Combining imagery and text

Richard Prince 'Dude Ranch Nurse'

Colin McMahon 'Victory over death'

Louise Hopkins '16 Cabinets'

Postcards by Atul Dodiya

Imants Tiller 'Act of God'

Joseph Beuys  'A.E.I.O.U'

I've been looking at ways that artists have combined images with text recently- this is  a small selecton of some of my favorites....

Film Posters of the 60's

Film posters of the sixties captured the turbulant essence of the decade. The cinematic ethos and icons of the era were represented in poster art.

Polish Poster Art

Polish film posters summerized the films content in highly stylised graphic terms, such as here in these posters by Tomaszewski.

Cuban Poster Art

Cuban Poster art contained powerful images that were windows into the story of Cuba. The revolutionary graphics  were beautifully designed, colourful and political. Poster design became a popular art form following the Cuban revolution. The images celebrated Cuban music, dance, film and sports and were distributed across the country.

All the journeys I have ever taken...

From memory I recorded all the journeys I have ever taken. I used charcoal and white chalk on black paper to make marks that I could blend and erase to create depth and a sense of history. I used weighty lines to indicate jouneys that I remember clearly or make often, and finer more delicate lines for those jouneys that I can barely remember.

Mapping Virtual Space

Using graphite powder as a base I made a drawing by working first with erasers, then charcoal sticks, pencil and white pastel to represent a visualisation of relationships and social networks.

Environmental Surface Mapping

I made drawings  on tracing paper that responded to an enviromental factor present on surfaces around the studio -such as dust, residue and scratches. I represented these elements in drawings using charcoal, biro, eraser, tippex and felt pens. I  layered the drawings and photocipied them to create these surface maps that capture different textures, shapes and pattern, enabling lots of variety in the outcomes due to the heirarchy of the drawings in the layering process.

Letterform Stencil Map

Using letterforms of different scales as templates, I built up ths image gradually to create a fictional stencilled map usingcharcoal, graphite powder and felt pen and focusng attention on mark- making and weight of line. The imagery incorporates signs, and bold geometric shapes to deverlop an interesting outcome.

Whose Dog Are You!?

Life Drawing, Week Three

 The first sheet is filled with various responses I made to the sketeton, including quick and more sustained drawings, different mediums including coloured pencil and graphite and techniques such as layering, drawing negative space and using continuous line. 

The second sheet shows a series of quick drawings using continuous line and not looking at the paper whilst drawing, only focusing on the model. I think it is  a successful drawing in the layout and composition. i think the drawings capture the movement of the feet well.

Film Poster Design

These are some designs I am working on for a poster brief. I began by creating imagery from the text using variousprocesses including charcoal through letter-forms,smudging and erasing, photocopying, inverting,printing onto acetate, photographing on a lightbox, projecting using and OHP and layering acetate over windows. I also photographed lots of telephaph poles and wires which  appeared throughout the film and I felt captured the of themes disconnection, communication and isolation.

Penguin Book Covers

These handmade collages are put together with found ephemera which is a way of working that I  particulary enjoy. I prefer the original collages to printed copies as they better maintain the quality of the found materials. I think the colours I selected for the set of four books work well together. The restrictive nature of trying to make a collage to fit around the grid format of the penguin book cover is difficult, however it does help to create a sense of uniformity to the set.

Record Sleeve

Some ideas for my version of a record sleeve for Lana Del Rey's single, Video Games. I wanted to experiment with photoshop to further developed my ability to combine computer based image  manipulation with handmade work. I do prefer the final magery to look more handmade than computer generated so I drew the background image using chalk pastels, and then combined this with a hand drawn title 'Video Games' which loosly resembles a tattoo, and the related themes therefore of adolescence, love, rebellon, commitment, devotion, pain and disilluson. I need to improve my understandng of combining text with image. I began this process with the title but wasn't then sure how to best intergrate the artist's names. I had chosen a typeface that was reminscent of vntage typewriting but it still looked 'plonked on' , rather than invoking the nostalia I had hoped for. A more modern font and colour embedded the title better into the piece.

Quick! Collage!

Four Book Covers

These are purely computer manipulated, not using any handmade collage on this set....just layering imagery and scribbling the titles over! I like the choice of images as they create new meaning when placed together. The more simple layouts are more effective than the confusing busy ones. As I become more confident in layering and arranging imagery on photoshop I need to rely less on found images and more upon made images to further personalise the outcomes.  think the mages would be lifted by the introducton of shots of colour and some of the title text appears lost.

More of my bits and bobs

A recent series of my little handmade collages