Illustration Friday: Voyage

Very, very proud of this one - I used a little bit of watercolour (the background is a nice blue wash, and the girl got a bit of watercolour on her lineart, too) but most of this is digital.

I think Polyrillustration's layout is in serious need of a re-vamp. Not quite sure what to do yet though.

Cards for Sale

Although I thought I couldn't get them printed in time for the Vyner Studio exhibition, here they are - greetings cards featuring my paintings and a couple of my Loli-themed drawings! There's 4 of each design, so if you'd like one get hold of me ASAP (they're £1.50 each)! I will do reprints if I have the demand for them. Thanks muchly to MOO for being very speedy, especially as I'd put in an order for 100 business cards at the same time (they're perched happily on my windowsill). Well worth the cash.

Kawaii, Oh My

First off: If you're not busy this week, head down to the Vyner Studio! You may recall me mentioning that the pieces in the entry below were being done for an exhibition - well, they're on show there as part of the Tea Party Club's 5th Anniversary event! Check it out!

I'm still going strong with the Embodiment project, but I think my Moleskine (notebook) is getting a little tired of watercolour washes over and over again. Taking the hint from my good friend Addy, I bit the bullet and ordered from Modes4U.

I ordered a couple of 10-pack deco tape sets (very cheap at about £3 per pack) and, as I'd just received a paycheck, some adorable stickers. They posted them out to me within a couple days, and got here today - super quick for overseas shipping!

They also threw in an extra deco tape (Rilakkuma-themed) as a thank you for ordering from them. How sweet! As well as journalling my adventures, deco tape is also good for sealing packages or adding a bit of cute to thank-you cards. With good prices, excellent shipping and customer service, I'd definitely shop again with Modes in the future.

As for Embodiment spreads, as I've not done one of these posts in a while:

Includes the laminated Loli conbadge I'd done for myself at the event.

Even things like business cards and packaging for teabags cannot escape my journal!

And, to top it all off - my Three Lolifriends image was used as a design for the back of a compact mirror for the Tea Party Club's Sunday tea party event. One of my Lolita friends, Jennifer, was kind enough to take a photograph for me as I couldn't attend the Sunday tea party:

I'm well chuffed!

Hothead

Thanks to Ad, the Hell's Medic for the prompt! This painting was done in my Embodiment journal (and bled right through onto the other page ... I was a bit heavy handed with the gouache) in-between university drawings. It's a self portrait, while at the same time representing the element of fire.

I used gouache, Daler-Rowney pearlescent liquid acrylics (which I've taken to collecting) and good old fashioned inks.

I will get to uploading some university work soon - it'll be a long post but it's a needed one!

Embodiment in the new Academic Year

Very soon (in less than a week), I shall be a second-year student. How time flies.

On my 'off days', I like to muck around with pressing teabags into the journal pages (overnight is best, makes a great imprint), staining, paints, all sorts of lovely mess. This has given birth to a few page spreads.

A Polyrhythm is very many things. This was based from an exercise I had to do way back at the start of my GCSE Art course (that was many years ago).

This one got a bit of popularity on my Tumblr. I like how each layer is visible - like many scanned pieces I find it's nicer in real life, but generally I really like how it turned out. My journal, as well as being a diary of sorts, is a place where I can experiment with techniques and then take them further if they work out.

FEATURE: Paul Kenton

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, especially as when I first saw these paintings - in the ICC, in Birmingham - I was completely taken in. The free flowing lines to the shining paint, to the sheer energy coming from the canvas just enthralled me. If a painting can be 'delicious', these would be top of the menu.

Enough of my waxing lyrical - let's look at the goodies.

I love how the various painting techniques are used here to create a bustling city. The smudges of yellow and red just give out all of this energy, and the intricate, well-placed lines forming the stationary buildings just emphasise it.

This one - Piccadilly - is my absolute favourite. There's something warm and comforting about it, yet I think of it as set towards the end of summer where there's that slight chill in the air that warns you of the colder months. The light and yellow tones contrasting with the blue sky and dark lines (as well as the reflections of the passers-by - he notes in the influences section of his website how the interaction of water and light fascinates him) make this piece amazing.


What are you listening to me yammering for? If his work is at a gallery near yours, go see it!

His main website is here:
http://www.paulkenton.com/

And his Twitter feed can be followed here:
https://twitter.com/paulkenton/

All images in this post are © Paul Kenton, 2011.

Fun with Facebook and Tumblr

I now have a Tumblr outlet, here. Hooray, hooray, and thrice hooray!

http://polyrillustration.tumblr.com/

My Facebook page is on the right hand side of the blog, in the sidebar. Like, like and ... well, you can't like it three times. But liking it once is good enough for me.

Things here are hectic - I'm working a lot of the week at my part-time job, and the hours are long. Very grateful to actually have a job, but ... still, I go out to get the train at 7AM and I get back at about 6PM. For some people that's not a very big deal or even the norm (it is for my mother), but for me it's tiring. When I get home, I barely feel like doing much by the way of art even though I know I should. I do, however, still collect editorial illustrations daily for my university research diary and do what I feel up to. I've found that if I try and force myself to draw when I'm tired or lacking energy, it only results in crappy art.

For my more informal drawings, I get a lot of inspiration from people around me - as cliche as it sounds, you really do get great ideas. For example, this drawing was an idea that formulated after I went to a Lolita meet this weekend and stand-up comedy was brought up. Personally I'd love to see a Loli stand-up act - even if it wouldn't really work for your random passer-by, I'd certainly love it.

Felt tip, fineliner, and pencil. The background is mixed-media - graphite, tea, PVA glue, white acrylic paint - all smudged up and left to dry. Both pieces were scanned in and edited with the GIMP.

This is something based from a photograph that touched my heart, by a guy called Joel Goodman. I was very worried when the London riots were going on - I have friends who live and study in London, and when it spread to Birmingham, the city I consider my home, I worried even further even though I'm not there currently (something which I was very thankful for at the time). A video was uploaded to Facebook of my student accommodation surrounded by rioters, there were photographs and reports from people living in Birmingham, and it didn't make for pleasant viewing. I tried to keep up via Facebook and Twitter, and - of course - you don't know what's real and what's rumour. I wanted to make sure everyone I knew was safe. Businesses and buildings were ruined. Homes were destroyed. People were injured and killed. Innocent lives were turned completely upside down. Whether it was "I did it for a laugh" or "the government don't care about the working-class", there is no reason that can justify what those people did. It's disgusting, absolutely abhorrent.

The slogan I got from the Facebook group - Anti-Riot: Operation Cup of Tea - where the members uploaded a photograph of themselves with a nice cuppa and a sit down at 8.30PM to show that they didn't agree with the riots and wished to stay out of it.

I wanted to do a piece on the riots - I felt I should - and overall this is what came out.

I'm off for a cup of tea, and to sit down with my sketchpad.

And where have I been?!

... not quite sure. But I'm getting there.

What I'm up to right now

(Hi, folks! I'm back in business again.)

While we all wait to start our next module, university has set something to be getting on with for the next two weeks (about half the time is up). It's focussing on drawings, design principles, and appropriation. Here's a couple photos.

There's something very interesting about collage - especially how it handles positive/negative space, unity and dominance. I've been into it since Foundation, since the importance of mark making was drilled into my mind, and even now when I picture my illustration career - I won't be able to just work with pencils and pens. I love sitting down to a good old fashioned life drawing session with an A1 sheet of cartridge-paper and a stick of charcoal like anyone else (and it's a therapeutic practise, too) but I feel that my main style needs materials - buttons, bubble wrap, paints, needle-n'-thread, old magazines, coffee, felt, different fabrics and textures. Heck, on the odd occasion when I do digital art, I still want it to look painterly and with texture.

So, I took this opportunity to make use of it, and look at collage in more of a design perspective. It's certainly interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with.

My room'll be smelling like a Starbucks branch for the rest of the evening, but it's worth it.

Embodiment: One Year, Four (and a half) Journals

I picked 'The Day's Leisure' because it's such a nostalgic tune. Clannad isn't particularly nostalgic for me (although I've liked the series for a while), but the music just ... is. Gotta love Key.

Anyway. This is sommething I've been wanting to do for New Year's Eve to mark my first year in journalling. After I finish Book Five, I'm thinking of getting a Moleskine - I flicked through one belonging to one of my university course-buddies and the paper quality is beautiful, it'd be a real dream to write and collage on.

The photographs are ones I took over the course of the year, which is nostalgic in itself. The journals themselves are currently in storage and not very easy to get to (with the exception of Book Five, which I'm still working in) - also, I treat my journals like time capsules. Once they're put away, I'd like to leave it several years before digging them out again. Unfortunately, there are no photographs of Book Two, which was a text-only, spiral-bound A6 journal - but I do still own it.


I wish everyone a super 2011!

New Year, New Course

This was done as part of our induction - we were put into little groups of five or six, and given a list of tasks to do. Mine was to go out, find another of the university's campuses, and make an illustration of one of the flowery tiles set into the wall. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually need to go to this campus, but it was fun finding it (tip: don't rely on Google Directions).

My course lectures start later this afternoon. Afterwards, I have a meeting with the student magazine team. Awesome!

Final Interview

I'm posting this on the day I came back, so - as I'm sure you'll understand - I'm completely mentally frazzled. So, writing-wise, I'll leave you with the message of the work I did (based from the brief I was given) while at my interview:

There are many layers, pages and windows to the human identity.


Photos are in no particular order, but the first image is the 'front cover' (and you can see the second page through the letters I carved out) of the small handmade book I produced:

















I am Polyrhythm, Polyrhythm I am!

A Little Book o' Mess

Those of you who have done a Foundation course in Art will know the importance of mark-making, especially in those first few weeks. The 'Day-to-Day' project I'm doing now involves a lot of experimentation with media, and I figured I should have a little book to accompany my large sketchbook and sheets of A1 - a little book o' mess. But a book of nice mess, I feel it draws the eye and appears interesting (I'm a sucker for tactile pieces and textures). Weaving, cappuccino powder (that smells awful, I may add), PVA, black dye, glue-gun strands, pinpricks, acetate that's been printed on, extra sheets stitched and wax all feature in this, and I'm not even a third of the way through it yet.




The first two pages of this book - the very first is weaved with newspaper and splashed with wax, PVA and coffee after having a little spray-paint applied. The wax and PVA was also there to stop it falling apart; it wasn't the most secure of weaves and it kept falling out x_X





The 'lemon' page and acetate page were both stitched to the spiral binding. One was a wrapper from a lollipop and I wanted to use it for something as I found the little drawings cute, and the acetate ... darn, I wish the PVA had dried clear but because there were a good few layers in it and I'd trapped the glue, it didn't. Still, no matter - it worked quite nicely. I used the acetate I'd previously used for screenprinting; I'd had no idea what to do with them afterwards and this seemed like a nice use of them.



I then experimented with taking parts out of pages and replacing them with other materials (in this case, another bit of acetate that was printed on). Also there you can see some weaving with receipts and carrier bags (two things I seem to collect a lot of).



Experimenting with graphite shavings, and more writing. On the opposite page you can see some glue-gun strands and pin-pricks (the latter is a bit time-consuming but it's lovely for texture 'specially if you apply coffee or tea afterwards).



More fun with spray-paint. I really like the left page on this one because you can actually see the print on the acetate and the coffee-stain on the prior pages - a nice touch. I don't think I'll be doing anything further to that page even though it's still quite plain compared to the others - the little window is nice enough.

College work

Nobody likes to be bullied. When I drew this, I wanted to repair the poor little kid's toy train or get him a new one. :(

My work in college is often mixed media. Sometimes I do stick to just the one material, but often I use two or sometimes even three. What I've found during this time is that when my work is photographed or scanned, the 'flatness' gives it a more interesting look. In magazines or picture books, this works rather well.

My themes, so far, have gone from happier pieces representing childhood and innocence, to the darker side of things. For typography practise, I used a few quotes from Robert Fulghum (who wrote this book - I've currently put a request in for it at the Library but the only copy of it is in headquarters' archive so I'm not sure if I'll get it) alongside these drawings - as they supported how important childhood was for the rest of one's life. This piece involving these two lads was part of a much more sinister one (which gave the style I draw in a new light) - a bully and a victim, one instance between these two and also shown in the interaction between the bully's father and the teacher (the dad refusing to believe his son's a bully, throwing his weight around, etc).

It's very interesting to work with a particular theme that you feel strongly on - when I was drawing the red-faced kid I felt like scribbling all over his face, so I must be doing something right!