Cake and Doodle 17/02/16

After the Chris Madden, Barney Ibbotson and Emma Reynolds talk (which will be detailed in my next post) I looked into Draw Northwest and some of the other artistic gatherings which take place in Manchester, this lead me to Cake and Doodle.

This week I decided I would attend the Cake and Doodle gathering. It takes place every Wednesday at Ziferblat on Edge Street at 7:30pm, Ziferblat is a unique venue in the fact that tea, coffee, cake, soft drinks, juice, biscuits, cereal etc is free you are charged based on how much time you spend. The rate is 6p a minute so that's £3.60 an hour. So if you are planning on attending keep in mind you will be charged for your time spent.

The gathering is a good way to make industry contacts in fact one of the women who attended works with Emma Reynolds. It's a very open environment and you will often be asked what you are working on and given advice and critique if you express you are open to it. It's a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere. And in addition it's a great way to find out about exhibitions and events around Manchester and it isn't just limited to illustration. Through this weeks Cake and Doodle I learned about O!PLA 2015 which is a night of polish animation on Friday 4th March 7:30 -9:30pm at Ada house, 77 Thompson Street, Manchester. It requires a ticket since seats are limited.

I would definitely recommend attending Cake and Doodle not many attend every week so just come along if you happen to have a free evening.

Exploring Wonderland Exhibition

On the 8/02/16 I visited an show in the Manchester Craft and Design Centre called Exploring Wonderland which was a celebrating the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in wonderland. There was a large variety of work including home decor, jewellery, illustration, installation, sculpture, ceramics and paper cut.    

Since I did a project on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland last year it was interesting to see other peoples take on it especially since the work on display spanned so many disciplines.

I especially loved the paper cut by Fairy Made Paperart

More of her work can be found on her facebook page FairyMadePaperart

Gallery Visit: Richard Goodall Gallery

Yesterday I visited the Richard Goodall Gallery in Manchester. I was really impressed by the work on display and I could see my work fitting in there. They sold work from a range of artists and my parents ended up purchasing a print.

I discovered two new artists the first being Jay Ryan.

Jay Ryan is an American artist specializing in screen printed posters for rock bands and concerts. I love the quirkiness of his characters, they are cute but not overly cute and it inspires me that he has actually produced artwork for bands and he has even produced album artwork and track illustrations. Being a big fan of music I would love to produce work for bands.

The second artist I discovered goes by the name of Daniel Danger.

Daniel Danger is based in the New England region of America, I love his use of colour and the subject matter of his work. I have recently discovered that I find old abandoned buildings absolutely fascinating so his work instantly appealed to me. His work is almost akin to documentation, you will find many urban explorers love to document abandoned buildings before they get demolished and are gone for good. By the looks of his instagram @tinymediaempire he does dabble in urban exploration. 

   

Hattie Newman visit

I'll start this off by saying Hattie Newman's practice and mine have very little in common but her talk was still interesting and there were still things I took away from it.

One of the things she does that I am quite curious about is window displays, I won't go as far as say it is something I am going to do but it does interest me. She has also dabbled in animation which again is an interest but not particularly something I'm going to pursue. But she did talk about fashion which I am interested in getting into but in Hattie's case it was advertising for fashion companies where as I want to design my own fabric and design t-shirts.

Some things which inspired Hattie was the Muppets and Thunderbirds which are things I remember quite fondly from my own childhood.

She mainly does editorial stuff which Fig Taylor advised me against so a lot of what she talked about in regards to that didn't really strike a cord.

She told us when it comes to clients they like to see you are always pushing your work in new directions and that you never stop pursuing to develop further as an artist. And she stressed the importance of making connections within the industry. 

Her work was fascinating, she made her sculptures from paper each taking her weeks or months to create.

This was her design for The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park map, she said this was one of the most challenging projects she had ever worked one because everything had to be in exactly the right place where in other projects she could get away with things being a bit inaccurate.