David Hockney (post#13)

Last week, I've been introduced to an artist who has done kind of work that is sort of similar to mine. His name is..

DAVID HOCKNEY

He is a British painter, draughtsman, printmaker, designer and photographer. According to Wikipedia, Hockney is considered as one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.He specialises in photo montages, which he referred as "joiners". Below are just some of his works:

Each of these works is made up of a series of photographs which are taken from different perspectives and arranged to form a composite image.

It was believed that Hockney's creation of "joiner" was not intended as it happened when he was in L.A. working on a painting of a living room. As a preparation, he took polaroid shots of the room then pasted them all together. Upon looking at them, he realised that it formed a story, as if the viewer was actually inside the room. This discovery made him left his passion for painting for a while, inorder to fully concentrate on his new photography form.

I understand why this artist has been introduced to me as his techniques will help me develop my mural further. I actually like the idea of having images taken into different perspectives in a way that it conveys movement to the viewer. I'll probably use his style to my work.

Which one's which? (post#12)

So here's my image

It's more London looking because I now got that Routemaster bus, which is one of the real trademarks of London.

Inorder to determine which of these images are going to be a drawing, a photograph or grayscale, what I did was, I've printed each of these images thrice. (Please look through my sketchbook to see what I've done)

The visual style of each image varies between each print-outs. For example:

On the first print-out, the image of the London Phone Booth is in coloured



On the second one, the image is in grayscale

For the third one, I've printed a drawing version of the image.

To be honest, I'm not really going to use the grayscale image of the phone booth because for things like the London buses, phone booth & underground sign, they are all either gonna come as a photograph or drawing as I want to keep their redness.

I've also printed a grayscale version of the whole illustration as my guide.

Once printed, I've cut these images out and laid them all on the table. This way made it easier for me to fiddle with images and decide which combination of visual style goes well with each other.

Since at the moment, I still haven't made up my mind on whose image I'm going to use, I've just brought back the photograph of the theatrical woman.

Just incase you're wondering why the ensign flag had disappear, this is because I've already decided that it is going to be set in Overlay sort of effect. And I think, if it is going to be set in this effect, I would prefer it coloured.

If I am being honest, looking at the image above, I actually quite like what the cut-out effect is doing to my illustration. However, I do not think this would be ideal because if I scanned this in, all images will going to come as a single image.In other words if I want to do some adjustments on a particular image, i.e. London Bus, this wouldn't be easy without affecting the rest of the images in the illustration.

I think I will gonna settle with the one below. In this illustration, St.Paul's Cathedral and Swiss Re building appears in great detail, which to me is interesting, and the redness of the London bus, phone booth, underground sign is maintained. I've got no worries when it comes to making it contemporary because I'm going to change its saturation later anyway.

The Chosen Style (post#11)

During the past few days, I'm actually torn between the ideas of whether I'm going to have my mural as some sort of a joiner or just leaving it as it is but with iconic things breaking out of the edges. In the end, I've just decided that I'm going to have it as a joiner, after all this approach is much more representational of London.

 

However, with this illustration that I have at the moment, I need to make some changes. These are the images of the London bus and Queen's Guard.

This is actually the sort of bus that we see in every parts of the country. For this instance, I've got to be more traditional, I've got to use image of a bus that can only be seen in London. Therefore, I'm probably better off using an image of an old school bus like the Routemaster.

This is very traditional, very London.

Same thing with the image of the Queen's guard that I have used.

I've also got to look for another image as those guys needs to be less military.

What I'm gonna do now, since that my tutor has said that the way that I've laid out the images is fine, once I've replaced the images of London bus and Queen's guards, I'm gonna go back to where I was.

I may add a bit more relevant stuff like the ensign flag and the Queen, then I'm gonna plan which of them are going to be a drawing, photograph, vector etc.

The Development (post#10)

You can see on the following images that I got rid off the image of the theatrical woman because I don't think I will be using her for my mural. If you've noticed, the parts of her right hand was cropped, therefore I'm just going to look for another image.

So inorder to make each images to go well with each other, what I did here was.. I posterised all the images together. By doing that, the effect kinda ties all the elements together as they've been treated in the same way. At the moment, they now all look as if they're part of the same piece.

Another thing that I did was, to make my mural attractive to my target audience, I've added some effects to my design. I've kinda oversaturate the images that makes the whole thing kinda funky and edgy as I'm now using more colours. But ofcourse, I don't want to get carried away with this effect because the whole thing about London is its redness.

During the project, I have also been introduced to the idea of making this illustration as some kind of a joiner, which I think is a great idea. The mural now appear as set photographs being joined together. I like the idea because its kinda giving an impression of what London is about. It would be sort of saying that London is typically a place where lots of people are all taking pictures of things. Apart from that, it would also make the illustration more powerful.

But I quite like this one as well actually

Probably with this approach, I might consider the idea of making things breaking out of the edge ( i.e. the soldiers could be coming out of the base edge or I could also have a pigeon flying out of it, etc.) in order to get a less rigid and rectangular format. I might also consider looking for another picture of the Big Ben,( the one that has got a top bit) because it would probably interesting if there's something popping out at the top edge. I think that could be really exciting!

After a week.. (post#9)

So again, here's my first trial

After a week, by looking at my first trial, I’ve realised that if this is going to be my mural, all of the elements that I've collected wouldn't be fitting in together. This is because each of these London's iconc things got different treatment. At the moment, it got posterization (The Swiss Re building), strong colour contrast (as there are pure black and pure white), greyscale (Tower Bridge & London Eye) full photographs (London Bus, Lion, Queen's guards etc.), then dual tone. What I'm strying to say is, it seems like these images are not holding each other/working in together.

The other thing that I also got to consider is the quality of the design. My design should be appropriate enough for the target audience. Therefore I've got to think how I can make it a bit more trendy.

Make it modern (post#8)

Inorder for the mural to look contemporary, I've looked at images of clubs and discos as I am actually thinking of applying the ambience of these places to my design (through colours). I think that way, it would make my design look funky, and appealing to the target audience.

http://www.cbbmusik.de/images/static/DiscoAlu.jpg       http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/

                                                                                Laser_show_disco_(3).jpg

http://cliques.org.uk/images/disco_lights.jpg                 http://hits2disc.com/services/rainbow-dance-floor.jpg

I guess what would make my mural funky is its colours.It should consists of lots different bright colours inorder for it to look trendy and exciting!

First Trial (post#7)

Today, I've sort of plan how I'm going to bring all the images (of London's iconic things) together (please look through my sketchbook to see my ideas). Hopefully when I finish, it will be easy to decide the sorts of visual style I'm going to use for each of them.

MY FIRST TRIAL

This is going to be a mural, therefore I think it would be a good ides if its size is quite big.

For my mural, I've decided to have the dimension of 60cm x 30cm. 

This illustration is just my first trial, so at the moment, it's not that good. Here I've just randomly posterized, desaturate, live traced some of the London's iconic things, only just to give a preview of how my mural is going to be like. And as you can see, I haven't put much attention to the way that I've blended these images together.For example the bus looks slightly dissolving and the telephone box is sort of fading in into the background. This is because first, I want to know first if my arrangement of these images is ok. Once I confirmed that it's ok, then that's the time when I'm going to sensibly blend them all together and plan which of these images are going to be a drawing, a photograph, a vector etc.

As much as possible, for this mural, I don't want to alter much of the images that got red colour on them, because for my design, I want red to stand as the prominent colour.

If I'm being honest, at first, I don't want my design to appear busy because I'm thinking that maybe it might not be able to deliver the idea if the design is jam packed of things. But I think for this instance, it would work. It would sort of saying how busy London is. It got theatre (this is the reason why I got picture of that lady there), it got tradtion, culture etc. I am also thinking of using images of famous celebrity (if I could) who are London based (i.e. Daniel Radcliffe). I think that would really appear to the target audience as most of the 18 to 24 year olds are found of celebrities. But this is just an idea. I don't know, at the moment, if I'm allowed.

 

Design Inspiration (post#6)

After brainstorming, the next thing that I need to do is, thinking how am I going to put the images of London Eye, Big Ben etc. together because obviously these are going to be in different shapes and sizes. But before I could do that, I've got to think the kind of visual style that I'm going to use for my mural. Inorder to have inspiration, I've looked through examples of works of different artists and illustrators.

 







 

If I am being honest, among those illustrations, only one appeals to me the most.

www.glaucodiogenes.com.br/main.swf

I like the idea of having a mixture of different visual style into one piece of work. To me that looks very exciting rather than having all those images vectorized, or having my illustration in full photography, drawing etc.

I quite like the idea of how the type has been put accross the page. This gives me an idea of having sort of typography that is representative of London (i.e. "The Oxford Street", "The Strand" etc).I also like the way that the statue of Jesus has been illustrated at an interesting angle. This to me is logical, because it is this statue is very massive, considered as one of the largest Art Deco statue in the world.

However, unlike the above illustration my mural will consists of the vibrant colours as I want my mural to appeal to 18 to 24  and by doing that will make my mural modernistic, youthful and and exciting.

Top of the Mind Branding (post#5)

Just like what I do on every project, I started off doing brainstorming. Here, I've listed the different iconic things in London that I could use for developing my mural.

• Big Ben
• Houses of Parliament
• Tower Bridge
• The Queen
• River Thames
• London Underground Sign
• Foot guards and Life Guards
• Red Double Decker Bus
• Buckingham Palace
• London Eye
• Madame Tussauds
• Union Jack (Royal Ensign)
• The Ritz
• Picadilly Circus
• Leicester Square
• Crown
• Harrods
• Street Light
• St.Paul's Cathedral
• West Minister's Abbey
• Black Cabs
• Red Pone Booth
• Iconic statues (i.e. Napoleon, Black Lions, Nelson's Column, Victoria Memorial, Eros Statue)
• Admiralty Arch
• Trafalgar Square
• British Museum
• London City Hall
• Pigeons
• King's Cross Station
• Theatre Masks
• Bowler hats & Umbrellas
• Tower of London
• Tate Modern
• Albert Hall Memorial
• Globe Theatre
• Battersea Station
• Corgis
• Wembley
• Red Colour
• Olympic 2010
• Johnston typeface as it is the one that have been used for London Underground Sign.

Apart from Johnston there are also other typefaces that are also associated with London and these are Gill Sans, Clarendon, Albertus, Efra, FS Clerkenwell typefaces

You can see in the list that I've included the Red Colour. This is because to me, it appears to be the traditional colour of the London City. Notice the City's bus, the Queen's guards'uniform, phone booth etc. they're all red!