KILLUSTRATION: 2008

Wednesday 5 November 2008

CAPSULE CABARET #3

the performance of

Palomar in Society - On Biting the Tongue.

Basically it reads from top to bottom:

Palomar in society

On biting the tongue

"Any edible tongue will be mashed into a pulp by the teeth"

Part of capsule cabaret afternoon

Animation & Performance

from 2:15

(That's when ours was, I wasn't quite sure when it officially kicked off at the time of making this poster)

in the BA Illustration studio.

Basically just a lot of collected imagery, a warped photocopy, stencilled text, some edited text (that originally said: "Anything edible will be mashed into a pulp by the teeth, jaw and tongue")

I am quite comfortable working in punk style cut-n-paste, so this was pretty easy to piece together really. I think using warped photocopies as a background works quite well for black and white, as it has a textural material-like quality to it.

I also made this beast.

Mr. Palomar now resides in my kitchen/lounge in Halls.
His grey skin tone represents the greyness of his character. Always "umming and ahhing"
His eyes move in unison (not of their own accord) and his maxilla and mandible (thanks, Hunterian) are seperate so his mouth opens and he had a big foam tongue but it was rather rank so i didn't bring it home.

Originally, he was supposed to have an empty white box showing his mind and thoughts through projection. In the end he was a kind of minor part as most of the focus was on the animation, which was on a white curtain. I was behind the curtain operating the eyes, jaw and tongue.

It was a little bit shambolic on my part because I couldn't see what was going on and hadn't chance to rehearse as such! I enjoyed it though, it was a larf.

CAPSULE CABARET #2

After choosing the 8 key moments in our storyboard, we were each asked to remake them, to a multiple choice specification, for example: quicker, lighter, darker, geometric, blah.

I chose DARKER cuz it gave me an excuse to draw sick things.

1 -Puking Bloodspit

This was originally 4 people socialising with each other. Harriet drew lines to represent speech, and it reminded me of a fine bloody mist. I'm really pleased with it, but in hindsight it would have been better if the bottom left guy was puking onto Thatcher.

2 -Well Forked

This was based on my images of Palomar's brain. My train of thought was (Brain --> Zombie food --> cutlery --> Indiana Jones monkey-brain eating style image) The knife and fork suggest cannibalism too, which is quite a dark topic i suppose.

3 -Sick Things

This was based on Alice's drawing of Palomar thinking, showing the inside of his mind and a ponderous facial expression. I wanted to show him as a sick fucker grinning like a mentalist as he conjours up thoughts of viginal tentacles, drilling babies, arson and kitten suffocation.

4 -Gaffa-gob Gun-mob

These were two well dressed chaps. They got got.

5 -Flying LaVey

Based on Liam's warped photocopier high jinks, it was quite abstract so I thought of using evil bastards as the starting point. This one's Anton Lavey, satanist bible writer and general nutcase.
Number 6 was similar but of a horrible clown. I later used the original of 6 as the background for the performance poster.

7 -Theifs' Choice

This is a more visceral version of the one from the previous set of bars in his mind representing the consequences of his speech. I thought about nasty consequential punishments and came to the idea of an arabian theif's hand being severed after being caught in the act. This could have been done better but I was rushing to finish.

8 -Nazi Cock Knocker

This one's just horrible. It was based on a tiny piece of one of Alice's pieces which had a nazi propaganda poster of a steel worker hammering at something on an anvil. Because of the connotations behind the original, it was hard to think how to make it darker, so I just made it sick instead... There we go. Not my proudest moment, but a response none the less.

CAPSULE CABARET #1

We had to make a storyboard on the texts we had been given. My group's was Palomar in Society - On Biting the Tongue. We assigned ourselves six each images each or so.

Here are mine.

Mr. Palomar's brain.

Thoughts.

Zig zags.

Flashback in mind (circle).

Consequences.

Propaganda eyes.

The originals are on A4 paper done with biro. I sketched the first one out, then folded it to A5 size. I then scaled up that section, using a grid method and did the same from the second to the third one.

They are not the greatest drawings in the world but I think 'Thoughts' and 'Zig zags' are pretty succesful in that they benefit from the textures I used, which are diagrams of brain processes.

I am still not sure whether I should have used colour. I like the uniformity that comes from keeping it black and white (not to mention having to pay 5p rather than 70p on the photocopier!!!) but with hindsight of the last 3 projects or so (as well as line drawings from British Museum) I am starting to become sick of never using colour.

The way I replicated sections was a decent method, i reckon. I masking taped the original to a new piece of A4, put it up to the window and basically traced it.

The only one I'm really unhappy about is 'Consequences'. I feel that the bars look cack-handed and the hands look cackbarred. I should probably have put more detail into the eyebrows too, esp on 'Propaganda eyes'. Can't win 'em all!

Thursday 30 October 2008

HUNTERIAN MUSEUM

PICKLED PEOPLE PARTS AND OTHER SICK DELIGHTS.

The ribs and thoracic and limbar vertebrae showing metastatic tumours.

A prolapsed jejunum showing approx 4 inches of small intestine passing into the section immediately below.

One of the arms of an octopus showing the suckers on the inner surface.
I was a little disappointed with how some the pencil drawings turned out, but this one reassured me.

The foot of an infant showing the early eruption of smallpox over its surface.

I wish I had taken a camera because the jars were so old that when you moved the item would distort really nicely.

Cranium, probably European male, and a male skull from which part of the cranial base and the right zygoma have been broken off.

I was especially pleased to see shelves full of broken skulls. Skulls make up a massive part of my aesthetic ideals that it was good to draw from life/death.

Deformed tusk of an African elephant.

I was becoming increasingly conscious of how many more drawings I had to do in the timescale given, so I chose an easy draw. Imagine that on an elephant's face though!!

Part of the rectum with the urinary section of the cloaca of an ostrich.

First time I've ever drawn one o those!! I thoroughly enjoyed it, the folds were great and I thought it was funny the way it was strung up from the corners. Does anyone know what a cloaca is?

Head of a young chimpanzee.

This was so harsh I had to draw it. The pencil marks have gone a little messy, a lot of the definition (the tongue mainly) has been lost.

The sac of a large hernia, believed to have been congenital, of the inguinal region.

This piece almost looked like a flower or something. If someone said "hernia sac" to most people, i'm pretty sure nature's beauty wouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind.

At this point I got fed up of the 'delicate' pencil drawings I was doing and wanted to make some bold marks, so for the second half I used fineliner. I think it was a wise decision as the next ten have so much more clarity than t'others.

The foetus of a puppy with no facial features and an abnormally small head, probably caused by the absence of the brain above the brainstem.

The upper half of the body of a foetal pig, showing excess accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the cranium.

Everything was backlit and the head looked amazing cuz it was translucent. I didn't quite manage to capture the 'lolling' tongue as well as I coulda though.

The foetus of a pig showing severe malformation of the hind limbs and pelvic girdle. This is probably my favourite image from the whole trip. Once again the arms were strung up into a little zombie pose.

Painted silver prosthetic nose, early 19th century.

After reading the accompanying text I had to write it out because it made me laugh so much. The funniest bit was that it was like a burgundy colour so it wouldn't have matched anyone's skintone anyway!!

the upper body of an Asian house shrew, showing the position of the teeth.

It was cool how they were dissected into upper body, lower body etc. in some cases. It makes for a self contained and well composed drawing!

The body of a lizard dissected to show the viscera.

This one wasn't so great to be honest, the lizard had a lot of texture that I couldn't properly record without making the drawing look too busy, consequently the 'chest' scales look crap.

The lower body of a sparrow, caught during breeding season in late spring, dissected to show seasonal testicle growth.

Nice. They had one for every few weeks of the season. Sadists.

The toe of a lion.

Cats are awesome so I really enjoyed drawing this. From the size of the claw you get an idea of how much damage this beast could actually do. The fur was amazing and I think that using a fineliner and drawing it the way I have gave it a bold effect that I may try to replicate in the future.

Lemur skulls. I thought these were cute.

The maxilla and mandible of a child aged 6 to 7 years old. The permanent teeth begin to erupt around this age and the lower incisors are just emerging. I don't know where I thought permanent teeth came from before I saw this, but this really surprised me. Are they in there the whole time, or what? I think the drawing was quite successful, especially the eye sockets and the nasal region.

All in all, it was a good day out. Lots of curiosities and most importantly,

SKULLS.

I'm even considering going back to draw the first ten again in fineliner...

Watch this space.

Summer: Who I am and what I want.

WHO I AM:

MY PERSONALITY

NAME: Colm. Translates as 'dove' in Gaelic and pronounced like 'column.' The Mythology behind my name is on Cullan, the sword smith and warrior. The story goes that he was entertaining the King of Ulster, and the King's nephew, Setanta, arrived late. Cullan's fearsome watch-hound had been unleashed, as the guards were told there were no more visitors expected, so Setanta slayed him. REalising what he had done, he then offered to become Cullan's guard until he could find a replacement for the dog. The myth is Cu Chulainn - Cullan's Hound.)

AGE: 20 (At time of drawing). 20/21sts of the "Key to the door". Actually my 21st was shit, I had tonsilitis and stayed in bed.

BIRTHPLACE: Camden UCH ( Basically I turned the word 'Camden' backwards - Ned = Scottish slang for chav, Mac = computer)

DATE OF BIRTH: 9th October 1987. "The" Storm.

POSITION IN THE FAMILY: Youngest of 2, I have just flown the nest. My sister has flown and come back but thats not nature's way so I didn't draw that. Also, the mother bird would have scraped the empty eggshells out of the nest if ya wanna get really technical. I am pleased with how this one turned out. In comparison to the other watercolour one (for 'religion), the use of watercolour here looks appropriate and effective.

NATIONALITY: Irish/English mongrel. The dog is my aunt's, Riley, he's a mysterious breed. Even though I have Irish citizenship I'm still a mongrel... But aren't we all?

RELIGION: Atheist. Religion = conflict and bigotry. This is my least favourite image, I made the mistake of making Ganesha blue, his arms look really wrong and awkward.. Buddha also looks as if he is pullin Bin Laden's beard rather than strangling him.. I could have made this better by making the original drawing more precise and applying colour using photoshop rather than watercolour paint.