Seagull Poem

We had an auction here at Falmouth to raise money for the annual book produced at the end of the year, that compiles work from each of the current 3rd year students, and were asked to donate work.
I wrote this poem very late one night/very early one morning a few weeks ago, and thought it would be nice to experiment with cutting text, and illustrating my own work, so i had a go.

I cut into some thin white paper, stuck it on red card, and window mounted it.
I didnt get a good scan before i gave it in, so unfortunately ive got this horrible blue tint on one side of the photo.

Illustration for T.S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men'

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

   A penny for the Old Guy

   I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

   II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

   III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

   IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

   V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
      For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
      Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
      For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Illustration for 'Aubade' by Phillip Larkin

Black Card 10x10cm

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Illustrated Haiku

Illustration done for a haiku written by one of Bristol University's 'Helicon' magazine readers.

Dark Manhattan plays
it's codas across his face.
Dead(Beat) man walking.

Narrative Project

These two images were created for a narrative project, to illustrate the short story 'Oubliette' by Gary Somethingorother.
Essentially its about a very confused man trying to decide whether he's mad or not.

Editorial

A mock editorial project. We were given a few articles and had to illustrate one of them.
The article I chose was a New Scientist piece talking about the possibilities of changing things you hear into visual images.
It can be read here http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727731.500-sensory-hijack-rewiring-brains-to-see-with-sound.html?full=true



The illustration is made with black card, and lots of poked holes and cut out shapes. The final image is a photograph of the piece on a lightbox.
The image shows a stream of glowing dots coming out of a woman's eyes, butterflies made out of ears and more white dotted patterns. The butterflies represent a new freedom and beauty that this technology hopes to provide. While the white dots remind the viewer of braille, and of the experience described in the article of different positioned dots representing different sounds.

Body organs project

We were each given a few words and had to create 2 contextual illustrations based on the word. I had 'body organs' and made one image showing the effect of a literal brainstorm, and another which imagines a world where pigs are using footballs made out of human organs.

7 Deadly Sins

This is a piece done as a possible background/side image for friend and poetic shambler Mr Sunil Sandhu

"The Importance of Being Eager: The Art of Making Friends at University" Part 1

I did some illustrations for some of beautifully crafted words of Dominic Fogg for Hullfire, the Hull university magazine. These are the other 3.

Find people insipid and annoying? Snort all and any available substances until they become more bearable.


Why did Jesus only have twelve mates? Because he had principles. A rookie error in the art of making friends. I may be a chain smoking alcoholic who is failing my degree, but I’ve got six hundred friends on facebook! Sacrifice all sense of moral judgement because, let’s face it, individualism is for egocentric pricks!


Thought G-Unit was dead? That happy slappers were childish? Think again! Make an exclusive gang, wear the same clothes and ride a tandem bicycle. Popularity guaranteed.

"The Importance of Being Eager: The Art of Making Friends at University" Part 2

I did some illustrations for some of beautifully crafted words of Dominic Fogg for Hullfire, the Hull university magazine. These are the first 3.


If your life has been thus far boring, make up some interesting lies. Fictional philanthropic Gap-Years work a treat!



To make people feel comfortable around you, you need to be comfortable with yourself. Get naked spontaneously. It’s ‘quirky’ – “Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed”



If you like sports on television, or in any form, you’re an idiot. This is fact. Most people are, however, utterly stupid. Eager for friends? Grab the nearest racket! Or remote!

Dawn of the Dead

Using the same process i used for the previous piece of work, i created an image/poster inspired by Dawn of the Dead.

Initial cut out


Final photo

Alien

To further develop the way of working i sort of stumbled across for my last project, ive been doing some more pieces with a similar graphic feel.
This first one is an image inspired by the famous chestburster scene from Alien that Im sure most people are aware of.

Ive got a few images to show how the final piece comes about.

Firstly, this image shows the initial sketching, note making and experimenting with cutting the black card.



Next, i draw out and cut the final design, creating the black stencil like frame, which i will later stick coloured paper to the underside of.



Before sticking the paper on, i like to use them as stencils.



The final step before sticking on the paper, lighting them from behind and taking the photos, is to scan the black stencils, and to colour them digitally, in order to work out colour schemes, various shades and whatnot. Obviously the final image will appear differently, due to the nature of the light, the paper thickness and quality, and the photo, but this is enough for a rough guide.



Photo of the final created image

Perfume-sixth image

This is the last image from the Perfume series.

Illustrations for 'Perfume: The Story of a Murderer'

These are 1-5 of the 6 images i created to illustrate Patrick Suskinds novel.
Due to the religious undertones of the book, i decided to create these stained glass window-esque pieces. After designing the scene and drawing it on paper, i traced it onto a black sheet of card. Then I cut out all the shapes in between the lines, and stuck different coloured and textured paper over the gaps on the underside.
These where then lit from behind and photographed.

(the last image will be in the next post)

It was quite a tedious process, the first two images taking a good few days to work out where to cut and what paper to use, but overall im very pleased with the results and will definitely look into using this way of working in the future.

A few pieces.

Here's a few things just to get this whole blog a-rollin'

Lets Begin

Unfortunately this Easter break I havent actually done a great deal of work. Lots of plans for personal projects, no real progress.
Ive spent a lot of time filling up my mind with other illustrators work though, in preparation for next term. Here's some of them..

- First, Warsaw-based studio Homework currently have an exhibition at the Kemistry gallery in London

- Then, Some nice old vintage book covers

- Then, some of Noma Bar's fantastic celebrity portraits

and thats all for now.