A Menu Card

Started with some doodling in my  sketchbook

I experimented with combining 2 doodles

I also did a simple doodle on my phone which

I quite like. It has punch but it was just too quick and easy to do I felt that I would be cheating to use it so I went back to the computer and looked for some more ideas

The drawings were from images I found on google (ignore the cut out for the moment it comes later)
I liked the idea of creating a fishy scaly effect with potato or sponge printing. There are several pages of these which I won't bore you with. The top one was made with a carrot and a piece of spongy packing material cut to a basic fish shape, you can see the outline of the cutout in the bottom left corner.

The second one was a piece of sponge (both used gouache)
I then drew around my fish in pencil

I like it but it's not suitable for the brief

I drew a fish shape on the carrot print scales which I cut out and stuck in my sketchbook, you saw it earlier. Then I thought the carrot print looked more like a shoal of fish and drew into it

I like this best, maybe it needs rotating?

It works at 4cm x 4cm and could easily be enlarged. I would have preferred the colours to be a bit bolder but I don't easily work with bright colour (unless you count the phone image which could also work)

Animals from around the world

There's an obvious design for this which involves a globe with animals around it but it's already been done very well so the challenge of this exercise is to come up with something different. I did some brainstorming with words related to the world and animals and some doodles.

I want a selection of animals that represent different areas of the world. Popular animals will attract readers. I know it's a factual book but I don't know what animals are covered, it would be sensible to check and include only animals that feature in the book on the cover. The sketch idea on the left above would include animals from the north, around the equator and the south, but strictly speaking koalas and kangaroos are marsupials. I wonder if that matters?

A quick look on Amazon implies that modern kids get photo's on the front cover of their reference books so this book is bound to stick out just because it has illustrations but bright colours would help. The brief doesn't specify the format for the design so here goes.............

I cut the animals out and played with the layout

Working with the collage theme from before I did a world

 And the  layout with animals as the letters

Which when superimposed gives

With a little adjustment using Paintshop

I liked the idea of arranging the animals around a half globe so I scanned them, coloured them on the computer printed them out and arranged them around the globe. The globe is too small or the animals too big but I'm not happy enough with the design to take it further though I do like the font I found for the typeface, very Hanna-Barbera!

Returning to one of my original ideas ..

I added lettering and colour

Difficult to choose a suitably eye catching colourscheme. I did try some bright colours but they jarred

It really needs painting sympathetically for each of the different climates but while I was messing around with it I did play with the lettering a bit

Which opens up another new set of possibilities

The lettering was supposed to be spaced symmetrically about the middle line but doesn't look quite right to me. It doesn't stand out as well as it should. maybe alone with no world? -not eyecatching enough. I could have animals scattered around the animal print lettering

AAARGH I've just proof-read this  its "Animals FROM AROUND the World" Dummy!!!!

Finally I had a go at painting the previous design in acrylic

I've tried to expand my ideas as much as possible and have ended up with lots of other designs that I could try (like the animal print lettering) but I think I need to draw a line under this project and move on. Any comments gratefully received!

Revisiting Music Poster

Now that the scanner is working I scanned my poster image and used Paintshop to trace the contours which took me back to my outline

Then I could use the fill tool to play with colour and Publisher to do the lettering. It does look a bit boring....

I printed out my contour image and went over the important lies with black felt tip. I really like this image but I can't see a future for it without colour

 It needs better lettering more in keeping with the drawing. Jo suggested cutout paper. Inspired by my art student daughter and Japanese paper cuts I thought of stencils so I drew and cut out this (rough paper hence pink)

 I was going to spray paint through it but with a bit of computer manipulation you get...

 or.....

I think I like the top one best. Again I'm fighting with colour schemes. I want this to be eyecatching, I feel it needs to have red and white on the lifebelt or it doesn't make sense and one of the band wears a green hat so that's important to me to connect it with the real group

and then does this have more punch??

Revisiting

Jo my tutor has posted some comments & ideas for some of the recent projects so I've broken off working on Animals of the World to try some of her ideas.
First the museum posters

I can't take credit for the change of captions. Jo has better ideas with words than I do. She's right the pictures work better with less lettering.  Not so cluttered, more punch. I do struggle with colour schemes. Need something bright and eye catching which doesn't look cheap and gaudy. Also I think colour is probably age specific I might be able to recognise what age is aimed at form other artist's work but I can't decide suitable schemes for myself at this stage. Need to keep my eyes open more

Museum Posters

OCA student Jereme Crow did a brilliant poster for the Natural History Museum http://www.redbubble.com/people/jereme/art/7006660-natural-history-raaagh.
How can I follow that? I was thinking of visiting the outpost Natural History Museum in Tring which is full of stuffed animals and birds, but I need to think differently so I chose the De Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre near St Albans http://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk
I spent a morning there doing some sketches both for the fun of it and to generate some ideas

It's difficult to attract children, particularly teenagers, to small museums. The perception is that they will only be able to look. In my experience my children weren't keen on the idea of visiting a museum but enjoyed themselves when they got there and much of that was down to how much they could touch. I tried to focus on ideas which would make the idea more attractive. The middle plane is a Sea Vixen and it is possible for visitors to sit in the cockpit which I believe would be quite exciting.

Time is tight so I generate a lot of my ideas when I'm walking the dog or cycling to work. This means I don't have as many sketched ideas as I should but I did a few thumbnails;

My idea is to get the viewer to imagine themselves in the museum interacting with the exhibits. Three posters on the same theme, YOU, HERE...

The figure needs to be universal so that anyone could imagine it to be themselves. I was inspired by the child in the cereal advert who has a glow around them and the line they draw around figures at a crime scene on TV (ok that's a bit of a gory comparison)

Idea for Teenagers (13-16yrs) I would need to return to source and make a drawing of the cockpit  that better fits the A3 format for this to work.

For the adult audience

and for 5-9year olds:

I want the lettering orange with a bold black outline like the figure but I can't work out how to get my computer to do that so it looks a bit wishy washy. Maybe this is better?

The lettering needs to be fatter and bolder and more in keeping with the figure. The figure needs to look as though it is wearing more clothes that would appeal to a 5-9 yr old and the plane has got a bit fuzzy through reworking.