Gert & Uwe Tobias at the Maureen Paley Gallery

November 26th - January 15th The Maureen Paley Gallery

MAUREEN PALEY. 21 Herald Street, London E2 6JT www.maureenpaley.com

I saw work by the Tobias brothers at Nottingham Contemporary in 2010, it's well work seeing their work. I thought these artists create some interesting alternative responses to their own culture and backgrounds. Of Romanian origin, they create some unique responses to myths from their homeland, responding untypically to the Dracula story for example, in a less stereotypical fashion creating giant colour woodcuts.

Take a look at the Maureen Paley website www.maureenpaley.com

Handmade and Bound - Artist Book Fair

SUNDAY 20th NOVEMBER 12-6pm (this Sunday!)

Handmade & Bound is an independent fair with affordable, handmade artists’ books, comics and zines. It was conceived partly in response to the fact that there will be no London Artists book fair at the ICA in 2008, and further in response to the changes to the nature of that event when it returns in 2009 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

The event we want to have will be based on handmade but affordable books and zines. We want to achieve a good balance between artists books and zines (in the DIY punk tradition).

St Brides, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London, EC4

Nearest Tube: St Pauls (Central line, two stops from Liverpool street)

Saul Bass - On Making Money vs Quality Work

'I want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares... and I'm willing to pay for that'

The knowledge bank

THE KNOWLEDGE BANK


 This really useful set of guides from AN explores the responsibilities and practical frameworks of a professional practice.

The portfolio of practical guides contains advice from artists and arts experts on everything from pricing to marketing and copyright to what to put in a contractual arrangement, fees, approaching galleries and funding bodies and includes tips on where to get legal advice.

2011 Graduate represented by Eastwing Illustration Agency

2011 Graduate Adam Avery has recently been taken on by Eastwing Illustration agency, Adam's work incorporates screen print processes and digital media, to achieve quirky and witty illustrations. Adam is currently working towards making work for publishing projects, and has already produced work for a number of book cover designs.

2010 Graduate bags National Trust Commission

2010 Graduate Lauren Greaves has recently produced illustration work for Carter Wong on a campaign for The National Trust.

Drawing IS Thinking - Milton Glaser

Some very pertinent thoughts on why we draw, how we learn to draw and what the point of it all is anyway. Glaser states:

"for me, drawing has always been a primary way of encountering reality"

He discusses drawing not as a way to think and to perceive rather than just to represent  Here he talks about his book Drawing is Thinking. This book illustrates the Glaser's commitment to the fundamental idea that drawing is not simply a way to represent reality, but a way to understand and experience the world.

 

Cut it out

A workshop for first year students - looking at the relationship between colours and composition.

Niels Klim's journey under the ground by baron Ludvig Holberg

Louis Holberg's 1741 science fiction / fantasy / utopian / satirical novel derides his contemporary 18th century society while drawing inspiration from Thomas More's Utopia and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It was considered too radical for Nordic culture, so the first edition was published in Latin in Germany where it circulated to a much wider audience and its popularity ensured it was quickly translated into a number of languages.

Inspiration: Karel Teissig, Czech Poster design.

I found this poster designer on Rick Poyner's design observer blog from his posting "An unknown Master of Poster Design" observersroom.designobserver.com This is fantastic inspiration for the Year two poster project. Some original thinking, brave compositions, and strong combinations of type and image. Beautifully quirky imagery.

The Hunterian Museum Drawing Visit

www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums
On November 3rd Year 2 & 3 illustration students will be taking a drawing trip to The Royal College of Surgeons of England. There are some fantastic exhibitions there at the moment and include: Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability by Ju Gosling aka ju90: Extinct and Ivory,Treasures from the Odontological Collection.

Parrots at BibliOdyssey

A taster from the always wonderful BibliOdyssey.

Here are the reliminary drawings for Edward Lear's book ''Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots: the greater part of them species hitherto unfigured, containing forty-two lithographic plates, drawn from life, and on stone' 1832  You can see the final plates here.

Edward Lear was TWENTY YEARS OLD when his Parrot book was published!!

Edward Lear Sketches of Parrots Relating to 'Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots' (1832), ca. 1830 (MS Typ 55.9). Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Fontifier - your handwritting as a typeface

Here is a website were you can turn your handwritting (or anything hand drawn) into a typeface with no need for fontlab. It uses a template which you print out fill in, scan back in and upload to their website.










None of their examples are particularly inspiring but I think it could be a brilliant tool if used well.

Word as Image

This is a great film by Ji Lee (Creative Director of Google). He is a very interesting fellow and worth looking into. This is an animation of his new work 'Word as Image'.

Berger on Drawing

You should all have read (or watched - it was a TV series) or at least heard of and about to read John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing' - I will write a post about this later. However, more relevant to the 1st Years 'Drawing Object' project is his less well know book 'On Drawing'. Below are a few excerpts that really rang true with the way that I think about drawing.

- “For the artist drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase, it is quite literally true. It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him, to dissect it in his mind’s eye and put it together again; or, if he is drawing from memory, that forces him to dredge his own mind, to discover the content of his own store of past observations.” (page 3)

- “A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – seen, remembered or imagined.” (page 3)

- “It is a platitude in the teaching of drawing that the heart of the matter lies in the specific process of looking. A line, an area of tone, is not really important because it records what you have seen, but because of what it will lead you on to see. Following up its logic in order to check its accuracy, you find confirmation or denial in the object itself or in your memory of it.

John Berger [2005]: Berger on Drawing. Edited by Jim Savage. Aghabullogue, Co. Cork, Eire: Occasional Press. Second Edition, 2007.

Two Exhitbitons you must see!

Bass Notes : The Film Posters of Saul Bass

Kemistry Gallery 43 Charlotte Road, ShoreditchLondon EC2A 3PD

Old Street (Northern Line) or walk from Liverpool St (15 mins)

17 February — 17 March 2011

No graphic designer has made a greater impact on the world of film than Saul Bass. This exhibition brings together a collection of his film posters, film titles and film festival posters from the Lloyd Northover donation to the British Film Institute. The BFI’s Poster Archive has kindly loaned the exhibits to make this show possible.

Saul Bass’s work is instantly recognisable for its directness, its simplicity and the way it makes its meaning felt. Breaking all conventions in the 1950s and 60s, Bass virtually invented film titles as we know them today, and he was the first to synthesize movies into compelling trademark images.

In a period when graphic imagery can be so easily manipulated electronically, Bass reminds us that a strong idea is always at the heart of a great design. His work, as reflected in this exhibition, is as refreshing today as ever.

John Stezaker

Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Aldgate East, Liverpool St, Tower Gateway DLR

British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations.

Both Exhibitions are a short work from Liverpool Street Station and have FREE entry!

The Book Cover Archive

The Book Cover Archive is a thorough and expansive collection of book covers. You can browse the archive by designer, illustrator and publication. It even tells you what typefaces are used on the covers - very useful. Here you can find all of the Great Ideas/Loves series by David Pearson as well at the 70 commemerative covers by Penguin. There is a broad selection of both illustrative and typographic book cover design - all have been carefully selected and represent the best there is to offer! It's well worth a look. Here are just a few that I found - I particularly liked a series of Nabocov books published by Vintage.

Illustration Drawing Visits: 25th & 26th January

There will be an Illustration drawing visit to London on Tuesday 25th January. Followed by a drawing visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford on Wednesday 26th January.

Years 1 & 3 Tuesday 25th January

Years 2 & 3 Wednesday 26th January

Further information will be posted on the Year 1 and Year 2 notice boards in RM 127.

1" squared Linocut workshop

Year 1 Illustration students developed a sequence of three one inch linocuts. This one day project encouraged students to explore ideas development at a small scale. Whilst also developing skills in lino cutting and sequential imagery to support their 'Entrance and Exits' narrative brief.

World Press Photography Awards 2010

... I then started thinking about an exhibition I had seen at the South Bank Centre of this years World Press Photography Awards. Although all of the finalists are very worth a look - they don't make for particularly comfortable viewing - one particular photographer will perhaps be of most interest to Year 1 working on the Pro/Con eating meat....

Tommaso Ausili

... Slaughterhouses in Umbria, Italy. Neatly packaged meat in supermarkets is often completely detached in consumers’ minds from the process of its production...

Views of America

After discussions in the first year crits about their Pros and Cons Project, I though of a couple of photographers that might be useful - particularly if you have chosen the Pro/Con USA.

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

....In downtown Detroit, the streets are lined with abandoned hotels and swimming pools, ruined movie houses and schools, all evidence of the motor city's painful decline. The photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre capture what remains of a once-great city – and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America... Taken form a article in the Guardian.

Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and São Paulo Biennials. These images are from his book 'Sleeping by the Mississippi'.

William Eggleston

...Had you to guess where he came from and what he did from his appearance alone, the words 'English' and 'aristocrat' might spring to mind way before 'American' and 'photographer'. And yet, at 65, William Eggleston is perhaps the most innovative American photographer of the past 50 years whose unique style has transformed the way we look at the world.... From the Observer 2004, read more here.