'Mr Anderson..."

This was one of my very early attempts from a few years ago at capturing facial expressions mainly using shadow.

I really wanted to capture the smirk Agent Smith from the matrix has on his face through most parts of the film. Overall, you can just about tell it's him so I'm relatively pleased! :)

Dorothy Burroughes

Dorothy Burroughes linocuts are some of the best examples of single block linocuts I've found, so this is what I'm going to be gunning for with my first few attempts - adore these linoprints! :-)

I'm going to consult Dave the college printmaker on how best to recapture this kind of look with my own linocuts - i'm already thinking the jubilee leisure centre would be a good one to practice with!

Another one of Dorothy's linocuts. Really liking the shapes she's created for the smoke in this industrial themed print. 

For more info on Dorothy here is a write up about her work: http://haji-b.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/dorothy-burrows-british.html

A Tale of Two Prints: Architecture

After much umming and ahing I've decided on my first theme that'll keep me busy until the run up to christmas! :-)

I'll be looking at architecture as browsing google I've been really impressed with the quality of linocuts and screen prints depicting various buildings and locations.

I think this is quite an interesting prospect as it'll give me a chance to highlight some of the cool looking buildings around Warrington, and I can also snap pictures when I'm out and about in Stamford which has some lovely 18th century architecture.  

"if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates... who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery? "

I've always been interested in capturing interesting facial expression as they communicate a great deal with very little effort.

This was probably my best attempt at capturing the infamous Janet Leigh shower scene from Psycho. I like using shadow to highlight facial features and it's something I want to improve upon!

Take it to the Xtreme!!!!

This is an extreme sports poster I designed a few years ago. I couldn't actually scan it in as it's A3 so I ended up taking a picture of it which is why the background looks slightly wonky  - it's not in reality!

I started this piece mainly out of interest in exploring different media. I chose card as I had never really used it before.

I got the inspiration for this particular piece while watching the intro to Frasier believe it or not. I really liked the way the intro depicted the Seattle skyline with just a few well known landmarks rendered.

I started out with a very rough sketch of what I wanted to achieve with the cityscape. I chose the New York skyline as that has a plethora of well known landmarks (empire state, chrysler building and so on) and went about thinking what would work best in the media I had chosen.

*picture

Originally I wanted to do the skyline in silhouette but with the brief experimenting (below and above) I thought the cityscape looked a lot better split into white and black - it kind of gives the image a 3D look.

I eventually moved onto the snowboarder himself and tried to find a fitting pose for the character to strike. In retrospect I really wish I'd gone with the one below as it's a lot more exciting to look at than the pose I eventually went with.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result but if I could redo the poster again I definitely would have chosen an actual typeface instead of creating my own, and I would have opted for I a different pose for the snowboarder.

"When a man says no to champagne, he says no to life!"

 

I'm a huge fan of the film The Deer Hunter and I really wanted to capture the 'thousand yard stare' Robert De Niro has in parts of the film. I used the black boxes in the background to highlight the bandana to the right and I just generally thought it added to the picture - making it look quite neat!



"If it bleeds we can kill it..."

This was more a labour of love as I absolutely adore the film Predator. I wanted to capture the Predator himself in full flight high up in the tree tops!

I was quite pleased with the pose and detail of the predator himself but I somewhat ran out of steam when it came to creating the surrounding jungle - it would have taken an insane amount of time to draw in all the trees as I would have liked. I 'm dissapointed with the end result if I'm honest, as I know I can do better.