Plans for Over the Summer.

- Well, as placements go:

'Art In Action' - Helping out Joanna Migdal and networking with lots and lots of artists that will be there, might be able to get some more work experience out of it!

Getting in touch with Su Blackwell, whos based in London.

Getting in touch with Rob ryan, doubt it will happen, but I can try :)

- I'm also going too carry on with work for Simon In On the Wall, and may have to make a special trip up here to give him work he's asked for...

- I want to start thinking about ways to promote myself, as little craftfairs and oppurtunities to sell my work keep coming up, I go to the event or someone else takes my work and I rush into thinking what to put on the pack of the print or how to present the print and myself.

I want to design:

Business cards a range of about 6, this makes them more special and individual and person for the person recieving it.

I also want to look into how I could mark my work, how do others do it.

I've had really good feedback about the flock and foils I did a few months back which I am hopefully re-producing for Simon at 'On The Wall', and so wonder if I could do my business cards in flock or foils? Would it be appropriate? With research I will find out :)

So over summer I want to start thinking about these and research how other artists and designers do it.

Email From Simon - 'On The Wall'

I emailed Simon yesterday, to ask specifically what he was expecting next thursday when I meet him, today he's emailed me back and set me up for my next weeks work and possibly over the summer.

My main focus is on the strawberry stuff, below this is what Simon talks about. (I have the whole email in my sketchbook...)

'As far as screen printed stuff goes, I’d love see to the ‘Hot-air-berry’ Screened... I think it’d would look amazing as a 2 or 3 part layered screen... I’m guessing you guys have access to water based inks? I’m really interested in images that have layers overlapping bold water based inks as it mixes colours where they are layered –( I’m sure you’ll be familiar!) Blows my tiny mind how cool it looks though!!....

I also like the idea of you screening the giant strawberry in maybe two colours , but each layer being slightly off-set so you get that almost 3d effect, then maybe using a spare lazer cut stencil you could perhaps aerosol the hot air balloon over the top??... to be fair, I think however you go about it – it’s going to come out looking superb... I’m just all giddy right now about layered water based screens and then mixing that up with other processes like lino-cuts, fine lined illustration, stencils etc... Once you’ve made your screens up just bang out as many variations as you can be arsed to do!.. There are so many products I want to build up a folder of possibilities for I’d rather have too many options than too few.

Ok, so that’s Mr strawberry... he’s a winner, big, small, various colours, mix up the processes, use as much of the colleges paper as humanly possible!!'

This is really exciting...I'm a little disappointed that this has come about at the end of this brief, but it couldn't be helped, as I was doing other work for other briefs at different times. It will hopefully set me up well for 3rd year as well and building this relationship with Simon is important.

Prep of images for Screen PRINT.

Today I've begun preparing some images that Simon would prefer screenprinted for print, it's a shame that they will not be done in time for the end of this brief and for my visit to Simon at 'On The Wall' to be so late on in the project but I've had other deadlines which didn't allow me to start this brief earlier, but also it's exciting to have somebody actually want my work and so I look forward to printing these next week...

I'm still deciding on colours and how many colours to separate out and print?

My Visit to 'On The Wall'...

I've just got back from visiting 'On The Wall' and speaking to Simon, he seemed to really like the work I took him and said that it was crazy that I should take him lots of repeat pattern, as the shop is wanting to get together a collection of wrapping paper design now and Simon said my stuff would be perfect, he liked and wants to use, my Barbie repeat pattern, pens repeat, strawberry repeat and origami hearts as wrapping paper designs, while I was there he wrote down the stuff he was interested in using and said he would email me regarding them.

He's also asked for me to screenprint my strawberry repeat design and we arranged a follow-up meeting for next Friday, to then show him the screenprinted design.

He liked the laser cut design, and said that he would like to use it, but obviously he can't put this in a print production, and if I wanted to produce them for him to sell then it would'nt be very cost effective for me, but I said that, at the end of the day I'm doing this all for experience and the money wouldn't matter so much. But he said he could and would like to give me the gallery space downstairs to use and exhibit the work and then any sold, the profit all goes to me. I need to ask him when this slot would be available, because there's an artist using it next. This is something we will discuss further when I next see him, but he likes the design a lot and so wants me to turn it in to a print - thus screenprinting it.

So all in all, I'd say a pretty successful and exciting first outing into the real world :)

Prep work to take to 'On The Wall'...

Today I spent, the whole day picking work and putting together my portfolio to take to show Simon at 'On The Wall'.

I've never taken my work to show anyone before, and so I didn't know whether I would be taking too much or too little. I put the laser cuts I done first as these were what I had actually produced with 'On The Wall' in mind, however I'm pretty certain that he won't want to take my laser cuts, as they would be hard to reproduce in the print production, well I would have to produce them.

I'm taking my barbie head prints as I think they are one of my most successful prints also a photo etch of a barbie photo which I will suggest as a postcard design.

The only other work I will take is all the new repeat patterns I have designed as well as my repeat pattern pen design for 'pocketful illustration magazine'.

The photos are shit, but you get the idea...

Last Laser Cutting Session...

Today was my last chance to get stuff cut before going to see Simon at ' On The Wall', I had lots planned, but couldn't get it all done.

I still had trouble with the whole image of the birds and bikes showing up on the laser cutting program as Micheal reinstalled the old program for me so I could actually cut images. But I was really keen to see what they would look like, and If I'd spaced it okay. Below is the birds and bikes cut into paper...

I cut this design out of fabric as well, which seemed to work quite well, I put the gingham over wood, so that the design showed through and have cut it as if it were a picnic blanket which has been placed over a picnic table...

I also cut the strawberry design out of other materials, I tried cutting it out of magazine pages, one side of text and one side with an image on it. I really like the idea of the work/my design being camouflaged and hidden into other images and text...

Here's the design cut out of a thin wood and then also the engraved strawberries...

Wood.

A couple of days ago, I went to the woodwork department downstairs, 'surprisingly', to get some wood to laser cut and engrave into, the technician was really helpful and I looked at a few different woods, I wanted a light wood and this was handy as the darker woods are more expensive.

We dug out a rough A3 sized bit of wood, which was really thick and then I watched the technician as he explained everything he was doing, in the end I had two beautiful

I hoped that the grain in the wood, will add to the 'organic-ness' and picnic'y feel I want, I also thought about the idea of picnic tables being wooden and people carving into the wood, for a finished piece, I could maybe add a bit of text in that looks as if it's been scratched in as well?

This is what the wood looked like when it had been engraved into...

I wasn't that impressed, but I think that it would have looked better if the design was bigger, or if I'd used a kiss cut, this would have given the wood more depth, as it half cuts out the shapes.

Below are photos of the design cut into a thin wood, it gives the image a nice feel, especially as my theme was picnics and this idea of the picnic table...