Parallel Cities – The George Inn

Whereas the Narrative Project was probably too long, the Parallel Cities Project was definitely too short.

It was bit of a strange one, too. A collaborative project with Graphic Design, everyone was given a spot on a map off South London to make work about. We also had to make work for the ‘procession,’ more on that later…

Admittedly, I was fairly pleased with my random location. I was given The George Inn, an ancient pub just off Borough Highstreet. It now serves as London’s last galleried coaching inn, a relic of a industry that once thrived in Southwark.

As a starting point, I decided to pay the Inn a couple of visits. I was slightly underwhelmed by my experiences. As a building, it was nice enough, however it did little to interest me aesthetically. Additionally the pubs clientele were somewhat disappointing, mostly suits from the city. It seemed despite its long and rich history, the George now operated like another other pub in the capital. I had a few drinks and a nice burger, so it wasn’t all bad though.

Here are some notes and sketches I made on my visits.

 

If the George was uninteresting today, its hundreds of years of history undoubtably contained something I could centre my project around. I started gathering a few books to research the inns long existence. Fortunately, I picked up the rather brilliant ‘Shakespeare’s Local : Six Centuries of History Seen Through One Extraordinary Pub,’ a recent book written by Pete Brown. It proved indispensably helpful to my project, detailing fascinating context not only of the pub but the curious history of Southwark as a whole.

The title, as I would eventually discover, was somewhat misleading.

Most interestingly was the fact that compared to the other pubs of old southwark, the George was nothing special. It was not the most famous, biggest or even economically successful of its brethren. However, it is important now because it is the only one to have survived; the last of a race of mighty coaching inns that once made Southwark indispensable to the capital.

Long discounted from the boundaries of The City of London, Southwark was a settlement built for passers-through. Built around the only bridge into the city, it became a choke-point; providing for the back-log of travellers with a bustling wealth of inns, brothels and theatres. Essentially anything The City would not have within it own walls.

Among many such passers-by, I became interested by the long list of literary figures connected with southwark and in particular the George. From Chaucer to Dickens, so many of the nations most prominent literary minds seemed to have some connection to the inn. From this I took the idea for my own work, quite simply I would make an informative piece, detailing all the poets and writers that frequented the George. Here are the final illustrations.

I was pleased with these images. This was a short project and so in some respects I played it safe with these images, not feeling comfortable with trying something more daring with the time given.  Given more time, I would have made a more expansive work, perhaps investigating the area of Southwark as a whole. They worked even better when made into physical objects. I printed two versions of the booklet, one on sturdy paper to be showed at exhibition and another slightly cheaper version to sold at the shop.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I was initially concerned about the scale of the booklets, being roughly 10cm by 6cm when folded. However I came to like them, the intimacy of their size making for a delicate yet informative object. In fact, I actually preferred the sale editions. Printed on a cheaper, light paper that felt pleasing disposable and ephemeral.

They reminded me somewhat of the broadsides of old, a form of cheap street literature used for advertisement or to make various announcements.

An example of a broadside poster.

But this was not all that had to be made for the Parallel Cities Project! Additionally there was the small matter of the procession! This was something a little different. Making costumes, masks, banners, signs and pretty much anything else we could carry, we would parade down the jolly streets of Peckham; each representing our given location.  Given the literary connotations of my site, I decided to dress as Shakespeare (well, something that vaguely resembled him) as well as making a banner. There are no photos of this, unfortunately, but as soon as they are available they shall make there sorry way on to this blog. I was rather pleased with my banner, it consisted of the illustrations from my booklet printed on a larger scale. I was surprised how well they worked considering how small they were initially. Here is a photo of it up on display at the exhibition (it became damaged in the rain, but actually looked all the better for it.)

The procession proceeded from the school all the way to the derelict houses we were hanging the show in. It was a laugh and just the kind of silliness I’ve come to expect from 3 years of art school.

Additionally, the Parallel Cities show itself was genuinely impressive. Set in a couple of dilapidated houses half-converted into a gallery space, the nature of work and venue complimented each other perfectly. Considering this was a short project and one I admittedly didn’t enjoy quite as much as the others; the collaborative effort put into the setting up the show was truly impressive and was a fantastic way of ending not only the Parallel Cities Project, but the year as a whole.

The Narrative Project – Returning to Oink

This was project was as enjoyable as it was long. For the best part of two months, the Narrative Project saw us planning and creating a children’s picture book. The nature of which was left, almost dauntingly, open. Our books could be fiction or non, centring around any story we may like to tell, whether it be our own or that of an others.

I made my decision quickly. For this project, I would return to Oink.

Oink, for those who do not know, is a collabortive fiction world that I started working on last year, during the ever-so-enjoyable Author Project. Its a pretty cool place full of angry lizard men, sentient fungi, an owlman and of course pigs. Lots of pigs.

My involvement with it did not end there, however, having worked on it on and off all throughout the past year. Thankfully it was a creation that had grown and developed substantially since it initial conception, excitably writhing around in my mind for too long, it was time to centre my school work around it once more.

My initial idea was to make a type of ‘look and find,’ style book. Set in the house of a Devourer, one of those ‘angry lizard men’ I mentioned earlier. The illustrations would show different rooms, scattered with detail, in which the reader would have look for specific objects hidden on the page. Below are a few explorative studies, planning out different compositions.

 

I was very pleased with these initial sketches and why yes, that is COLOUR! Perhaps the most important breakthrough of this project, the suitable application of colour to my work has been a long time coming. I feel the use of watercolour complements the form of my mark-making and appears more naturalistic than the computer-colouring I had been experimenting with earlier in the year.

Despite this breakthrough, however, I was struggling with the direction of my picture book. I felt that the ‘look and find’ format I had chosen, had become an uncomfortable means of showcasing the exciting world of Oink. After much though and some helpful tutor feedback, I decided to scrap this idea and make a book more suited to explaining the world I had made.

For this I turned to my long-running Oink sketchbook. A eclectic collection of general Oink-themed ideas and designs, I felt that it told a story of its own. Despite the lack of tradition storytelling structure, it possessed a strange sense of narrative in its own right. Below are a few example pages.

The project became a lot simpler at this point. While, one day I may still wish to make a ‘look and find’ style book set in Oink, I feel an that a book like this has to come first; to contextualise the reader into the world.

My plan was to work from my sketches to form a non-fiction style guide to Oink. To make it more specific, I centred it on Oink’s fearsome race of pig-eating lizard men, the Devourers. I decided to narrow down my work, as encyclopaedic explanations of entire worlds take time! Here is the page order of the final book, in sketch form.

Our brief stated that from our mock-up book, we had to make 4 double page spreads. Here are my four final illustrations.

I was generally pleased with the end result. While they certainly were more polished illustrations, in regards to my initial images, ultimately I found myself preferring my sketchbook pictures more. The fact that they were unresolved and rough seemed to fit the idea of fictional guidebook or journal more suitably.

Regardless, the project had been massively helpful and enjoyable. In fact, almost too enjoyable! Most importantly, I learned how to channel an idea into a format that is recognised within the industry, should it ever be sent to a publisher.

Illustrating the Heart Of Darkness

This was a funny set of work. One that dealt with fascinating and uncomfortable ideas and concepts; but ultimately I found it a conflicted project, a project I really should have enjoyed more.

In many ways, this was the second Fiction Project, its premise was the same: read a text and illustrate it. It served as both an internal project, to be assessed with the other work so far, but additionally it originated from the Folio Societies annual Illustration competition. This year, the book they had chosen was Joseph Conrad’s infamous “Heart Of Darkness.”

Upon reflection of completing this project, I don’t think they could have chosen a more challenging book for entrants to illustrate.

Quite simply Konrad’s book, isn’t pretty. Dealing with the ruthlessness of colonial rule that throttled the eighteenth century Congo; it is a book that peers into the murky world of the “enlightened,” colonial man and the shadowy savages. Even judged by the authors own times, the book is unquestionably racist; its descriptions of the native people are frequently de-humanising and dismissive. It is a massively complex book, one that deals with huge questions; with the very nature of man comes under scrutiny. And worse of all, there are no answers. Conrad’s conclusions are phantasmal and vague and most importantly dark.

So how on earth do you do such a book justice!? I came to the personal conclusion that you can’t. Perhaps this is why the Folio Society had chosen it, perhaps they thought it was time that someone conquered it.

I decided not to approach this project with the competition in mind. I wished to engage the project on my own terms and not have to worry about making work that would appeal to the Folio Society.

I wished to make images that continued to explore the new drawing techniques that had been developing in the years projects so far. Additionally I wished to take on colour again, after my disappointing findings during the Fiction Project.

I sketched numerous compositions like the ones below. I was initially interested in Kurtz, in particular the scene where he crawls through the jungle on all fours.

I tried various attempts at finalising this composition, however, after some time I decided to drop it. While I like the hunched shape of Kurtz, I believed the image was too decorative and central.

In particular, I wanted to create a set of images that had a unifying narrative link running between them. I chose to look into the relationship between light and dark, or more particularly the persistent symbolism of fire against darkness that is dotted throughout the book.

I became drawn to a less-apparent scene taking place around the beginning of the book. Before Marlow has begun his tale, he reminds his audience that the Thames, the river that now all civilisation and progress seemed to flow through, was once too a place of darkness and savagery. He imagines the first Roman Legionaries arriving up the river in their strange galleys and coming into contact with feral ancient Celts. They “were men enough to face the darkness,” as Marlow puts it. Its an atmospheric scene and one that stresses the universality of savagery that Conrad so tantalisingly explores.

Here is the final image. I am generally pleased with it. I feel the glow of the flame illuminates the scene adding to the sense of foreboding and fear of the unknown. The Romans, men of progress, act as banner-carriers of civilisation; while the savage Celts watch on in the murky darkness.

Continuing with the symbolism of flame and darkness, my next illustration was taken from the middle of the novel. One night, a wooden dwelling within the station Marlow is stuck at, mysteriously bursts into flame. The natives, under instruction from the station Manager, struggle to put the inferno out. Marlow notices there is a hole in the Managers bucket. This scene encapsulates the futility at the centre of Conrad’s story. Earlier the Manager describes the stations that dot the along the river as “beacons,” of progress. Ironically, this becomes an all too literal description. Like the Managers  efforts to extinguish the flames, colonial rule is hopeless to tame the Congo.

My final illustration was harder to discern. While I liked the strong narrative link that flame had brought to my images; it was a slightly restrictive decision as it meant I could only work with scenes that contained fire. I felt somewhat stretched for choices by my third image; a factor that made my final illustration ultimately the weakest.

In the scene Marlow observes how Kurtz, near to death, seems unable to focus on the light of candle in front of his face. Instead, Kurtz only seems transfixed on the darkness around the flame.

Compositionally, I feel the final illustration is somewhat stale, compared to the previous two. I also find the image too decorative, the details seem to take away from the atmosphere of the scene. However, I do like the warmth of the colours used and the way in which the lighter shades make Kurtz seem even more skeletal and depleted.

In addition to the three illustrations, we were also asked to plan the cover and binding for the novel. Again, like the image above, I feel I should have invested more time into this aspect of the project.

In honesty, I didn’t give this project enough time. I enjoyed reading the book immensely, however, I felt my images buckled under the combined the strains of this enthusiasm and lack of time. The whole project felt slightly contradictory. On one hand we were told to follow the restricted brief on the competition, while at the same time encouraged to explore the novel through our own visual language; despite the fact that these two factors would for most people, be at complete odds to each other.

I was vaguely pleased with some of what I came up with, but for whatever reason, I really should have enjoyed this project more.

Rotational Project : REPORTAGE

I found this to the most open of the rotational projects.

More importantly, however, this project started with a trip. We were to visit The Royal Opera House Thurrock, the site of production for the various sets required for the ROH back in London. A strange place, in a stranger area, the production site was a modern barrel shaped structure. With its vegetation-clad roof and silvery exterior, it seemed even odder for the fact it existed in the middle-of-nowhere. Inside, however, it was an exciting bustling place, full of busy practitioners working on various segments of the latest production. While receiving a tour, we were told to draw what we saw around us, the people and the setting they worked in. This was a challenging task, one that made you pay constant attention to your surroundings and to work quickly, as the environment was constantly changing around you.

We even made a model set!

We were only at the building for a few hours, so I didn’t create as much images as I would ideally have liked, but I found it to be a hugely enjoyable trip. I found myself immediately interested in the building itself. Particularly the strange ribbed arches of the roof; they seemed to bring a unity to the shape of the entire building.

After our trip, the project began proper. For the Reportage Project, our aim was to create work that captured the notion of “performance.” This was in quite a broad sense, but in general it would involve working with places and people who act, be it in a theatre or otherwise. This project centred around observational drawing, it concerned working with the real world, from which we would construct a “visual essay,” a work that reported on a particular idea or theme. I was admittedly quite stumped by the initial vagueness of the project, so as a simple starting point I visited the Royal Opera House and made drawings there.

I was quite pleased with this trip and soon began to get a feel on what it was that interested me in this project. Instead of the people who visit and perform in such places like theatres, I began to become more interested in the buildings themselves.

I continued with this train of thought and made trips to an number of other theatres around the capital. These works comprised from a number of approaches. Some drawings were done on site, while others were fleshed out at home using photographs I had taken.

These images looked further into the forms of these buildings themselves. They also reminded me how varied theatres can be; the ornate grandeur of Wyndham’s Theatre for instance, is a whole world away from the brutalist minimalism of The National Theatre. I found my drawings suited the more decorative buildings and I soon began to find these details interesting in themselves. In particular I became drawn to the statues and other human-like ornamentations that adorned so many of the older theatres. It was only in looking over my photographs that realised just how prevalent and beautiful they are.

Overlooked by the lights and posters of the shows within, the figures and details that encrust so many of London’s theatres are undoubtedly forgotten. These silent sentinels fascinated me and I decided to form my visual essay around them.

I started to make more realised illustrations of the statues and decorations, working from the drawings in my sketchbook.

These images would form the components for my A2 final piece. Constructing it was fairly straight forward, most effort being spent on finding the correct arrangement of the separate images. This proved quite challenging, as it was difficult to find a layout that complemented such a diverse set of objects. Text stating the object depicted as well as its location was also added. Here is the final layout.

The last thing to do was to print. This was simple enough, a trip to LCC’s mighty printing rooms left me with my A2 piece. I don’t usually see my work on such a large scale, so in this respect I was very pleased with the print. I had wanted to print on off-white paper, however, so I was no too keen on the intense bright white that the piece ended up on.

The Reportage Project proved to be an interesting project, concluding with an unexpectedly enjoyable final piece. At times, the openness of the project seemed over-bearing but when approached calmly and with a simple starting concept in mind, I felt my work and ideas grew into a developed final visual essay. I hand’t particularly drawn from buildings and architectural details before this project, so this additionally was rewarding. And, while I would have been happy enough to have centred my work on buildings alone, I am glad my ideas developed further to look primarily at statues; a subject that had a unexpected resonance with the topic of performance. This intriguing subject-matter, combined with a matter-of-fact style of representation, concluded in a final piece that maintained a strong sense of balance that was both informative and visual.

Rotational Project : EDITORIAL

I found the Editorial Project to be the most rewarding and surprisingly straight forward of all the rotation projects.

All the work produced derived from studio sessions and the rapid pace ensured that this project did not out-stay its welcome, with weekly deadlines making sure the work was finished quickly.

As the name suggests, this project looked into the discipline of editorial illustration. The studio sessions involved simply working with an article, in this case both from newspapers and simply illustrating them. The project was constructed to simulate conditions of working within the “real world,” and thus we has no prior knowledge of the articles content and a constrained amount of time to work in.The premise was simple, the execution of the work however, proved to be profoundly challenging; yet ultimately I found this project to be rewarding in a way unlike any other of projects of this year so far.

The first studio day worked around an article concerning a female spy and the professional and emotional pitfalls she discovered while working within the CIA. It was a wide ranging text, covering themes like loneliness, isolation and exploitation, to name a few.

Initially, I felt daunted at the prospect of creating an image that encapsulated all these loaded components. However, it was in the early stages of planning my illustration that we were reminded that this was not how we were expected to work.

The idea was to take an aspect of the article that we particularly resonated with and explore the article through that angle. I found this to be the most useful piece of advice of the whole project. It is impossible to capture every theme and concept within the text. Such a slavish representation of content would become to visually heavy and would only serve to supplement the article. Instead, you approach the content in a way that works with you, you find your own way in and in the process better the article as a whole, adding a visual dimension that not only supports the text but communicates ideas that  perhaps weren’t readily apparent to begin with. The illustration is not simply an addition to the text, but an extension.

The process began with making thumbnail compositions concerning the particular ideas we had chosen to work with. From these more considered images would grow.

My early plans centred around machinery and the idea of professional autonomy. As these initial thumbnails show, I explored this in a more literal way, drawing engines and merry-go-rounds.

My ideas started to become more refined as the explorative sketching continued. I was still interested in the concepts of autonomy and ambiguity, but my next batch of thumbnails started to look into them in a less literal way.

I liked the idea of repetition to stress both aspects of professional machination and the subsequent loss of identity that the article addresses. The idea was to show this in a orderly, almost geometric, composition; spy lined up to spy as if printed from out of a machine, yet with enough distinct detail in each character to make it still interesting to look at. Here is the final result.

All concerned, I am very pleased with my final editorial illustration. I believe I found a way around the overly-literal connotations of machinery that existed in my intial thoughts and came up with an image to still addresses similar concerns, yet in a more rewarding way. I am also pleased with my use of colour. Colour is somewhat a stranger in my work and an area that in general I find challenging to utilise. But here, with the use of Photoshop, I feel the colours are pleasingly understated and work together as a whole.Additionally, the repetitive, grid-like composition helped getting around the slightly unusual square dimensions that were required in the brief. While I was worried that motives like the dynamite or the secret brief-case may become clichéd, I think here they are expectable and almost humorous. They  stress the ludicrous nature of working for the secret services.

The next workshop included another article. This one was completely different. In contrast to the emotive nature of the first article, this piece of text dealt with economics. Wrapped in layers of economic jargon, at its heart, the article concerned the rising  disparity between the super-wealthy and the majority of society. At first the addition of mundane facts and figures seemed quite threatening from an illustrative point of view, but in actual fact, I feel it made the text easier to deal with. It was easy to cut out the mathematical gibberish and centre on the areas of the text that were conceptually exciting. In general, this was an article about contrasts.

 Working with the idea of contrasts, I looked into scale. My premise was simple, big money, in monstrous almost “King Kong” form, towering over the population; the lights of the city blocked from their view.

My final illustration didn’t stray too far from my initial sketches, however, I am generally pleased with the result. Again I was working against a fairly odd set of dimensions and I am also pleased by the use of colour, even if its application proved more troublesome than in the first image.The drawing itself is particularly simplified, with even bolder arching lines and a greater concern for shape than other images made recently. I am finding my drawing to be becoming increasingly stylised in this respect. Whereas I used to rely heavily on detail to construct form, more and more I find myself turning to shape and overlapping line. I feel my approach to drawing is at a turning point, one that I shall continue to push.

Rotational Project : VIDEO

I must confess, I never really got into this project.

The first of the rotational projects and the first right after the hugely enjoyable Fiction Project; Video seemed like a strange excursion from the traditional route that the first project seemed to have steered me in. Perhaps it was timing, had the Video Project rotated later in the term perhaps it would have been easier to deal with.

Like its name suggests this project dealt with film and moving image in general. If anything, I found this project to be an exercise in learning to use new tools; in this case our work would be produced within Adobe Premier.

I have next to no experience in dealing with moving image, frankly because it is something that has never interested me as much as making still ones. I had dealt with a similar project last year, during the Author Project. It had been hugely fun work, making use of stop-motion techniques to make a film that was totally bonkers, yet visually fun to create. It had been particularly enjoyable because stop-motion opened an avenue into moving image that my interests could get behind. I could draw creatures and objects and then make them move, still by still.

Good times…

However, things were all different with the Video Project and this was where the problem lay. We were told stop-motion was off the table, due to time restraints. Same for hand-made animation. The later was understandable, however the decision on the former confused me; we made the stop-motion film last year in half the time given for our current project. Regardless, it narrowed down my options concerning drawing. Instead we were to incorporate film, either from found sources or taken my ourselves. We could use separate imagery, but it would have to be in the form of still images.

Our work could be anywhere between 20 seconds to 2 minutes long and had to explore a one word idea or concept. Some of these all sounded quite complex and convoluted, so I went for something simple. I went for Fish. Or to be precise, Fish Fish.

I had originally wanted to make an animation about deep sea fish, looking into their strange shapes and forms. Upon revision, I decided to keep with my subject matter and in particular, the strange almost hypnotic quality of their movements and shape.The next step was getting to grips with the tools for the job, found in Adobe Premier.

If anything useful came out of this project, it was the fact that I came away with new knowledge on using a program I had never encountered before. I must admit, at first I felt like a chimp at the driving seat of the moon-lander, upon glancing at Premiers complex array of options and buttons. But with help from the technicians at school and few youtube tutorials, I realised it wasn’t all that bad.

My next task was finding a way of presenting my film ( I found some grainy old stock-footage of deep sea fish)  in a way that stressed the memorising, illusionary movement of fish. I discovered a method of reflecting the video straight down the middle, to create a strange kaleidoscope effect. The result is interesting, turning shoals of fish into creepy, writhing balls of horror. The whole scene looks like a nightmare out of a H.P Lovecraft novel; which I guess is no bad thing. I just didn’t like how the whole video seemed to be built around this visual gimmick and without it, it wouldn’t have been half as interesting.

Additionally, I filmed my own eye, to bookend the start and finish of the clip. This too, added to the sense of dream-like, inexplicable horror.Going further with this sense of subversion, I added a few subliminal slides. Taken from photographs of fish I found washed up on a beach last year, they are similarly reflected like the moving images.

The Horror!

All that was left to do was to combine these elements in Premier and edit them down into the correct time frame. I had a lot of footage to work with, as the found film of the fish was a good twenty minutes long. The video went through two edits, the previous one was changed as the parts with my eye went on for far, far too long.

Well, anyway, here it is…

http://

FISH FISH FINAL from Joseph Killick on Vimeo.

I am pleased with this project in the sense that I managed to take on a process and program that I had never used before and make something from it. However, I feel the result itself is lacking. I simply didn’t enjoy making it and I feel it shows. In part, I felt this project to be incongruous with the others. While all the other projects were very different, they all had elements I could relate my own practice and visual process too. I simply felt unable to do the same with the Video Project and as such I was raring to be done with it and get on with some drawing.

The Fiction Project

Despite the extensive pile of reference work under my belt, I found  the process of getting into this project surprisingly hard.

The project offered three paths of format. We could make a single A0 image, a set of 5 sequential illustrations or a three-dimensional work. At one point it was suggested I try going for the A0 approach, an idea that frankly terrified me. All too soon it became apparent it was simply to large a format to what I was used to and while I was willing to try something new, it all became too much. Also, my house was literally to small for the paper.

I returned to the safer option of the 5 sequential images, but problems persisted. My yearning to do something different lingered. I was not content with drawing in the same meticulous, decorative manner that I had become so used to. I wanted to make images that looked different in the very lines that made them. Luckily, it was suggested I look at the work of 1940’s artist Anthony Grosse. I had little knowledge of his work, but I what I saw inspired me to change.

While still very detailed, there is a refreshing simplicity to the line and form in his drawings. Lines overlap, while some forms become transparent. This sense of contrast in Grosse’s drawings was intriguing, I decided to simplify my approach as well. This initially took form in rough doodles, until I had enough confidence to transfer the approach over to finished work.

Drawing the finished illustrations was particularly exciting. The new technique came as a huge relief, appeasing my urge to try something new and yet retaining what had work well in my approach to drawings previously. Here are the finished illustrations.

I chose to leave the stranger latter half of the story and concentrate on Julian’s rise and fall; his lust for hunting and the fulfilment of the curse in which he murders his parents. There is sense of direction that flows through the separate images, from left to right. Particularly in the second, third and fourth images. In the second image, Julian is in his prime, he is an apex hunter laying in wait ready for the slaughter. In the next image he fells the Stag and the curse is set. This composition is particularly central and symmetrical, marking the fact it is a turning point in the story. Next, years later, Julian has become the hunted; as the phantoms of all the animals he had killed descend upon him. It is a complete reverse of the composition in the second illustration.

While decorative, I feel the use of detail is used sparingly and does not over-weigh the image. I feel there is a pleasing sense of atmosphere to these images, particularly in the third illustration. It is a sad, mournful scene as the proud stag stands above its fallen mate and child. This sense of sorrow is heightened by the simplicity of their shape, which contrasts starkly against the detail of the foliage; combined with the aura-like disc behind the stags head, giving an almost holy aspect to this trinity of animals.

A few of these images went through different iterations. The first illustration was a particularly difficult composition to determine and went through the most changes. I found both the arrangement and tone of the picture went too far in terms of stylisation. The scene seems almost humorous due to the childish aspect of some of the figures. I choose to totally move away from this scene and depict a more general image. Quite simply, the final image depicts Julian’s family castle surrounded by woods. It is a more mature scene and details such as the jumping fawn, hint to the events yet to come.

Changes to the forth illustration, were minor, being more concerned with stylistic choices rather than general composition. The final image is simply more refined, with improvements made in particular to Julian’s figure.

More notably, I attempted to depict these images in colour. This would prove to be a lengthy and ultimately disappointing venture. I tried and tried and tried to make these images look just as strong in colour as they appeared in monotone and in conclusion I feel it simply couldn’t be done. I believe this stemmed from the fact that these images were constructed without colour in mind. The mix of complex mark making makes the combination of colour and tone, even when applied in a flat sense, almost impossible. It was a disappointing conclusion, as at times images showed promise, however, I had to admit to myself they simply didn’t look as strong.

As a mid-ground in all this, I printed the black and white illustrations on creamy, off-white paper. I found the standard mix of black on white to be too intense, the images look warmer on off-white paper and look more like images printed within a book.

To conclude, I found this to be a particularly challenging but ultimately enjoyable and successful project. While I am frustrated that the appliance of colour failed, I am pleased that I managed to create a set of illustrations that, judging from previous works, look fresh and yet retain enough of what has worked previously in my drawings. In many ways, I hope this sentiment continues throughout the year, as I try out new approaches to challenge my established ways of working.

The Fiction Project – Preparation Work

Bridging the gaping chasm between the first and second years, we were tasked to begin preparation work for a project simply called “Fiction.”

This was a pleasingly simple project, a kind of bread-and-butter style task; quite simply we had to illustrate a story. Choosing from a list of different short texts, our summer task was to gather a visual library of reference work to stimulate our ideas when we returned to school and started the project properly.

I choose a rather strange tale called “The Legend of St.Julian the Hospitalier,” by Gustav Flaubert. Born into a noble family, Julian becomes obsessed with hunting and the act of slaughter. He revels in animal butchery and is soon cursed by a magical Stag to murder his own parents as punishment for his wrath. He flees the land to avoid this and becomes an esteemed knight and eventually marries the daughter of a sultan. However fate catches up with him and he accdentally murders his elderly parents, after mistaking them for intruders in his palace. He then runs away and becomes a hermit who ferries people across a river. One night he ferries a leper across in a storm; the leper demands that Julian embraces him physically to keep warm. It all gets rather gross, but then it is revealed that the leper is actually Jesus and Julian ascends to heaven as a reward for his selfless hospitality. So like I said, a rather strange tale.

As the photos above show, animal remains played a big part in my observational works; given the prevalence that animals have within the story. All manner of creatures are mentioned, so trips to collections like The Grant Museum and The Horniman Museum were of great use. I also made use of a holiday to Cornwall to observe relevant aspects like castles and churches, as well as the rugged landscape.

As all too often I had rather too much time on my hands over the break, so my collection of drawings was particularly expansive. Which would prove to be no bad thing, upon returning to Camberwell. Having amassed a vast collection of relevant images, I had greater confidence when the project started and final illustrations had to be made. Apologies, its a long scroll down from here.

God! I even had time to mess around with colour!

Second Year and Beyond

After what seemed like an endless summer holiday, October brought my second year at Camberwell College of Arts. Along with a change of house (welcome to Peckham) new studious and tutors; this next year also brought in an aspiration to approach work in a new way. I felt that during the last year, as enjoyable as it was, I had reached a somewhat stale comfort-zone. Hopefully, in the second year this would change.

My first project of the new year was simply titled Fiction, read on to learn how it went and note that all posts above this one concern the second year and beyond!

– The second year also brought Shacks.

The Biography Project – The Dramatic Tale of John Wilkes Booth

The Biography Project, like the Author Project before it, was a particularly long project. Which was a welcome factor, allowing for more ambitious and developed work.

The premise of the project was pleasingly simple. Each person in the year was assigned a semi-famous person from history to make either an animation, 3D work or book about. Each person was of significant fame, but not too much fame as to negate any point in researching them.

I got John Wilkes Booth.

Most famous for being the caddish assailant of President Abraham Lincoln, I soon found that there was a lot more to the life John Wilkes Booth than those murderous few moments when he killed America’s Commander in Chief. Regardless, I was very pleased with my tutors choice of person for the project and quickly decided that I would make a book.

Born into a prominent family of actors, his father aptly named Junius Brutus Booth, I was most taken back by the fame that surrounded John Wilkes Booth, even before he put a Deringer round in the presidents head. In fact had he not killed Lincoln, its likely he would still be history books thanks to his theatrical acclaim alone. The equivalent today, would be an A-List Hollywood actor taking a pop at Obama.

While he toured the country, he became well known for his energetic portrayals of Shakespearian characters, his dark eyes and good looks making him particularly popular with the ladies. Meanwhile sectional tensions, worsened by the argument on slavery, were ripping America apart. In 1861 Civil War erupted, the South seceded from the North. While Booth was not actually born in a typical southern state, his home-state of Maryland having southern sympathies  Booth very much regarded himself a southern gentleman; despising the North and subsequently its “tyrant,” president. Tellingly, he would never fight in the war, honouring a promise he made to his much loved mother.

With the south all but crushed and slavery abolished, Booth’s hatred for Lincoln increased.  With a band of fellow conspirators he originally planned to kidnap Lincoln, but with the south’s prospects worsening, assassination became the only option.

Despite the drama and bravado surrounding the act, of which Booth no-doubt loved, the nature of the plot and the means it was carried out in, were rather slap-stick. With the help of two others,  Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt, between them they would kill the President, The Secretary of State and the Vice President. Booth was the only one successful in his attempt, shooting Lincoln in the back of the head as he watched a play at Ford’s Theatre. However, Booth broke his leg as he made his escape jumping down the presidential box. Powell would fail to kill the already bed-ridden Secretary of State, William H.Seward, only inflicting a couple of unpleasant, however non life threatening wounds; while the nervy Atzerodt simply got drunk and forgot all about assassinating Vice President Andrew Johnson.

Booth goes on the run. Despite his badly broken leg, the manhunt lasts for a nerve-wracking 12 days, undoubtedly thanks to the help of sympathisers he meets on the way. Eventually he is cornered in a barn at Garrett Farm, Virginia. A fire sweeps through the wooden construction and in the confusion he is shot in the back of the neck by Sergeant Boston Corbett.

Booth lived a fascinating life, one which I, like many others, knew very little about. Much of what I learned was from reading “Manhunt – The 12 – Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” written by James L.Swanson. I found it to be a very useful book, providing minuscule detail about the events before and after the shooting.

He wasn’t some crack-pot loner living on the fringes of society, but a prominent actor in the centre of it. He lived a happy life, he was well known, well-off and well loved by his family and friends. All this made his self-destructive decision to kill the President, even more shocking. It was an act of arrogance, murder on stage, even if acted, was a familiarity to Booth.

While researching and making work for this project, I soon realised how easy it was to get swept away in the drama and romance of Booths murderous acts and the exciting manhunt that followed. But the truth is Booth, committed an evil and most importantly, cowardly crime. A true southern gentleman would have challenged Lincoln to a dual, and shot him in the face! Instead he was shot suddenly from behind. Lincoln never saw it coming and while he died hours after Booth pulled the trigger, he would never regain consciousness, never comprehend exactly what had killed him.

With sufficient knowledge of both Booth and the assassination  my attention turned to making the book. My first challenge was to decide what style the book would be laid out in. I soon became interested in newspaper front pages and posters of the time.

Monstrously ornate, I quickly became attracted to the decorative nature of such pieces. Hybrids of all sorts of detail, we see classical wreaths and frilly whiplash curls more typical from European works. There is a strong theatrical sense to them.

Additionally they display eye-catching, flamboyant headlines. They are sensational and exciting, while retaining an intricate detail that would play well to my meticulous pen and ink style of drawing.

Here are some developmental sketches.

The plan was to represent each important act of Booths life as if it were a period newspaper or poster. At the top of each page would be a dramatic headline, some of which would be direct quotes from the time, and at the bottom there would be text explain that particular entry. Surrounding each page would be a border, decorated in a relevant fashion.

The process of drawing each page was incredibly fun, if not somewhat laborious. The addition of hand-drawn text was notably worrying. Much time was spent making sure I had not made any spelling errors and whether the text would fit within its box.

For the most part, however, I was incredibly pleased with the outcome.

Thanks to planning out each page before I drew it, most of the illustrations only had to drawn the once, because their design had already been realised in my sketchbook. However with a couple of pages, I felt that they failed to convey their message strong enough and I re-drew them, as these following images show.

The general composition of this image didn’t need to change too much, it was the finer details that bothered me (and yes, I did cross the first one out in an artistic rage). The change of background and layout and style of the title, are much more relevant and communicative of the information given at the bottom.

Here the composition changed completely. Initially I was unsatisfied with the contrast between dark and light areas, but I soon decided to make the last image look more like the first. Bringing a stronger cyclical nature to the book.

I am pleased with the use of familiarity and repetition in these two illustrations. At the beginning of the tale, Booth’s mother cradles her newborn, at the end the grown-man desperately cradles a rifle. The vision she sees in the fire has come true in the last image, her son would die for for his country, his South, but only in the most misguided and ultimately “useless,” fashion. Hopeful Angels and cherubim guard the borders of Booth’s birth, by the end they are all skeletal reflections, it is time to die.

With my pages drawn, the next step was to print them into a book. This part of the process is usually tricky, however, on the whole I received little problems. Taking my images down to printing rooms of LCC, I printed two versions. One was set to the actual size of the original illustrations and the others shrunk down to a A5 size, to be sold at the final show. To be honest I actual preferred the images when shrunk down, they seem more compact and ultimately more commercial.

And with that, I was finished!

In conclusion, I am very pleased with the outcome of the Biography Project. I consider myself lucky with my selection of person, a person who the more I researched, the more I became interested and excited to make work about. And I think this shows. I feel I have caught the sensational quality inherent in the imagery of the age. The bold titles and elaborate decoration make for pieces that are visually energetic as well as visually informative; I feel people can learn and have fun while doing it, thanks to the attention-grabbing nature of the illustrations.

This idea of making works that inform,either to younger audiences or adults, is an area of illustration that I am finding to be increasingly interested in. I enjoy making works that are both visually intricate and informative.

Going into this project, I was slightly apprehensive about the prospect of making a piece that would feature images of people. Humans don’t feature massively in my work and I was worried that this inexperience would show. On the whole, however, I am pleased with my images of people and faces, I soon learnt to draw them as I do with anything else, e.g with the use of intricate mark-making and with the contrast of bold and faint lines.

All these factors combine to make a work that I hope feels professional and visually accomplished. The imagery has a strong continuity within the compact book-format, but in truth, I feel they hold their own as singular illustrations. I am proud of this work and feel the use of illustration as an informative, education medium is one I will undoubtedly continue to explore in the future.