MONSTER GIRLS

I was happy with my CMV print so I decided to add a background to a monster girl I made towards the beginning of the academic year (November 2016, forgot to blog it, whoops) 

This was a unicorn faun or a unifaun if you wish. 

Adding a mixed media background to this really gave a finished look to the image - something I could actually show as a piece rather than just a cut out monster discarded on a piece of paper. 

Digital work allows me to experiment with layer settings and textures more than I could with traditional media, a valuable asset to my practice. It let me give the sick magical glow to the unifaun. 

Gonna continue adding backgrounds to some of my previously done monsters as it's fun and lets me build a wacky portfolio of monster girls!!

Buffy Brief: Development & Hitting a Wall Already

I'd hit a wall in my self initiated 'fun' brief. Whoops.

I found myself redrawing faces over and over again to try and get it 'right' and the whole process was not really getting me anywhere.



I asked Abi to look over some of the work I'd been doing and give me some tips for she is also a Buffy fan and would be able to give me some advice in context to the project (as she's basically the target audience). She said the earlier paintings done with mostly shapes worked better than when I was trying to work with lines as I was getting too hung up on the lines.

The shapes are more bold and distinctively look like the characters, so I should take my time on doing some really good shape based images rather than lots of quick line based ones like I got hung up with.

The above shape based images do work better than line based one. 

FMP || Sanitary Products

I was somewhat interested in the idea of packaging for sanitary products that Patrick Suggested so I gave some thought to it. I like the idea of normalising and in a way glamourising periods as it is part of life that is often erased from the media. 

Thinking different kinds of sanitary products - pads, tampons, moon cups, and how these could potentially have designs applied to them.

There's the boxes, & the wrappers but could the designs be applied to the products themselves? 

Potential for "Bloody Chamber" puns & unusual designs

In this day and age you can get all sorts of re-usable cloth sanitary pads - perhaps with more potential to have a pattern on them than your run of the mill disposable sanitary pad. (though those do tend to have a bit of a design on them). 

I feel like with this and makeup packaging I'm at risk of getting too sucked in to trying to design a product and not spend enough time thinking about imagery. 

FMP INITIAL SKETCHES N STUFF

I selected a few texts that I thought the imagery would be appropriate to translate into the context of makeup packaging and spent some time just drawing things. 

(texts I selected were The Bloody Chamber, The Snow Child,& The Tigers Bride, I'm also considering Lady of the House of Love and Company of Wolves)

I quickly realised / remembered I wasn't good at drawing roses, wolves or tigers, so that was a good start. 

The first chunk of my sketchbook are just repeating these a lot to get into the swing of drawing them. 

I'm addicted to this brush pen, I love the quality of line it gives - I kind of feel I've done a lot of sketching with it and maybe am becoming too dependant on the brush pen and should keep drawing in different media. 

A lot of my recent work has been shape based so I think it would be helpful in the future to think / draw / sketch more in shapes rather than instantly going in for lines? 

There's a lot of themes that could be included, I want to focus on themes of embracing femininity & make something glamorous and beautiful. 

The idea of this informing makeup packaging ties into a feminist, women making things for other women standpoint. 

CRIT WI PATRICK (Progress Tutorial)

MY BLOG WAS TERRIBLE AND NOT UP TO DATE, SO I NEED TO GET MY BLOG UP TO DATE.

* liked the idea of the 'secret 7' making videos to go along with the track

* intrigued by Angela Carter stuff but cause I forgot to bring my book, couldn't really comment on anything.
    - unsure of how makeup relates to Angela Carter. I felt as if it did because of points of women making things for women and the glamorous imagery in carters work and the transformative nature of makeup
    - suggested I branch out from that into sanitary product packaging - which I really like the idea of as it really ties into my interests in feminism and womens bodies being censored in the media as menstruation is something that has been mostly hidden from the public eye.
(though I am thinking about just focusing on experimenting and making images and THEN finding ways to apply them to things)
   - Research Angela Carter and more about what she was about

* Buffy stuff / when working with character - CHANGE MY PRACTICE, work on BIG paper instead of in the confines of a sketchbook.

CMV || Out of Order / Weekly Monster Girls

I ended up not being so invested in this project, I thought I would be as I was definitely interested when it was briefed. Maybe I just lost my drive, or I got busy with other things so I decided to just create one of my weekly monster girls and use this as a basis for my out of order piece.

I made this beautiful reverse mermaid - Fish head, human legs.

To make it more of a finished piece I added some background-bits in photoshop, using some of the textures I had made monoprinting for my final project. 

I'm really digging the effect the textures and layer modes gives the seaweed. 

As the mermaid is the main focus of the 'out of order' this element had the most detail and I left the background bits more block shaped just to frame her. 

I am loving this image to be honest. Doing this has made me want to develop more of my monster girls series, giving more of them a background. 

FMP || Monoprinting

I wanted to get better at traditional printing - specifiically monoprinting and lino printing.

These are techniques I want to use as a component in my practice - I don't see myself making full monoprinted or lino printed images but using all the bits and pieces for papercut or digital development cause the textures are life.

I enjoyed the process. It was fun  and I got a lot of great textures out of it.I decided to not work with black too much when printing, cause stuff looks more fun when I experiment with different colours. Ended up using a lot of reds and rich purples / magenta's etc. Are these a bit cliche? I should try some softer colours, give different tones, feelings, etc. I really like the gold, I think jewel tones would work for this project as they give the rich glamorous look that would translate well into makeup packaging concepts as well as reflecting the tones of Angela Carters work.

Selected imagery from Angela Carters Bloody Chamber - Keys (Bloody Chamber), Snowflakes (Snow Child), Wolves (Company of wolves), Flowers (Various Angela Carter stories)

This is just initial imagery generation, I hope to develop bits of these futher for patterns etc.

FMP || Colour Schemes

(sorry upside down) 

Thinking about colour schemes, and what kind of makeup products could be appropriate for each story. 

The stories I picked out had different tones and feelings - which I scribbled down in my sketchbook along with some colour schemes (which as well as being colours for the images, could also be potential concepts for product colours (eyeshadow pallettes, lipstick, blush etc.) 

(pictured are my colour ideas for The Tigers Bride and Lady of the House of Love, in my sketchbook there are also scribbles for The Snow Child and The Bloody Chamber) 

The Tigers Bride colour scheme was a lot lighter and softer as the story is less dark compared to other ones in The Bloody Chamber - I like how this gives me a range of different moods to work with, not just all doom and gloom gothic stuff. 

I took inspiration for the colour schemes from descriptions etc, scribbling down items like the tigers bride's crystal teardrop earings, The opal ring in the bloody chamber - making obvious connections with colour schemes and feelings.

BUFFY - INITIAL DOODLES RAMBLES IDEAS ETC

soooooo this is the first workings of things in the sketchbook!!

going into this thinking very much the images made are designed to go on a box set re-design.

first thoughts: whats appropriate to go on each season box. I intended the design as a 20th anniversary re-design / collectors edition the intended audience would be people who are already established Buffy fans. I thought, because of this, putting the main villain of the season on each season's cover (for a new viewer it could be considered a spoiler??? but for already established buffy fans it's like, they know whats going on)

My initial stuff is a lot of sketches, trying to figure out characters faces (and failing), I want to retain my 'tone of voice' but still show the characters which is proving VERY DIFFICULT.

It feels more difficult cause i'm trying to look at it from a design perspective rather than just a mindless fan-art piece ( even though it is a self indulgent passion project, cause I love buffy ). But since the characters are real actors I feel like it has to look enough like the actual humans but you know... realism... it's not my thing, proportions etc. It's just not working for me.

Monster Girls || Frankensteins / Valensteins

It was valentines so I did a matchy matchy set of Frankenstein's monster (valensteins monster). There are a little different to what I've done so far as less of the image is papercut - just the hair is - Which works for this - I wanted to simplify stuff after fucking up that centaur real bad.

I think this works as the images are still bold and I was able to retain my style of drawing faces and such - which can get kind of lost in fully papercut stuff.

I thought doing a little pencil shading on the faces would give some depth and ellude to different skin types being stitched together.

The Blue and yellow hair is maybe a little too marge simpson, but I still like it, I dig the contrast. and the black and green hints back to classic Frankenstein / horror colours.

FMP || Proposal & Initial Thoughts

I spoke with Teresa about my idea for FMP which was makeup packaging based on Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. She liked the idea as Angela Carter's work is very glamorous and sensual, with rich imagery that would be interestingly transferred into a makeup setting. With a basis of femme work made for a femme audience (perhaps not specifically female, but femme) 

I was inspired for this idea from sugarpill's special edition packaging. 

25th Anniversary - Edward Scissorhands 

Feline Fancy - Valentines special

There are lots of makeup brands that are doing limited edition packaging and concepts behind a set, so I think there is scope for this to be a successful project!!

Could I use sugarpill as a hypothetical brand for this?