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accidentally posted on the wrong blog 

Week 5

This week I’ve been working on a more cowboy drawings, tackling stances, positions and clothing. Along with this I have been playing around with the previous idea combining tormented horse imagery with the human form.

These tiny cowboys mostly serve as a warm up. Working from the references I took in last weeks photoshoot, I’ve been drawing small rough little cowboys in various poses. Working so small is a great warm up when thinking about shape, size, distance and position very simply. Not having to delve into lots of detail and using simple watercolour to finish it off allows me to create a quick image that I can work from again from but in an illustrative form. This lets me test various lines and shapes. I find it easier to work off a drawn image as it shows you what lines should be more prominent from the others. For this reason, I really like it as a warm up before drawing larger images.

For these pieces I’ve worked differently, producing much larger rough images. Working from the idea I had, I really like the imagery of the horse head on the human body. Looking like some sort of mythical beast, the horse head looks peculiar and out of place (obviously). The way I have written this into the theme of this Western, is that the antagonists of the film are a gang of 7 men, lead by a man called Phillip Grayson. The gang rob and thieve but under the guises of nuns. This allows them to move through the West and be mostly undisturbed by authorities as The Church remains sacred and why would nuns be any threat. As a method of humiliation, decapitate horses and place the heads on their captives. Its somewhat inspired by The Godfather with the horse’s head in the bed but serves a different warning as it acts a method to scare anyone who might step in their path. Since I am using horses as a sign of femininity, the decapitation of the horse is used here as an act against our main character and the gender. The antagonists also use women’s clothing as a way to deceive and cheat their way past. In many examples of literature e.g. MacBeth by William Shakespeare, a women’s best women is her mind and its ability to deceive men, Lady MacBeth being a prime example. Another example is that of Homer’s Odyssey where the main character Odysseus, is deceived by pretty much every women he meets. My female protagonist will defeat her opponents in the shame way that is associated with men, front on and in the case of the West, with a gun in her hand.

As for the actual pieces, I’m not thrilled by the larger pieces. I tried to emulate the last charcoal horse pieces I did, along with one where I wanted the horse head to appear as more of a construction, chaining the human in. Unfortunately, I think the charcoal didn’t play down well on the paper as I wanted to use much larger paper but it had some sort of film over it. They worked well as experiments but not sure if I want to follow these ones up in particular.

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Final critical review

 This project has really felt like my last foundation project. It’s been difficult, challenging, I’ve tried digital work which is entirely new me and I have ended up with (at least one of them) what I consider my best piece to date. I have stepped down a slightly more design route as over time, I think it is where I would like to end up when thinking about future careers.

My concept is to create a dynamic poster for a imaginary Spaghetti Western that I have thought of. I springboarded off looking at 1960s lifestyle illustration and was really drawn to their ‘bubble and streak lifestyle’ along with the portrayal of women in these illustrations. Lifestyle illustration contained beautiful young women swooning over young men to advertise a product or ideal. The best magazines to work for as a commercial illustrator back then was the women’s magazines that tour across the West. Along with some fantastic art coming out of the 60s the rise of spaghetti westerns took place, with Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollar Trilogy’ being made. These films, and many others like it were a primarily male dominated cast; men doing manly things.  I wanted to take these two ideas and flip them over, using the style to portray women as confident, strong and really just as capable as their male counterparts in the Wild West. To do this I needed to come up a rough narrative, capturing the dynamic moments and key characters to go on the poster. Posters are essentially just this, the interesting parts of the film without giving away the plot.

I find that starting with good basis for research is good, but I much prefer finding new artists as I go along. This allows me to match my research as my project and ideas evolves over time. My research can be split into two parts: Research into the 60s illustrators and research into the Western films and their design. The 60s illustrators mostly include Bernie Fuchs, the guy go paved the way for the change in lifestyle illustration from the 60s, loosening the grip on realism and showing more experimental techniques. This was due to the change in photography as it became more accessible for publishers to do, so illustrators had to do what cameras couldn’t. Along with Andy Virgil, David Grove, Eric Earnshaw and a number of other illustrators, we saw this shift towards brighter colours, heavy pencil rubbings and a dynamic use of space within their pieces. Another illustrator, Brian Sanders, had a very similar method and documented it a bit more than the others. His use of negative space offered a lacking approach to colour and shape, which in turn brought a new aspect to his images.

The research into Spaghetti Westerns has included looking into artists who create western art and the films themselves. So far I have determined that there is two large categories for westerns; brighter, more heroic tales and more twisted, gritty stories of betrayal. After watching ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ by Leone, I believe I want to steer more towards the darker West, where nearly everyone is a cheat, and those that aren’t usually end up dead or poor. I wanted to capture a West where morality seems to have gotten lost in. I would say my research has gone well as it is quite extensive into imagery and metaphor. For instance, I have been looking into Picasso’s horse drawings as they supposedly portray the pain of femininity. Along with this I have looked into man’s relationship with horses, as both pets and tools. I watched a documentary titled Unbranded about four men who drove 16 Mustangs from Mexico to Canada showing both the attachment towards the animal as a companion and the tool that needs to be broken in order to control it.

As for modern artists that delve into the West, Felica House did a series called Re-Western, painting classic spaghetti western characters as women to allow women to empathise with a group of characters that are primarily male. Fort Guerin is a Virginian artist that captures the more comical side of the west snapshotting moments, and producing a sense of a bigger picture by using borders that seem too small along with his heavy incorporation with text.

My final pieces are two faux film posters for a film concept I created with a female protagonist called ‘Shoot From The Hip’. This sparked from what I noticed about 1960s lifestyle illustrations and that women were presented as sheltered and dependent on some sort of man. The first poster I created depicts a horse rearing its front legs upwards attempting to shake the rider on top of its back of. The horse stands as a metaphor for the treatment of women while the rider represents men, enforcing and dominating the creature into servitude. The piece was made on photoshop using a ‘brnk’ brayer brush tool which leaves a charcoal like rubbing. I used this alone to shape and mold the form of the pair, using the more intense strokes for darker areas of shade while leaving areas blank to get highlights. The rider has his face hidden beneath his hat to express a theory I had about westerns where hat position and facial exposure was a tell tale sign for their morality. The low brim of the front of the hat is to say that the man is an antagonist. The brush strokes ripple of the horse and rider to show a greater sense of movement along. The horse is panicking, its eye wide open in the fight against the rider while the man seems to be enjoying it. The horse (the women) fights its oppressor in an attempt to free itself from this state of captivity while the man attempts to break the horse in order to gain dominance over it. Over this on another photoshop layer, is a rough red border that captures the scene. Red is a colour I associate with liberation and empowerment and a stronger, more intense shade of pink which is typically a feminine colour. To keep the rough texture for the border, I loosely applied the colour on top as if it had been printed or rolled lightly across.

The other poster is a Olly moss inspired design piece. The composition is an outline of a women’s behind and thighs takes the most of the page up, leaving space on the outside and inbetween the legs. This is applied in the same way as the red border but with the opacity lowered so that it builds up layers in various places. I used this to try and create areas of shadow such as the inside of the legs and underneath the behind. Within these legs are six silhouettes going upwards of cowboys being shot, injured and killed. They take the same texture of the legs, using this faded brush to add texture. The silhouettes are a range of orange and brick reds while the legs are a much lighter orange. I felt that these are all very western colours, capturing the texas frontier in its dust plains and vast wilderness along with the worn and fading texture. The dying silhouettes are to represent the abruptness of death in the west due to the advancement of firearms at the time, moving towards semi automatic revolvers and repeaters. The figures are plucked out of existence, only leaving a fading mark on the world left. Another silhouette is situated where the legs meet, holding gun towards the viewer. The other silhouettes all face towards the audience while the legs face away to show that these are the enemies that the protagonist must overcome. The legs feature the hips and legs, two parts of the human body heavily associated with the attractiveness of women as they supposedly  represent the women’s fertility. However it is also famously where a revolver was holstered in the west, and to shoot from the hip was typically done in duals in order to quickly dispatch your opponent. I have linked these two together to show that in the kill or be killed styled West, your hips themselves are not important, but the weapon you holster there and your ability to use it.

Both posters have a title font I have created using lino printing and then scanning them to work them into the title. The font itself reflects the West by being both stylized with Western characteristics and being pulled apart and worn out. The Os in the title are in the shape of revolver cylinder, pushing the importance of the weapon at the time. The position of the title itself, simply reflects that of a hip bone, edging inwards towards the knees. Both are printed on matt paper as opposed to satin as it tends to be much shinier which have interfered with the visibility of the piece.

Overall I am really happy with how both pieces went, I personally prefer the second poster I did with the legs and silhouettes. I think as far as a poster goes, it has a more intricate design and better use of space. I am annoyed with myself as before I took the files to the print shop, I went back and edited the pieces on photoshop, cleaning up the white line that goes across the whole red border and the overlaps of the on of the silhouettes but I didn’t save it as the JPEG image and ended up getting the previous version printed. Hanging them up as part of our end of year college show was pretty easy, hung of the wall in our classroom above a work surface. I was moved from a space in the hallway, which I would have prefered to have kept. Since it is in front of a work surface you can’t get very close to them, and I think the detail in the horse, such as it eye, are lost due to the distance.

This may be the first project in which I have stayed reasonably on top of time planning. Started with a basic plan that I could manipulate and change so that I wasn’t to constricted. I would make a plan for each week the prior week, following the guide I made.

Not too many issues with in this project. The extra two weeks we got really allowed me to step back and re-vamp my project to something I actually liked, which was a obviously quite crucial to produce something that I am actually happy with. The font was easy to make but I ran into some issues with it. Since they were oil based they needed time to dry. I managed to print them on the Wednesday and needed them dry by the weekend so I could scan them in, work on them and get my posters into the print shop by monday in order to print them off. However, I went to London on the Thursday and Friday so needed someone to collect the actual prints from college. Unfortunately, said person didn’t pick up any copies of the letter T, so had use photoshop to combine the the letter I with the top part of the letter F which pretty much made the same T I had designed.

I hope those viewing the posters will appreciate the design and along with the artist statement will understand what exactly I have tried to produce, that a narrative can be just as interesting with a female lead that doesn’t necessarily take on female qualities in what is typically associated as a male dominated genre.

Overall, I believe I have achieved a good all round project; consistent work, multiple directions and outlooks, varying designs and ideas along with a wide variety of research of artists related to my topic. I did however really feel like those two extra weeks were needed so if that hadn’t happened this conclusion would be very different. I am happy and impressed with my own work and hope it reflects in my final grade.

Foundation has been a blast, and I feel that I am mostly ready for uni, starting at Camberwell College of arts in London. Really glad I spent the last year learning new skills and building confidence with in the field. Can’t wait for the next 3 years

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Week 10

This week has mostly been assembling our room for our exhibition, hanging our work and preparing for our final shows private view.

Here is my artists statement: 

Inspired by the portrayal of women within 1960s lifestyle illustration, I set about creating faux movie posters with a predominantly female protagonist. The Spaghetti Western genre suited as an extreme example of an era where men ruled but in fact anyone could thrive provided they were prepared to do what was necessary in order to survive. I wanted to break the distinction between man and women using subtle imagery such as man’s dominating relationship with horses; I found this representative of the struggle of being a woman in a less progressive time

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Final piece Review

(the files are too big to upload the actual JPEG images but here they are all hung up in my exhibition space)

My final pieces are two faux film posters for a film concept I created with a female protagonist called ‘Shoot From The Hip’. This sparked from what I noticed about 1960s lifestyle illustrations and that women were presented as sheltered and dependent on some sort of man. The first poster I created depicts a horse rearing its front legs upwards attempting to shake the rider on top of its back of. The horse stands as a metaphor for the treatment of women while the rider represents men, enforcing and dominating the creature into servitude. The piece was made on photoshop using a ‘brnk’ brayer brush tool which leaves a charcoal like rubbing. I used this alone to shape and mold the form of the pair, using the more intense strokes for darker areas of shade while leaving areas blank to get highlights. The rider has his face hidden beneath his hat to express a theory I had about westerns where hat position and facial exposure was a tell tale sign for their morality. The low brim of the front of the hat is to say that the man is an antagonist. The brush strokes ripple of the horse and rider to show a greater sense of movement along. The horse is panicking, its eye wide open in the fight against the rider while the man seems to be enjoying it. The horse (the women) fights its oppressor in an attempt to free itself from this state of captivity while the man attempts to break the horse in order to gain dominance over it. Over this on another photoshop layer, is a rough red border that captures the scene. Red is a colour I associate with liberation and empowerment and a stronger, more intense shade of pink which is typically a feminine colour. To keep the rough texture for the border, I loosely applied the colour on top as if it had been printed or rolled lightly across.

The other poster is a Olly moss inspired design piece. The composition is an outline of a women’s behind and thighs takes the most of the page up, leaving space on the outside and inbetween the legs. This is applied in the same way as the red border but with the opacity lowered so that it builds up layers in various places. I used this to try and create areas of shadow such as the inside of the legs and underneath the behind. Within these legs are six silhouettes going upwards of cowboys being shot, injured and killed. They take the same texture of the legs, using this faded brush to add texture. The silhouettes are a range of orange and brick reds while the legs are a much lighter orange. I felt that these are all very western colours, capturing the texas frontier in its dust plains and vast wilderness along with the worn and fading texture. The dying silhouettes are to represent the abruptness of death in the west due to the advancement of firearms at the time, moving towards semi automatic revolvers and repeaters. The figures are plucked out of existence, only leaving a fading mark on the world left. Another silhouette is situated where the legs meet, holding gun towards the viewer. The other silhouettes all face towards the audience while the legs face away to show that these are the enemies that the protagonist must overcome. The legs feature the hips and legs, two parts of the human body heavily associated with the attractiveness of women as they supposedly  represent the women’s fertility. However it is also famously where a revolver was holstered in the west, and to shoot from the hip was typically done in duals in order to quickly dispatch your opponent. I have linked these two together to show that in the kill or be killed styled West, your hips themselves are not important, but the weapon you holster there and your ability to use it.

Both posters have a title font I have created using lino printing and then scanning them to work them into the title. The font itself reflects the West by being both stylized with Western characteristics and being pulled apart and worn out. The Os in the title are in the shape of revolver cylinder, pushing the importance of the weapon at the time. The position of the title itself, simply reflects that of a hip bone, edging inwards towards the knees. Both are printed on matt paper as opposed to satin as it tends to be much shinier which have interfered with the visibility of the piece.

Overall I am really happy with how both pieces went, I personally prefer the second poster I did with the legs and silhouettes. I think as far as a poster goes, it has a more intricate design and better use of space. I am annoyed with myself as before I took the files to the print shop, I went back and edited the pieces on photoshop, cleaning up the white line that goes across the whole red border and the overlaps of the on of the silhouettes but I didn’t save it as the JPEG image and ended up getting the previous version printed. Hanging them up as part of our end of year college show was pretty easy, hung of the wall in our classroom above a work surface. I was moved from a space in the hallway, which I would have preferred to have kept. Since it is in front of a work surface you can’t get very close to them, and I think the detail in the horse, such as it eye, are lost due to the distance.

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Development and refinement plan

With the extra few weeks we have, I am changing my approach to my final piece. Instead of one poster I am doing two to express the two main ideas of project.

1.A poster to express the punishment of women using horse imagery as a metaphor

2.A more graphical poster trying to break the distinction between the qualities of man and women.

Both of these are aimed to be part of the Spaghetti Western genre, using the west as an extreme example of a time when women were truly at the mercy of men as a response to the portrayal of women in 60s commercial illustration.

 Poster A: Inspired by Picasso’s horse drawings that supposedly expressed the tragic treatment of women in his life and his pursuit into their hearts. I’m using the relationship between man and horse as an example. Man breaking horses is a sign of domination, forcing this animal into subservience. Almost always these wild horses rebelled against their apparent new masters, bucking and rearing to force the rider off. When applied to the metaphor, it comes to a feminist viewpoint, women rebelling against men that would see to oppress them for their own gain. I wish to depict a classic rodeo scene, rider being thrown around on top of the animal and the horse looking panicked and aggressive.

I’m going to do this on photoshop, using the charcoal like brayer brush to create this intense and light marks that should hopefully capture the horse’s muscle definition and its power. Along with the charcoal horse portraits I did, the roughness of the marks bring the chaotic movement of a bucking horse. Visually this is inspired by western illustrators such as Will James, capturing the horse’s motion while retaining the rough texture that the 60s brought into lifestyle illustration. I plan to paint a light rough red border over this to capture the moment within a space and to retain the aforementioned rough texture.

 Poster B: Inspired by the works of British graphics artist Olly Moss, I want to create a more abstract poster, using shape and colour to show two different parts to one story. My idea so fair is to use the shape of a women’s behind and legs to set the page, making this arc with a gap in the middle. This should fill the page nicely, leaving areas of negative space at the sides and the centre. I think it is quite important how I do these legs as I want to make sure that it doesn’t seem like I am trying to sexualize the female form so I plan to just capture the outline. Within these legs will be the faded out silhouettes of cowboys, all facing towards the poster, while the legs would be facing away from the view. This is to express that these cowboys are in the way of the owner's legs and are something to overcome.This is a  theme of death in the West expressing how abrupt it is with the moral code and the advancement of firearms. The silhouette is to show how death is like removing the person from existence, one second they are there, the next they are gone, only leaving this faint, fading mark on the world. I will be using oranges/ brick reds as I feel these are very Western colours while also remaining gender neutral colours.

 Both will have the same font and title on the piece but positioning and size may vary due to space on the poster.

Both will be printed A1 and I have been recommended that it should be on a matt paper as the satin paper’s shine might make parts unclear. Both will be created on Photoshop using the brayer tool to get this nice worn effect, almost like wood board.

The only help from technicians I will need is just to have them printed (hopefully on time) by the print room. I hope those viewing the posters will appreciate the design and along with the artist statement will understand what exactly I have tried to produce, that a narrative can be just as interesting with a female lead that doesn’t necessarily take on female qualities in what is typically associated as a male dominated genre.

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Week 9

 Been pretty productive week, been using this new way of digital painting to try out some new and to ve-vamp some older ideas. Some of the pieces I have done this week along with the further research. It was election night so I made a Jeremy Corbyn piece but he has a cowboy hat (he was also a wizard for some reason but that’s not important). This was to further the experimenting with the brayer brush tool. It builds up layers really well, as I said before allowing the darker layers to seep through the grainy top layers. Along with this I went for a simplified clothing style, essentially scribbling the lines down. This leaves these crease like lines which nicely form this rise and fall of the fabric. This was inspired by the work of Brian Sanders (again), not looking to encapsulate the negative space, but to get detail without many lines. The other was a portrait of a photo from my photoshoot, simply a sample by building up layers. I find myself redoing parts a lot but that only adds to the amount of layers that might come through the gaps. Really happy with this piece. I tried to keep this T-bone structure with the nose and brow, feels very reminiscent of the 60s and 50s illustration where nearly everyone man had this rigid bone structure.

 I looked back at my silhouette idea and thought how I could adapt it to change it from the Death Rides a Horse poster and using the brayer brush. I made a selection of a figure from my photoshoot and drawings and brushed the brayer tool across the body (holding shift to keep it level). Tried this in a few colours and I was really happy with the result. Keeping the theme that death in the West is abrupt, like removing the person entirely but now it seems more faded, leaving this worn mark. My favourite is the orange one as I feel it reflects the colour scheme I had in mind of this washed out orange.

 The font was easy to make but I ran into some issues with it. Since they were oil based they needed time to dry. I managed to print them on the Wednesday and needed them dry by the weekend so I could scan them in, work on them and get my posters into the print shop by monday in order to print them off. However, I went to London on the Thursday and Friday so needed someone to collect the actual prints from college. Unfortunately, said person didn’t pick up any copies of the letter T, so had use photoshop to combine the the letter I with the top part of the letter F which pretty much made the same T I had designed. Once I had all the letters scanned, cleaned up and scaled, I set about positioning them. I had the title on 4 separate lines, all lining up on the left. I felt this shape, in its simplest way, was reminiscent of a hip bone which seemed appropriate. I chose to use lino because using a more traditional printing method leaves this great pulled and damaged print. I wanted something that looked worn, along with this, an artist I met at the John Jarrold's print museum told me lino is great due to it not being too time consuming meaning mistakes are acceptable and not fatal to a piece.

 I will talk about the actual piece in two separate posts, a plan before making the pieces, and one afterwards.

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Week 8

So we have been given an extension for our deadline, moved from the 12th of June to the 22nd of June. This is so we can continue to refine our work and so that we can assemble our exhibition pieces and write our final review about the entire exhibition, otherwise we would be evaluating pieces that may not necessarily be constructed etc. Really happy with this, I wasn’t liking the direction my piece was going, the scanned images were very difficult to piece together, often having to transform separate images which in turned became pixelated. I have posted what I had so far. So with these two extra weeks I am revamping the design of my piece. Instead of one poster I am going to do two, both entirely digitally.

I have come to the conclusion that the horse head on a man’s body isn’t imagery I am going to use. Without a full explanation I don’t think anyone would particularly get the point I was trying to get across, this grotesque act of humiliation isn’t very clear out of context. However I am still adamant to use horses as a metaphor for the female gender, the elegance and form is comparatively similar. Watched a documentary called Unbranded directed Phillip Baribeau, where four college grads ride a caravan of 16 mustangs across the free land of America from Mexico to Canada. Mustangs are wild horses captured by the US government to lower the population of roaming horses that are damaging the environment. The men cross dangerous terrain on what isn’t always seen, dangerous animals. The start of the documentary shows the power of these beasts as one kicks one of the riders in the face when he tries to remove a cactus needle from its lip. Along with this, we see the training or ‘breaking’ process where the horse is taught commands and to get used to being ridden. Famously, cowboys are seen doing a rodeo on the animal till it eventually calms down and the rider assumes dominance. Previously in the Old West, it may have involved hurting the animal in some way, aimed to scare it into service. But plenty of the times, these 700 pound steed hurl their riders off, where you are now in danger of being trampled. Throwing this into perspective, horses are both elegant and deadly much like the kind of woman I am trying to portray. Thinking about one poster being a horse hurling its rider, or trying to buck them off; women trying to stop men from dominating their lives.

I have found an illustrator called Vincent Nappi on youtube, looking at one of his tutorials which he commented saying he was inspired by the work of Bernie Fuchs, one of the main and first illustrators I looked at for this project. He uses an additional tool from another illustrator Andy Brinkman called the Brayer brush. Its essentially a rectangular block that leaves a dusty trail behind it but will pivot so that you can make swift angles. It is also a pressure tool, so pressing hard on the tablet gets a thick block of colour while lightly dragging it leaves a dusty charcoal like mark. Here are some samples I have made testing the new brush. Essentially works the same as any other painting, dark base turns and build up highlights and detail. The colour you can achieve digitally is very easy. What I have found is that digital art is very forgiving, letting undo and redo, manipulate and change; you just have to learn where all the buttons are. I really like the dusty particle effect, looks very lifted and worn, almost an embodiment of the Old West. Pressing lightly for the highlights or lighter tones let's keep that base layer as it comes through the gaps between marks.

Next week i will be working more on this style, looking back at past ideas to see if this new style brings new opportunities.

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Week 7

I'm onto the construction of my poster, and finding it difficult. I've been looking at more abstract ways to create a poster, using lots of figures of various sizes depending on their part within the narrative but struggling to find a way to piece it all the together, and to divide the page with these characters. Along with this I'm looking overall colour schemes. I would love to use blue but I feel it's associated too much as a male gendered colour. More western colours however are red, yellow and orange, which all work and give a strong desert tone.

I have drafted up some sketches, testing out space and imagery and seeing how I can build up different drawings based, adapting size and foregrounding based on what imagery I feel is most relevant. I’m on the fence over whether or not I scan in multiple images and layer them in photoshop or if I simply draw one image to scan in. An issue I am now facing is that if i scan my images, the scanners i have available will go to 600 resolution on an A3 scanner at college or 1200 at home on an A4 scanner. From what my friend doing graphics has told me, you can only scale something scanned in to so big a size without it becoming pixelated. If i have calculated it right the largest I would be able to print either method is A2, which in my head is just too small. So that is an issue I am going to have to overcome in the next week.

Along with this I have started cutting my larger lino cuts for the font. The previous cuts were just a little test sample and since then I have added small little flicks at base of the letters to make the design a bit more intricate. Here are the actual cuts, I only did each letter for the words once, as opposed to an entire alphabet or just the entire word. Since I am only doing a title I would end up with a lot of lino cuts that wouldn’t go to any use so no need for the rest of the alphabet and since I am scanning it in, I can print each individual letter and use it multiple times e.g the two Os. I think the tall, slender letters with the small points edging out reflects previous fonts from the era and hopefully will give me this great torn and lifted effect.

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Week 6 (P2)

I've been working on a way to present my title on the poster. The title is 'Shoot From The Hip’, since the hip is a body part associated with the fertility of women ie ‘child bearing hips’ and also a key aspect to the Wild West, where one typically holds their revolver and would likely quick fire from the hip in a duel. I felt this title is appropriate as it links these two ideas together along with the thought that a woman's best tool is not her ability to raise children, it could be her ability to sling a pistol, taking on a more authoritative role.

I've been looking into some western style fonts to get some ideas. There are the classic versions which have these signature points coming out either side or top to bottom. Along with this I have been thinking about how they would have actually printed something like this. Likely a letterpress so I am going to a print museum in Norwich to see if they have any older machines or examples of some western style fonts.

Finally I have conducted another photoshoot looking at make up on a male face. I thinking of implementing my antagonists in their disguises to have poorly done makeup, to add to their psychotic vibe. I got two of my friends (while drunk) to put makeup on and pose around a bit. This was great as they were really loose and up for getting into this sort of Heath Ledger type joker character. I looked to get this pale face from Foundation and runny eye shadow to contrast, bringing the shadow in their brow out. Since I am giving my female protagonist more male associated qualities, I felt I could do the opposite for my antagonists but more towards their physical qualities.

[sammoorefoundationartfmp-blog]

Week 6 (p1)

 This week I have been busy making samples. Working on more digital colouring where I have looked more at overall colours across the entire scanned image. Along with this I have conducted another photoshoot and started working on a font using traditional printing techniques for my title ‘Shoot From The Hip’.

 Firstly I had an idea inspired by the opening to the Dollars series: an animation where silhouettes ride across a coloured background along to the impressive soundtrack. These openings are fantastic and simple, capturing a fast paced example of the West The poses of my friend getting shot are quite interesting as they tend to have quite a pronounced shape as his limbs jutter out and his legs buckle. So my idea was to have a block silhouette for any dead characters within the image. This is to express the abruptness of death in the West. As guns were starting to get closer to automatic and the large amount of the population that carried a firearm, death could be almost over before it started. One second you are alive but a single shot fired and you could find yourself written out, removed from the world. I think this silhouette idea expresses this quite well, however, after researching this it does already exist on the poster of Death Rides A Horse starring Lee Van Cleef. So I’m not sure if I still want to use this idea, although I really like it I don’t want to feel like I’m just taking the idea so I will have to adapt it. That being said, I tried it with one pose and with a number of different colours to test whether a black or white silhouette works better. I would have to say the white on the red works best since I think red best captures the West as a dangerous place. Blue seemed too subtle while the yellow really pops out but doesn’t contrast with the white silhouette enough.

 The other pieces were a number of ways to colour a cowboy in. The first was a simple block colour with a opaque orange over the top. This image was pencil and a washed out ink over areas of shadow then scanned in. I quite like this, the ink simply acts as a darker tone but needs to be applied a little neater and with stronger pencil lines are they get lost under the ink and colouring. Next was an attempt to get the streaky texture of the 60’s lifestyle illustrations. I think It worked quite well, especially with the backdrop. By combining more colours underneath it might really start to emulate the physical brush strokes. Fianlly the last two are using the charcoal smear tool. This works with a pressure tool allowing you to easily swap between two colours and blending them together. It works well if you want to achieve just one changing background and I looked to aim to get lighter colours over the lighter parts of the figure. Although I really like the tool, it can come across as too random or even sporadic, areas just being too heavy with one tone.

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Week 4 (p2)

The photoshoot was pretty successful in my opinion. I looked to create a few varying different references to work from: Neutral positions including gunslinging, the other side of this with death poses (the moment of getting shot) and a theory to do with hat position.

 The neutral positions are fairly self explanatory, simply the took photos of my friend with his arms by his side and then him reaching for the gun and then holding the gun (imaginary) himself firing. Tried a few different outfit changes, having the waistcoat and shirt and then adding in the Fistful of Dollars poncho over the top. These are to work from and see how fabric changes along with the perspective of fully outstretched and half arms.

 The death positions were to capture the various ways in which a person might die in a Western. In many spaghetti westerns such as The Magnificent Seven, when someone is shot they are propelled backwards, often spinning out. I went for my controlled positions and told my model which direction the gunshot was coming from in order to match the directions his body would turn and face. Along with this we thought about the body position vertically, and whether he would lean back or keel forward, perhaps clutching his chest or wound. These turned out pretty well, and I’ve been able to get some good small sketches out of these. I really like the imagery of many dropping off, it tends to give a lot more power to the character shooting.  

 Finally the hat position theory. I believe that in many Westerns, the position of hat says a lot about the characters morale compass. Those with their hat high at the front and low at the back are generally good characters, I think this is due to being able to see more of the face. Neutral characters have it evened out and tend to be morally good but perhaps selfish, or at least self preserving. Finally a character with their hat low at the front and morally prepared to kill and cheat to get what they desire. They are shrouded in mystery and tend to be unpredictable.

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Week 4 (p1)

Splitting this week into two halves so I can upload all the pictures I want to show.

This week I was working heavily into the horse concept I’ve had. I really love this idea, using tormented horse imagery to portray the suffering of women. I started with some A3 charcoal horse heads. These are inspired by the statue of The Horses of Helios in London by the artist Rudy Weller. These huge statues tower above you, and the definition of muscle and tone is exquisite. The roaring horses are exactly the kind of thing I want to capture, however finding a reference is difficult. These are all done with charcoal, again using the side of a bar to sweep and drag the lines across.

As with everything I’m doing at the moment, I worked them into photoshop to colour them. I love the capability of photoshop and finding colour so easily but also keeping the texture that comes with the charcoal. At first I just worked with the brush tools I was already familiar with, but then I discovered the charcoal tool which works with the pressured pen I have on my wacom at home. This allows you to set two colours, and depending on the pressure you out it will do either or something inbetween. This gives some awesome effects, especially with very different colours but also with two shades of the same colour.

I’ve come up with an idea to combine the human body with the head of a horse, but haven’t properly been able to get it down onto paper quite yet, going to keep trying with it next week. Been looking at more digital artists to work from, see if I can get some new ideas or techniques from them. 

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Week 3

So week Three I have still been working on digital art, scanning in images and trying different ways to colour them.

I created some mono prints: two that I have scanned and digitally coloured and one that I am going to work ink onto. Since they are oil based prints they take a fair amount of time to dry so the inking will have to wait. The others though went into the scanner and I tried two different tools to colour them, both involving opacity changes. The red one, just of a cowboy I used a brush tool and separated the bristles apart using the slider. I wanted to get the streaky effect from the 60s art. Over the block background, I used a lighter red with a lower opacity to streak over the character, building up parts since it is fainter and needs layers for intensity. The yellow one is an illustration I did of the three title characters from ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I used a yellow for the background, then used a lower opacity grey on certain points such as the eye sockets and under the hat’s brim. I then went over this in an even lower opacity yellow to see if I would build a shaded tone. I used a simple marker tool for this. I quite like the result of both of them, however I left to much ink on the table, or didn’t leave them long enough to dry a bit because there are some very thick blotches of black which a) make it harder to see the line and b) don’t play to the light well as it should be darker under the hat.

The other pieces are more digital colours. I scanned in the drawings, set the mode to multiply and began colouring in beneath the layer. The first is using the streaky brush, adding in the tone just ontop of eachother. I like how it turned out apart from the gun as it should be coming out at a higher angle. The streaky paint kinda makes the shading a bit difficult to see so maybe that need to be fainter but overall I like it. The one with the blue background is actually the result of a friend who is more familiar with photoshop than I am so was helping me with some Regan Dunnick style pieces. The red background one is my result. His main tip was to use the polygon lasso tool to locate areas and then colour them with that. Means you don’t have to worry about going over the lines or anything like that. His other tip was to put a dark blue shade on skin and then use a lower opacity to build skin tone over the top. This allows you to again build up layers to make different (not too different) tones. Pretty happy with the way this turned out. I would like to use the other methods for the each image, and then merge the two together, see if I can create a sort of collage effect since that is what I am envisioning for my final photo.

I’ve started doing some research on the use of horses in other works of art outside the western genre; found some pretty interesting notes about Picasso’s use of horses and how they symbolized the women in his life. Along with this I’ve begun to start drawing horses, looking at more minimal ways of portraying them.

Next week I am planning to do a photoshoot for some basic cowboy poses to start working from while also delving into more horse research.

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Week 2

The paint techniques are difficult to pin down what they did. From what research I’ve done they start with pencil or charcoal, followed by an ink layer and then worked over with Gouache. The ink is apparently mixed with soap which stops it from blending so much on the paper and gives it that streaky effect. I learnt this was looking into an Illustrator called Brian Sanders, who worked in the 60s and still illustrates today. He explores the use of negative space quite a bit in his work opting for a less is more approach (not exclusively). I also learnt that in the 60s Sanders and others swapped this soap method and started using liquitex but I have yet to get my hands on any.

Since I’m in a very experimental phase of my project, I decided to wing it and give some digital art a try. I scanned in some of my earlier drawings and went about using photoshop to colour them digitally. First I just played around with shadow, grey to a layer underneath the drawing. I turned the scanned layer to multiply, whatever that means, but it puts the colour layer underneath so works for colouring pretty well. I then tried some full image colour, apart from the shadow I did. I really liked the yellow one and I think it turned out quite well. If I block out more of the white in the character with dark shading it should seap quite nicely in gaps that I leave. Then I tried a full colour, using block colour for parts in and out of the light. I quite like this apart from trying to colour the blood, which I didn’t think turned out too great.

Next week, I want to keep working on this paint method as well as trying more digital colouring. I really enjoyed using the wacom Bamboo tablet and I was intrigued by the results and what I could in photoshop but also what I can do before the scan. I’ve been looking at an illustrator called Reagan Dunnick, who uses pencil rubbings on digital scans and its really cool.

The last image is a wax pencil on canvas piece that I plan to try the soap method on. Apparently you scumble the ink onto the pencil, which is apparently by using a rag, but not entirely sure.

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Week 1

Mostly this week, and work prior over the Easter break was dedicated to research. This was split in two halves; looking into 1960s illustrators and 1960s spaghetti westerns and related art.

The main 60s illustrators were lifestyle illustrators such as Bernie Fuchs, who paved the way for the experimental methods highlighting the use of texture, colour and unique spacing in his paintings. Other illustrators I researched were Andy Virgil, Coby Whitmore and David Grove, all using this same streaky style in their pieces.

The research into spaghetti Westerns involved looking at the original western films from the 60s, which was the era that westerns became popular. Particularly popular in Italy and Spain as well as the US. There are many takes on the Western setting, which contrast each other in many ways. There were more gritty films such as Sergio Leorne’s ‘Dollar Trilogy’ starring Clint Eastwood and some more light hearted films like the ones of John Wayne. Both paint the Wild West as a rather grim place to live. An artist I found who delves into the west, is West Virginian Fort Geurin. Inspired by his upbring and collection of charity shop cowboy comics, Geurin rides into the brightly coloured cowboys, framing close ups of dynamic moments. He combines them heavily with text, often direct speech from the characters although the text doesn’t also fit in the image, creating the sense that this is just a part of a bigger picture. He was the inspiration for my wrapping paper piece.

Alongside my research I worked on some simple easy sketches, either using my imagination or stills from films as a basis. I aimed to work like Geurin, Capturing just moments of a larger narrative. I used a china wax pencil (think thats what they are called) to add a bit of texture. The 60s style looks as if its paint over pencil, but water based paint can wash the pencil away, which makes difficult under the watered down paint. The larger brown piece is an example of narrative being part of the piece, told through text. The story is about a shoot off happening in a bar filled with drunks. Due to their state, none of them hit each other. The way I tried to write the story was by moving very fast through action to action, adding small pointless bits of detail. The men are the characters in the story, mid fight. The men are all very rigid, the thick pencil leaves a create rough edge, stylizing the piece. I like to think the men have a sense of unity among them. There is little to no detail on their surrounds, but that of a wall or table one man crouches behind. They do differ in distance, making some characters larger focuses.

The next week I plan work on trying to figure out the painting techniques along with more western drawings.

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Final Major Project

Trying the blog again, but with gonna attempt to post more regularly and keep to it. This is my final project on my foundation art and design course and will determine my final grade. We are allowed to do pretty much whatever we want and so I want to do something a bit more design related, thinking something like a poster at the moment. Gonna stick to using my blog to comment and discus on my art, showing samples and my opinions on them, with little bits of research thrown in.

Here is my project proposal that I have drafted up for my tutor

Trying the blog again, but with gonna attempt to post more regularly and keep to it. This is my final project on my foundation art and design course and will determine my final grade. We are allowed to do pretty much whatever we want and so I want to do something a bit more design related, thinking something like a poster at the moment. Gonna stick to using my blog to comment and discus on my art, showing samples and my opinions on them, with little bits of research thrown in.

FMP Project Proposal

My last project involved me creating a handmade book full of illustrative portraits of strangers that I observed on the street. I used an overwhelming colour for three of each of the pieces designed to convey the emotion that was psychologically linked. I used mostly a mechanical pencil within the first half of my project before swapping onto the use of acrylic inks allowing me to play with the different techniques of watered down mediums e.g. ink drops. From this I plan to work into other key sides of illustration, aiming towards narrative and commercial representation, such as movie posters and along with concept creation. My last project included quite a large amount of experimentation and sampling which helped me arrive at the style and technique I chose. I plan to keep going with lots of different mediums  but perhaps more traditional ones. Since my last project was presented in a book, I am thinking of either working onto canvas or paper, perhaps to have it copied to produce actual posters.

I have been researching and looking into lifestyle illustration from the 1960s. The 60s showed a very liberal approach to the production of art and imagery that was used in primarily women’s magazines, along with a number of other publications. The methods in the 60s was to use a combination of paint and rougher mediums, such as pencil and crayon, to create a more abstract presentation of reality. This was due to photography becoming cheaper and more accessible and so illustrators had to produce imagery that photography couldn’t. Illustrator Bernie Fuchs first experimented with this new style, paving the way for illustrators over the next decade such as Andy Virgil, David Grove along with older artists such as Coby Whitmore, changing his style to fit with the demand for more stimulating work. In my opinion, these illustrators produced some of the most interesting pieces, that changed lifestyle illustration from a simple representation to genuine and thoughtful works of art.

I am planning to combine this style with something fitting of the time, along with my own interests. Spaghetti Westerns were breaking their way into the film industry in the mid 60s and are a personal favourites of mine. I plan to create faux western posters based on the style and techniques of the 60s, however I am exploring the idea of using a female protagonist. I feel lifestyle illustration had rigid ideas about the imagery of women, and although the style will reflect the times, the content will not. Depicting a strong female character within a setting that was typically dominated by men.

For this project I will be splitting my work into four parts: My research will be in one sketchbook, my larger samples with in another, my physical pieces and I will be starting another blog in order to comment and document my process and opinion. I plan to work with the combination of pencil, charcoal or crayon along with light washes of either acrylic or gouache paint. From what I have researched, these were the main mediums used by the artists I’ve looked at. I will be doing frequent life drawing sessions to help with the human body, and will start to influence them with the fashion illustration style that 60s had.