personal studie

This year in the terms of graphics and my coursework I have had an on going theme of music. I started with the As to A2 project which evolved into my summer assignment, during this summer assignment I experimented with a wide range of different experiments, from the use of typography in images to stitching out different things in fabric. When we got back we still had the theme of music running though our work as we got set a brief to make/design a CD packaging, with this we could design any album and any artist we wanted, so I chose the band The Killers. After this project we had to do our personal project where we would still somehow relate our work with the on going theme of "music". With this personal project we had to pick our strongest skills with in graphics and think of something to do that would fit in with music, I choose to do a flash animation to a song of my choice" cough cough".

Though out my AS graphics I looked at a lot of stencil work and a lot of illustration work, one person that really inspired me to draw and do work like him was an artist called David Shirgley. As a class we went on a trip to London to see his exhibition, whilst there I felt that me and him had the same sort of humor with in our drawing techniques, this influenced my work by making me draw more quirky funny things with in my work. This was all good but the work of some street artist such as banksy really inspired me and influenced my work in stencils and at the final exam I choose to do a series of stencils of famous land marks around London, such as Tower Bridge, St Paul’s and the city hall. During the AS to A2 project I analyzed 3 different album covers, Chemical Brother push the button, The Shins chutes to narrow album cover and the Coldplay X & Y Cd album cover. When research these album covers I researched the inlay by going to a local CD shop and physically looking at them, I also researched it only by going on the official website of what ever CD I choose to do. The most influence I got from the artist of the album covers was the simple ways of The Shins album cover, and the way when you opened the inlay you discovered more to the CD and more to what the lyrics mean in the songs them selves.  When looking at different artist and contextual links I chose to look at the work of Jacob Skarin and my first reaction this piece of work was that it looks a bit plain a bit boring but when you realize who the target audience is and what the product actually is, you realize that it fits well with the product so therefore is not a bad design .The jukebox is just a CD packaging and no band goes with it and the other box is a Nokia box which is a phone company. Jakob Skarin made these three products and with him he has a very different style but yet it stays with his product design as he goes on and makes them which is a really good thing .The sort of people who would listen to a football song CD would be those who go down to watch games on a regular basis so I would say the target audience is middle-aged men or young adults. The text and the imagery for what I can see on this CD cover is very in your face text its suppressed posted to be loud and get the message across and the imagery is just people playing football and a grassy background to relate to the football theme. I heard about this contextual link from a teacher who said this would be more up my street in the way the packaging is done. The advice given back from teachers and peers about my development and ideas was very good so when I came up with the idea of doing The Killers as my band and the theme that I did with the CD work they said I put together the songs with the theme as in its very rocky type music and in the inlay I put a grunge effect of rocks and overlaid them which worked very well. Only in-depth analysis I did was of the work of David Shirgley. The artist who made this piece of work is David Shrigley, he is aged 44 and studied at Glasgow school of art. He was born in Scotland but did an art and design foundation in Lester, he had his first exhibition in a gallery called transmission gallery in Glasgow where he was born. His last exhibition was in the Hayward gallery in London, which I did go and see on a school trip. The piece of work that I am looking at by David Shrigley is called Cat and Mouse. The work is done by the technique of line drawing, which is basic drawing lines; the piece is for an exhibition and was made in 2011 but exhibited in 2012. I have chosen to do this piece of work for the analysis because I find the work funny but yet dark in some sense. I also picked it because I find that my work can be related to his in some shape or form, and since I also use the same materials to create works I find it easier to look at the work.

The work when I went to see it was landscape and put up on a wall with a lot other drawings done by the artist, in a way its like all the works came together to make up one piece of work. The work has a theme which would be dark humour and illustration which is very my type of work. The work is about a subject as cats and dogs have been in the public’s eye natal enemies but here David Shrigley is saying they have finally made peace. The title really does explain the work because some people may think that the cat is another animal but with the title you can clearly see what animal he is trying to get across. There is no real deep meaning behind this work he has just gone with a simple funny type of work and works very well.

The work was done by pen and paper very simple stuff. The skills are basically to use humour in the work with only a little bit of drawing skills only basic line drawings, the artist use's colour by not using any colour at all which gives the work space and meaning. With this it creates the effect of it being a dark and meaning full piece of work. The work is in between A4 and A5 so basically like a Christmas card shape and in away it does make the work better as it says its not a massive problem but it is a big enough problem to put it up in a exhibition.

My first reaction to this piece was that it was a funny piece and had some meaning behind it and made me want to research it more. I like the humour behind it, the only thing that could be better is the drawing skills but then again that makes David’s work better as you, the only thing that reminds me of this work is David Shrigleys own work which is really good as you will know his work anywhere. Finally I think David Shrigley is one of the most inspiring people in the terms of my work, and I this may be one of my favourite piece's by him. Another in depth analysis I did was that of copyrights stencil work along with illustration to make his pieces.

The person that made the art/design is someone named copyright uses a mixture of different techniques such as illustration which is what I'm looking at right now, and stencil/ graffiti which goes together really well and is really cool. This artist is not very known, he does street art which is then sold on his website. The piece that I’m looking at is just simply a piece of street art and illustration goes into a lot of his work to help him out with all his stencils. It has been exhibited to the pubic as it is street ar. I have chosen to research this piece due to the fact that he is relating to my work in the illustration way but also he has done graffiti and in my artwork. I am working on a street art piece in my other lesson so in that way it related to my work and me.

The piece its self is called American princess, then shortly after this he redone the work by making American princess 2 with is basically the same as this but with a different angle of the girl and different dress along with some different backgrounds. One famous quote by the artist is, is fear not money? As implying that when you have fear you will then get money so in a way it fits in with his work very well as he does street art and that is all about fear and the fear of not getting court doing it is very overwhelming and at the end of the day he gets money out of it so his quote really does make sense.

The theme I he is trying to show off is that of how the girls in America are seen as princess but in realty they are nothing more that some street art so basically calling them a tramp in a sort of way, you get this understanding from the title and when you look into the work with more detail. I think with this work it is all about a story of a girl in America trying to find her way which is why he made two of the piece with different titles. I think the artist has found inspiration from just living in America, which just sums up why he did this piece.

The materials he has used are spray paints as you can clearly see all around the piece, you can see he has used pencils maybe pens to get the image onto a stencil maybe, also it looks like it may have been touched up in Photoshop so he would have used a mac for this work. The artist has gone for the rough effect so he has used bright colours but in a bad way so this is very effective to the piece as a whole. The work doesn't look like its massive but it would prop fit a wall somewhere.

My first reaction to this work is that it looks really cool the only thing I really dislike about this piece is that I is taking the piece out of American girls saying they are rich but I don't think the artist has seen what some American girls go though out in the states to get a good understanding of what is going on. This work has really inspired me to go on and try out many different types of stencilling and for that I am very great full I stumbled across this artist he is great.

The comparison of these two artist are really different, one is an some what doodle list and the other is a street artist, but both artist have inspired me though out my graphics work. But as I have already said  

In the personal project I put the link from my song of the summer by choosing to do a video for a song of my choice. I researched once again the work of David Shirgley as at the time I didn’t know what type of theme I would be having for the final piece, I also looked at the work of copyright, the stencil artist, who uses stencils and a lot of different mixed medias across her work. I then took the influence they gave me a put it into moving images. The contextual research didn’t have a big inference on my work because when I got to the idea generating of ideas I came up with doing a flash animation a both artist didn’t have anything to do with flash animation although my drawings in the animation can sort of relate to the artist and work of David Shirgley. The final piece went down very well with my peers and teachers, with this final piece they said theirs was no room for improvement apart from a longer video as I could only do 30 seconds of work with in the song due the scale I was working on and the time as well, along with this my sketch book had enough drawings in it to meet the requirements.