Illustrated Menu

here is my illustrated menu for orangemabel. The title is the font i designed. 

Location Project- Rose tinted Glasses.

 I decided to do my location project on the current place I live since I moved to Londn from university. I lived in Manor Park for a year and now have lived in Forest Gate for just over a year. Whilst researching online my local area I found these lovely things because have to say about my new town.

"Manor Park. A s**thole that is so wretched, it even makes Forest Gate seem charming."


"The place abounds with shambling losers, wastes, the aged and the dumb – and broken-english speaking refugees and dodgers of every race, colour and creed. A hovel and a ghetto at the same time. Failure hangs over the place so heavily you can taste it. Everyone else tastes it too, judging by the big gobbets of phlegm you can see gobbed out on the pavement every ten paces – the different colours inside of it are something to look, I suppose: street art."

"Pound shops and take-aways are what there are plenty of – they almost outnumber the benefit-scroungers that populated the dump."




Baring in mind I moved from a small Roman town where i'm used to knowing everybody who walks past me on the street, it's safe to say i've had to adapt a little bit to this environment. Anyway i have always been one to make the best of a bad situation, my rent is cheap and it gave me inspiration for this project.

 

Here are some photographs you can see of my local area. The first three are typical East London, I cant walk more than 50 metres without seeing mattresses on the floor. The flats/tower blocks are absolutly filled with people, foreign families in fact most houses are. The trainers hanging on the power lines mean you can buy crack here and most peoples houses are overgrown and completely filthy. I decided to edit the pictures for more of a pretty summer vibe, they're still the same photos but with just different colours.

For my final print I decided to do a Photocopy transfer of different houses on my road so its a long print of my street. I then put a white van at the end. A white van for me personally symbolises, well... a dodgy person? I then screen printed over my photocopy transfer some illustrations i did to brighten the whole picture up. Theres kids holding balloons. I have turned the pedophile van into an ice cream van and drawn some cute woodland creatures to brighten up gloomy Forest Gate. Although I spent a while on the illustrations I actually prefer the original one without the illustrations. The grey gloomy feeling it gives ad the way the van is at the end on the right is very abrupt and creepy.

yummy!

Here are my decorative OrangeMabel doily's. I started off by rubbing them with paint and then using the Photo Litho technique which is my new favourite printing technique. I used my biscuits illustration I designed which you can see here.

I wanted to use stereotypically english biscuits. For the orange mabel brand, something a bit old fashioned, something you grew up with to give that home comforts feel which is the same feel as OrangeMabel tearooms. I drew them in fineliner with posca pens but tried to keep to the same cute, fun drawing style. I think it makes a nice repetitive pattern. I also vectorised it on adobe illustrator to be used as a giftwrap.

Work Experience

On Monday 4^th March 2013 I went to Thumbprint Editions, Camberwell to do work experience for four days. Thumbprint Editions Limited is one of Britain’s leading Fine Art printmaking studios. They do prints for very high end clients such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst. While I was there I got to help work on prints for customers such as Mark Quinn and Gillian Carnegie. I had quite small responsibilities like mixing paint, taking prints down and putting prints out to dry but it was really interesting for me to be in a working printmaking environment. Very different from the studio I use at university. The working printmaking environment is very tense and there is a lot of pressure because the customers are paying a lot of money for those prints and they can choose to reject them and not pay for them if they don’t think they’re good enough. Everything’s a lot more large scale and there is so much more pressure for perfection as it isn’t your work it’s somebody else’s, somebody famous! I’m very grateful for the people at Thumbprint Editions for having me I found the whole experience really helpful.

 

 

Litho Prints

Here we have my final OrangeMabel litho prints YAY! First we have the chandelier picture, then the brocolli and stilton soup which by the way i made myself then the garden in the snow through the window with the bunting in the foreground. Everybody always comments on that picture because they can't work it out. It looks sort of like mountains in the distance with a cloudy nights sky the way the bunting is. I think it's quite nice that you really have to look at it and work it out for yourself. I have done the prints on watercolour paper because it has a nice matted effect and looks like an old photograph.

100 Drawings Illustration.

 Here we have my 1000 drawings made up from artifacts from museums. The museums I visited were the British museum and the Horniman museum. The British museum is one of my favourite museums for artifacts and I am mainly intrigued by all the oriental figurines they have in there. I like the Imperial China section of the museum because it's mainly influenced by buddhist culture and they have a lot of religious figurines which I find beautiful and interesting to draw.  The craftmanship in some of the figurines are amazing and you will find a lot of them are made from Jade or other precious stones and worth a fair amount of money. 

 In the Asia part of the museum there are lots of shrines and figures influenced by Budhism, Jainsism and Hinduism. These figures tend to use a lot of gold and bright colours and I have depicted them in my drawings by using an array of bright colours and different media.

The horniman museum is in Forest Hill and it was the first time i'd visited there. They had a lot of natural history also the musical instruments I have drawn were from the Horniman.  

PINNY!

Finally my pinny has been made! I took it upon myself to go and buy a cheap sewing machine and after lots of infuriating hours of threading needles and losing patience I finally got the hang of it and actually enjoyed doing it in the end. Behind is a frame I illustrated aswell which I was going to use to frame my prints for my final show.. but they're not round anymore they're square... so I thought i'd recycle them and use them for this image. I'm really pleased with the outcome of my pinny and pleased that at 22 years old I finally know how to sew. 

Altered book.

I was really excited to do this altered book project for illustration as is was something I had done before in college and wanted to continue. For my final major project for Graphic Design in college I made scenes from a story I had written about recycling aimed at children. 

I started this project wanting to make another story not necessarily aimed at children but I wanted it to be cute and heartwarming to read. One of my favourite books is called 'This is for you' by an artist called Rob Ryan who's artworks are all made of intricate paper cutouts. The story is a cute romantic journal of a childs thoughts and dreams growing up and is really something nice to read when you need to cheer yourself up a bit.

I wanted to do a similar thing with my altered book but have it as an interactive book. So the reader could play along with it as it was being read. I started with the words 'Let's pretend we are children' and it has two little children playing then the little boy gives the girl his heart and she can take it with her wherever she goes throughout the books and on adventures. 

Unfortunately this idea seemed to start out pretty well and the idea was there but it just didn't turn out on paper how I hoped it would in my head. I spent a lot of time planning and wasn't getting anywhere then just went for it and it wasn't as good as i'd hoped so I moved onto a different idea. I hope to come back to this eventually with a fresh mind and a fresh book because I know there is something there that I want to do it just wasn't the right way to go about it.

I moved onto my Treasure Island altered book matey! Why are pirates called Pirates? Because they ARRRRRRRR! It's a cute little treasure chest in the sea and when you open it up it has a little mirror and maps and a pirate hat and Jewels! Who doesn't like Jewels?

Font

 I have come up with a font to use on my stationary and on my collection of things I wanted to keep it very cute and hand drawn. It was inspired by organic shapes around the countryside where orangemabel is situated and just adds a bit of contrast to the other things i have created which are all pastel shades.

Doilies

I saw these beautiful doilies in Paperchase with floral designs and swans on which inspired me to make some doilies of my very own using Litho prints. I bought some doilies and painted them with a pale background colour. I then used my litho plate do try a print on them. This one was just a tester from a screen I had already made for my other orangemabel prints. I wasn't sure if the doily would be too thin to print onto but it actually turned out really nicely. I am working on a repetitive pattern for the rest of the doily's for my final show.

Invites

I decided to re-do my invitations for my showcase onto cute little teacups. They come complete with a strawberry teabag and a barcode that links you to my blog. Cute overload.

SHOWCASE 30TH MAY!

I'm really looking forward to my end of year showcase exhibition I'm literally so full of ideas for it I might explode. I'm trying to portray my exhibition as a sort of tea party, it's going to be set out like a tea room with framed prints on the wall, it will have a table and chairs with all my creations placed upon it and I am even baking cookies. If that isn't dedication I don't know what is.

Photocopy Transfer.

This week I have been working on some photocopy transfers with some of my orange Mabel images. Photocopy transfer is one of my preferred techniques I like its simple yet effective turnout. I'm keeping to a pastel coloured theme for my prints and have been working on some hand illustrated frames to go around them later on. I may even illustrate into these pictures I haven't really decided yet, or later them up with tracing paper or assitate I have so many ideas going on in my head right now it's driving me mad!

March exhibition.

A big thank you to everyone who showed up to our 3rd year Printmaking exhibition last week, was a real success even if the alcohol did run out after about 10 minutes. Can't wait for our end of year showcase May 30th be there!

vintage cutlery.

For my Orangemabel vintage theme I wanted to design some textiles possibly a tablecloth or aprons, tea towels etc. I have a picture in my head of my exhibtion space being really busy with little framed photos everywhere, signs, bunting, cute little things, napkins. I have loads of ideas just not enough time to do them all. I designed this cute little cutlery design which i scanned into illustrator, vectorised it and printed it onto fabric. I'm thrilled with the result but havent yet decided what to do with it, i'm torn between leaving it and using as a table cloth or having a go at sewing and making an apron an oven mit and all that jazz, what do you think?

ORANGEMABEL

We're not in Kansas anymore.

                             
 For the appropriation project  I was originally planning to pick an artist and do an illustration in the style of their work. I have recently been watching a lot of old films so I thought i'd use an old film as one of my themes, instead of using somebody elses style i decided to keep to my own and just use the film subject matter as the appropriation. I chose to use the Wizard of Oz as my chosen film. It was always a favorite of mine as a child and has lots of interesting aspects to draw. The illustration is of Dorothy, the main character. I feel she is a vulnerable character, she is a young girl away from her home and is a well loved character a lot of people have grown up with. There are two main witches in the story: the good witch and the bad witch. I have drawn the bad witch on the left side like the devil on her shoulder and the good witch on the right like a guardian angel. 

The emerald city which is behind Dorothy i have drawn a penis shaped tower as a subliminal messages to represent the gay references and metaphors throughout the wizard of oz film. 'Friends of Dorothy' is a known phrase to associate with somebody who is homosexual which originates from the film. It is also discussed that the whole journey of Dorothy coming out of her reality a boring sepia world and embarking on this colourful experience for her and her friends to find out who they really are is a metaphor for somebody coming out of the closet. 

Here is my original drawing from my sketchbook drawn in pencil and fineliner. This was everntually turned into a screen-print dont in both black and white and rainbow colours.

 

I also experimented with the image on photoshop, i'm not really too happy with the end result but it's defiantly something I will come back to.

I also visited the V&A because they had an exhibition on Hollywood costumes and I wanted to get a proper look at Dorothy's dress. Some of the costumes they had in there were amazing. They had robes from Harry Potter, Jack Sparrows Pirate outfit from Pirates of the Caribbean, all the fabulous threads from 'The Addams Family' and of course Dorothys blue dress and ruby slippers. You weren't allowed to take photographs in there but I managed to get a sneaky one.

  

  

Hello Everybody!

I thought it was about time for a new blog as my other one was such a mess, i have decided to be a lot more on the blogging thing this term, try and post everything and keep on top of everything. Wishful thinking i know! I hope you like it, would love to hear feedback in the comments section! xoxo.