elle;

REINVENT: COTTON WOOL

Praise & Post

I’m a creature of comfort and habit. I’ve found it easy to contain my work within the confines of neat 0.8mm fine liner pen tips and 12pt serif fonts, but at this moment in time, all I want to do is create colourful mess. 

Underexposed

I got my first lomography camera when I was about 14 and instantly fell in love with the surreal colours and distortion. Over time, I’ve collected loads of under and overexposed shots which I’ve never really known what to do with. 

Mail Art

Today, my eyes were awakened to the Mail Art movement that started in the 50s. The idea being, artists create work simply to send to someone else… who may or may not respond with their own. You get to rework, retouch, reconsider each item. You can send the same thing back. You can paint it red and send it to someone else. 

Nigel brought in a crazy amount of colourful, collected bits and bobs that looked beautiful as a collective and individually. Each item oozed arbitrary care and thought in the most exciting way, because the items existed simply to exist.

23.04.16 | Deconstruction

My next project is focused around Adobe Illustrator. Although I’m not familiar with the software, I really enjoy and appreciate the process of illustration. As a preparation task, I chose to deconstruct an item (a micro USB cable) using a knife. 

The biggest thing I noticed when I challenged myself to illustrating in the past was the details. The thousands of intricate, seemingly unimportant details that make up the whole. The freckles, the placing of the features, the small hairs, the lighting; everything that makes up a singular face. In this, I aimed to take apart the object literally; to understand the structure underneath and dissect it physically, and not just imaginatively. In the same way you need to understand bone structure before you can master a face, I figured I would do the same with an object. 

16.03.16 | Barbican

Today, if not only for a change of scenery, I went to the Barbican centre again. The space itself is quite overwhelming. It’s clunky and dense and so not aesthetically pleasing that it somehow becomes it’s own endearing aesthetic. I appreciate the dulled hues and lack of saturation that encompass the whole centre, alongside the dark, sturdy bones of the building. The whole ‘feel’ of the place is similar to what I want for my zine. It’s enticingly strange and out of place.