Visuals for Nation of Shopkeepers

Myself and Joe Durnan are going to start working on a stop motion animation to be used as visuals at the next Limn Illustration event he is holding at Nation of Shopkeepers. We are having a meeting about it today to brain storm some ideas and plan around the time scale we have to do it. There is no given theme, so all it needs to be is something that would appeal to creative young people, largely art students, as this is the type of crowd that will be there.

Craft Fair Fail

So, I managed to get all 10 successful prints of each design completed and packaged in time for the fair, but unfortunately due to lack of advertising and change of venue no one showed up and the fair was only open for about an hour. Plus, they decided to charge people 4 quid entry which in my opinion is far too much. I'm on the look out for another craft/art event to sell my prints in, possibly in the next Hand Made event which should be back at the Brudenell Social Club.

Prints for Hifi Completed

'How to Not Sell Your Soul at No Soul for Sale’

The Black Dogs Collective are looking for proposals to be created and sent in by the 30th April, to then be shown as part of their exhibition in the turbine hall in the Tate Modern.

The problem we would like to pose to you is this: 'How to Not Sell Your Soul at No Soul for Sale’

- This conundrum is directed at those artists, collectives, creatives, curators, students, facilitators, art-workers and so forth that consider or describe them selves as ‘not-for-profit’ or ‘independent’.

- The form in which we would like your answers to take is as an A4 ‘How To’ card that outlines instructions and suggests specific actions, activities, performances or discussions that can be enacted over the three days of the No Soul For Sale event.

- The activities can range from the everyday and pragmatic to the far-fetched and ridiculous. Perhaps you think inviting wild animals into the Tate would do the trick, or maybe reading out a manifesto for autonomous art, or handing out directions to ‘non-institutional’ art spaces in the local area? In any case we’d like an easy to follow step-by-step guide, using text, image, diagrams or any form you see fit, that people can both contemplate and act upon.

The work sent in will then be enlarged and displayed in the turbine hall. I would like to try and get something done for this as soon as possible. My mind feels a bit disorganised with ideas though. spider diagram? I hate them, but it may be necessary.

Screen Printing

I had some problems with the prints coming out dark enough, particularly with the black as the dots were so tiny. It was also pretty hard to line up all three images each time with every individual print. I'll go back tomorrow and see how many are usable. I also need to buy plastic cases for my cards, which I can get in the Merrion market art shop apparently.

Casting a Turkey

After my tutorial with Graham, I decided I wanted to do more with my Illustrations. So, I am going to make my turkey filled with fingers image in to a reality by casting fingers and a turkey, and possibly throwing in some red wax.

I went to the casting room this morning and with much help from Oli Frend, I got a fair few fingers models done in about half an hour. It was so quick and easy to do, and I will paint them once I have enough to fill the turkey cast...(which I have yet to buy a real turkey for).

Other Printed Card Costs

I'm looking at prices of other hand printed cards, to get an idea of how much to charge.



This website charges £4 for a card. However, they are printed on quality heavy stock paper and I am using cartridge. Therefore I can't justify charging as much.

Finding an Exhbition Space

We need to find out from Leeds Art College if there's any chance of getting an exhibition space over the next couple of months to display the work for The North, and if so, if it would be ok for us to invite the vendors to come along and see it, which I think is very important that they can.

I'm also going to check out other exhibition spaces in Leeds, such as The Common Place. This was suggested to us by one of the coordinators at The North. It is run by volunteers, and they have a space that can be booked out. As far as I can tell, there are no fees to pay. Over the next couple of days I will contact them and the art college and see which one, if any, seems the most appopropriate.

Further ideas on Big Issue project...

One of the vendors who we would really like to involved in the project mentioned to Claire that he didn't like the idea of using photography in the exhibition, and we get the feeling that this may be a group mentality from the vendors about it. So, I thought as a way of still using the vendors lives as a key theme and to incorporate photography still, we could give the vendors the disposable cameras and encourage them to photograph whatever they like e.g. the surroundings of where they sell the magazine, themselves, things they see in the city around them, their living situation....anything at all. Then, once we have the photos, Claire and I will use the outlines of the photos to laser cut intricate cut outs of designs from the subjects of the photos, and possibly create layers of these images which we can then put together and mount.

Doing it this way means that the identity of the vendors will be concealed, but they will still very much be the concept behind the visuals we create. I also think that creating something quite intricate and beautiful will be nice for the vendors to see, and knowing that it is dedicated to them.

We have yet to put this idea to the vendors, but the coordinators really like it and have encouraged us to ask the vendors for feedback when we next work with them or see them.

Live Brief: The Big Issue in The North

For a few months now I have been volunteering weekly with The Big Issue in The North. It has always been something very separate from my art practice and other areas of my life, but we have been asked to create work and put on an exhibition for them. We had a meeting with one of the coordinators to get some more details on what exactly it was they wanted us to do.

It's a really loose brief, because the coordinators are open to anything really, as long as it involved the vendors in some way. At the moment, the idea of putting together a photography exhibition is one that seems popular. We know that one of the coordinators is in to photography herself, and she likes the idea of giving the vendors disposable cameras and seeing what could come from that. We need to talk to the vendors in some detail about any ideas we come up with too, to see how willing to get involved they would be.

The Illustration after Adobe Illustrator...

Once I turned my sketches in to vector images, I coloured them using very simple varying shades of red and black. I will then print the image out twice, with the two colour spearations, and play around with halftones in Photoshop to give a grainy effect. It also means I can still get away with using only two colours when screen printing, but the different shades will look good.




Plus I played around with another sketch. It doesn't go with the food theme, but I like it and would like to print it with the others, keeping the same colour scheme.

Prints for the Craft Fair at Hifi

Paul Price asked me if I would like to create some prints to be sold at a craft fair at Hifi on the 24th April. This seemed the perfect opportunity for me to do some work that I enjoyed doing, and having it seen by the public. I wanted to do a set of two images, using my obsession with the idea that food that appears secretive, normally has a reason for being so. For example, having never eaten a pie in my life, I constantly question why you would need to conceal its insides with a top layer of pastry...it doesn't seem necessary. It has no function. is there something suspicious hiding in there?

Here are the original pencil sketches, before I edit them on Illustrator.

Anna Fox Exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery

I absolutely loved Anna Fox's work, entitled 'My Mother's Cupboards and My Father's Words'. At first glance, it appears to be a twee, dainty set of photographs, each one accompanied by a small amount of delicate writing. On closer inspection, The pretty little photos become tainted by the angry, violent and disgusting words that grace the space next to them.

Roller Dolls FAIL...

So, having emailed my two new designs to Jude, I didn't hear anything back for a good few days. I emailed them and asked if they had actually received my work at all, and they replied saying they had but had ended up going with someone else's work because I had apparently taken too long to get the work done.

This is not true. There was over a week to the deadline when I sent them my work. I'm annoyed because it is slightly disheartening, but I also wish they had just been honest with me earlier and said that they didn't like my work. Oh well, I can start working on something else now.

Van Doesburg Exhibition

During my week back home in London, I also visited the Van Doesburg exhibition at Tate Modern. I wasn't able to spend as much time as I would have liked to there, but was very drawn to his examples of his use of typography and design work, more so than his abstract work.

As The booklet I picked up states, 'Theo van Doesburg was one of the leading figures in the development of geometric abstraction. He was also the founder and chief spokesman of the De Stijl group, and edited the magazine of the same name..This exhibition explores his pivotal role within the international avant-garde not only through his own work- as artsit, designer, writer and editor- but also that of the artists he promoted, collaborated with learned from and influenced'.

De Stijl is a movement founded in 1917 by the painters Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar with the architect JJP Oud and the poet Anthony Kok. I scanned in the two pages on De Stijl which can be clicked on below and enlarged to read.

Postcard from The Photographers' Gallery

I picked up this postcard from the desk at The Photographers Gallery. It caught my eye, and intrigued me at first, but also bothers me because I can't look at images like this anymore and feel excited. People picked up on the whole 'this is a mass of cool, quirky, child-like, bright-coloured mass of handmade stuff' and has been over used I feel. All the same, it's pretty to look at. Plus it's advertising two performance artists, Andre Blood and Zoe Sinclair. And I'm definitely down with performance art.

East End & West End

East End & West End is a map of galleries in the East and West ends of London. I picked it up at an exhibition, and really loved the way it was designed. It has quite a personal, old school feel to it. It feels quite precious in my hands, as if it's a hand printed antique. It also made the idea of wandering around and looking for these little hidden galleries seem like a secretive treat.

Richard Billingham Exhibition

On Tuesday 13th April I went to see the Richard Billingham exhibition at the Anthony Reynolds gallery in central London.

The main themes of these particular photographs were his family, animals and landscapes. He normally groups these themes separately, however it the nice thing about this exhibition is that it displayed a selection of a mix of these. One thing I find about his photographs is that they really engage me, more than most photography does. I can appreciate photography, but most of the time unless it's David Lachapelle or Nan Golden-eqsue in your face and larger than life visuals or subjects, I find myself to drift from finding any connection with the photos themselves.

Richard Billingham has a way of capturing a fairly normal looking setting, but giving it a sense of the unknown or intrigue, very very subtly. I love the photo below, because he cuts out the face and head of the main character in the photo, but doesn't leave it feeling like it's missing anything necessary to the photo. For me, it creates an atmosphere and feeling that I just can't place. I'm tempted to feel a certain sadness, but am not sure of the history behind the people in the photo. I am aware that Billingham has had a quite a hard relationship with his family, especially with his father, as he is an alcoholic.

Alternative Illustrations

I decided to try something different to using the plaing card suits as backdrops, and now that I've learnt to use Live Paint tool on Adobe Illustrator, experiment with the colour a little more e.g. make them look less flat.

Feedback from Roller Dolls

I received and email back from Jude. One of the main points that stood out, was this one:

'I'm not convinced by the severed leg, simply because there will be families and children attending the bout and I think it gives the wrong impression about the sport as a whole, it's quite savage. I'd prefer the image without this.'

Clearly Graham should not encourage my Illustratively masochistic tendencies when it comes to 'family' events.

However, she also said that the quality of the designs weren't good enough, which I totally agree with because colouring the images on Photoshop just doesn't deliver images that look the same standard as Illustrator.

In the email, she also said, 'I'd like some of the colours changing so they represent the teams that will be playing on the day. Birmingham (represented by the black card suits) will be playing in army print and black. Leeds (represented by the red suits) will be playing in bright red, white and black.'

I had asked before whether there were any colours in particular from the outfits she wanted me to use, and had said no. I emailed back and said that I would take all the changes in to consideration and decided to create something completely new because I got the impression she didn't like the work too much.

Possible Illustrations....

I scanned my sketched in to Adobe Illustrator and turned them in to vector images, then filling them on Photoshop. This is just so I can send something visual to the Dolls quickly and get feedback (I still need help on how to use Live Paint tool on Illustrator). In my email I explained my idea of using the four card suits, and said that I obviously needed more detail on the colours of the uniforms of the two roller teams playing.

Tutorial with Graham

I had an individual tutorial with Graham, which was very helpful. He started by asking me what wanted to do in the future, and I began by answering with the very 'sensible' answers e.g. what I think I could make money out of. However, when it came down to it, I realised the kind of things I wanted to be doing were producing my Illustrations for people and companies who I really felt involved with....e.g. Circus of Horrors, Burlesque shows, Rockabilly gigs and events etc. This also connects with this live brief for Leeds Roller Dolls. It is something out of the ordinary, and one of the only sports I feel enthusiastic about.

I took along my unfinished vector image, just as an early example:


Graham pointed out that his feedback on the image wasn't necessarily important, as he wasn't the client. However, he said it was a nice image, but that I was clearly holding back...which was spot on. I had fought the urge to use my severed limb, gruesome sketches as I thought they may be a little too much. However, I agreed with Graham that I should take the risk, and send them both images. That way, if they were shocked by the more violent one, then they had a more mundane alternative.

Sketching Ideas

I have pencil sketched up a couple of drawings I would then put in to Illustrator and play around with. They are very, very basic and haven't spent too much time including a lot of detail or making them too precise, as I will do this in Adobe Illustrator.






I thought I could make a series of Illustrations, using the 4 card suits. using the reds or one team, and the black's for the other.

Roller Derby Artwork

I thought it would be a good idea to look at some other artwork done for Roller Derby. I like that the Roller Derby girls are always portrayed in a pin-up like fashion, and sexualised through their exaggerated outfits and positions.

Previous Leeds Roller Dolls work/posters

I told Jude it would be helpful to see any previous Illustration work they've used to get a feel for it. She emailed me the artwork used for their last game in Leeds. She pointed out that they didn't want it to be similar in the way that the previous girl had included the name of the game and other text in her design, when all they wanted was a simple image that they could play around with. This made it easier for me, as I'm not very confident when it comes to choosing the write type and layout for things, however this could mean they could ruin my work by adding awful text and doing it all really badly. I will send them my images alone, but will play around with adding some titles myself and see how it looks.

Here is the poster for their previous game, The Snow Brawl:


I don't like it, but it's very obviously not my style. I understand why this would have made them want the artist not to include the text themselves. However, it's still helpful to see. My work will be fairly different from this. This is quite a hand-drawn image though, and a lot of my Illustration is computer generated e.g. on Adobe Illustrator. But they know this from looking at my online portfolio, so this should be ok.


(This is another poster they used for a previous game, using Photography).

Live Brief- Leeds Roller Dolls

Jude emailed me and said the Dolls were impressed with my portfolio and would like me to produce a series of Illustrations for them, to use on flyers and in the program for their next game.

The Roller Dolls are a local roller derby team. I'm not too clued up on how exactly the sport works, but I know it involves women, skates, knee pads and physical violence to some degree. Awesome! It's a sport that originated in America and is a big craze over there. Here's a video I found on youtube.com:


It gives me a little bit more of an insight of what the Dolls do. Looks pretty fun.

All I am aware of as of yet is that they are considering using a vegas/casino theme, and that the brief is quite flexible e.g. they would like me to have a fair bit of input. Jude, the Roller Doll in charge of design and promotions, suggested it would be useful for me to make an appearance at one of their practices so I can get a feel for what it is they actually do and meet a few of them. I am planning on going next Sunday, also with the intention of hopefully eventually joining at some point.

Reply from Leeds Roller Dolls

They emailed me back and liked my work, and have said that they will be in contact within the next couple of weeks with more details about the game itself and any themes that will go along with it. Apparently at the moment they like the idea of a Vegas/casino theme, which would be cool to work with. I am particularly obsessed with using images of playing card suits within my work, which has put a couple of ideas of images in my head.

I guess Ill just wait for some more details....

Contacting Leeds Roller Dolls

After our FMP show at the end of Year 1, I was contacted by a lady from the Leeds Roller Dolls team in Leeds. I was unfortunately unable to do any work for them at the time, but now am very interested in getting back in to contact with them and finding out if they are still interested in getting me to do any artwork for them.

I emailed Adele and she gave me the email address of another Roller Doll who is part of the design team, to drop an email and find out more. Before I got round to emailing her, she emailed me and said she heard I would be interested in producing some Illustration for them, and if I could send her some examples of previous work she could take this further. I didn't have an online portfolio, so set one up fairly quickly with a website called finalcrit.com. It was very simple and I just included a few bits of work.

http://www.finalcrit.com/design/amberbednall

This is the main page of my online portfolio. I made the first image one my Tassle Massacre images from the show last year, as I knew this is something they initially liked.


I have emailed her the link and am waiting for a reply.