Art books

So one thing I love to do, is look for books (specifically ones with a lot of pictures haha) on artists thats I like. I would love to say my book collection is extensive, however its really not (books are expensive!) but the few that I do own, I really love to sit and look through when I find myself wanting inspiration or motivation.

I really want to grow my book collection because I find they really do help me, but heres some of the ones I already own, they really are a great source for research and inspiration.

Book title: Mexican Graphics

by korero books (text by Antoni Cadafalch and general editor Dr. Alderete)

I orginally bought this book after getting a brief to design some characters (one of those characters was a wrestler) and I found it helped me in my research towards my design. But another reason that swayed me to buying this book was that it was full of fun and creative day of the dead designs. As you know, skulls are a love of mine and making them even prettier with lovely designs and patterns only attracts me to this book more. 

Book title: Illustration Now 

by taschen book (editor Julius Wiedemann)

I purchased this book at the Tate modern gallery in london. I really love illustration (hence why I'm doing a degree in it) so I thought I would pick this book up for future reference, its full of loads of interesting illustrators so really good for research and ideas.

Book title: Dark Inspiration 

edited and published by viction:ary

This was another purchase from the Tate modern also. I'll be honest when looking around at the many many books there, I found it hard to find ones that really stood out to me to buy (I wanted them all but I'm not that rich) UNTIL... I found this gem hiding away, and I am so glad that I did find it! 

What really drew me to this book was the name. I summed up the kind of work that I love so simply, and the cover also blew me away to be honest. 

But then when I looked through it I came across one of my favourite artist. BEST FIND EVER! It simply made my week and its been one of my favourite books ever since.

Book title: Art by tattooists 

by jo waterhouse published by Laurence king publishing

As I've mentioned, I love tattoo art, its a big inspiration to me, so when i came across this book I got quite excited. I find it really interesting to see what tattoo artists do on a different surface than skin, with their own ideas and without the pressure of perfection (knowing its on a customers skin forever). I really enjoyed looking through this book and theres some great images in it.

Book title: Femina & Fauna: The art of Camilla D'errico

by dark horse books 

Camilla D'errico is one of my favourite artists so when I saw this book, I took the opportunity to get it so that I have a physical copy of some of her portfolio, which is great because I don't have to constantly go on the internet to see her work. This book is truly beautiful and really shows off her work and style in such a fitting way and shows an insight into how she creates what she does. 

Book title: The book of skulls

by Faye Dowling published by Laurence King publishing

I don't think there's much explanation needed as to why I purchased this book. The answer to that is in the title of the book alone, and if you read my last few posts you'll know why that is haha. This book is pretty awesome, it has everything I love and is a great way of showing how one object (or subject if you like) can be used in so many different ways. I really love this book, its so creative and inspiring, showing there is always a different way of working with one subject. 

So those are a few of the books I've collected over the past year or so. I really want to get some more so I had better start saving some pennies. Hope you enjoyed those :) 

Also today, my laptop was playing up a bit and decided to just open up some of my bookmarks, but it reminded me of this glorious website http://theinspirationgrid.com/ so I will leave you guys with that :) ENJOY!

Blogging

So, I'm really quite enjoying having this blog, and I love having a place to post my progress and inspirations. That has led me onto wanting my page to look nice and homely and try and make it as "me" as possible.

I've spent my evening designing a new header and trying to add little bits onto my page, and re-learning some old skills that I had completely forgotten haha. 

HTML coding still confuses the hell out of me but I'm learning more and more.

For the moment, I'm pleased with how my profile looks, but I like playing around with it and changing it up so theres no doubt it will change around soon enough :)

Anyways this was just a little update on tonights efforts :)

hope you like it :)

Tattoos

One type of art that really inspires me and that I always enjoy looking at/getting is tattoo art. I love seeing images transferred onto the skin where they can be kept forever. So its always a great achievement for me, when one of my designs is put onto someones skin. Yesterday, I was lucky enough for this to happen again. Unfortunately I didn't tattoo it (I left that to the trained professional) but I am proud to say that it is one of my designs. 

The image of the tattoo does not look anywhere near as good as the tattoo looks in person, but then it never does. I'm really pleased with how this came out and hopefully one day I can tattoo my own designs onto people rather than have someone else do it for me. 

Thanks to John Stevens (at living colour tattoo in lincoln) for doing such a great job on this piece :)

This design is quite old now but was always tattooed onto skin :) Again not very good images, sorry.

Tattooed by Patrick Blakey at the gilded quill in lincoln.

Arty friends

Aswell as posting my own stuff on this blog, I want to post some of my friends stuff aswell for you guys to check out :)

Heres a link to a friends facebook artist pages :) His work is pretty sick so go give him a like :)

KAGAYAKUINK

Anatomy

So, it seems I have a slight problem/obsession with skulls and the human body when it comes to art. I have no idea why but I literally find Skulls or bones so fascinating and interesting to draw and I really love the look that they can give when used in certain ways, I feel they can look simply beautiful and the images aren't always as scary as this might sound haha. 

I get quite a lot of inspiration from most of these images so I thought I would share a few artists/ ways in which this particular subject is used in art that I like. 

These are literally a really small selection of examples, something, i still can't put my finger on what, but something really draws me to these images.

Artists from left to right :

Tom Fench

Jason Freeny

Alex Riegert-waters

Karl Kwasny

Steve Simpson

Josh Harker

Punctured Artefact: http://www.puncturedartefact.com/home/4576389611

I'm not sure the name of the artist but this image is from a blog called "skull a day"

Again this image i found on Notcouture and I'm not sure of the original artist name

These are just a few interesting pieces out of the collection of images that I have.

I try telling myself its not an unhealthy obsession but sometimes I do worry haha.

Enjoy.

NOTCOT

Sometimes when I'm in an artistic mood, but I need that little bit of inspiration to get me started on something, I like to have a little gander on the internet and through some of my books.

I always find myself going to one particular website for inspiration, it has so many interesting and completely different posts on it, ranging from product design, to illustration, to architecture. It has everything! I really love this site and I've found so many of the artists that I love from scrolling through its pages for hours.

NOTCOT.ORG

Also check out its other links at the top of the page :) 

NOTCOT.

And if your into fashion, or want a bit of inspiration for outfits for characters maybe, check out the fashion section :)

NOTCOUTURE. 

Seriously I love this website :) so many inspiring post and helpful links.

I hope you can find some inspiration from it too.

Have a nice day :)

Karl Kwasny

The project that I am focusing on at the moment is a summer project based on creating a group of characters. 

I'm currently at the stage of looking into artists and researching character ideas. 

I wanted to do a post about Karl Kwasny's work because at the moment I am really loving it. 

His style is incredible and although it may not be to do with characters, his typography work is something I'm also very drawn into. Such a talented guy, definitely an inspiration to my work at the moment :)

Heres a link to his tumblr account which is where you can find most of his work :)

http://monaux.tumblr.com/

Twelve phrase book

Again another one of the projects I enjoyed quite a lot. I thought this was a really nice project to work on and had quite a lot of fun doing it :)

 

These are just some of my favourite pages and the best shots I had of them :) Again, i used mainly watercolour paint, poscas, fine liners, chalk and pencil crayon. 

News haiku book

This was one of the projects that I enjoyed doing the most. I was really happy with the outcome of this little book. I made it by simply hole punching the pages and tying it together with string. I used black card and brown paper for my pages and i think they worked really well together.

I mainly used, tracing paper, water colour paint, pencil crayons, posca pens and a black fine liner to create all the pages.

Tell tales

When we first started the tell tales project, I found it so hard to create a character (its not my strong point) but i managed to create one none the less. 

I actually quite enjoyed creating this little booklet and I'm quite happy with the outcome. 

I haven't taken photos of the other pieces in this project yet, but I'll edit the post once I have :)

Museum project

Its fair to say I really didnt enjoy this project much. But there were a few drawings I was happy with. They didn't help me when it came to creating a building though :( but i like the sketchs haha

Haiku Postcard Project

For the haiku postcard projects I kinda kept my designs quite simple and tidy, this is mainly because thats just the way I like to work. But these are the final designs I ended up with :

"It started with birth,

They live lives in happiness,

And die with a smile"

"The meaning of life,

is that there is no meaning,

it is all a lie."

"When you think you'll sink,

get ready and start swimming,

pick up the pieces."

As you can see, poetry writing isn't really my thing, but i enjoyed the art :)

4 word phrase project

So the outcome of this project was the phrase "Robot found an organ". I started by thinking of a few different ideas of what I could do, and looked at a few different artists for inspiration.

These are some of the images i looked at/worked from. I really loved the idea of the robot being cute and frail, kind of rusted. So after playing around with a few different ideas I decided on the idea of creating like an old photograph style portrait, of the rusty, aged robot. 

This is what I came up with, and I really loved this peice :) I just wish i could have found an old frame for it to go in, would have made it perfect.

To create this piece i used Chalk pastels on brown paper (for the background) and I used posca pens - in brown and white, with pencil over the top for the detail on the robot.