Christmas.....Already?!!!

I would usually groan at an early mention of the festive season, and I must admit it is far too early to be thinking about it.... However recently I have been thinking about ideas for the Tigerprint Gifted? Competition. And of course the designing of any products relating to the occasion, have to be thought about prior to the event (commonly and unfortunately summer!!).  It is very challenging on the sunny days (like today), to think about concepts for the polar opposite. Oh well...just thought I'd share that with you, wish me luck! 

Thanks for reading (although you probably didn't want to be reminded...) x

Back to Barcelona and Book covers!

I seem to have skipped past the book cover project that I completed... But I wanted to share the research I gained in the latest module and to maintain my posting to the blog. Following my Sagrada Familia woodcut, produced in the earlier stages of the book cover project, I came up with various ideas for my book cover, based on the book A Weird and Wonderful Guide to Barcelona by Le Cool (mainly because the title appealed to me). In the end I settled for an idea based around a tourist style postcard, with a painted   city view on the front and the reverse with a postage stamp and handwritten blurb. Here is the development of my painting.

Initially I started to paint with famous landmarks enlarged amongst the city buildings, but decided that it was too busy and drew the attention away from the areas I wanted to highlight (a less obvious and cliche postcard view of the city). Here I started to build up the mosaic effect, using rubber stamps I had made to  give the impression of the work of Gaudi, in Parc Guell.

Below is the painting close to completion, with much of the painstaking mosaic pattern completed. . .

I think the time spent on the mosaic pattern was definitely worth it and the results are better than I expected I could achieve, which is great, pretty happy with my first attempt at rubber stamping.

Thanks for reading x

Self promotion and Creativity (Original post dated 15/05/11)

​Recently after spending most of my time in the print room exploring new ways of producing artwork relating to my last project, I have been thinking about self promotion. I have been trying to find an outlet for my prints and experiments, that could be used in order to gain exposure. After a lot of thought and consideration an idea has begun to develop, but it needs more time. I have been looking for further inspiration in the field and read two interesting articles in Computer Arts. 


The first article is an interview with a London based strategist who works for Mother, an international creative agency. It is interesting because it talks about big ideas and alternative ways of finding inspiration, from which to spark ideas. 

The second article​ is about Joe Duffy, who has built up a company dealing with brand identity and design. But he talks about needing a combination of illustrative skills and business sensibility to formulate strong concepts, which I think is very true. He makes some good points about the advantages of collaboration also.