Monday 17 February 2014

Tube carriage

Recycled these drawings into monoprints. (I imagined them displayed as a long tube carriage, along a wall, but not possible to show it in this post.)



Sunday 16 February 2014

Le Gun


I'm doing this! Excited but a bit nervous...



 

 " I need only to brush shoulders with the artists of Le Gun to be imbued with the elixir of life, which is so vital that it makes my hair stand on end, metaphorically speaking of course, as i am bald."
Andrzej Klimowski, Professor of Illustration, the Royal College of Art

LE GUN work together on each drawing they make, creating idiosyncratic imagery which blends a punk, occult, pop and surrealist aesthetic. Established in 2004, LE GUN is a group consisting of five artist illustrators (Bill Bragg, Chris Bianchi, Neal Fox, Robert Rubbish, and Steph von Reiswitz) and two designers (Alex Wright and Matt Appleton) who met at London’s Royal College of Art.

As well as being the producers of their cult self-titled magazine, the group are internationally recognised for their enigmatic installations, design projects and art shows. Most recently they built a shamanic ambulance pulled by urban foxes for the exhibition Memory Palace at the Victoria and Albert museum. The particular style they have developed, in which the sum is greater than the parts, is what makes LE GUN’s group aesthetic so distinctive.

Their independent graphic art publication provides a common ground for both emerging and established artists, illustrators, writers and poets.

Now for the first time Le Gun are opening the doors on their creative process...watch a lecture on the work of Le Gun and the theme of the session and then spend the day working with the artists on large scale collaborative drawings in an informal and fun atmosphere. In our first workshop RANDOM FACTOR we will be generating ideas using the cut up technique explored by the Dadaists, William Burroughs and David Bowie, using chance combinations of location, character, object and scenario.

Wednesday 5 February 2014

Rotoscope

There is a competition for adult learners to make something inspired by the V&A collection. This idea is too technical to finish by the March deadline, but maybe next year...

I've looked online for how to make a praxinoscope, (optical Victorian toy in the Museum of Childhood). Lots of people have made them but no one is sharing... if I ever finish this, I will put up step by step instructions. The idea for the figure is a dancer based on Karen in the Red Shoes, probably in etchings.

Anyway, I've made a start. This is a try at an old fashioned technique called rotoscoping  to break down the dancing steps. Rotoscoping is used most famously in the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds sequence in the Yellow Submarine, and I think in the first Disney film, Snow White. It breaks down the film frame by frame and the artist traces the movement.  I used a free video to jpeg converter, it was great. I like rotoscoping a whole lot more than CGI.

 I would like to know how to make the whole thing, rotating disk and all, but I've cheated here and used a lazy susan.

Next job is to make the mirror that reflects the pictures in the middle. I think you have to be quite mathematical and precise.