One of the portraits done over the summer.
medium: ink and chinese water colour.
oils!
August 26, 2009I some how managed to escape using acrylics until the last year of secondary school. for some reason using acrylics at gcse was a must. Those who know me back in the day when i actually painted (2 years ago) know i like my paints as watery as possible. I was forced to use acrylics by a great tutor at A level. It was definately enjoyable but i prefer to stay as far away from the stuff as possible unless i have weeks free studio time.
At the moment im taking an oil painting short course at chelsea. THE CAMPUS IS LOOVELLY.. inspiring.. and the studio space.. loads and loads of space although im sure its much more populated during term time.
I suppose the greatest challenge of oil painting for anyone who like their paints watery is that oils dont really do watery watery so much, and the greatest mental hurdle would be painting from dark to light. The exact opposite of water colours and inks.
day one.
That would be my first venture into watercolours.. (still life is also another thing i don’t really do..)
Fairly pleased with it, and i don’t have the patience for it but its nice just to be so ingrossed into a piece of work. Illustrators, you know what im talking about!
The second day: The second attempt at oils was just urgh.. difficult. I realised just how difficult the subject matter was when i painted the first colour.. (with no damn pencil lines) i eventually had to scrape away oils as a means of marking what went where. geometric shapes and patterns is something i struggle with particularly.
day two: first coat
day three: second coat
day two: first coat detail.
day three: second coat detail.
To be honest i was going to give up on it.. the tutor seems to quite like it and although I don’t like it all that much but these pictures don’t really show it off that well.
Its still not finished.. but i’ll start something else tomorrow.
.. almost forgot to mention. The stuff takes TWO MONTHS to dry.
Final day tomorrow!
delicious. product shots.
May 20, 2009
these are the very rushed product shots i took yesterday. VERY RUSHED. hence the ununified colours. i printed them on my new printer, the highest quality setting of this printer is rubbish so… hmm.
there’s still a lot i want to do on the project like show the shop front sign at very least and the name tags i had in mind, little details and also the rest of the menu.
delicious. menu.
May 20, 2009
this is how the menu started. three choices of 3 different foods. so three pies, three puddings three drinks.
I had so many ideas for how to do the menu. thats the initial sketch of the final idea i chose to use. having talked to shin, i got the idea of using speech bubbles instead of little planks of wood to enhance the idea of togetherness and have it as if the menu is in conversation.
heres me testing it on wooden board. i wasn’t sure whether or not to just have the main names of the pies or the list of ingredients i had originally planned.
i wanted to make the text stamped on like the logo of the company. so that was one nudge towards just writing the main names of the pie. there would be a lot of stamps to be made. sure i could photoshop it. but it woundn’t looko the same. anywho. here are the tests on photoshop to see which was better.
some how the look of the pie on top bugged me, it was the minimalist and very abstract look . i tried using the picnic matt pattern like i had done on the cup illustrations to try to merge the look. didn’t work.
in the end i reverted back to the slightly traditional looking inky illustrations that i used on the cups. works a lot better i think. although not sure if it would work as well .. if all three look the same as in pies, drinks and dessert menu. I only got round to making one in the end. not overly sure about the hand writing style.
incase you were interested in the little stamped letters. they’re cut on lino like the company logo before being attatched to a piece of wood and foam. (for the bits of wood i cheated. i used the other end of the muji letter stamp set. ) the foam sort of helps even out the pressure and make it a better stamp. foam was also used to make the speech bubble white surface on the menu. it gives a nice even coating that looks washed out which was exactly what i had in mind for the menu.
delicious. overall look and feel.
May 12, 2009[monday may 11th] forcing myself to start. right. need a logo!
[garh. i think i spent 4 hours doing something that i might not even need for my project. garh. come to think about it. how the hell did i spend 4 hours on that.. urgh. it doesnt even look that greato.]
[tuesday 12th may]
[well i think i might have found a way of personalizing the napkins without actually printing on them.]
3.33 am [photoshopped and non representational menu sample just to pin down what i want it to say. a wee bit waffly maybe..]
4.20 am [conversation prompter cups. not working. at all. impossible to draw without bleed on these. sample sketch. not looking so great. we'll see how it goes.
[sunday may 17th] new style/identity. limit colour palette.
[monday 18th may] tones made using the picnic matt. adding ‘unity’ .. i hope
i have too many things to do.. urgh..
