Headlines and stories

When I was brainstorming things to symbolise the children I used foot prints, shadows, empty shoes. These sketches represent the children who have had their childhood stolen from them, being forced to become child soldiers, child brides, child prostitutes, child labourers and those who have been lost to abuse and neglect.

These are preparatory sketches for my prints and composition planning.

I collaged obituaries under the print to dramatise the theme of death. The prints alone just look like a pattern they aren't too literal. I wanted to subtly collage these little morbid notes under the print so where there was not any ink, the notices were revealed a little.

When the 'beauty/art' is stripped away the true message can be conveyed. Somewhat like headlines and stories in today's news, the glamorized tabloids are more colourful and in your face but when you look past the useless pretty stuff there's more important news. Alot of people today focus on the meaningless news and the superficial in's and out's of the world and ignore the things in the news that make them flinch; murder, prostitution, rape, genocide, war, poverty...

 In some of the other prints, like the obituaries, I collaged little extracts from found articles, there subtly placed along the border but once printed, these words are stripped away because of the difference in paper colour.

 When you strip away the frills there's usually something ugly underneath. In mys ketchbook a lot of my drawings were covered over with newsprint, tracing paper and baking sheets to dramatise the notion of hiding the truth; layered over and forgotten about, like alot of children in the world, lost in the system, brought to war, sold to old men, working day till night to make the clothes you wear.




 These children are forgotten, no one is by their side to stand up for them and their rights.

Headlines and stories

It's the start of second year and our first brief is 'Headlines and Stories; blending politics, pop culture and picture making to tell tales'. I began looking at the conflict in Syria, basing my research on some Unicef articles I found stating that over 400 children were killed in Syria in the past year, another 400 have been detained, tortured and sexually abused. This is a major violation of children's rights. It is the Syrian armed forces, led by Syria's president Bashar al-Asaad, who are acting out the crimes against humanity. A Syrian soldier was quoted threatening a young boy before killing him that they 'take adults and children alike and kill them'.

In my sketchbook I began working on something to represent all these children. I came across a Luke Dixon print of a girl, really detailed but he left the eyes out. For something so simple it had a good impact. These images are meant to represent the dead lifeless eyes of the children who have been killed. It depicts the emptiness felt by the children who have been violated and exploited, becoming shells of themselves.

 This idea was too specific, so I made my them more general, rather that focusing on one particular situation in today's news, I am now dealing with the violation of children's right everywhere and the general vulnerability of a child.




































These are some prints that I made from the sketches above;

Collograph 2

 The above prints were dealing with my friends tattoo again, I was just messing around with different parts of the tattoo and experimenting with colour.

This is my favourite print

I became lazy conceptually and I was just working on images I had left over from silkscreen so I went back to the sketchbook and started looking at different reasons people get tattoos again. I researched them under identification purposes and looked at Nazi concentration camp's numbering system, people who were forcibly tattooed for identification. I took sequences of numbers in the concept of the prisoners tattoos and painted them with pva and carbrinium. i used quite worn down drab colors to go with the whole feel of the tattoo. I then looked at prison and gang tattoos for awhile.

   I looked at slaves in the Roman empire who were also numbered under this system. Exported slaves were tattooed with the words "tax paid" and it was a common practice to tattoo "Stop me, I'm a runaway" on their foreheads.

Collograph

I really didn't enjoy collograph at first, I liked how my board turned out but the result prints were crap enough, so i stopped working as an actual image and a picture and made smaller boards more about the texture and the general sense of the image. I used tile adhesive on the skin and carbrinium for the tattoo marks and just different levels of pva on different areas, it's a nice method of print once you get used to all the different materials and what effects they give and then you can use them to their best advantage, my first prints were shite i wasn't happy with them.

i got into print hells yeah

So I got into print as my first choice, nice one. Our first project was called Notions of Identity. I'm looking at tattoo's as a means of identification. There are a few different reasons people get tattoos, traumatic/natural tattoos which are marks upon your skin caused from accidents and traumas, these identify you and an experience in your life; amateur and professional tattoos which people get as marks of status, symbolism, out of traditions in your culture, decorations for bravery or status of slavery. The symbolism and impact vary depending on the culture you're dealing with. 

Quality of photo is fairly shit

An example is Papa New Guinea's Koita tribe. Traditionally tattooing begins at the ages of five for most woman and is added to annually until they are at marriagable age which they then receive the V shaped tattoo across their chest to symbolise coming of age. A woman from the Koita tribe can be seen in the above image. I looked at Maori tribes, the Croats, Christians and many other cultures that used tattooing as a part of traditional identification of their culture.

 For the image I first decided to print in silkscreen I printed a bitmap half tone of the Koita woman, the font next to her reads, "'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD", in Hebrew. It's a passage from Leviticus. The majority of Christians do not take issue with the practice, while a minority uphold the Hebrew view against tattoos based on Leviticus. Tattoos of Christian symbols are common. When on pilgrimage, some Christians get a small tattoo dating the year and a small cross. This is usually done on the forearm.

I then looked at tattoo's people get to alter their own individuality. My friend has a really neat tattoo so I used her as my image and printed in a pop art style. I looked at the silkscreen artist Julien Opie http://www.julianopie.com/#/contact. When I was planning it out I had hoped for a thicker bolder black outline, it came out quite thin in the bitmap.

painting elective

These are tonal studies I painted during this elective, In the lower brown paintings I only used the three primary colours and in the higher orange-blue paintings I created a tonal scale from warm to cold and depending on the distance of the object in my still life I painted the closer, clearer pieces warm and the further away and less defined, cold. When painting these the idea was to learn about how to execute tone with blending or mixing of colours, so we had to paint in blocks of clean unmixed colour, doing our best to mix on the pallette and not the page. I experimented with painting using a card which I found alright, ok to execute quick line drawings but not great for detail for me anyway, a palette knife which i really enjoyed, it was all about layering up the paint and texture and has a really nice finish, and then just a standard paint brush. The bottom images are my compositional studies.