I really love to see the process behind creative projects, which is why I’m so fascinated by theseblog entries by Airside this morning. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m particularly smitten by the handmade approach they’ve taken to creating the Airplot logo. Really beautiful work that allows itself to be used in a number of ways while still maintaining continuity.
Right now, I have my own process post to share with you. Last night, I finished up the first draft of my poster for OVAC’s Tulsa Art Studio Tour. It has some typical May elements in it– the texture, handwriting and skyscraper –but I feel like this is more refined. Definitely more photographic than the flat film work that I’ve grown so accustomed to making for screenprinting. Perhaps it’s just a part of the natural progression for me. Either way, I’m pretty happy with it and I hope OVAC is happy with it too.
I am such a sucker for copy machine textures & manipulation. Seriously. I dream of the day I can own a copier so I won’t feel like such a delinquent for sneaking into places at school and making copies (which, in case you were wondering, I don’t do anymore). This is a photo I took in Tulsa in Dec, 2006. (You can see the original here.) I copied this last year for a xerox transfer I was going to do for litho. Actually, I’m pretty sure a portion of this image did end up making it into that print. Anyway, I really enjoy the tones at the bottom of the image, so I cropped the photo and made this into the background for my poster.
From there, I started adding color and put in a modified version of the logo and handwritten text (list of artists, actually) as a textural element. There was a lot of moving and shifting and color changing before I got to the final composition.
And here’s where I am right now. There are a few changes I can already anticipate making…such as watching the margins a little bit better, the size and placement of the logo, the fact that I have yet to add the sponsor logos. It’s getting there. For my next project, I’ll probably make an effort to stay away from the reoccurring elements, but for now, I’m satisfied with the progress I’ve made. I actually have a new project coming up, so you’ll be hearing about that in the near future.
I haven’t been 100% the entire month of April. I feel like I’m a little bit off on everything I do. That said, I’ve had an incredibly difficult couple of weeks. I’m not going to get into it here, there’s a lot to be said about why I’m feeling sub par, there’s probably too much to be said. I know the end is in sight, but when I’m in the thick of it, I never feel like I’m going to get out. All I can really do at this point is keep my chin up and trudge through it.
In the meantime, here is some work that I’ve done recently:
Helped run color trial proofs for Jane Kent as a part of my internship. It was one of the hardest weeks I’ve had in a long while, but quite possibly the most rewarding and thrilling at the same time. Funny how that works out. The edition has yet to be run, so that’ll probably consume another hefty chunk of my time. Not that I’m complaining…if I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t be doing it.
I’ve working on poster after poster after poster. That in combination with all the long hours in Dolphin have made my brain a little fried (solvents, anyone?). Anyway, here’s a little peek at a design I’ve been working on for the Spoon show this Friday:
I wanted to create a poster based on Spoon’s rejected album titles and Trouble Minx was one of them. To me, it sounded like a vintage pulp novel and instead of making it too racy, I went with a collage of vintage advertisements. I wanted to use images that were a little quirky and strange, something that evoked the same feelings as the Autumn de Wilde music video for “I Turn My Camera On” without being a rip-off (a poster full of legs, perhaps?).
Basically, my design got the ax during class last week. It’s too vintage, too feminine and too obscure. For some reason, it just feels like Spoon to me. Maybe I’ve been overexposed to theGimme Fiction era imagery from Sean McCabe. Maybe I’m drawing too much from my own opinions about the band. (Maybe I just wanted to screen print a sweet CMYK poster?) I guess this is why I didn’t protest too much at the suggestion to start over. Though I can’t pretend that it didn’t frustrate me. It still frustrates me because I see plenty of gig posters where the design seemingly has nothing to do with the band and…it doesn’t bother me one bit.
Alright, so I’m just whining now. It’s a learning experience, really, and I know that I’m going to have so many more times in my life where I’m going to start a project over. Time to stop babbling on the internet and start working.
I’ve been ridiculously busy since my last post, but that’s to be expected. Spring break happened mid-March, I finished two screenprints and a lithograph (which will be the basis for the second half of a print I started at my prof’s shop) and dove head-first into a website for the Post-it Project. The opening for the project is tonight at the Current Gallery in Baltimore from 7-10pm. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it because I’ll be in DC seeing the Rauschenberg exhibit at the National Gallery, having beer and garlic fries at Gordon Biersch, and seeing Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks (with John Vanderslice!) at the 9:30. Please send around the Post-it Project website – http://www.postitproject.com – to anyone you think would be interested!
There have been a number of other things that have happened since I last posted, but I just don’t have the time to write about it now. Here are some previews via flickr:
It’s the last stretch of the Justice poster, these are the last tweaks. I think I like the last one the best, even with the long and skinny crop. The printing should happen this weekend or early next week, depending on when I get my paper. Did I mention I just spent $100 on paper? Yeah. But it should last me for a while, especially the many many sheets I bought for my Adv. Screen project. That class and litho are the most exciting of the semester, most definitely.
Busy doesn’t even begin to describe my life. Here are a few things that I’ve been working on:
Justice poster mock ups from the first one I made to the most recent. Eventually this will be screenprinted.
A series of screenprint monoprints. Better (and more) pictures of these coming soon. I’ve got another series in blue, and my first editioned screenprint of the semester (still in progress). I also just finished a two-color lithograph that I’ll get a picture of soon.
Been thinking a lot (too much) about my life post-graduation and I think I’ve made myself a little crazy in the process. There’ll be more later, I’ve got to get some sleep tonight.
Had seminar today. I’m really glad I’m taking it because it’s basically a portfolio development class / getting ready to find a job in the real world class. Even after having one class, it’s already made me feel better about that whole “what am I going to do after college?!” crisis. For example, we talked about resumes today and covered a million things that I hardly considered when making mine. It might be a little early in the game to say this, but maybe, just maybe, everything will work out okay.
A poster I did last year for my Graphic Design IV class. Promoting the Smart car to college students. I like it alright, but I should have spent more time working on the concept. Let’s just say I was really frustrated with that class and I just wanted to make something that I liked. All that negative space underneath the block of text is for a sticker that would contain info specific to whatever school the tour was going to. You know, to save money and all that.
Flickr did some strange things to this image when I uploaded it, so the color is not entirely true (check out the differences between the original and the resized! blech!). It’s supposed to be a bright blue.
I’ve got Adv. GD in a few hours, so it’s back to creating a storyboard for my roarin’ 20s/graffiti inspired lighting catalog. More on that one later.
A smattering of what I’ve accomplished in the past month or so:
New pictures of the print from my last post. Now titled “Family Tree.” You can’t really read it, but the handwritten text in brown is about my relationship (or lack thereof?) with my family. The previous post didn’t have any pictures with the letterpress layer – translucent base on top of everything – so there’s that. It doesn’t photograph very well, unfortunately. I got a call from a woman at MICA about submitting this piece in a show at the Center Club (somewhere near the Inner Harbor?) in January. Exciting!
Snafu, an accordion book I made for my letterpress class. I posted some (digital) mock-ups on flickr a while back (you can find those starting here), so you can see how it progressed. My camera died when I was printing it though, so no layer by layer pictures.
Gloss screenprint layer. Also difficult to photograph. I’m beginning to think it might be a smart idea to invest in a polarizing filter…
Some pictures from my graphic design project. We were supposed to design a paper sample/promo booklet for a fictional line of “tree-free” papers. I chose a silk fiber paper that conducted electricity (I don’t think anything like actually exists) and created a promo booklet that mimicked the notebook of Nikola Tesla (if it were colorized and modernized…). I screenprinted all of the paper samples, which in retrospect was rather stupid and time consuming, but whatever. This piece took around eight hours to comp and I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. The outside is really hard to photograph, so I’ll have to figure something out so I can put this sucker in my portfolio.
That’s all for now. I think I’m going to start posting inspiring works. I’ve got a lot of ideas, but they’re all so disorganized that it’s making it hard for me to produce something solid. Time for more writing, I suppose. It’s a wonder that I sleep at all.
