Billie Jean analysis

Billie Jean has an interesting sketchy style. His images are very carefully composed. He uses different types of mark making and blocks of color to emphasise certain parts. To keep the sketchy quality his work is drawn in blue ball point pen, and I imagine he doesn't use any type of correctional fluid.  The little mistakes and overlapping lines you see contribute to the authentic quality of the marks.

He draws different subject material, from cartoon dogs to pixel smiley faces, peace signs and and basketball players. The shoe looks traced; but considering it's an ad for a shoe; it needs to be less stylized than everything else in the picture. Personally I see why his style and drawings would be appealing, but I prefer more refined styles, even for sketching. If it's a big commercial poster, it shouldn't have as many  overlapping lines.

Album Cover analysis

• Coldplay 'X&Y'

Coldplay chose to have a more unclear and interactive image as their album cover. The symbol says the name of the title, 'X & Y', in an encoded alphabet. The decrypted alphabet is shown in the booklet so you can decrypt the front cover by yourself. There's an extra message on the last page of the booklet also written in the code, saying 'Make trade fair". Make trade fair is a campaign for fair trade between governments. With their original alphabet ColdPlay makes a subliminal message.
The symbol itself is colorful and placed in the centre of the page. Considering that Coldplay's genre is mainly rock, it doesn't suit them very much.

• Chemical Brothers 'Push the Button' 

Chemical Brothers' "Push the button" and Coldplay's 'X & Y' have the same cover artists, Mark Tappin and Simon Gofton (aka Tappin Gofton). The cover art borrows motifs from soviet propaganda posters. All variants of the album and individual track artwork shares the same theme. To avoid being too close to communist posters; Tappin Gofton use various bold colors, excluding red. Further more, "Push the button" is a provocative phrase, unlike the communist posters, which were very suppressive. 

• Beck 'The Information'

Beck's cover is essentially a blank page, with included art stickers for the customer to create their own cover. This is his selling point and his way of encouraging people to buy more physical copies of albums. Because the stickers make the album a special addition, however, all of it's sales are excluded from the UK charts. This says a lot about Beck and his intentions as an artist.

• The shins 'Chutes too narrow'

The cover for The Shins' "Chutes too narrow" has an interesting format and stylized, cartoony imagery. The designer is Jessie LaDoux, who has a very distinctive style. The band's genre is alternative pop, so the cover fits their music. The booklet itself is not simply square, the picture is cut and very interestingly presented.

Bruce Timm and Rod Guen analysis

Bruce Timm

Rod Guen

Bruce Timm and Rod Guen are both American comic book artists. Bruce Timm is most famous for the cartoon series he developed, "Batman: The Animated Series"; and Rod Guen publishes his own comics but has also done work for Marvel and DC. Both artists have been a major influence on my art for the past year.  They're very knowledgeable about anatomy and it shows through their confident brush marks and stylization. Bruce Timm's style in particular is instantly recognizable, the characters he creates are very unique and have a lot of personality. Rod Guen's drawings are also very alive and, particularly in his figurative work, flowing.

I'm not very interested in drawing my own comics, however Bruce Timm's clean and simple linework and Rod Guen's excellent anatomy skills are very inspiring and something to strive for. I drew my copy with a brushpen and washes of black ink. Observing artists and replicating their techniques is a very good exercise and something I should definitely do more of.

François Zavier analysis

Canadian artist François Zavier has a very interesting body of work. He does a lot of mixed media work, experimental typography and stop motion animating. I found him through his "the worst is yet to come" series, in which he uses heated wires to burn through papers with motivational sayings. It's a unique concept, and to me, it's an interesting way to visually portray anxiety and depression.

Initially I only saw François' photographs from the series, but afterwards I saw he also had a video on his website. The video is even more interesting to watch, because you watch the words form and slowly burn through the paper. I also noticed he's used .gifs to present his work several times, and decided to make a gif of his video. This kind of work is perfect for .gifs because, while you can enjoy the work as a still image, a short clip of the process will make you appreciate it even more.

David Szauder analysis

"Gil"

I've been interested in glitch art for quite a while, and I when I found David Szauder's work I was inspired to finally make my own. He has a series of pictures called Lost Fragments - Failed memories that explores how our memory works through glitch art. He creates the pictures digitally, presumably in photoshop, and tries to make it seem like a video card glitch, but with less colors.

my experiment

The pictures from the series are mainly portraits, so they have a good composition that focuses on the face of the person. He's tried to keep his pictures looking vintage by keeping the limited color scheme, but for my experiment I added as much color as possible. By changing the colors I also intentionally changed the mood of the picture. The original picture had a more innocent look, and with my collage it's the opposite - the green/yellow color scheme is now purple/red/blue.I also added a slight 3D effect by editing the layer channels. I love doing digital collage, so I'll happily do more of this in the future.

evaluation

Interpreting the theme

I wanted to experiment with paper and create a small zine with a vintage theme. I planned to focus on the more glamorous part of the 40s and 50s, like the pin-ups and hollywood actors and actresses. The glamorous image of the 40s and 50s often obscures the war and economical situation at the time.

I wanted to create a vintage, 50s related zine, so I plan to include envelopes and family photographs. Envelopes are obscuring the contents inside, and photographs have a different meaning to myself that is hidden and unknown to others. 

Recording observations

I recorded my observation in my sketchbook and digitally on my blog. I made a lot of experiments with different materials traditionally in my sketchbook. I used photoshop for my digital experiments with collage.

Idea development

Because I wanted my zine to be interesting to look at, I wanted to use a variety of techniques and materials. The idea I developed the furthest is my pin-up drawings. I copied a lot of pin up paintings and drawings, which helped me a lot to draw more freely in that style. Another idea I had was to create digital collages in photoshop with portraits of actors and actresses from the 50s. I took a lot of black and white photos and added colorful geometric shapes. It's quite simple but very effective when used with the right colors. An idea I discarded was to put tracing paper over photographs and draw on top of them. I experimented with it a lot, using different mediums to draw like pencil, marker and ink, but it didn't look as good as I wanted it to be.

Materials, Techniques and Processes

I've used a wide variety of materials in my sketchbook. I've used pencil, watercolor, marker, ink, marker and charcoal. I've combined them most of the time. For example I've used ink to add outlines after a watercolor drawing has dried. I've also done a lot of digital collages in photoshop. I started out by only adding triangles and other shapes around the person's eyes, but for my final piece I plan to draw bigger shapes. I'm more comfortable with photoshop, but because I practiced a lot with watercolor and pencil I'm much more comfortable with traditional mediums now too.

Influences 

I've been most influenced by 40's and 50's American culture. The pin-up art, the war, and the golden age of hollywood. I've always been interested in vintage American commercial art, so for the project I decided to research those two decades further. My biggest artistic influences would be George Petty, Gil Elvgren, Andrew Loomis, Norman Rockwell and Geraldine Georges. Elvgren and Petty are very famous pin up artists and their style of painting appeals to me a lot. Norman Rockwell is a defining figure in American art, looking through his paintings really help me to get a feel for the 40s and 50s. Andrew Loomis is famous for the paintings he's done in advertising and also has several drawing books that i've read to help me draw in a 40s style. Geraldine does very interesting, gothic-looking digital and mixed media collages. He's inspired me for my own digital collages.

The exam trip to the Photographers Gallery didn't inspire my ideas that much because they didn't fit the theme I set for myself. Nonetheless it was interesting to see.

Geraldine Georges collage

my own work, inspired by Georges

Final Piece

For my final piece I intend to create a small zine with a vintage theme. I want to use envelopes, textured paper, and both digital and traditional collage. I also want to include my pin-up drawings, and a drawing of a 50s actor or actress to accompany the digital collage.  

Conclusion 

 I enjoyed working on the exam because I set myself a very clear theme from the beginning. I have been interested in it for a long time so researching it was very enjoyable and my drawings and collages have improved since.