Ink Deep

For ease of access, below is a list of links that tie into my Digital Media work, in chronological order.  The below serves as my sketchbook for this unit: Artists who work with Digital Media Artist Profile - Alice Rebecca Potter Artist Profile - Aaron Campbell Artist Profile - Orla Kiely My Method of Digital Illustration Emulating Aaron Campbell Combining Illustration with Photography My Thoughts on Digital Art Evaluation

Digital Media was a topic I was excited for when I saw it on our curriculum.  Along with Illustration, it was one of the subjects I was the most excited for.  But when we first talked about it, I wasn't all that enthusiastic.  Looking at digital printing and the surface pattern uses disheartened me and I was worried it would end up being closer to Contemporary than what I had envisioned.  This immediately killed my thought process, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the unit.  When we started to look at different artists and styles, I made an intentional stride to find artists who bridged the gap between what we were looking at, and the type of art I knew I was interested in and wanted to work with. Aaron Campbell is the best example of that.  His work was awe inspiring, and his digital illustrations were close to what I believed digital media to be all about.  Whilst looking at his work and similar artists, I regained some of my enthusiasm....

Digital Art is something that I think is ill defined.  Both literally and in the minds of many.  I believe it has as many variations and connotations as 'Art' itself.  For example, if someone records a clip of themselves doing something creative in a video game, it could be considered a digitally created animation.  And therefore, art.  I'm not sure if I like what this could mean.  I've not been shy about admitting my limited knowledge of art and the art world, but I feel a similar problem arose with things like conceptual art.  What is art?  Can anything be art?  What shouldn't be art?  I feel we'll be asking the same questions about digital art very soon, if not already. I believe in my head that digital art is something created using digital tools that has an analogue input behind it, as well as intention.  Maybe that's too specific.  I don't really know.  But if it meets that criteria, I will consider it to be a for...

Digital media allows us to do certain things that would be impossible, unlikely, or incredibly difficult.  It can gift us certain shortcuts.  It can make certain things seem more real or possible.  One of the ideas I was toying with was trying to take a character and insert them into the real world.  The idea was to blend a character and make it seem like they are existing in the real world.  To do this, I would need to find a photograph and then draw an image to fit into it. Thinking back to our theme of environment, whilst I happened to be staring out of a window into a thunderstorm, I realised that I actually really enjoy being in the rain.  So long as it's not cold or windy.  It's probably one of my favourite weathers to stand in.  With that thought in mind, I wanted to draw a character enjoying themselves in the rain.  I starting going through stock images of rainy scenes, to see if any spurred any ideas. I found this image, and w...

Aaron Campbell's work was definitely some of the most inspiring and colourful examples of digital illustration that I'd encountered in recent years.  Coupled with his cartoon-y style and inspirations, his style was something that strongly resonated with me, and was something I really wanted to try.  I took a close look at one of his images in particular, with an eye to trying my own version of this image. Ultimately, as a car lover, I wanted to feature a vehicle as my subject matter, with a colourful scene behind it.  I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to come close to something like this.  I started by doing a sketch.  Or more aptly, a series of sketches.  I wanted to tie this into the theme of my own environment, and my immediate idea was to draw my own car, a crappy like car that I have such a strong attachment too. This was my first composite sketch.  What I'd done here was take several sketches I'd done and combined them into one to creat...

There are seemingly unlimited ways to create digital art.  As I have been creating digital art on my own before the course began, I have my own methods and styles and on top of that, I'm aware of a vast number of techniques.  I have friends who have created art works by writing code, with no analogue creative input whatsoever.  And even then, digital art isn't just limited to visual elements.  Sound can be created digitally, film and animation. there really is no end to the routes one can take to create art with digital means. That being said, there are elements that I consider to be more 'traditional' within the digital art medium.  This is my personal opinion, so this might not be the majority opinion, but I feel that traditional digital art is visual art that's created digitally, using an analogue input.  What I mean by this is that the digital aspects are created by a Human hand in some way.  Be that with a graphics tablet, or even a mouse, I bel...

For ease of access, below is a list of links that tie into my Contemporary Art Practice work, in chronological order.  The below serves as my sketchbook for this unit: Artist Profile - Jean Tinguely Artist Profile - Michael Craig-Martin Concepts - First idea: Deconstruction Concepts - Second idea: Acts of War Concepts - Third idea: Fighting Depression Development and Creation of Prototype Evaluation

When I started this topic, I really wasn't sure what to expect.  Contemporary art is something I had little to no experience with before the course, and it certainly wasn't something I was attracted to or particularly understood.  Though we'd looked at a lot of artists and examples, I really had no idea or sense for what I wanted to do.  It took me a long while to even look and Jean Tinguely and begin to get ideas for working in a similar theme and style.  Even though I would look into this, I would eventually abandon what I was thinking about and moving onto something else entirely. Although we'd looked at sound art and artists like Susan Philipsz, I never really considered this piece to be similar.  The only way they were related were in the sense that they both played audio.  Though the space was something I considered, it was more about the shape and look of the object than the environment.  I feel like for the most part, I took my own route to g...

I still wasn't sure if I wanted to use the cardboard box idea with the new speech that I was working on.  The speech relating to depression was never originally intended to go with that medium, but I wasn't sure how I wanted to best convey that message.  In the interim, I got my hands on a box that I thought would best fit what I had in mind.  I wanted the box to have as few markings on it as possible, and look like a generic box, both in material, shape and size.  I went through a few different boxes before landing on the one I wanted to use. Knowing that this was something I wanted to do, I bought a small bluetooth speaker a few weeks ago, intentionally trying to find one that was small and flat, that I could place quite low and flat down on the bottom of the box. As you can see, the speaker is quite low in profile relatively speaking, in terms of the box's height.  Once I did that, I found a piece of cardboard of the same material that I could use t...

This idea actually came to me really last minute.  And honestly, I'll still not 100% about it.  I was working on other things, wrapping up some last minute details, when I had an idea.  Something I wanted to do.  A project.  Now, I knew this was something I wasn't going to be able to do in class, and even then, I never considered tying it into anything.  I never game it's theme any thought.  But I considered this a project I would do myself in my free time in the next year or so.  The project was all about my fight with depression over the years, and a message that I wanted to pass on to other people who (as I have) may have had severely damaging experiences with depression. Now, at this stage it's crucial to note that this was never intended to be related to this unit.  I've always been fascinated by animation, but I've always been scared by the work load it entails and my lack of knowledge on the subject meant it was something I had never...

I now knew I wanted to do something that had a more personal connect with me, one that really explored my ideas and beliefs.  I hadn't really done that with my art before, as I tried to really avoid my political opinions and such when it came to my work.  My views had always been more open and inviting.  I believe we're all equal and that we should all have an equal entitlement to the planet, and that ultimately, the best version of our world is one that works together.  I hate any sort of violence on a global scale, and honestly think it's a pointless act.   Life feels like this pointless, yet futile struggle whilst those on a higher level (Government) make mistakes and make decisions that greatly affect us.  I feel this has been happening more and more recently, and honestly it's left me a little frustrated.  I tried to think what I would like to do to combat these feelings.  And my first instinct was to punch Donald Trump.  But t...

With Contemporary Art Practice I really wasn't sure what it was that I wanted to do or wanted to create.  The type of art that we looked at was not all that appealing to me, and I found it hard to connect with any of it.  From my mechanical and engineering background, I did however take a liking to the machines made by Jean Tinguely .  This made me think of working in a similar fashion, but on a smaller scale. I thought about working on an electrical scale rather than a mechanical one, and considered deconstructing some sort of broken electrical device and trying to build some sort of machine (which would most likely not be able to move).  Whilst this idea intrigued me, I wasn't sure what I was aiming for.  I didn't know what sort of machine to create, and I had a harder time than I expected getting my hands on some disregarded electrical items.  Due to environmental reasons, the college and a couple of companies I asked, were unwilling to give me some of...

Orla Kiely is am Irish designer, living and working in London.  Born in 1963, she attended the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, before going on to achieve a Masters at the Royal College of Art in London.  Since graduating, she has achieved commercial success and popularity, with many of her designs being mass produced and replicated, and sold to the masses at a reasonable price.  As a result, her designs crop up in day to day life rather often, and most of us will have someone we know who has some household item featuring one of her designs. Kiely's designs are wonderfully simple, featuring easily identifiable and natural shapes that have been simplified into an appealing and clean image.  Her colour choices are (in my opinion) quite bizarre.  I find them quite hard to describe.  They're not overly bright, but are quite saturated despite their darker tones.  The colours used are almost retro, and for me scream 'Seventies'.  I'...

Digital media covers a wide array of styles and techniques, which makes it both incredibly interesting and diverse, but also sometimes confusing to decipher or understand.  Most of the artists I have looked at so far are heavily focused on the commercial aspects of their work.  Work that has been requested or designed exclusively to fit a particular commercial purpose.  I have never enjoyed looking at art from a commercial perspective.  My approach has always been to try and create interesting art, and then look for ways to commercialise it.  This most likely comes from my background trying to make comics and such.  Ultimately, for me, the best and purest examples of digital art come from digital illustrations. As a result of this, it was important that I look in depth at (at least) one digital illustrator (which did not have an immediately evident commercial use).  Aaron Campbell is a Canadian artist who I have been aware of for some time....

Alice Rebecca Potter is a young British artist that we as a class have looked at.  Based in London, Potter works freelance, selling her illustrations to design companies.  She also makes some products herself which can be purchased through her own website, or through some third party websites who help her manufacture her items.  These products vary from greeting cards to mugs to clothing (most commonly children's clothing).  Her style is brightly coloured (often with a limited palette) and simplistic in it's form and composition.  Some of her designs can be repeated to create patterns and textures.  Potter has also experimented with typography in her work. Aside from looking at her commercial work, we also looked at how she creates her work.  Potter has talked about her process in depth, giving us a great insight to her creative process.  She explained how she starts by simply taking a walk and observing nature, or other elements of our surro...