LAUIL503: Studio Brief 3 - Final Zine Pages

Centerfold - pages 6 and 7

Double page spread

• Deciding on final pieces is very difficult for em as I can b quite an indecisive person but I am relatively happy with how this final version of the zine is looking!

• There is a sense of coherency with the colour palette of green and black (and anything else that will show up due to digital texture overlays - slightly cheating!)

• There is a sense of balance with mixing full pages with double page spreads for visual interest

• There is a sense of a slight narrative - tickets at the beginning of the zine indicating ticket collection / a journey / an adventure, motifs of the train for boarding, then the illustration of Poiroit on board investigating murder, bottles of poison, and skulls for death

• I can't wait to see how this turns out on acetate!

LAUIL503: Studio Brief 3 - Photoshop Play!

 

• Here are just a few of my favourites from my Photoshop experiments combining gelli prints, my cut out shapes, textures, and mono prints

• Looking to Japanese Notan for repeat shapes, negative and positive shapes for a sense of harmony

• Listening to Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder have really impacted the aesthetic of this! Who knew Agatha Christie could be Disco!!!

• There is obviously no sense of cohesion here and they will need to be edited to reflect my chosen two way colour palette of green and black for this brief but some of the compositions went truly wacky with the layer functions and overlays!!

• I'm really excited about this project now and pushing my ideas further and further have proven fruitful. There will be a lot to choose from when it comes to creating the zine! 

LAUIL503: Studio Brief 3 - Cut Shapes and Textures!

 

Cut Shapes

 

 

• Here are just a few of the textures I created using gelli printing (mono printing at home with acrylic paint on a gelatine pad) and cut shapes based on exhaustive shaketching of motifs in my sketchbook 

• Scanning in the cut shapes with all of those lovely textures picked up from the gelli printing I did adds such visual interest, a sense of "grunge" and "distress" and "vintage," that will look rather effective when experimenting with repeated patterns next.

• Looking back to my proposal and contextual research, I have ticked a number of boxes in wanting to use cut shape for collage arrangement (albeit digital) for  sense of the handmade and "aura", mixing digital and analog in the style of The Printed Peanut for a modern vintage mix, using the blues and greens from Este McLoed's selected illustrations to evoke poison and mystery, and cut shapes positive (I've kept some of the negative too for further printing and experimentations) as seen wit Japanese Notan.

LAUIL503 Studio Brief 3: Screen Printing Poirot

 

• After enjoying screen printing in the Dracula brief, I wanted to find out if it could benefit my zine in any way

• Selecting and mixing a muted blue and brown give illusions to the old, to vintage aesthetics, to old Penguin classic books

• I'm not sure if I want this zine to be character driven or feature Poirot at all, the main character of The Orient Express, and while I enjoyed this experimentation I do feel I have ultimately wasted a morning's work and reflection
• I'm not to happy with the characters design and the only thing I truly like here is pushing the printing process into a weird direction!

LAUIL503: Studio Brief 3 - Contextual Research

The Printed Peanut / Louise Lockhart

Louise Lockhart was a visiting lecturer in my first year of degree 3 years ago and I've been fascinated and has followed her practice ever since. I especially really like her handmade approach and combining that with digital (scanning and overlaying with textures( with give a more modern and contemporary aesthetic white still retaining a vintage and evocative tone of voice. Her process is one that I would like to adopt more as , from my COP research, the element of the hand-made retains a sense of "aura" and ownership of the artist / illustrator. I too would like to mix vintage aesthetics, synonymous with Christie, with a more modern and contemporary execution.

 

Japanese Notan Art

Japanese Notan art aims to balance light and dark to create harmony within an image and often uses positive and negative images and shapes through paper cutting. With minimal / no colour and texture involved there is no distraction. While I will be using two colours plus stock as part of the brief, I want to be able to create a sense of balance and harmony in my zine composition pages for the most part - or do I? I could turn this completely on its head and create something chaotic. Reverse-Notan for a chaotic train journey!

 

Este McLoed 

Unlike the first two parts of my contextual research, Este is not a college or cut shape artist or illustrator - however these works could easily be translated to that process. There is a sense of balance to these illustrations and I am particularly drawn to the green and blue tones... would I want to use these in my own zine to reflect poisons? The textures give a sense of he old and the vintage. I particularly like the use of repeated pattern and motif and draw home that sense of balance and harmony within the composition. I could create could shapes and repeat them digitally.