Hockney exhibition

Recently I went on a trip to London to visit some galleries, the main one I went to see was the David Hockney exhibition at the Tate Britain.

 

Ever since Matt showed me his drawings last year i have been obsessed with his work and find it incredible how he can work with such skill across a range of media that wide.

The exhibition was showing some of his most famous pieces of work over the past 60 years. Ive never really go to exhibitions and never have the desire to, however I was desperate to see this one before it finished.

I probably shouldn't have gone when I did because It was 2 days before the cop deadline and I still had loads to do but that was the only opportunity I had, that was kind of on my mind for the weekend but im still glad I went because it gave me some much needed inspiration.

Whilst I was in London I also visited the Tate modern, where I saw lots of nice stuff, my favorite was works from Picasso, Andy Warhole and Bridget Riley. Bridget Riley in particular, who I hadn't heard of prior to my trip. Her work is very mesmerizing to look at, very bright colors and bold lines and shapes put together to create giant optical illusions almost











 These are not my images, but they show just how great her work is. I have been getting into graphic design recently so that's probably why I like them so much. These pictures don't really do the paintings justice because they are massive in real life

First commission - Update

These are what the boards came out like, he is really pleased with them and said quite a few people have bought them already, unfortunately the t shirts haven't yet been printed so I don't have any pictures to show. I really wish it was some of my newer illustration work on the boards rather that a detailed animal portrait but I suppose its still getting my name out there. Someone looking for work could visit my Instagram page as a result and may prefer my newer stuff and commission me on that, which would be great.

First Commission - Second image

This is the design that will be printed on the back of the t shirt, as I mentioned in another post I did suggest to him maybe something a bit more abstract but he didn't seem to keen. The picture he sent me first was a very zoomed out picture of the building from a very straight front on angle, I told him that this would be very hard to copy as there were so many small details, especially if its getting printed onto a t-shirt because I need to keep it bold with not to many faint marks.

I advised that if he didn't want anything abstract, then the next best option would be to have a more zoomed in, off centre angle. I believe this looks more compositionally appealing to the eye, which he agreed with. Also to add a box round it so its not just a floating building.

This was the final drawing, done first in pencil then gone over in brush and ink. This one took me a very long time, probably around 6/7 hours all together. I started rushing it a bit towards the bottom because it was taking far too tong and I had other modules which desperately needed working on, thats why the quality and precision diminishes towards the bottom.

This is the photoshop edited version ready to be printed on a t shirt, over all I am fairly pleased with it, although it is definitely not my favourite style of art. I don't really consider this illustration, more just a detailed copy of an image, its a shame that this had to be my first ever real brief but im just glad its over and done with, and that ive now got that experience to learn from.

He has said he is very pleased with both the drawings and may be wanted some more stuff doing in the future, but im going to say to him that I will probably only be doing more contemporary naive work from now on which is the work I like

Leeds print festival trip

 

The other day me and a group of people from graphic design attended the Leeds print festival. I made friends with them through the collaboration responsive brief and they already had tickets so persuaded me to get one. The day was quite fun in general but the fair wasn't what I was expecting at all, to be honest im not quite sure how they could call it a festival, it was just a day sitting in a lecture hall listening to guest speakers. It was at Leeds college of music so I was expecting to get there and there be stalls set up by different artist selling prints and other art works but there wasn't anything like that.

The talks however were quite interesting, there were guest speakers from its nice that, people of print, Dr me, and two other illustrators who I cant actually remember the names of, they gave some good advice in terms of what to do after uni and who to contact. This trip has given me some encouragement to just stick at it, work hard and don't stop being creative