Stockport Art Gallery

One of my fellow students, Lauren Chapman managed to get us a slot in the Stockport art gallery for us to promote ourselves as a collective class of 2016.

I do hope we can gain a few grades from this as it took a couple of days to sort and erect everyones images as not all who promised to help turned up and kept that promise so this took up some of our precious time. It looked great though

Progress shots from my last project

 Just a few progress pics from my final uni project.

 I started from Walter Gropius as my influence and his magical work from modernism. He was the fore-master of this movement and so was born the Bauhaus.

I took it a few steps further with the prefabricated buildings he designed and I went a more biophilic route. I designed my 'Creative Containers' from shipping containers to make a place to stay and create. It could be positioned in the centre of a city but would feel a million miles from it. It has a living container and a smaller studio container on top and everything used to build and decorate would all be recycled. I think Oliver Heath would approve?

Helen Mussel-White window

A window display done by one of my inspirations for paper cutting, Helen Mussel-White.
Its at Fred Aldous in Manchester, one of my favourite shops. I have spent a few bob in there I tell thee!

Business card design

 These are the final designs for my business card.
The one on the right is my front and below is the back.
I have hand made the images and hand done the letters with stamping. I tried my hardest to like the fancy, posh templates but it just isn't me at all, im all about handmade and these two side are exactly me. Couldn't have got them any closer to what I wanted, very happy. Delivered on friday.

Hopes and fears

This post is about my life after uni, my hopes and fears. My hopes are obviously to become a well respected illustrator who will build a great reputation and forever to be in demand. Also I hope to achieve a first or a 2-1 degree which will then allow me to complete my tutor training diploma which then possibly some day will allow my family and I to move overseas to work. I feel that at some point I will have earned the right to work in a warmer climate and a better lifestyle for my wife and children so that it gives them the opportunity to achieve their own full potential in life. To offer them the chances that I didn't myself get at an earlier age and to watch them flourish into adults with a smile on their face and sun on their backs. It would also be for a selfish reason too, to make me the proudest dad and know that I have done my best for them all that I could possibly do.
My fears are that I won't get the commissions I want due to being a mature starter to the industry. I fear that I will lose out to younger illustrators. I just hope that the editors out there will take on board the actual art work and the age of myself the illustrator. I feel that I have a lot to bring to the table being a mature graduate. What I mean by this is that I have different reasons and priorities which should help rather than hinder as I have more to lose than younger graduates. I hope it shows that I for a start would be seen as more reliable as I have more responsibilities in my life so I wouldn't waste peoples time and hope they wouldn't waste mine either. I would hit deadlines and be constantly in touch with the client to make the commission perfect as I have less time to make a respected reputation for myself than younger illustrators. I also have more bills that need paying so this would have me working twice as hard to get the commission in the first place.

   I do feel that with myself being older that I can use my learnt life skills and social skills to my advantage over the younger ones as I have had to deal with the public a lot more in my previous line of work and it gives me a whole lot more confidence to promote myself as the best candidate. Also with my knowledge of working in the building trade for many years previous, this expertise and skill will seriously help with certain types of my work such as architectural illustration, perspective drawings, realism drawings to an extent, paper cutting/engineering and also my making of 3D models. This kind of stuff I find to be quite a natural element of my work where as the younger crowd would possibly need to learn these skills through further classes.

Project mock ups

 Heres a few pics of some mock ups for my project. I am designing some biophilic student, creative dwellings with studios from shipping containers which will be self sufficient. My idea is to build it all with recycled materials.

These will be places to get the creative juices flowing but to stay in them will be cheap to rent. Also they can be built anywhere such as busy city centres but the aim will be to make it feel like your in the middle of nowhere.

Oliver Heath Talk

This talk by Oliver Heath was amazingly interesting. He is an ambassador for Biophilic Design. Basically he designs living, working, educational and medical dwellings all to be close to nature. Productivity from workers, higher attendance and marks from students and recovery times by patients have all got better when these places are close to nature. being able to see a green landscape through the window, plants inside, things constructed from wood and most important, natural light. These natural things also produce better air quality. He has proven it to work numerous times especially to his worst critic, Nick Knowles from the T.V. show, D.I.Y SOS, where Oliver is their on screen designer. Attending this talk helped with my current project as I seemed to be missing a connection between a couple of parts in my project that I couldn't quite work out what but now this Biophilic aspect as worked as the glue to my problem. Thank you Oliver.