Julian Trevelyan, Pioneering Printmaker.

I have been looking at the work of Julian Trevelyan, I love his simple shapes and bold yet subtle colours and the little shapes/symbols often hand coloured that he used to decorate his work with. Trevelyan studied at the Stanley William Hayter Atelier 17 in Paris where he met and worked with Alexander Calder, Vieira da Silva, Miro and Picasso, he was married to artist Mary Fedden.

Dry point etching

I am going to experiment with some dry point etching to add to my mono print compositions, here is my first go.

MONO PRINTS

I have been doing some Mono printing with a view to incorporating it into my collage, this reminds me of a 'cliff edge'

Horizons

Life is an Uphill Battle

A small American mini bus

In the Parking lot

At Dusk

Day time

The Bus on the print background

Life is an Uphill Battle

Some textures

 from print and wax crayon drawings of little cars.

Visiting Artists/Illustrators

The artist who made these posters for the Brighton Art Fair is called Sarah Young she describes herself as a print maker,painter,designer,maker and illustrator. She works from her studio on the south coast of England and prints at Inkspot press in Brighton. I love the vibrancy humour and composition of her work and I think she would be a very interesting visiting artist to have at HCA, with many different techniques to talk about.

FINISHED POSTER

This is my finished poster alongside Max Huber's music programme cover, Venice 1958, I hope mine captures something of his.

NEARLY FINISHED

These are some variations on a theme!

INHERITED PROBLEMS

I love the colours and shapes in this image unfortunately when I looked at this closely I realised that it had lines on it from when my printer had been misbehaving when had made my collage in year one, this spoils the image and they are impossible, to get rid of it seems, anyway I was determined to use it any way and they do not notice in my final piece.

PIANO KEYS!

  I was inspired by the Max Huber print below, which was a music programme for a festival of music. His image had the suggestion of piano keys, so I thought I would also use use piano keys to suggest music in the classical music poster that I am making. I want the poster to be more about at atmosphere than facts, and I want it to be soft and dreamy looking, so I like the soft layered effect of Max Huber's work. I got carried away transforming photo of the walls of a tent into piano keys!  It was an interesting exercise in photoshop but an actual photograph of piano keys might have worked just as well in my final poster.

OLD TEXTURES AND SHAPES TO USE!

Until my opportunity for screen printing arrives, I am looking at my existing shapes and textures  that already exist in some of my old work and giving them a new lease of life as something new, here this is interesting as this is an old piece of work (pre-art degree) piece of work, which I had cut up and collaged into a new piece of work in year one with Alan which I am now going to turn into something else, so I get three different pieces of work from one. The one on the left is a part of my year one collage, and on the right is the start of turning it into something else, it has nice velvety textures.

MAX HUBER

I have been looking at the work of graphic designer Max Huber (1919-1992) I love his soft flat Matt colours transparently layered one on top of the other I think these were achieved by screen printing, but  with photoshop a similar layering is possible, if not as appealing. I am never the less going to try and do some screen printing soon.

 These images now shown above my flier below seem to emphasise its  fussiness.I do really like the strong simple black type on these, it is now quite retro looking which could be good!

OPERA FLIER (for external personal brief)

As part of my external personal brief I was asked to do a quick flier for the opera 'The Elixir of Love' an opera where a love potion is taken. I was under a bit of pressure to do this more quickly than the other posters, as it turned out we decided not to use it and made a flier from the actual photos of the opera, but here it is anyway. The font does not work very well as the colour and romantic nature of the letters make reading it a problem. This would need rectifying if it was to be used. As  a whole my end result did not please me and I was pleased to set it aside. For the hearts I cut out some of the patterns that I had made for the mural, and I found an old picture of a pharmaceutical bottle and used photoshop to fill it with some mysterious pink liquid.

FOREVER UNRESOLVED PERHAPS?

This is  the image I put in my portfolio, really because I just could not resolve all the issues in time with  the others. I now, even more with a small amount of hindsight feel that it is extremly over crowded and busy, and lacks the proffesional finish that I will be seeking for my final major projects, but it has been an interesting learning curve, and one that I  would gladly never ever try and revisit, resolve or look at ever again!

STILL MORE WORK IN PROGRESS

Here are the experiments I talked about below, I made the above one really big as if you look carefully the man in the white coat developed a face made out of wires when I placed one image over the top of another. I have included two with just the nest and the font I would like to have had more time to experiment with  the fonts and to develop the simplicity of this idea a bit. I talked with Alan about making a drippy font. Notice there are two different syringes in the just nest ones. I do think that the letters dripping out of the syringe (another of Alans brain waves) work brilliantly  well, and would have worked even better if I had time to make them all drip!

MORE WORK IN PROGRESS

At first I photographed an actual nest from my garden but after a tutorial with Alan he suggested that I make the nest out of paper which I then did cutting up many, many strips of paper, I am glad i'm not a bird.I think in fact the paper nest is a great improvement!
It is after this image on the left that things start to get a little messy. I think the addition of a syringe might have been the straw that broke the camels back, it just would not fit on, but perhaps unfortunately, I made it! With letters seeping out of the end spelling the title, they would not fit on either but I MADE THEM, oh dear.  It got more complicated than that as after a tutorial with Neil we decided that the image looked warmer and had more about it in the photographs that I had taken charting it's progress, so I decided that the final one would be a photograph not a scan, not a bad idea as I was having to scan it two halves to fit it in the scanner. I duly photographed the image with the addition of the syringe and the letters, but I think because of the size of it and shadows, and tripods and lamps, not necessarily working together as they should, it just looked unprofessional, it did not work, in the way the quick photos worked it was not one nor the other. So I scanned all the letters in separately and applied them in photoshop, while feeling the pressure of time weighing heavily on me...

WORK IN PROGRESS

As I went along I photographed my cutouts so I could compare how they looked. This whole procedure of blogging as a reflection on one's work is really making me take another look at things, and I am seeing things now that I was just too close too before or I just did not look even though I took the photo's, things start off quite pleasing even though just in ideas form in some cases and as things progress towards the end it just gets more and more crowded, and this is before I put the words on...!

SOMETHING A LITTLE CHEERIER

After spending some time looking at all things connected with mental hospital's, I was starting to feel predictably gloomy, so when in the library I came across Sparkle and Spin, illustrated by graphic designer Paul Rand, it was like a breath of fresh air. Simple cut outs often on a bright white background. In One Flew Over  The Cuckoo's Nest There is a scene with a party on the hospital ward, this scene is crucial to the plot,  I thought I would try to juxtapose the lightness and brightness of Paul Rands type of cut out images with the gruesome hospital ones.

ELECTRIC SHOCK MACHINE!

This machine is truly shocking! and  I own it. It is so horrible I keep it in the cellar.  My husband is an an antiques dealer and he bought it along with a lot of other gruesome medical stuff, It was all still hanging around a few years ago, when we were sorting workshops so I put it in the cellar for a rainy day? or an illustration project. It took all I had to get it out and photograph it, I am explaining this as I don't want it to be thought I just downloaded the image from the Internet. So here it is and again looking at things in hind sight I think it is gruesome enough for me to have made more simple use of, it gets a bit lost in my collage, but is one of the increments I wanted as it played such a key part in the film.

LONG CORRIDORS AND MEN IN WHEELCHAIRS

I am adding these pictures to my blog, after the event, I have now done as much as I can do for the Cuckoo's nest project, but I am sad, I always proceed like a headless chicken and don't reflect enough because I am scared of running out of time, now if I could have more time I might have pursued this avenue or corridor! but I didn't so... again the simple ideas work quite well, but it takes a great deal of something to make them work.

MEN IN WHITE COATES LOOKING UP!

As usual quick thoughtless sketches work so much better than contrived ones.  I really like this psychiatrist in his white coat, I would really like to figure out how to use these little sketches or develop them in such a way as not to ruin them, but it is not in me yet.