War of the Worlds

Let's talk War of the Worlds, the musical.

I was raving through my mother's vinyl collection in the loft, and came across this. Now we have this on CD, and it is awesome. If you've never listened to it, do it. Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. Do it.

Anyway, it's awesome, it's got some amazing artwork on the sleeve and in the book that came with it that I want to share.


This is the fold out of the sleeve itself and the scene is that of when the first martian crashed to earth, described as 'the cylinder'. The painting is by Peter Goodfellow.



The first page from the book. The painting is my Geoff Taylor and is called 'Panic in the streets.'
"...the beginning of the rout of civilization, the massacre of Mankind..."



'Thunder Child' by Michael Trim.
"...the Thunder Child vanished forever, taking with her Man's last hope of victory. The Earth belonged to the Martians..."



'The Red Weed' by Geoff Taylor.
"...the Red Weed began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land, it's living scarlet feelers crawling, crawling!"



'Parson Nathaniel' by Peter Goodfellow.
"...they must be cast out - and I have been chosen to do it!"



'Brave New World' by Geoff Taylor.
"We're gonna build a whole new world for ourselves. You know where? Underground!"



'The Birds' by Geoff Taylor.
"...out of the hood hung red shreds at which the hungry birds now pecked and tore."

Oooold stuff. Good stuff.

-HJ x

Visual Language Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I have definitely gone back to my fine art roots within this module when it comes to my What is Line project. It was the chance to go back and do something that I used to enjoy doing a lot.

As for the session work during visual language, I have gained skilled in perspective. I've touched on the subject before but not in great detail and we looked at it in a lot more depth with Lorenzo this time around. I have learnt about icons and schematics and how the simplest way is often the best way. It has taught me a lot about breaching the language barrier and making things universally understood.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

I definitely just started exploring lines as soon as I got the brief and then the research came afterwards when I had more of a definite direction that I was working in. When I had the right direction I researched into artists whose work applied to my own. Experimentation definitely came before in depth research.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalize on these?

Experimentation is definitely a strength of mine. I had fun with this project and it was the chance to go back to something I used to do a lot of and have no time for anymore.  Experimenting definitely helped me decide the direction in which my work was going.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

Apparently I'm incapable of being able to lay down enough newspaper to not wreck the carpet in my room.

I spent a lot of time on the experimentation and the fact I did little to no research before I started is a weakness.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. Research first, it'll probably make life easier.

2. Spend less time mucking around.

3. Lay down more newspaper and not wreck my room.

4. Use all the time that was given to me and start right away.

5. set a specific amount of time aside per week to work on Visual Language.

6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas.

Attendance: 2

Punctuality: 2

Motivation: 3

Commitment: 3

Quantity of work produced: 5

Quality of work produced: 4

What is Line Statement

'A mark indicating position, connection or boundaries.'

What is line resolution

I decided to put my paintings and my what is line exploration into context by creating a HOW TO craft book for parents to do with their kids.

The audience of the book is the parents of the children, and not the children themselves because the majority of crafts within the book should be done under parental supervision.

I looked at lots of different stocks to print the pages out onto like tracing paper, sugar paper, brown paper...

But the book was really the clearest and the cleanest on white paper, so that's what I went with. I wanted the cover to be highly visible, so I used Magenta and Yellow to really make it stand out to attract attention of the people who pass it. 

The book is A5 and consists of eleven double page spreads with one craft idea on each. I am very pleased with the resolution. Wop wop!

 

I mentioned that I looked at the idea of printing this out onto brown paper, and I really liked the test piece that I printed out, so I decided to make a mini version of the book on brown paper, using both the stock and testing out another scale.

The book was very small, and pocket sized, but I think that it is too small and easily losable.

Paints

This is a contact sheet consisting of photographs of all the paintings I have made over the course of this project. The majority of them are A1, and then A2, with a few A3 and A4 sheets scattered amongst them. Whoah!

-HJ x

Oops...

Let's look at the state of my room for a moment.


Uh oh.

-HJ x

Armed with a straw...

I really really really wish I'd thought about doing this technique earlier in this project, rather than a week before because damn, I really love the results of these images. Essentially, it's just food dye on paper with me chasing it around with a straw. I got so light headed but it was completely worth it. I actually love these pictures a lot.




I was feeling a little creative here, clearly and decided to MIX COLOURS. This one with the red and blue is definately my favourite, because there are some gorgeous transitions of the colour in there. I know that's not what I'm supposed to be focusing one but still, I love it.

I love the mash up in this, and the green that's appearing when the two colours meet.





-HJ x

Bubbles

This was an interesting idea, and one that I wasn't entirely sure would work, but there you go. Also, I had to hunt down some bubbles in Leeds, which is a lot harder than I imagined and I ended up having to pay a pound per pot. That's wild! I was not impressed. Either way, I mixed quite a lot of food dye in with the bubbles and hoped for the bed, and this is what happened. I only had three pots of bubbles too so I had to select what colours I would use, and I chose red blue and green. I would have chosen red blue and yellow, all primaries, but I wasn't sure how well the yellow would show up. So instead, we have RBG.




It was a pretty messy process, but it's something that I've wanted to try out for a while, and that was my chance. Some pretty interesting results, and it didn't ruin my carpet at all, which was most excellent!

-HJ x

Glitter.

Never. Again.

I've never has such a disaster as working with glitter in all my life. We had a crit for what is line last week, and someone suggested glitter, and I was like, great! because I had some and that could look really cool. So I went about it, and it was going well and I had a few things done.

Anyway, I couldn't get the lid off this one pot, and I was like, wrestling with it, and then it popped off and flew everywhere and I think I inhaled half of it. I'm going to be sneezing rainbows for a while, no joke.

Everywhere. I had to fetch the hoover out. I stopped working with it after that.

This is one of the pieces that I managed to successfully do before the Great Glitter Disaster of 2009.

Glue on brown paper becomes...
GLITTER FEST. Now, it looks really pretty but it was completely messy and so not worth me glittering up the insides of my lungs and stuff. But aw. Sparkley.


-HJ x

Damien Hirst

Personally, I'm not a Damien Hirst fan, but I do like the 'In a spin' series that he's done. It's currently on exhibition in the uni, on the floor below where I'm sitting right now actually, and I like it. Even if the writing on them does look like it's been done by a five year old.

It's a very simple technique of just dropping ink and paint onto a piece of paper that's sitting on a turning table, or something. Like one of those pottery wheels.

Anyway, it fits in with my project because of the fact that the images were created by not touching the paper.

And they're aesthetically pleasing.

-HJ x