First Original Comic.

Taken some time recently and sat drawing and finalizing my Domestic Abuse comic from University  (Title still to be decided....any ideas?) 

Gotten a few pages drawn up, colouring them inbetween my searches for employment.  Two pages basically done.

Hope you enjoy the teaser above. 

End of Assessment, Start of show.

Assessment is over and done with now, so now it's the organisation of the end of year show. Walls are painted and everyones' work from my course is hung up. 

My work to be shown at the exhibition is not the final work I had for assessment but a stronger piece of work I had from before. The dull ache 'poster' I had before was really scrappy, however after cleaning it up and recolouring it on CS4 Photoshop, it has come out quite nicely, and really makes an impact on the viewer.  

I'll take some photographs of my work hung up in the exhibition and post them soon.

Experiment.

Picture 1 - Gesso and feathers on Somerset paper. 

Picture 2 - Mixed Media

Picture 3- Ink on Somerset Paper

Everything is getting a bit hectic at the moment, University deadline for assessment is getting closer, I've only got another week after this one and I'm still playing catch up at the moment, so this may be my last update for a while until everything has calmed down.

After doing colour tests, I decided to try using really feathers in my work (Picture 1). Although I liked the effect, it didn't quite work as strongly as my drawn feathers. So I moved off from that and tried a mixed media piece (Picture 2) , layering three sheets of tissue paper together. The front sheet just simply had the type on, the middle had feathers drawn on in ink, the back layer had photocopy transfers of real feathers.

I really liked this piece, however after my seminar I was told to revert back to drawing graphically rather than to continue with experimently with materials because I don't have the time between now and assessment to experiment to much.

Which I agree with, but I'm still glad I experimented, so I started drawing more graphically again and have also started working with a limited colour palette in inks, to try to help my work flow together rather than looking disjointed. (Picture 3) The last drawing is definately my strongest style in drawing, so I understand where my tutor is coming from.

Memory Poster Update.

Been working and reworking some of my memory posters, above are just two that I quickly scanned in. Both are drawn by hand using fine liner pens; as I was drawing more of the posters I found the other memories were coming out far more graphically than my realistic feathers. So I ended up re-drawing them again; I think the result works a lot better, more of a powerful image and it works well in the series of posters I've started producing. Today I've photocopied the originals a few times to carry out some tests to see if they will work as well with ink washes and colours.

Currently doing my dissertation at the moment, so I haven't really had time to do my main work, but next week is had in day, so I can get back to drawing soon. In the meantime, have some photographs of my studio space and work I have done.

My University studio space needs a bit of a tidy up, towards the bottom you'll notice some other artists work I use as inspiration, they include: Becky Cloonan, Yuko Ota (from Johnny Wander) and Sam Bosma.

The other two photographs are of one of my draft pages for my domestic abuse based comic.

Panels.

Finally thought of an idea for a few panels to go towards a comic/fanzine. I done a quick test of colours/style of colouring on the two panels below.

Women's Aid

Haven't really done a lot on my main project currently other than reading. Been mainly concentrating on my disseration to get that out of the way.

I have however found out some truly shocking statistics through Women's Aid UK, a charity in aid of women who are victims of domestic abuse. Here's some of the facts I discovered:

• 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their lifetimes and between 6-10% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year (Council of Europe, 2002).  

• 12.9 million incidents: The British Crime Survey found that there were an estimated 12.9 million incidents of domestic violence acts (that constituted non-sexual threats or force) against women and 2.5 million against men in England and Wales in the year preceding interview (Walby & Allen, 2004). 

•  One call a minute to the police: Though only a minority of incidents of domestic violence are reported to the police , the police still receive one call about domestic violence for every minute in the UK, an estimated 1,300 calls each day or over 570,000 each year. (Stanko, 2000).  However, according to the British Crime Survey, less than 40% of domestic violence crime is reported to the police (Dodd et al, July 2004; Walby and Allen, 2004; Home Office, 2002). 

•  44% of victims of domestic violence are involved in more than one incident.  No other type of crime has a rate of repeat victimisation as high (Dodd et al, July 2004).

•  Fear of being killed: In a study of 200 women's experiences of domestic violence it was found that 60% of the women had left because they feared that they or their children would be killed by the perpetrator (Humphreys & Thiara, 2002).

• Homicide: On average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner. This constitutes nearly 40% of all female homicide victims.  (Povey, (ed.), 2005; Home Office, 1999; Department of Health, 2005.)  

•  54% of UK rapes are committed by a woman’s current or former partner. (Walby and Allen, 2004)

• Serious sexual assault was most likely to be committed by someone known to the victim (89% of female and 83% of male victims). Just over half (54%) of female victims reported that a partner or ex-partner had been the offender. (Coleman et al. 2007)

• 29 children in 13 families were killed between 1994 and 2004 as a result of contact arrangements in England and Wales, 10 of them since 2002. In five of these families contact was ordered by the court. (Saunders, 2004) 

• 1 in 5 young men and 1 in 10 young women think that abuse or violence against women is acceptable. (Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, 1998).

Some of these statistics are truly disgusting, to think that humans can think of these acts as everyday blows me away. This is why I have now decided to do my work on Domestic Violence.

Newspapers.

I spent today pretty much doing intensely detailed doodling, in order to waste time until my tutorial at 14:15 in the afternoon. Drew two hands on separate paper, using the same graphic style as before but including some more detailed crosshatching; then went on to draw some hands bound together. I left the last illustration in black and white because I think it made a bigger impact as it was instead of adding in the blue/grey colouring.

After finishing these, I decided to shift everything about on my studio wall, I discovered that the separate hands worked really well when combined with the illustration 'Shame.'

After much 'faffing' with my work, I had my one to one with Ian Chamberlain. These are the quick notes I took from that tutorial:

• Domestic Violence? More people can relate and have experienced. Can also use my own experiences with it. 
• Can see my style of work in a Graphic novel/fanzine/printmaking.
• Look into current news rather than vague historical events e.g. Chikatilo.
• Perhaps take current event from newspaper and illustrate. e.g. M5 crash near Taunton. 
• Or look into major historic events and adapt into comic form e.g 300/ From Hell.
• Keep a narrative.

With this tutorial I discovered I was at a bit of a crossroads with my work. I didn't really have a concept, other than keeping a narrative; I didn't really know where to move onto, although through my research I had discovered what I was interested in: control, power, and the edges of morality. 

I will continue with research but perhaps keep too more contemporary and 'conventional' issues rather than serial killers.

Joint.

My last seminar at University on the 28th of October was partly useful, partly confusing.

I was told by my peers that the pencil drawing 'Captive' was too sexual, something I already knew. However, they made some valid evaluations about the small graphic/comic styled illustrations and confirmed what I had thought:

• A narrative/storyline is being read
• Small and frantic- adding to disturbing-more dark imagery.
• Colour adds more humanity- reds really grabs you- evokes danger quality.
• Undergrowth wrapping around victims- disappearing- buried = creepy. 
 

They also gave me some good points and questions to think on:

• Which Side of the line am I looking at?
• Observational or experience.

• Control- not just physical, can be emotional.
• E.g. Domestic violence/abuse

• Juxtapose images- suggest rather than shout. 

• Perhaps look at rope, tape and cable ties- again suggest with images of just rope instead of tied up women etc. 

The last one I wasn't too keen on because it starts to lose a narrative when it is just of rope, however using an image of rope and juxtaposing it with another image appealed, and so I experimented with juxtaposition. 

Rope. Draft. Nov 2011.

Rope. Nov 2011

Shame. Nov 2011

Restrain. Nov 2011.

Sorry about the image quality, the photographs were taken with the camera on my phone.

 In the seminar, they also suggested going back to using pencil instead of brush pens and ink, however I enjoying using them far too much to go completely back to using just pencil.

While I thought of the comments my peers said were great and useful towards the techniques of my work, I didn't recieve anything helpful about the concept or undertone of my work, and so I am starting to feel a little lost about how to move on from the above.

Dead.

After continuing with my sketches about Chikatilo, using ink and my brush pens; I believe a narrative is beginning to arise slowly between and across the images. I am enjoying the graphic feel to the images, I believe the lack of complete graphic detail gives across a detached feel, making the illustration seem more cold and isolated.

The colours I have been using on the illustrations have also helped with the impact and mood given off with each piece. The blue/grey gives off a feeling of death to the bodies, a lack of life; the bright crimson skirt on the women gives the definite connotation of blood, and helps stimulate the feeling of death against the pale white skin.The black and brown ink helps lose the image in page, making the corpses almost disappear into the undergrowth, again bringing across the feelings of loss of life.

I think these images would work well as large litho prints, a small body lost within a large page of undergrowth, giving the feeling of being discarded and forgotten. More to be developed....

Dead. -Click for full image. 

Red Skirt - Click for full image.

New Pens. New Style.

 

Recently, I have purchased a Pentel brush pen and a few other coloured brush pens after reading that Lucy Knisley uses one (I love her artwork in French Milk.)

I found that after my first sketch (above) my style had almost completely changed. I don't believe my style changed wholly because of the pen, but that it helped manifest this change. I think the main contributing factor to this change is Craig Thompson.

A few weeks ago I purchased both Habibi and Blankets by Craig Thompson, I absolutely adore these books, both the artwork and the stories are beautiful. I heartily recommend them to everyone, whatever your interest is in books.

I believe the stories have influenced the way in which I now see narratives and the way my linework has progressed into something more graphic based than the mess it was before.I think I will continue working and developing in this way with brush pens because I enjoy the comic/graphic based element my work has now gained.

New hardback cover to 'Blankets' by Craig Thompson.

Page Extract from 'Habibi' by Craig Thompson.

Start.

Captive. Pencil. Click here to view image larger.

I started my final year at UWE with the intention of exploring the art of tattoos. However I found I quickly digressed after my research led me to the tattoos of prisoners of war during the Holocaust; this led me to looking at the treatment of prisoners at Buchenwald by Ilse Koch. I then progressed into reading about the Angel of Death at Auschwitz and then onto Unit 731.

All of these events both horrified and fascinated me; I found I was interested in repulsion, in the edges of morality; how people declare and enforce their control and power over others through acts of violence, both sexual and not.

I began my visual exploration of this intrigue which a detailed pencil drawing of a naked bound women. However, I discovered that the image was seen as more sexual than captive. Naked rather than nude, not vulnerable looking enough.

I discovered during a seminar that I had too many random thoughts and ideas; I needed to connect them all and pick one. I found it wasn't necessarily the idea of control that I was interested in but the stories and narratives behind the acts of mutilation etc.

I decided to pick a serial killer and his/her 'story' and go with it. Doing several quick sketches illustrating a narrative. I settled on Andrei Chikatilo....for now.

Wikipedia: Andrei Chikatilo

Portrait of Chikatilo. Pencil.