typography

Thought I would share with you some of the typography I have done for projects throughout my time at Falmouth. I always seem to get positive feedback on the way I hand draw my type and so I have put together a little list of my favourite ones. I have an idea for a type based illustration involving Shakespeare too so I hope this list can inspire me for that.

The type I draw is usually influenced by heavily decorated Victorian typefaces, and some of the 're-imaginings' here are directly from Victorian type. Others have more of a handwriting/script feel.

Close up of the Magic Garden font I designed for this poster

Victorian style type for my recipe at TheyDrawandCook

Reinterpretation of a Victorian font for a project about baking history

Handwriting style font I used for a poster

Handwriting with ink and capitals with light graffiti

Stencilled type for a poster for the Don't Panic Norwegian Wood competition

Traced ink type for an editorial for my good friend Camilla

Illuminated letters for a book festival poster

A victorian style font for a prospective map of the Black Country Living Museum

Type I created for my auction artwork

garden

It's been all about the gardens recently in my life - not only have I been out enjoying this gloriously warm, early summer sunshine but there's also been a bit of green in my work!

My mother is organising a trip to the Magic Garden in Wolverhampton for her and her ladies' club. This private garden in Wolverhampton is a glittering retreat from the city. The garden is part of the National Gardens scheme which aims to make money for charity by opening special gardens to the public.

The poster above is intended just to advertise the particular event my mother is organising, as there are many dates the garden is open for the public to see. I decided it would be a good opportunity to design my own typeface, and the hand drawn lettering incorporates stars and flowers in order to match the arch around the image. It took me a while to decide which set type to use but I decided a simple garamond wouldn't detract too much from the main typeface. The quote underneath the date is from the main description on their website; a lovely poetic quote that matches the feel of the gardens.

inspiration

I started work on my quote today! How exciting. I cracked open the paint and tried out one of the main focuses of the image, the cake stand. I hope to do some of the other elements in different mediums, but I haven't quite worked it out yet. I quite like how this has turned out, especially the sandwiches.

In a few days I'll be doing a bit of self arranged life drawing with one of my friends in order to get some pose studies done for a mural. A family friend has asked me to design a mural incorporating angels for her daughter's bedroom wall, so I'll be putting my friend in a floaty dress and getting her to pose, Burne Jones style! Will update with some of the drawings soon.

Speaking of Burne Jones, I went to a wonderful exhibition the other day at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which was all about Pre-Raphaelite drawings. They had a fantastic collection of pieces from the main brotherhood as well as later members, with some beautiful early work from the days when the founding members attended the Royal Academy. My particular favourites were the Moxon Tennyson they had on display, showing Holman Hunt's The Lady of Shalott, a portrait of Fanny Cornforth by Rossetti, and some of Millais' life drawings. They also had one of the more breathtaking images by William Holman Hunt, The Finding Of The Saviour In The Temple. It was wonderful to see the painting in real life as the colours are truly vivid, particularly the robe that Christ is wearing.

The Finding Of The Saviour In The Temple (1854 - 1865), William Holman Hunt

Fanny Cornforth (1868), Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Seeing these images really inspired me to get back into drawing from life which is why I am particularly excited about my session on Thursday. In the rest of the museum they had a great collection of work by other Pre-Raphaelites, from Ford Madox Brown to Edward Burne Jones. I loved it!

Downton Poster

Here is the finished Downton lecture poster. I was struggling with a background colour but I feel that the text and the colours I have chosen sit nicely on the cream colour. Would love some feedback on this if you have any.

(I will point out that obviously the photo of the Abbey in the poster is not mine, this is just a college project and credit goes to whoever took that photo, but the rest of it is all my work so please don't reproduce this without permission.)

Experiments

I've been working on my Downton Abbey lecture poster today, and for some reason I decided to colour it using photoshop. Well, the colours themselves were hand made and then I've been sort of digitally cutting it out. This little bit is obviously of a phone, modelled from the lovely phone downstairs in our bar. I would love to know if anyone thinks this is looking any good? It's hard to work without feedback! Finished poster coming soon.

home

On Monday, I journeyed the five hours it takes to get back to the Midlands for our Easter break. I packed my sketchbook (though I'm yet to open it) ready for an easter full of illustrating and hopefully a good set of images to get into my portfolio. Another job while I'm here was to get hold of some of my life drawings to put onto my website sketchbook page. I'm still deciding which ones to go on there, but here's a few examples of the ones I was considering. I had to take photos of them with my compact camera which is why some of them aren't great quality. (Just to warn you some of the drawings are female nudes so if you are not comfortable with this don't scroll down!)

sketchbook

Just a quick one to show you some of the sketching I have been doing for experimentation for my Downton poster. Have been trying to represent some of the characters, without being particularly detailed. I think it's working so far!

Lady Mary

Carson

Dowager Duchess

Anna

wordy

Seeing as I don't have much new stuff to show for myself, I thought I would show you another six I did. I really should send those soon! I'm not sure if I want to use this one yet, I just enjoyed drawing it. It was inspired by this font, which as I look back at it now doesn't actually include numbers. I guess this is what it would look like! I really liked using brown ink for this, but for the victorian type style I have used in the other sixes I may use a bit of photoshop magic and change them to a nice tealy colour or maybe a dark red.

At the moment I am doing a poster project for a lecture about the amazing Downton Abbey which is happening at the Du Maurier festival in May. I thought I would have a go at doing some prospective event posters that were a bit different, as I thought the original posters will probably include photography. I have been playing around on photoshop with silhouettes, and this is what that came out like :

I thought that through using some kind of patterns and things I could reflect the status of the people. Not sure if that's going to work yet. I am getting my excitement back a little bit, but I am finishing for Easter this friday. I MUST WORK AT EASTER! Might have to get that tattooed on my head!

realise

Russell Brand sketch for quote idea

The two Ronnies

This week has been interesting. I've come to a bit of a realisation about my work, and I think that I needed this week to really get it. I have been designing my illustration for the quotes book that I mentioned last week, and the week started with an idea about portraits and type that involved comedians. These few sketches are some of the prep that I did for that piece, but yesterday I realised it wasn't necessarily saying enough about me as an illustrator, so the idea has now changed completely!

This is a section of the new idea for the quotes book, which is a lot more 'me' really, as it will give me a chance to use my hand rendered type as well as be about a subject I enjoy. The quote itself is still undecided, I have a few to choose from which is good. Easter is going to hopefully give me an opportunity to get loads of work generated. Feel like I have a positive end to an otherwise difficult week.