How it all came about...

As shown in some earlier posts... the whole idea to do a time lapse video of ourselves painting the door with each of our design came from a DVD of mine ( http://www.b-stormers.com/motionpaintings/ ). I found it by accident a few years ago in Magma after seeing it played on the TV there, it was great to see how not jsut one piece of work started out but many and the interesting idea of painting over what had previously gone before was alien to me... I'm sometimes teased about how precious I can be over my own work... so this format meant I didnt have time to worry about every detail nor how it looked at the end... I was again reminded that the focus should be on the idea and not the 'style' of how it looks... however I've used this project as a release for me to do some of my own work/my own thing.

Those that follow my own blog know that I love cartoons and comics and I feel like I reverted back to a more comfortable drawing style... black outlined, cartoony and graffiti like. Last year the idea of using techniques that were appropriate to the idea etc. was discussed and I kind of got the impression that my interest in cartoony drawings was frowned upon.. but due to the nature of this project and its close proximity to graffiti I jumped at the chance to craete something in a style I felt would look good :) (like always I did just want to show off my own skills, but this project was more about our interests as I mentioned earlier)....so... I started looking to artists that I thought would fit this brief...

First off I raided my graffiti books, 'Art of the Rebellion', 'Street Logos' and 'Concrete 2 Canvas' purely for artists who draw characters with a cartoon-like style...

Flying Fortress ( http://www.teddytroops.net/ ), has graced my research before was an immediate influence purely in the creation of my Monster character as I wanted to achieve the same 'look' of smooth crisp lines/edges almost like it was a vector piece created on the door.


another piece by FF gave us the idea of not only using the door as a canvas but to add pieces to the door that could be painted on and then removed to be shown as evidence... however due to time we didnt get chance to pull this off... We had intended to add 3 canvases to the door and then paint as normal... but before painting it all white, we would remove the canvases to keep as reminders.

Dave the Chimp ( http://www.davethechimp.co.uk/home.php ) was another easy choice in terms of technique, with his simply shaped characters coming to life on walls, doors and other various canvases, each with a strong cartoon and comic vibe/ancestry to them. Chimp clearly enjoys what he does, and enjoys having a laugh at the same time... jsut read his 'About' section on his website! It's this fun factor that I want to capture in all of my work... and I know in a couple of previous briefs I completely missed it! I just did a piece of work that fitted the bill and then moved on... not good! thats not me. I want to deveop my own personal style and feel I need to focus my attention.. but here is an artist who has fun with what he does, he expresses his own personality into his work and spans various techniques/areas from 2D to 3D, graffiti walls to canvas... why am I not relaxing about my work and doing the same thing...









this piece in particular could be seen as Graphic due to it looking like an icon or logo. The thing that makes it graphic is that it is easily readable and understandable... the execution of it through technique just makes the message clearer... I must remember... IDEAS first, before I even consider style....

this project has certainly helped and opened my eyes! :) most of all... I've had fun because I've been around some great people and been able to just be myself....

Joe Ledbetter ( http://www.joeledbetter.com/mainpage.html ), yet another artist who takes his creations across different mediums but also creates work in a comic/cartoon style. I don't know if it's because I loved cartoons as a kid that I still watch them to this day or because I always said from an early age that I wanted to draw cartoons (after copying images of Sonic the hedgehog, Mario and the Teenage mutant hero turtles)... either way.. Ledbetters work just seems to make sense to me... maybe not his depiction of characters and the situations they're in, although they are bloody cute... but more so that everything has a solid outline... you can read shapes which become limbs. You get a sense of the characters personality through the way he has drawn them...





I can get distracted by this cartoony style a little which I admit, but thats also why I took a shine to things like contour drawing.. (which was the technique I used for my naked woman design)... as it removes any over thinking on my behalf... but I jsut need to keep it all in check so i dont get carried away and lose sight of what I was doing...

also thought I would try researching about human curiosity... but I've pretty much covered the generally gist of this site in the previous post.. ;)

http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/explore.htm