Final show considerations

I've been thinking more on how I want to brand myself, while looking at places to get my work printed I stumbled across dStudio which is a printing and framing service which offers bamboo paper which is more environmentally friendly www.digitalprintdesign.co.uk/papers/. 

There is also a 20% discount on getting your work printed on Hahnemuhle Bamboo 290gsm paper which is a nice incentive. It says on the website it is especially good for vibrant colours so it should be perfect for my work. 

My response to women's sanitary products being classed as "Luxury Items"

I was angered to find out women's sanitary products are classed as a luxury and that some men were comparing their preference for being clean shaven to women's sanitary products. It's not specifically the tax which angers me more the principle behind them being labeled as "Luxury Items". 

Women in 3rd world countries are not as educated because they have little to no access to sanitary products and have to stay off school for 5 days to a week each month. That 5 days to a week puts them behind in their studies making it harder for them to further their education.

So a school year is roughly 195 days, roughly 6 months of the year. Take 5 days average from each month so that's 23. So times that by 6 (months) and that's 138 days. So that's 57 days of missed schooling a year that's roughly 2 months each year.

It gets worse the average start of a girls period is 12 and lets say that girl finishes school at 16. so that's 5 years, so total days a child should be in school is 975 and if you total in the time that these girls have to take off that is a total of 690 days they spend in school total from the ages of 12-16 years of age.

Shocking isn't it?

And people are telling us being in a position to be in education for 195 days a year is supposedly a luxury? We aren't after this stuff for free, we want people to admit this is not a god damn luxury!

Stella Creasy hit the nail on the head when she said "Tampons and sanitary towels, even I'm struggling with the words tonight it seems, have always been considered a luxury. That isn't by accident, that's by design of an unequal society, in which the concerns of women are not treated as equally as the concerns of men,".

Jaffa cakes are zero-rated for crying out loud! Yes stuffing our face with Jaffa's every month is fantastic BUT it is far from essential.   

I would love to at some point create some work around this issue but it would be a stretch to incorporate it into my current project, even though I am sure access to sanitary products is an issue for homeless women. 

Overthinking worriers are natural artists?

New Research Says Overthinking Worriers Are Probably Creative Geniuses

 I was reading this article because I am a chronic over thinker and I suffer from anxiety so it caught my attention. Also I am always interested in research about mental health and creativity. I remember someone asked me once if I thought that my trade off for being creative was my health and I think in a way that is true. My mental health has been a problem for over half of my life, before my mental health started to decline I wouldn't say I was particularly talented creatively, yeah I drew a proper stick man before any of my classmates in nursery but noting spectacular.

I remember becoming engrossed with art around 11 years old, this was also around the same time I started experiencing anxiety and a little later on depression. Being creative was for me the most natural cause of action especially when I was younger because I didn't know exactly what I was experiencing yet so I found ways to represent it through art.

So in a way I didn't find this article enlightening but more reaffirming what I had believed to be true for many years. It was comforting in an odd kind of way.

I am homeless but I am a human being

Today I watched this buzzfeed video and I think it informs people about homelessness and the stereotypes homeless people face in the right way.

I am homeless

I was in Manchester on Wednesday and one of the homeless guys came up to me and my friend, I remembered him and how I had given money to him before. He gives people poetry in exchange for their charity. The last poem he gave me was on the back of a betting slip and sadly I misplaced it, that poem brought me to tears and I instantly thought I need to bring attention to this. From what I can recall the poem he gave to me the first time was about how he used to be addicted to drugs but now he was clean. This time I was glad to see he had gotten a note pad instead of writing on the back of betting slips, it's such a small change for most people but for someone on the streets paper is a luxury item. My friend gave him some money (I have a rule that I only give what I have in my pockets) and my friend told me to chose a poem, he just so happened to have a poem called stereotyped so I asked for that one and told him about my project. He seemed so happy when I told him I wanted to dispel stereotypes around homelessness he said "that's good, there is way to much of it believe me."  He was the one who inspired this project and I told him his poem will really help. He smiled and I am so glad I saw that.

The future

Recently I have been feeling the pressure to really find a definite route I want to take my art and I have decided after degree to purse a career in a tattooing, I considered this before I started this degree I was even offered an apprenticeship and I let the opportunity pass me by because I wasn't confident enough in my artwork.

Now I have had time to think about it I have something unique to offer when it comes to style and I want to try and practice specifically doing work which will computationally lend itself to tattoo's. As far as tattoo styles I like I am a fan of "new school tattoos".

Image from checkoutmyink

Image from oquevemporai.wordpress.com

Image from flickr

Tattoo by Autumn Tierney

Image from geeksaresexy

by Mina at Hawk and Sparrows in Malmö, Sweden.

Image from poundedink.com

by Kelly Dotty

I like new school tattoo's due the the vibrancy of the colours and how bold an beautiful they are. And I feel it really fits with the style I have established.

It maybe seen as a trend in tattooing but I am also really fond of the look of watercolour style tattoo's.

Image from huffingtonpost

Image from 1337tattoos.com

By Gene Coffey

Image from www.cuded.com

I love the fluidity of the linework (if applicable) in watercolour tattoo's, and again I love the vibrancy of the colours they use. The line's in watercolour tattoo's are varied some lines are think and bold, others look like brush and ink and some are swift and wispy.

Anti bullying thinking back

I stumbled across this video on youtube, I watch this channel regularly but this video really reminded me of the last project.

I feel like when I was doing the project I did approach it from two sides. one side discouraging bullying and one side trying to make people understand why they or someone else bullies and trying to urge them to find a more none harmful avenue to dealing with those issues.

But they did bring up a rather valid point. Can bullying be an act of rebellion? The act of rebellion might not have anything to do with the actual victim rather the bullies maybe testing the adults who keep telling them not to bully. We see it in many other areas such as drugs because they are illegal to do they are can be seen as more attractive to do.

Just a thought   

YouCanNow

My tutor Jo sent us this link to YCN magazine in an email so I decided to have a look through it, the video at the bottom of the page is what I want to review the most.

Michael Wolff talks about design (blogger doesn't seem to like vimeo)

What Michael Wolff said made me question my artwork. Michael says about how he thinks the feelings behind a piece of art and/or design and how it is communicated is what is important, I feel my work is very based off my own feelings and emotions but does that come across to the audience viewing my art. Does my art satisfy people are improve their life in anyway? It satisfies me but I'm not other people.

It definitely provided some food for thought.

Salford zine library

On the 12th of November I went to the Salford Zine Library in the basement of the Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. The first thing I felt when I walked in was that I was an outsider, I felt really awkward walking in just to look at the zines.

After wondering around and not being able to find where the zine library was I asked the guy at the counter. The salford zine library was through a door I assumed was staff only. 

When I got into the room there were shelves and shelves of zines stacked haphazardly on top of one another.

Not sure why this picture is sideways but this was a very small zine, probably one of the smallest in the library. The zine is called disintegration. 

I really loved the crudeness of this zine.

There was also some more lining the walls on small shelves.

This one was mostly in what in spanish (I think) and I really like how hand made this one looked.

From what I remember this one was screen printed and I really liked the limited colour palette.

I like how this one has been drawn, again rather crude.

Another crude one.

This one seemed to be portraiture based. 

I really liked the idea behind this one but not so much the execution, this zine was made from sand paper and held together with clips. I didn't like how the pictures were just stuck on and just seemed to be floating in space. 

The zine library gave me a lot of ideas to experiment with.

Police Cadet Anti Bullying Project

Really looking forward to furthering my anti bullying work. I have been working on a little test animation (I have done 2 prior).

I have had quite a few ideas on what style I'm going to do for my animation. The animation will be aimed at year 6-7's which personally I think is too narrow an age group. I was bullied quite badly at school and I would say year 7-9 would be a better age group to target. I will probably bring this up with the police cadets.

Animation style ideas

-Stop motion
Drawing over the top of some of the photographs
Puppets/Shadow puppets
Claymation

-Mixed media (digital and traditional)
Photographic element cut up such as buildings or background images giving it a Dada feel.
Maybe include childrens drawings I could maybe get these from the police cadets so they are more age appropriate.
I could also used patterns in the back grounds or on the characters themselves like I have done in these examples.

I could drawing the scenes in sand or mud. But I don't think that may suit the style or audience I'm going for.


I want my animation to have a zany, gritty, cult, retro feel to it.
I also need to consider if I want my animation to be grayscale with key points in colour, monochrome or full colour.


Points I want to bring across in my animation

• I want to humanize the bully not demonize them, because they are suffering too.
• I want to get the audience involved, maybe by acting out some of the characters this will help make it more relatable and memorable. 
• What support is out there, how to deal and cope with bullying.
• Let them know that bullying can happen at all ages.
• To include consequences of bullying.

Anti Bullying Zine

For my second project of level 5 I chose to do a project on cyber bullying, I have very strong links with this subject matter and have always wanted to do something to raise awareness.

I decided to do an 8 page folded zine, these are easy and cheap to make and distribute if needed.

I have so far done 2 pages of the zine.

The front page, I wanted to use different typefaces to create a cut up dada style. I also wanted to make it quite high contrast so it would stand out and people would be drawn to it but I also wanted to stick with gray scale for the cover just to keep with the typical zine look.

With the first page I wanted to get straight into how to deal with being cyber bullied. I narrowed it down to three simple steps Ignore, Record and Report for bullying offline I would give different advice. I found I was bullied less when I stood up for myself instead of staying quiet. But online standing up for yourself only adds fuel to the fire.

When I'm done I would like to make my zine free and available for people to print out and distribute as long as they keep the end page (which will tell people it was written by me and where contact me).

I want the zine to include why people bully and positive traits which are common among people who are bullied. But I also want people to reach out to the bullies, because bullies bully for a reason and more time needs to be spent on listening so less will be spent on bullying.

This is one of the video's I watched when I was first thinking of making a zine.

I would like to do more zines like this focusing on bullying and mental health.

inspiration dump 5th of October

http://flypingzi.diandian.com/post/2014-07-23/40062285294

http://www.widewalls.ch/editors-pick-the-best-of-september-2014/

 by Chiara Bautista 

by Neiko Ng Illustration

by Emma Uber

Anxiety By Beethy

by Chiara Bautista

by Beau Stanton Visuals

http://hifructose.com/2014/09/27/on-view-beau-stanton-at-the-crypt-of-saint-john-the-baptist/

Out of uni project ideas

I have had a few ideas for projects I want to do outside of uni, my first idea is a t-shirt line most of the proceeds would go to charity most likely http://www.beatbullying.org/.

The t-shirt line would be called Anti-Bullying Pro-creative.

Another idea is a instant film animation I really like this idea BUT The price of the film I would need to make this project happen would be insane.

The ways I could do this feasibility are

• Do it over meany years
• Use a program called poladroid and print them off on photo paper 
• Use an actual instant film camera to take a picture and just edit in the animation on the computer.
• Use lots of repeated pictures 

The camera I would like to use

Fujifilm Instax Mini 8

prints business card/credit card sized prints

Lightweight

The camera itself is quite cheap compared to other instant film cameras

It would also come in handy for projects where I need pictures for sense of place I can just go out snap a photo and it'll be there in my hands in seconds (minutes if you count processing)  and are a nice size to put into a book.

Heres an example of someone doing stop motion with instant photography 

The size of photographs makes me think he used an Instex camera that takes the mini film

Sense of place #3

I used this picture in my artwork