Surrealism and Randomly Generated Art

Over the last few days I've been reading a couple of books as part of my research for the journal, the first book is called "Movements in Modern Art: Surrealism" by Fiona Bradley and the second is "The Innocent Eye: Children's Art and the Modern Artist" by Jonathan Fineberg.

On reading these two books it suddenly occurred to me that I've dabbled with surrealist methods to produce work in the past and completely over looked the importance these methods had in moving me forward. I have always been drawn to randomly generated art such as doodle art and most recently Jon Burgerman and found it difficult to pinpoint what it was I actually enjoyed about the work. I now realise it’s the freedom of expression and randomness that comes through in these works.

I was looking through some old sketchbooks after reading about the automatic drawing techniques used by surrealists like Andre Masson and I feel like Paul Klee did when he found his old childhood drawings. Below are a few pages of my automatisms done in the first year of my degree. By looking at these random's I believe this is the true me. I’ve been using pen and ink over the last year, which I feel really comfortable with, but am wondering if my cross-hatching methods have become too laboured. By this I mean it's possibly taking over as I have a tendency to get carried away. I guess it's a case of finding the right balance and harmony which will become refined with time. Perhaps by simplifying the hatching to areas of shadow would work best for me as I did in the chicken empathy illustration last year.

Most recently I have realised the projects I have found truly excited me were the ones where I had an arbitrary beginning i.e. the 'Disney Brief' and most recently the 'Lord Whitney brief' and this has got me thinking how I should approach projects in the future. I find I work best when I'm at play with my work and have found if I start to over-work or complicate things I loose that essence of fun and go through an unproductive stage. The sketchbook pages illustrated below are a great example of me at play with my work and this is what I feel I am currently lacking. From the positive feedback about my portfolio I have decided to give myself a break from Photoshop and Illustrator for a while to explore my hand drawn style to it's fullest.

Sketchbook Randoms 1

Sketchbook Randoms 2

Sketchbook Randoms 3

Sketchbook Randoms 4

Lord Whitney

On Monday last week we had a visiting lecture by the creative force known as Lord Whitney. Lord Whitney is made up of Amy Lord and Rebekah Whitney who met at Leeds Metropolitan and together they create stunning 3D Illustrations. The talk was about their journey through university and how they began their collaboration.

After graduating from uni and working as temps the pair began building sets in their basements and experimenting with different props lying around the house. As they talked us through various projects they had been involved in the main point that shone through was how they were driven to create things not for money but because they loved it so much. There is great playfulness and fun in their work, which is the reason they are so successful in what they do. Later on in the morning they joined us in our studio to set us a brief on compound nouns. The brief was to create an illustration in any way we saw fit using a compound noun. I was fortunate enough to chat to the girls whilst working on the brief that afternoon. They were really down to earth and offered me advice on the way I work and said they would love to see my drawings without the computer element as they thought it looked strong enough without it.

I really enjoyed working with Lord Whitney and their project helped me find a different way of generating ideas that could really help me with my work. I came up with ideas that I perhaps wouldn’t have thought of before by mashing words together and creating a page of really quick sketches.

Rough Sketches

As usual I wanted to make them into characters and decided to submit the below image. I plan to turn this little cheese character and some of the others I created during the brief into comic strips or short stories.

Final Submission

Personal Project Completion

(Final artwork for the school mural before printing. Actual size 812.8mm high x 4000mm wide.)

It's been a while since I posted anything about my personal project and I’m happy to say I’ve finally finished it.


I’ve had a few late nights this week trying to get the artwork finalised so could get it printed and in the school before Christmas and here it is in all it's glory.


There have been a few teething problems along the way, these problems were mainly to do with how I would get my artwork on the wall, but after careful research into different printing materials I finally found a way of having it printed large scale without compromising my artwork.


One of the biggest problems I faced was ensuring the final print would still show my hand drawn quality and because I prefer to work small how that would have an effect on my work at large scale. I found from an earlier 2^nd year project if I scanned my work in at a high enough resolution I could vectorise it in Illustrator without losing any fine detail. I scanned the final inked artwork in sections and pieced it together in Photoshop, I then took that into illustrator to be vectorised and tidied up.


The material I decided on after talking to expert printers XCEL Signs in Wrexham is normally used for banners. The durabiltity of the material means it can't be ripped easily, which was an important factor, as the children at Hayes Lane Primary School will eventually add colour to it. I collected the print earlier this morning and delivered it to the school, they were absolutely delighted with the final result and have asked me if I can spare some time to come in and work on the colouring in stage with the children before Christmas. They also asked if they can get a photo of me with the finished product to put on their website, which will be a nice bit of exposure.


The final concept for the mural is based on the Wacky Races with each character driving a vehicle that links to their profession.


I hope to have some photographs to post up soon.

Portfolio Visit – Taylor O’Brien

Earlier this morning I had another portfolio visit this time with the good people at Taylor O’Brien. I arrived 15 minutes early (as I’m still not too familiar with the streets of Manchester) and was greeted by Helen who very kindly made me a brew. Helen had a couple of things to sort before she could see me so I waited happily in the sitting and enjoyed my hot beverage. After a couple of minutes she was ready to see me along with head designer Lee. Before they looked at my work they asked me a few questions about what I’d done before and what I wanted to do when I graduate. I spoke a little about where I had come from and how I decided to become an illustrator and my love of character creation.

Helen and Lee were really easy to chat to and gave me an in-depth and helpful overview of my portfolio and advice on what they thought I could do to improve it. Helen thought my vector drawn work was really strong and said that this kind of work would be favoured in a corporate environment as it could be used for logo’s and branding. They could also see potential for editorial work in my pen and ink drawings and thought the characters drawn for the child audience would sit well in education or children’s books. Helen suggested sorting my work into sections in my portfolio so that clients could see how my style could work over different market areas.

They mentioned that I didn’t really need to put textures in my work and I should maybe think about playing with colour washes like I had done with the Craig Oldham poster. They thought by doing this it would be appealing for a corporate client who might want an illustration with their corporate colours.

Near the end of the visit I asked for some advice on how to best market myself and Helen told me it was a good thing to have a web presence don't fall into the trap of relying on a website bringing in work. She thought the best way was to visit a lot of different design agencies and speak to people in the flesh as this way you stand more of a chance of being remembered. They suggested sending people new illustrations through email with a note to say hello and keep you in mind should any relevant work come up. Another nice suggestion was to drop in samples of work with your contact details at the receptions of design agencies this way a small sample of work could be pinned to a notice board near a desk and help to keep you in peoples thoughts, it would also be a nice distraction for a designer to look at something different. They also thought getting an agent to represent you would be beneficial.

I really enjoyed this meeting as they made me feel really welcome and I think I kept them chatting for over 40 minutes. It was all good and I've come away with some nice ideas to think about.

Website Research

Having a website as well as a blog is a good way of getting your work out there and a well planned and thought out website will ensure the user finds it easy to navigate around your site without getting lost or worse bored. I don’t yet have a website as I want to make sure I have everything planned out just the way I want it before I go about designing it. I’ve browsed through many websites over the years and one thing that really annoys me when I reach someone’s page is when there’s too much going on and the page takes too long to load everything up. This is when I normally hit the close window button and go somewhere else. The sad thing is I probably missed out on something really good because of my impatience, but I’m guessing many other people will act in the same way as me.

One thing I like a website to have is an introduction page before you enter the site with buttons to navigate to different areas of interest. The McBess website is a brilliant example of this as it has buttons to direct you to his blog, main website, shop and his bands music. I like how the icons change as you hover over them and this is an aspect I’d like to have on my site. 

Another example of a neat and well organised website can be found here. I like how Neil has a nice crisp stylized look and feel to his site and how he has made it easy for people to navigate through his pages. He has a really nice portfolio page where it gives you info on the image as you hover over it. The image loads up at the bottom of the page instead of opening a new window so there's not the problem of having to try and navigate back to the page you were on previously.

I also found a nice website done by Simon Spilsbury. It has a really smooth animated opening page which then opens to the main page revealing his illustrations as thumbnails. When you click on a thumbnail it slides onto the page from the right and there are really smooth scrolling pop up menus at the bottom to navigate back to the main page or other pages of interest.

Edwina White has a really interesting page with some nice animated elements of her work that instantly give you an idea of what her style is all about. Each category has a different illustrated animation assigned to it that brings her work to life. My only criticism of the site is there are a lot of additional pages to navigate through once you choose a category to look at and they tend to load a little jerkily.

Here is an example of a website I’m not keen on. Although it has a nicely illustrated opening page there is nothing to say who they are and where to click to enter the site. I clicked on the main image and was greeted with a quite dull and unorganised page with loads of little circles that need to be clicked on to find out what the image is. They have categorised each section into posters, covers and a category called stuff which appears to be t-shirt designs and posters, but to be honest I was bored after a couple of clicks and gave up.


So I guess for my website I would like to have an interesting intro page with animated icons to guide people to different sections of my site and a nicely organized portfolio page with smooth opening images that don’t open a new window or get you lost. I would also like to be able to guide people to my blog, shop and twitter page so they can see what I'm getting up to and be able to contact me. Ha ha I don't want much!

A Welcome Bit Of Exposure

Last week I saw a competition on creaturemag.com asking for submissions for the Movember Moustache Illustrations Awards. They were inviting people to submit character illustrations of moustaches to help further promote the Movember campaign which happens every year creating awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. 


The brief was open to interpretation and split into 3 categories of Moustache Characters, Moustache Wearers and Moustache Theme. As well as the three category awards there will also be a "Drawer's Drawer Award" which will be voted on by all entrants. All winners and runners up will be included in an e-book which will publish not long after the winners are announced. 


I decided to have a go at submitting some artwork as it seemed like a fun and worthwhile brief.
I received an email yesterday to confirm my work had been posted up on the site check out my submission here. 


There wasn't really a concept behind my work I just sketched out a couple of characters that popped into my head and imagined a cowboy duel scene amongst some other ideas.


If you fancy submitting an entry to this competition you still have time as the closing date is 23rd November at 12pm. Click here for the brief and how to enter......and remember it's all for a good cause.

Tim Harries Words Of Wisdom

Another person that gave me some great advice on my work yesterday was cartoonist and humorous illustrator Tim Harries. Tim hales from Newport, South Wales and has been illustrating for over 14 years. Given that he'd been working professionally for such a long time I thought I should ask some questions. I asked how he started out and he told me he held down a regular job to begin with and worked on his illustration on the side until he had built up a decent client base that was sufficient enough for him to quit his job and concentrate on what he loved doing best and that’s drawing.

I told him a little about myself and what I liked drawing and he asked if he could take a look through my portfolio. Like other people had mentioned this week he was drawn to the character sketches and thought I should develop some of my work into comic strips. He recommended I approach newspaper editors to try and get them published. He said I had strong skills in my hand drawn work and should continue to build upon those strengths and maybe consider going into children’s book illustration. Tim said it was important to have a website to begin establishing a good web presence and gave me one of his printed postcards with his contact details on. It was interesting chatting to someone who worked in a similar way to me and also interesting to look at some of the work he has produced in different formats and now I have his email address I will make sure I keep in contact with him and ask him further questions in the future.

You can check out Tim Harries website here