uni

this is my last illustration for the summer project. It is about an article that I found quiet funny and yet really annoying at the same time. its about how buses are now using a system of free tickets for people who for some reason or another "deserve" them for the time being during the economic problems of the moment, as well as the problems of congestion that these free passengers are causing. I understand the elderly and the disabled (properly disabled, not vertigo or ADHD or something that allows you to function like a normal person all the time unless your getting something for free( excuse my rant but that kind of thing really irritates me)) along with some parents(hell you got four kids under seven,two in a pram, six bags of shopping from tesco, no car and you can keep the buggers quiet on the way home, I'll pay your bloody fair) thoses things i compleatly understand but there has to be some lee-way. I found the original illustration rather funny, more from the art style than the comment.
due to the fact that the original illustration was on a bus I decided to try to keep mine focused on the outside of the vehicle. the thought of people waiting an hour and above for the bus got me thinking. How long would you wait for a bus to get somewhere? so I began playing around with having people in sleeping bags and there being elderly people who had been waiting for ages and stuff. then i thought "what else to people wait around for?" - answer the opening of shops for sales, box office tickets, people were camping out on the pavement for the release of Harry potter books. People will wait for pretty much anything if they really want it. So i decided that there would be people waiting for the bus who had been there that long that they had set up an imprompture, (again my spelling sucks, I got dyslexia, or dyspraxia, or something to do with how I cant read of certain colours and some sizes of letters) camp site. I liked this idea and even though this was just a first sketch it is the one i liked the best.
this was finished on the 25th of august.

uni

This is my illustration for an article about the difficulties in the government because of all the finger pointing beurocracy (think i spelt that right) making everything difficult for the new government.
the original illustration showed puch and judy arguing with another person behand them. I suppose the whole punch and judy thing makes sense with the governments random bouts of abuse hurling and the fach that mort are puppets but i found it a little vauge until I thought about it properly. and i still dont get who the guy in the background is supposed to be if anyone.
the article did have some interesting word uses and there was a lot of visuals in the wording. however i focused in on the doctor who could not put up shelves in her office because of all the red tape. this image came about really very quickly. i was just doodling in my sketch book about shelves and red tape and camoflauged (probably not spelt right) coaches for the military- cos land rovers go to civil servents before they go to Iraq. Anyway I scribbled out this image and thought it was perfect for the illustration. Sometimes it just happems like that.
this was compleated on the 20th of august.

time warp

This was from an earlier edition of the guardian newspaper that i had fogotten about buying, until i found it again. its from the 28th of july. about an article called, " A history of folly, from the Trojan horse to Afghanistan" looking at the feasability of continuing the war, a war that no-one really believes in anymore just for the sake of not backing down. Due to the revelations about the slightly disturbing and undesirreable way in which the western countries have been running the war it is not surprising that they are no longer supported by the general public. The article goes on to describe the people running the war as being manipulated or just plain ignorant of the way in which they are running the systems. Just because weapons in modern society can be controled by computers it does not mean that nothing is going to go wrong as computers do not pick sides they simply do what is typed into them.making the porcess of war much simpler but also much more dangerous. Computers are not secure they are not infalable things can go missing from a computer just as easily as if they had been dropped from a pocket.
This article I found really interesting. the word useage was interesting and did give me plenty of ideas. but i decided that the fact that the article itself aimed so much towards the thought of everything being computerised, I would look at how the people controling the comperters were acting. In the article they are reffered to as puppets and the visual was just too good to resist.
I drew a very simple image for this. again in ink over watercolour, but i do like this image.
This was created on 18th August

uni

This article is a political article about the difficulties faced by the Jewish and Arab people in the country of Israel. Looking at the problems in the country it seems imposible that the two peoples will ever be able to live together peacefully. It seems really silly that they are all fighting over such small sections of land. Even more so that they are so un willing to work together to find a solution. the original image was directly linked to this article. it showed two men each lifting a flag for each nation. However both the men look exactly the same as your local shop manager and if you dont often read political news its a good chance that unless you read the article you might not know who the flags represent. I knew that the white flag with the blue star was the Isreali flag but i did not know about the other one being Packistans' (think I spelt that right, my spelling sucks) flag.
I have to admit I really didn't think that this subject could really be expressed in any other kind of way, other than using the flags. I also wanted an image of the country where all this was happening, not just some stand alone image that could be placed anywhere. I dont think this is the best that I could do, but I don't think that I could have bettered it within the time I had. I ended up being kinda ill after this one so I just started on the next one fairly quickly when I got better.
This one has been compleatly created in watercolour and ink. The watercolour was very liquid when I painted everything and therefore was very pale when i finally uploaded everything so I went on to photoshop and went through the filter choices looking for something to bring up the darker colours rather than anything else. So it generally gave the apperance of it being painted on watercolour paper.
this one was finished on the 14th of august.

uni

This is my third article. It is from the Times. It is an article about the benifits of friendship. Apparently you can live longer if you have many friends. A social surrounding is conductive to a healthy environment.
This one did have an illustration that was connected with the article. This one had a lot of interesting words again, most of it considering the survival of people who had more friends. So i did begin by looking at methods of survival. such as creating a raft from people and things like tha. Then I looked at roping or chaining people together, but it got far to complcated. When i decided it would be better if i looked more at people without friends, and if they had read the article what would they think about not having any friends and how could they change it, if they had difficulty making real friends.
This was another one which i used ink on a watercolour wash background. this one is much darker than the yellow and I'm not sure if it works properly. This was finished on the 9th of august

uni work

This is my second image. I was looking at an article in the Guardian Newspaper about the difficulty of fireing, or making civil servents redundant. Apparently it is too expensive for the country to get rid of the un-needed employees in the government. Acording to the article there are more and more who are coming to work and doing nothing as they dont really have a job they are being paid just to show up. This article actually really pissed me off as I have two jobs neither of which pays very well and both are plain hard work. I find it really irritating that some people who probably didn't do that much anyway now get paid to do fook all.
Again looking at the wording of the article I found certain phrases that would look good visually (in my oppinion) they were "Treading water", twiddling their thumbs" and in "limbo" These were really good words so I found the imagery they created really useful. the original image did actually connect to the article so I could see what I wanted to be different from. I did have a few attempts in pencil at first but they all seemed too complecated. My final attempt was again in ink but on a yellow watercolour wash.
this was finished on the 6th of august

Tailored Remarks

This is a re illustration of the small illustration at the bottom of an article called "What Washington thought of Cameron: smooth, genial, evasive - and tough"
From the magazine called The Spectator from the 31st of July. It is an article looking at the way washington has taken to David Cameron. when he went over to America he discussed Britains' invlovement in the Iraq war. It compares the difference in language he uses when he is in America and when he's at home. As well as the difference to Tony Blair ans the way America saw him and what they expect from Britains' new government.
I mainly looked at the different words that were used within the article. Whilst reading it I found that the image that it had been originally illustrated with didn't really make any sense. I preffer an image to be connected to the article so finding words that make sense and can be turned into and visual reference to the article.
I chose the phrase "Cameron's demonstrated willingness to tailor his remarks to his perception of what will sell well with the audience at hand" The finnished image did not actually take that long to create after I had decided on the phrase. I wanted real images not computer created ones even though they would be cleaner I like have a rough edge to my work that shows its been made by hand. Not that I have anything against photoshop I just dont feel that it's one of my strengths at the moment. I did not originally intend to create my image using inks but found that I liked the result more than working in paint or pencil.
This one was compleated on the 2nd of August