day of the dead work

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Phlegm Research.

Phlegm is a 28 year old street artist from Sheffield, UK. He is primarily a cartoonist and illustrator who has an addiction to self publishing and underground work. All of his comic work is with black indian ink and a dip pen. He only uses colour when painting walls (or planes) or screen painting. With a strange relation to graffiti, having a style thats grown entirely from his self published comics rather than letter styles. His comic has now been around for four years and comes out every four months or so.

Here are two pieces of his street art, i really like these pieces as i think they are very distinctive and have a lot of detail and characteristics, i love the way he finds a place to create artwork and he will just create something to fit the space. I've noticed in both these pieces the creatures look sad, i'm not sure if this is just in these two pieces or if he has a theme throughout his entire work. The images are in black and white, i think this makes them look a lot more effective, where as if they were to be coloured in they would look a lot more cartoon styled and like some teenager had just graffitied a wall.

Olly Moss Research.

Olly Moss is a fantastic young British designer/illustrator, his self initiated work includes illustrations, graphics, t-shirt designs, posters etc. He uses a wide range of bright eye-catching colours, with such simple designs. His work is incredible and is used widely around the world.


Here is an illustration by Olly Moss called Consumable. It is actually a design for a t-shirt. I couldn't find any information on this image but I think its a really good image I like the humorous design and the use of colour. It is basically a drawing of a Tesco apple juice carton in black and white, with a brightly coloured piece of paper with a face drawn on, which I think is supposed to represent a post-it note, there is also a speech bubble in the same style as the post-it note. I like that there is no text, just one simple image. I would really like to take inspiration from Olly Moss in my own work.



This poster is a design for a film called 'American History' (1998) I really like the simplicity and layout of this poster especially the eye catching cross in the middle of the swastika. The simple use of the colours black white and red, make the poster that little bit more professional and modern. The only problem i have with this poster is the text, although it isn't important text and as in most advertisements the text that isn't important is made less viewable not to take attention away from the main image.

Laz Marquez Research.

At a young age, Laz Marquez came to realize that he had a passion for something. His passion was the urge to create art, and since those earlier days in his life, he hasn’t gone a day without thinking about the power, execution, and integrity of being able to create it.

Laz began his career as a Graphic Designer, studying at the Art Institute of Philadelphia with a focus in Graphic Design. He later moved to study at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, to better hone and build upon his abilities. At the School of Visual Arts, Laz majored in Graphic Design and Fine Arts, which gave him a better understanding of the principals of Art, even garnering him the honors of being a featured artist in the university gallery on numerous occasions.


Here is the poster that Laz Marquez created for the film 'The Birds' (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963). It is basically a black silhouette of a girl on a white background. escaping from the head of the silhouette are birds. I really like the messy outline of squiggles and rough splashes and lines. The idea of a silhouette looks excellent and the use of colour fits really well with the theme of the film, as it is a dark film. The title has been placed with a circle outline on the head of the silhouette, usually this wouldn't work and would look quite tacky, but Marquez has really pulled it off.

Here is a book cover from part of a series of Stephen King books. The use of imagery and colours go really well together however the way in what they have been placed isn't so good. Personally i really like the imagery in this cover but i dislike the text, mainly because there is to much going on and it slightly confuses the eye. If the authors name had been placed away from the title it would have looked fantastic.
The image is basically a white silhouette of a fat man on a black background with a smaller black silhouette of a slim man placed inside. The idea is brilliant but i don't think it has been thought about thoroughly as the it looks like the slim man has a really long neck and a bad posture, although it is supposed to be the same man just slimmer and surely loosing weight would improve your posture not make it worse? The colour of the text is actually quite hard to read as some areas blend into the image or the background.

an analytical review on the work of Lucian Freud.

Within this essay I am going to discuss the work of ‘Lucian Freud’. To do so I am going to look at 3 of his paintings, focusing on his influences, techniques used and his individual style. Lucian Freud is an English painter that was born on the 8^th of December 1922. His early paintings were associated with surrealism and he usually used a thin paint, then in the 1950’s he changed to doing nude portraits.He usually paints images of nude people lying across a bed or the floor and he also did many portraits of pets and their owners. Freud has been known to spend up to 4000 hours on a painting and many of his paintings show that they have had a large amount of passion and time put into them.

Lucian Freud/Naked portrait with reflection/oil on canvas/1980/http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5101414

Here is a portrait of a naked woman, Freud has used thick rich but somewhat dull colours. Like Jenny Saville, who his work is often compared to, he has painted blotchy red patches on different parts of her body, mainly on her face. He has painted the model in an awkward position, blushing, this shows that she must of felt uncomfortable at the time, or he would of liked her to feel uncomfortable. Although he has given her patchy blotches, he has still painted her skin thick and in some ways, visually appealing.

One of the portraits of a pet and its owner is “girl white dog” http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/freud/

The colours of this piece are mainly based around pale yellows and greens.

I find this painting in particular very interesting and different from most of his other paintings, he seems to have painted her much more beautiful than she really is, as if he’s painted her as he see’s her through his own eyes. Usually his work seems really thick and “daubed” but this image seems more gentle, as if he has caressed her body with his paintbrush.

Reflection (self portrait) oil on canvas 1985.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/freud/

this is one of lucian frued’s later paintings, I find this one of his best paintings. It seems that the newer his paintings are the better the quality of his work. Freud works with thick impasto in relatively muted colours. The use of layering paired with his thick media make his subject (himself) really stand out and seem much more lifelike.

An analytical review of the work of Jenny Saville.

In this essay i am going to discuss the work of the artist 'Jenny Saville', an english oil painter who's work is very harsh and vulgar, she paints trauma victims, surgery patients, transexuals and transvestites in such an awful but beautiful way. In this essay i am going to discuss Jenny Saville's techniques, materials, processes etc and the effect they have on her audience.

Saville is famous for her paintings of overweight, disfigured ugly or surgery patients. Some of her work is of slaughtered pigs and women pressed awkwardly against glass sheets. Because of the size of the canvas Jenny Saville likes to work on, and the size of the models she paints, the viewer seems to feel like a small child looking up at a huge picture, a huge truthful picture that cannot be escaped from. Jennie Saville seems to enjoy painting the uncomfortable truth and displaying it in a such a large unavoidable way, her audience cannot escape it. Saville doesnt want to hide away the overweight, ugly, disfigured people, she wants them to be admired.

Saville uses oil paint on a huge larger than life size scale canvas. she paints in a way similar to finger painting and she pays very little attention to detail, she doesnt bother about keeping inside the lines or using repetitive brush strokes in one direction, because her work is to put across a message that no one is perfect, so therefore her work of ‘un-perfect’ people should be painted in an ‘un-perfect’ way.

She uses pigmented hues and tones in her work and the way she uses her almost creamy oil paint gives the skin a poured or smeared appearance, making it seem almost impossible to look realistic.

In conclusion, i really like the harsh vulgar work of Jennie Saville, you have to look behind the disgusting far-fetched images, and find the hidden messages behind each individual piece of work she has created in such a beautiful yet ugly way. I have enjoyed looking at Savilles work and i would definitely like to use her techniques and processes in my own work in the future.

illustration friday: surrender.

Suggested Improvements: Not use gel pen. Add more shading. Better quality photo.