I’ve always been interested in screen printing, I love the idea of putting my stuff onto bags and t-shirts or even making art prints so for the past 3 weeks I’ve been taking a wee screen printing class and I’d like to share my progress!
Ok first of all here’s one of my designs on the screen, It’s a dinosaur and it got there by placing the design over the light-sensitive paper to make a stencil in the mesh. This can also be done with light-sensitive emulsion.
Now I’ve got my screen ready it gets clamped to a machine with an arm (real technical terms here). Then I get my squeegee and ink ready.
So now we’re ready to go. With both hands I take the squeegee and swipe the ink down the screen, the action makes a very satisfying noise (like sweeeeeeeesh).
I lift up my screen and there it is, my first screen printed tshirt. I feel like a proud parent.
Pleased with my result, I try a different colour scheme.
I then decide to screen print my sketchbook, just cos.
Swish! So to conclude, I’m having loads of fun and will hopefully make up some (better) tshirts and bags etc for people to wear about once I’ve had a bit more practice.
So I got home from work today feeling a bit creative, but only having an hour or so to spare before I went back out. I thought to myself ‘maybe instead of doing my usual faffing about with computers or flicking through tv channels I’ll set myself a little challenge?’ like making and finishing something within the hour.
It was originally made of 2 or 3 different pictures but I ended up cropping it lots as I like this composition better. Anyways, It’s about me fancying someone.
In other news I have recently acquired a new robot, I think he looks like a Percy, wouldn’t you say?
As always, any feedback on my work is more than welcome!
It’s True, I like penguins, almost as much as tortoises.
It’s mainly because they’re super cute but at the same time I have the utmost respect for the little dudes, especially at this time of year when they start migrating in huge numbers to travel hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles for mating season, It’s a great and harsh trip and sometimes not all of them make it…
Hello! I apologise for it being over a week since my last post, I have been working hard on some secret little projects as well as some things of my own that I’m not quite ready to show yet.
So with an absence of original material, I’d like to talk about my shopping. Since the daylight is increasingly growing shorter up here I’ve been going on little book buying sprees, mostly art and comic books mind you but still worth talking about none the less.
Ok first on the list is ‘Lost Constellations’ which is the 2nd art book by Tara McPherson, one of my favourite artists.
In this volume you can clearly see how Tara’s work has progressed and matured since the last book whilst keeping her signature style and pallete perfectly intact. I’d definitely recommend this book to people who are interested in artists of today although one thing I would say is that if you own the first volume a lot of the same art appears.
Next on the list is the’ Juxtapoz Poster Art’ book, as a big fan on the Juxtapoz art magazines when I heard they were releasing a poster art book I couldn’t help but scoop it up.
The book features art and interviews from hundreds of artists and illustrators and even from flicking through the first few pages I was left with a strong feeling that poster art is an amazing art form with great possibilities and shouldn’t be overlooked as just another form of advertising.
Ok, almost there, 3rd on the list is a comic by spanish illustrator Gabriella Giandelli entitled ‘Interiorae’. This is one of my ‘random’ finds, basically I don’t know where to start with comics so my usual approach is to flick through some things in the shop and see which pictures I like best, this one won.
It tells the story of a little old lady on a journey to her final resting place, and if not a bit sad I found it really beautiful, mostly because of the astounding artwork which has such a natural feel to it, top marks!
Right I’m almost done, Last on my list is Shaun Tans ‘The Arrival’ I’ve always been a huge fan of this guy ever since I read ‘The Red Tree’ which inspired me immensely.
What’s interesting about this is that it’s a story about immigration and about all the people in history who have journeyed to the unknown in search of a better life, it also has no words or text whatsoever, as if to help you relate with the books characters. But as usual what appeals to me most is the simply oustanding and painstakingly detailed artwork.
Well I hope you enjoyed that nosey into my shopping, I’ll be back soon with some new pictures!
Hello! Hope you’re all doing well, I’ve been fairly busy this week, mostly with trying to balance my new job, my social life(if you’d call it that) and some commissions, one of which took me basically all week!
And that’s what I’d like to show off today.
It was for my good friend Campbell(Shambles)Miller’s new e.p entitled ‘Shambles Sails the Clockwork Sea’ and basically the brief was “I want to be sailing over a sea clocks” so I thought to myself ‘ok, I’m no stranger to bizarre requests so I’ll give it a bash.’ and a week later this popped out.
I’m actually pretty chuffed with it, as with most pieces there were points I just felt like scrapping it but I stuck it through and Campbell was very happy with it so I’m glad I saw it to the end.
The e.p itself won’t be out till October but in the meantime you can check out his stuff here.
I was thinking about this on the bus earlier, I think the hardest task for an artist of any type is to get out what’s exactly in their head. It’s something I definitely aspire to, to be able to put onto paper the exact imagine I’m imagining is my ultimate goal and it’s why I try to keep learning and try different approaches and mediums whenever I can.
Having that said, I did this with my new tablet earlier.
I’ve always had a bit of a fascination and great respect for digital artists, mainly because although contrary to popular opinion, digital art is extremely tricky and just as time-consuming as traditional methods, it can also have the most amazing results.
So in my never ending quest for finding the perfect medium I went and bought a wacom tablet, not a big fancy one just the entry level chap, here he is!
So I had a little fart about and here’s how I got on;
Firstly I took a line drawing from one of my books, just a small sketch that had been floating about for a while.
From here I went straight in with the colouring, now granted that I’m pretty hopeless with photoshop I had a bit of a tough time and it ended up taking me around 2 hours to end up with this.
I guess it’s not bad for a first attempt but I can’t help but feel that it looks a bit too polished and a little bit lifeless.
So in my little huff I decided to go over the drawing in watercolours.
Which I think worked a bit better, that’s not to say I’ve given up on digital art, I just need to get better at it and spend a bit of time trying to used the tablet and photoshop etc so If anyone has any tips or knows of any good tutorials let me know!
Hello hope you’re all doing well and having a great weekend! I’ve had a very exciting week as I’ve started my new job as a community art teacher, which so far has been the most fun I’ve ever had in a job so as you can imagine I’m chuffed to bits!
Anyway whilst in teacher mode I mocked up a little how-to sheet for the kids, but you can try it too!
It’s four simple steps to drawing a robot, as long as you know your shapes you’re sorted, and if you have a ruler even better!
Step 1. Draw a large rectangle with a square directly below it
Step 2. Add circles to the large rectangle and join the two shapes with 2 small lines (that’s your robots neck).
Step 3. Add in some arms and legs,keeping everything square.
Step 4. Give him a cheeky smile and some buttons!
Now that wasn’t so hard was it? you could even colour him in :)
Today I’ve got something very interesting to show you, one of my little monsters has been animated! and yes it’s only 12 seconds long but still I’m quite proud of it.
Cool eh? I’ve always wanted to see what one of drawings would look like if it came to life so when Enlightened Monster Productions (an independent film company) got in touch about doing small animated intro I couldn’t say no.
Anyhoo, I really enjoyed the job so you never know, it could be the first of many!
It may sound a bit introverted or slightly selfish but I’ve always preferred writing things down than talking about them. See, as much as I appreciate a friend’s ear whenever I try to get my problems across they always come out unstructured, words get jumbled and I usually just end up changing the subject.
I think this is one the main reasons I started drawing and keeping sketchbooks, It lets me get things out whilst taking time over my words and drawing where they fail, giving me a voice I previously never thought I had.
Neil Slorance 
