FMP Thoughts and Ideas

And the FMP begins, the final push of my 3 year course.

For this project I wanted to try and combine everything I've learnt on my course into one project. At the end of second year, we were given a project to do a book based on one of 5 titles given to us. I can't remember all 5 of them... but the one I chose was VESSEL. After doing extensive research and getting incredibly stuck, I was starting to give up when one of my friends suggested ship disasters and so I landed on an interesting true event about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis which also had a great controversy behind it as the captain committed suicide after being accused of captain error,causing the sinking, which was found to be incorrect after his death. Having wasted a large chunk of time going back and fourth on ideas I finally stuck to this and produced a 24 page A3 concertina book using screen printed pages of text alongside pages with a lino cut print on. I also made screen printed hard back book ends. I loved getting stuck into this and was really happy with the final outcome considering how lost I had been. Here are a few photos of my book

screen print front page

screen print back page

screen print text

finished book

From this project, I am going to take the 'disaster' idea, looking straight away at mankind disasters where failures to follow through on correct procedures in investigations have caused even more destruction. I am going to make sure I get the research done thoroughly and quickly in order to land on a final subject with plenty of time to create and develop images. I also loved making a standing concertina book so would love to create another one as part of my FMP.

The next project I'm taking inspiration from was at the beginning of second year, called 'Fairytale and Folklore'. We were asked to create 2 posters based on one of the short stories given to us using only symbolic imagery. I chose to illustrate BLUE BEARD, a story about a man who murdered his wives but in the end was killed by his last wife. With help from an incredibly useful reverse symbolism dictionary. I started thinking about what the book was about and what bluebeard, the main character's, personality was like. I then listed any words that came to mind, looked them up in the dictionary, and wrote what symbols there were for each one. For example, death - skull, black, skeleton etc. I then created two screen printed images using only these symbols. Here are the two images.

more successful screen print

Less successful screen print

Bringing the disaster and the bluebeard murderess character together, I have decided that a real serial killer from the past would be interesting to look at. As I feel doing another disaster similar to a sinking ship, such as a plane crash would be too repetitive and easy. I want to look for a story which I can illustrate from different perspectives, so I can produce several different things rather than just one. I also feel it is quite a different topic for me to illustrate, therefore a bit more of a challenge, which will cause me to really think about how to produce the final outcomes.

And finally, although the topic is completely opposite, I would like to take inspiration from my most recent project 'Negotiated Study' (the project in my first post of this blog). This was obviously a much happier, cheery topic, but I loved making several items all fitting nicely into something. So would like to try and have a chest/some sort of container of objects, perhaps an item or image for each victim. The chest to symbolise the secrets that a serial killer hides. As the container would be a lot bigger than the box I used in negotiated study, I would really like to try some 3-D work, as I think this would be a big challenge, as well as being new and exciting.

So... to sum up:

I would like to find a true story of a serial killer in the past, which has controversy and failures to follow correct procedures leading to more destruction. I would like to create a concertina book, one or more symbolic big posters, and some sort of big container filled with objects and items for each victim. 

So now to start the research!

Thoughts on my recent project

So here it goes, my first ever post...

To start off, I'm going to talk about the last project I did leading up to the start of FMP. It was titled Negotiated Study and we were asked to come up with our own brief which we believed supported and linked to the skills and techniques we had learnt over the last couple of years. I chose to do my project based on Gloucester Road in Bristol (a road which only has independent shops along it). I've been to Bristol a few times and absolutely loved it which is why I chose this as my location. During my research visit to Bristol, I discovered Gloucester Road with beautiful, unique independent shops, cafes and restaurants. I also found a few petitions circling to stop mainstream supermarkets being built in and around the area, which would ultimately put these small shops out of business. 

I started to think about how I could celebrate and advertise this special road while trying to persuade people to boycott the supermarkets and shop locally. So began working on an idea to create individual items such as stamps, coasters, badges etc. for a few of the shops which would then all fit nicely in a small(ish) box.

So here's what I made, what I thought worked and what didn't. And what I would change if I did it again!

Box of goodies contents list

No. 83 Scrumptiously sweet - a colourful screen printed fortune picker telling you where to head first in the shop

No. 85 RePsycho - 5 stamps showing the 3 different floors of the shop

No. 87 Playfull Toyshop - rainbow wooden block puzzle

No. 101 Grape and Grind - screen printed coasters advertising the different alcohols they sell

No. 125 Shanti -  Indian style decorated wooden box

No. 143 The Fish Shop - lino cut seafood recipe cards

No 347. The Reclaimers - Badges

Photograph of all my items together with their box.

I've chosen a couple of these items to go into more detail;

No.87 Playfull Toyshop

This shop was a traditional toyshop filled with sustainably sourced wooden toys, puzzles, books etc. I wanted to show the playful side of the shop by using decorative text and bright colours. The shop sign also had rainbow colours so thought I'd follow it through to their item. To make the puzzle, I found small blank puzzles which i combined to make one big puzzle. I then made my own boarder out of card. Underneath the pieces I had a copy of the image  so when the pieces weren't there, there was a guide image. I felt this worked effectively and made it look more professional. For the image, I created a black pen drawing which I scanned into photoshop and coloured, After printing two copies (one for the backboard) I covered the puzzle with double-sided tape and stuck it down to then cut each piece out individually. This was painstakingly slow and tricky! In hindsight, I definitely would've screen printed straight onto the puzzle! The image itself isn't my favourite for this project. I think the text is a bit unclear. I also think the colour scheme is a bit garish (although both play into the childish mood I was aiming for). Overall I enjoyed creating a puzzle, would definitely do it again, but perhaps prepare for it slightly better!

 puzzle - in future would like to screen print it

really happy with how perfectly the back and pieces line up.

No.347 The Reclaimers
This was by far my favourite shop. It was at the very top of Gloucester Road but it was well worth the extra distance. Filled with random antiques, old ornaments, vintage toys and rusting metal cigarette signs. Anything you could imagine really! I thought about how I could show all the different things they have to offer while also showing who they are. Badges seemed to fit in with the retro feel of the shop, while also allowing me to come up with several small images. And I thought a badge holder would then allow me to show what the shop is about through written advertisement. I thought I'd keep the colours relatively neutral while keeping with a traditional vintage feel. But play around a bit with the text as the employers I talked to while in there were really friendly and a little bit eccentric. Looking through my photos I chose eight of my favourite objects and drew pen drawings of them within a round shape, adding text to enhance the images. I chose the shape of the badge holder due to the shape of the entrance of the shop, and drew two pen drawings for the back and front to colour on photoshop. After everything was coloured and sized down, I printed it all off, made the badges and stuck the background to foam mount and cut it out. Overall I think it all worked really well, The colour scheme, images and text all fit in well with the atmosphere of the shop.

mounted on foam board and cut to shape

badges stick into the foam, and image left behind when removed.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this project. Individual items meant I could broaden my range of products and experiment different techniques. I feel that there are a few objects which could be worked on in terms of type face used to make it look a bit more professional. I am going to start doing some font research to prepare for the text I might use in FMP. But will definitely take how I approached this project onto how I start FMP. Although I'm looking forward to working a bit bigger!