Darn and drat!

Confidence cometh before a slap in the face with a wet fish.

Getting together work for a competition got me lost in research, and there was a lot, so for 'research' read procrastination. I could not settle on style or medium and in dithering ran down the clock and so lessened the choices. No lino prints for me!

The remit was to produce three illustrations and a design for the binding for 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley. Despite being set in the future it is very much about the 1920s and 1930s. My thoughts turned to Metropolis by Fritz Lang.

I find the Art Deco designs
so very attractive

I really like the travel posters of the same period they have such wonderfully strong designs and colours. They are outrageously optimistic, and like all advertising selling the lifestyle and dream of health, wealth and beauty.

So many to choose from, they are appealing for their nostalgia
and their artistry.

Steve Thomas's fantastic retro future Posters. He has
captured the quality of them perfectly.

The finished Malpais image.

Huxley's descriptions of London, the surrounding countryside and Malpais, which are very attractive and he takes great pleasure in its portrayal. As you can see I was getting completely diverted by this and  while I had many ideas they were not appearing on paper.

Some early design thoughts for the cover.
Based on the colour strata of the different
social castes.

Different ideas for Malpais, starting with a sweeping view
of the mesa and then focusing in on the ritual.

John the Savage's point of view - seeing the
gawking child twins, staring at this mother.

Rough of the cover. The finish would have all the figures
coloured.

In the end however, my designs were very different as I focused onto the human moments that had a very strong cinematic feel to them.  But lessons to be learnt...work faster...and don't get distracted...learn more Photoshop sometime soon! I was pleased with my ideas, but really unhappy with the results.

Happy New Year.

Hello. There has been quite a gap since the last blog, something to do with the holidays and work.  I have just uploaded a (rather long) film of the jigsaw being painted. It is not very exciting, but I hope that the music will help it to seem a little more vibrant.

Music by Holy Moly and the Crackers.

http://www.holymolyandthecrackers.co.uk/

Finished work, photographed sitting in the lid
of the box made for it.

The back of the work needed to be sealed as well.
Considered that on another occasion I won't mind painting a
different picture on the back - to make it harder and a little more interesting.

Since finishing the jigsaw I have made it a display box for it - based on a wonderful box that contained a circular cheese board...it almost fitted the jigsaw, but not quite! So I had to make my own.

This is the little prototype I made to try the design out.
Covered it in a photocopy of a photo of the jigsaw.

The full quote is: 'Life is the flower, of which love is the honey'
said by Victor Hugo, supposedly.

And then while thinking of a way to create an information sheet containing both the outline of the jigsaw - for those wishing to remake the jigsaw - and to tell you the flowers and insects on it, my husband mentioned seeing artisan film canisters in an art gallery which had a padded filling to stop the contents from moving around.  This seemed like a perfect coupling of the two needs - so I've made a padded/quilted insert which has the outline and names embroidered on it. I managed to do this fairly quickly by using the wonders of a sewing machine which had an embroidery foot attached.

Calico put over the outline on a light box.
The outline was photocopied from the Illustrator file on many bits of paper, due to a size issue.

I really enjoyed the free hand embroidery - it will look shockingly
amateur but it did the job.

Waiting to be cut to size and neatened - and in need of  a bit of bias-binding.

And a quick look at the Bee Box. Almost finished, sans
glue and a magnet to work as the catch.

All that nearly complete...and now onto the Bee Book!!

Another go.

Once was not enough! I felt I should have one more go at drawing out the jigsaw - aiming to get the correct route for the laser and using the pen tool instead of live trace. I also thought I would make the jigsaw a little larger.

The cuts are in a slightly different place. I was trying to avoid too
sudden or sharp a join.  Everything was fine, except
ending up with a tiny, tiny earwig.

Getting the laser bug.

While I've been painting the jigsaw I had other ideas about using the bee and flower design further. And having got a little braver with the laser cutter I wanted to try out something else. I liked the idea of making a box using just one flower and one bee, possibly using the bee as a clasp. I played with the notion of making the insect drop into a space in the lid, or using a magnet and securing the bee only on one side. For the moment it is this one design that won out.

First attempt. The rings are to be stuck together to form the
box. 

Spot the mistake! I altered the size while adjusting something
else on the laser computer and took no note of it. It was
easier to go back to the laptop.

The shapes match up perfectly but I rather like them
off kilter.

Second attempt. Smaller and all fitting, plus the lid is hinged
thanks to Steve.

What it will, sort of, look like when finished.

Branching out.

We are being encouraged at college to create animations (simple is good) so that our work breaks away from paper. So I took photos while painting the rose and bee motif. Setting the camera up on a small tripod and the tripod up on several recipe books, an atlas and an all important notebook to achieve the right height.

There was a slight problem in that I didn't get the painting done on the same evening - and therefore, nor the photos - and things had been moved! So there was a whole size discrepancy when I cropped the later pictures on Photoshop to hide the movement and then found out the canvas size to be different and needed to infill them to correct this. I was very chuffed when I learned to use the record Action button on Photoshop as that cut out having to individually import and alter about 100 pictures.

As with learning anything new, it all took a very long time to put together and ended with a very short, very amateur film, but I'm pleased.

It really is short, but happy!

Illustrator in the hands of a novice...

Hello and good evening. First an apology for the two name changes to the blog - something else I'm learning - so many fun and clever names for Art/Crafts/Illustration blogs...so many already used! So in the end - though I'm not promising anything - it is now name based.

Anyhow, back to the story of the jigsaw. Having really enjoyed the process of designing I then had to transfer the lines into vectors through Illustrator so that the laser cutter could read it (I had help with the small rose and bee design, so I was all on my own for this one). It took a day of frustration and much reference to the internet. So many great tutorials out there, but then you have to know exactly what you asking for...it took a while.

Redrawn on tracing paper.

In the end I ended up redrawing the sketch onto tracing paper, scanning then live tracing on Illustrator - I thought it was going really well until I noticed these loops. It was time to call on professional help.

A bit faint, but lots of extra loops that the laser
would follow if left in.

So two days after, at college I was lucky enough to find our great digital designer tutor Dom and ask for help. It took him a matter of moments to tell me what was wrong, how to put it right (easy, but time consuming) and that I should have gone to see him sooner!

FINALLY it was ready to go and I took it to the 3D technical department. The vector was fine, though an added layer of possible consideration was pointed out to me by Steve - a complicated design like this is also sending out a track line - and perhaps because it had been done by live trace the cuts were to be made in what looked more like a paint splatter then an Etchasketch and if the big shapes are cut out first and drop down, then when the laser comes to the small parts within the larger pieces they may not cut out and instead only etch....I set it off and waited. It is very exciting to see the machine working by itself, but cutting out a pattern you've been working on for many days.  

Voila! This time I was lucky and the laser cut things out just fine.

Choosing the right flowers.

Hi, from where I'm sitting I can smell the burnt, sweet aroma of laser cut Mdf. My 2nd attempt at a jigsaw is sitting in a plastic bag at the side of the laptop here. But that's skipping ahead.  I know that bees, butterflies and other pollinators are attracted to large, open flowers where they can easily get to the nectar, and after some more research I drew up a list of flowers to include in the final piece and then chose from that - looking for variety of shape and colour.  So...(these photos I had taken earlier in the year).

Purple Coneflower and Small Tortoiseshell

Bees on Thistles.