd done it but to be honest I wish I'd done almost all of her pieces. Carr paints using incredible skill that captures detail effortlessly in a way that also gives character and personality to the animals she creates in her almost all of her paintings.

 I became fascinated by this piece mainly because of the huge attention to detail. One of the main things that stand out are the hairs on the monkeys head as well as the folds and stitches on the garment that make it look so realistic. I'm a huge fan of photo-realistic art but only if its done in a way that a camera couldn't.  The reason I like this painting so much is because it does exactly that, even though its not quite photo-realistic. The style of the piece reminds of me of old Victorian natural history books that have incredibly well illustrated images of various plants, animals and birds. The blank expression on the primate’s face gives the impression of death and taxidermy. With the flowers and foliage being arranged in such a peculiar way almost growing out of the head I could picture something like this to feature in a cabinet of a museum, in a glass jar filled with formaldehyde.

 When it comes to my work I tend to avoid working in a realistic way, as I don’t feel confident enough to achieve the standard I want. Instead I simply the things I draw especially figures by using harsh/straight shapes and lines through digital media. However when seeing work like this I’m always inspired to push the degree of detail in my work further and try to achieve a more realistic look.

 When looking at the piece it’s made me come to realise that lighting pays a huge part in making an image successful. Getting the balance of light and dark right can give the impression of depth, create texture as well ad different surfaces and make objects look three-dimensional. It helps that Carr has the ability to paint realistically but with the added bonus of using tones so well she achieves a quality that looks like you could reach out and touch it especially as I mentioned before the folds in the cloth. I’ve taken this on board when making my latest illustrations for the 8x8 brief where my main focus was to play with lighting to create depth to my piece. Even though I work purely digital I think its important to look at other methods of working and try to learn from them so I can use similar techniques in my work.  

 One of my classmates showed me the work of Lindsey Carr about a week ago but if I had discovered her before now I would have definitely liked to email her as part of my contact reports. There isn’t too much info on the web about Carr other then she’s a painter and occasional toy maker that lives on the south west coast of Scotland. I think after building up confidence through contacting other artists over the past few months I’m going to get in touch with Carr as I want to know much more about what inspires her and why she paints the subject matter she chose’s.

There's definitely a lot to learn from a piece like this and it's really inspired me to paint more in my spare time. The only way to get better at it is to practice and its evident that Carr has had a lot of experience.

ONE.TWO.THREE

Below are three pieces of advice I've been given/heard over the past year that I feel has helped and inspired me in my work from various faces around the world.

ONE.

 "Use the internet to your advantage" Kevin Dart

After hearing this from Dart it made me reflect on if I was using the internet for its full potential. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't ha.  It's opened my eyes to the amount of opportunities there are on the web to promote yourself and collaborate with other fellow artists through the means of social networks as well as getting in touch with design companies/agencies/publications. I think I ignore some sites like YouTube/Facebook/Blogger in the sense that I don't always use them to their full potential and need to realise how much I could benefit from then. In the modern age we live in I think it's important to take advantage of every possibility opening and I sometimes forget this and distracted.  Even though it sounds obvious, I'd also pretty much overlooked the fact that it's so easy to communicate with other people around the world so effortlessly. I've started to take this advice on board over the last few months by making myself a CargoCollective (online portfolio) and a Twitter account. I'm not the biggest "tweeter" in the world but I'm finding it dead useful for keeping in the know with whats happening in the art industry, upcoming exhibitions and things like limited edition art prints/underground competitions etc.

TWO.

"Do not seek praise. Seek criticism" Paul Arden

 I bought Paul Arden's "It's not how good you are, It's how good you want to be" sometime last year and it's been nothing but help in how I work. It's a book on how to succeed in life and includes an insight to the world of advertising with facts and pearls of wonderful wisdom. This one really stuck out to me amongst others and has helped a great deal. A typical situation for me when working on a brief is that I box myself and don't let people see my work until near the deadline thus leaving little time for improvement. I've learnt that it's important to get a fresh and more importantly honest opinion on you're work before it's too late.  There's no benefiting from polite compliments when what you sometimes need is harsh brutal criticism. From this you can get the full potential out of your work and push yourself to get better final outcomes.  

THREE.

"Don't get drunk of others work" – Me

Over the course of the last month when working on the 8x8 brief, I've come to realise that there's a point where you need to stop looking at other peoples work and focus on the your own.  I feel that I'm just starting to really understand how I'm most comfortable in working and that "my style" is slowly becoming evident in my latest pieces of work. Looking at too much artist influence has started to become a problem for me as I feel like I'm getting "drunk" off too many different styles and aesthetics. When I do see work I admire I tend to try and work in a similar method combined with my own process but its too evident that their work is making too much of an influence and my work changes depending on who I've looked at for that particular brief. I now limit myself to looking at others when working and its obvious that my own style is starting to appear and my work is slowly becoming consistent.

8x8 FINSIHED.

On Friday we had a meeting with the MMU creative writing course leader to discuss our work created for the 8x8 short stories that we've been working on for the past few weeks. We find out on Tuesday which illustrations have been picked to feature in the printed publication so fingers crossed. Overall I was pretty happy with how it went in the meeting and my final outcomes. I feel like I'm starting to get to grips with working in digital media and progressing from project to project. I'm still wanting to push myself by making more textured dry brushes on photshop to give a hand generated look but at the moment I'm struggling to do it without it looking dead sketchy and as if it's been done on paint ha. Both my images look much better on screen as when I printed them out to show the client the colours seemed to loose their vibrancy and almost melt into each other. Kind of guessed this might happen with it not being the best printer and me working in RGB on here. Need to tweak this if I do get picked as I'm wanting the teal highlights from the monitors and lights to really stand off against everything. My spot illustration isn't uploading so I'll make sure its up later.

YMO - RYDEEN.

This is the amazingly, addictive song that me and Jord have decided to use for the Music Live brief. Seriously though once you've listened to it once you'll be hooked.