Hattie Newman Talk

Hattie Newman is a paper artist and she came to Stockport College to do a talk with us. She makes epic scenes and creative sets all from paper. For our class soon to be graduating, it was great to hear someone so young at the prime of her career, with how it feels and how scary it all can be, fresh in her mind. 

So down to earth, it was an absolute pleasure to hear her talk. Sat down cross legged on the stage humbly chatting us through her impressive client list, such as John Lewis, Louis Vuitton and The Guardian. She just loves what she does, with questions we asked does she ever lose patience, and no, because to her, it doesn't feel like work, yet so many hours, days and some pieces can even take weeks. It's a long process with all the planning measuring and then finally assembly, it's really work that requires a lot of project managing in addition to creative flair.

She works so hard to create beautiful well thought out landscapes, not just scale models but designed to reflect the clients wishes and to convey a message about what the companies all about. Her landscapes are fun, colourful and really well put together with the cuts. 

Fresh out of uni she says she didn't know that her job even existed, as with the case with a lot of jobs in creativity, it's meeting people, researching and looking behind the image and seeing what was done to create that. She moved to London, sleeping on a sofa she supported herself with a part time job and started to get the odd jobs here and there,  then her talent and hard work payed off and she has snowballed, into and in demand successful image maker.

She spoke about the importance of collaboration with others, she says without working with photographers the images would never do the original work justice. She also said about bouncing ideas off of other people and having people assist her in the paper making, imagine making 100 paper trees alone! 

It was interesting to learn about a method I'd never really done before and the awesome results that follow, I feel I would be two hours down surrounded by screwed up paper if I had a go, so hats off to her!

www.hattienewman.co.uk

The 100 Day Project

The following exercise is dictated by photographer Erik Almas, but I felt I could still use this method with my illustration work. The aim is to collect 100 images of things you would like to create. Then to brainstorm words that resonate with those said images, do this for each image then see which words pop up the most. These could be colour, genre, or elements that make up the image etc. You then narrow down the list and see what key words you are attracted to, these are then what you should focus on doing in all your future artwork. 

The images you choose should be the ones that strike you, resonate with you and what you would love to create.

I have been collecting images for a while now and I have hit my 100 mark, so I'm ready to start writing down my words for each. Here below are a few of my favorites. 

Doing my ABCs

I've recently been getting into typography, and wanted to make my own beautiful bold letters to begin my paragraphs. Having recently explored writing my own stories I wanted to make an alphabet that was inspired by and reflects my writing. It's fantasy fueled with elements of dystopia, death, angels and demons, with things that begin with the chosen letter, hopefully to recreate children's classroom borders of "a for apple". 

I feel my next step would be to try out borders and some colour, hopefully they can adapt to screen prints without losing too much of the detail. And possibly make some variations as for use in a story it would be nice for all the paragraphs to have a different design. 

New ventures

So I'm on an exciting venture at the minute starting up a new comic book with a friend but to be honest I'm not that great at cartoons! So, it's a little bit of a learning curve. I want to create something different with this comic, so I went for a mash up of my loves, pencil and free flowing ink, trying to create something gritty that reflects the characters. It's been really fun, to tell a story, as normally I produce singular images or a small series. This story was a short 16 page one with an original poem by Pablo Neruda, a man who certainly can articulate love. Which we decided to turn into a little zombie love story. A few things I've learned to work on is developing backgrounds for depth and have a little perspective in there. Also colour.. which I'm inherently scared of :)

So here's a few pages..

XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

By Pablo Neruda

Flyer Design

These are some flyer designs I for a charity club night I helped to organise. I wanted to go for something contemporary and simple, and hopefully something unique. Living in Manchester we are fed these flyers every single day, plasted onto bus stops and handed to you by promoters in the street. So my aim was to get the information across quickly and to get it to stick with a bold design. The club night we put on was to raise money for the charity Parkinson's Equip, a charity that helps people with Parkinson's disease improve their day to day lives.

Katie Crawford

I know from personal experience the therapy of putting negative things in your life into art, usually the worse the feeling the more emotive and hard hitting the art is. Katie Crawford has created stunning images from her battle with anxiety and depression. The photos are  simple and beautiful and it presents a golden opportunity to understand something she suffers from or a chance to say me too. 

"I want the photographs and their paired writings to begin to express the constant, overwhelming presence of anxiety. It's not always terrifying, it's not always strong and it's not always intense, but it's always close by."

Below are a few chosen images from the series and their accompanying text, chosen purely because they spoke to me the most. To view them all and to read Katie's thoughts behind the images click here.

they keep telling me to breathe. i can feel my chest moving up and down. up and down. up and down. but why does it feel like i'm suffocating? i hold my hand under my nose, making sure there is air. i still can't breathe.

a captive of my own mind. the instigator of my own thoughts. the more i think, the worse it gets. the less i think, the worse it gets. breathe. just breathe. drift. it'll ease soon.

no matter how much i resist, it'll always be right here desperate to hold me, cover me, break down with me. each day i fight it, "you're not good for me and you never will be". but there it is waiting for me when i wake up and eager to hold me as i sleep. it takes my breath away. it leaves me speechless.

Late Night 60s

A few songs that are helping me burn the midnight oil. And destressing me from attempting to work digitally :)