Monday 22 November 2010

multiple darwins...


This is my reference photograph which I found here.

Embossing onto acetate.

Playing with light and shadows.

Sketching.

Stitching onto card.

Embossing onto acetate.

Cutting out of a leaf (this did not work well AT ALL!- apparently if you start cutting into a leaf it loses a lot of its structural integrity...)

Cutting out paper.

Drawing with text.

Embossing onto card.

Burning onto wood.

Using photoshop to make an image drawn from tiny ape illustrations.

Using photoshop to alter colours and repeat.

Sewing-pins onto polystyrene.

My latest college project is to work from a photograph and to produce at least 20 different illustrations from it using different techniques and materials. Our subject was chosen for us and I was given Charles Darwin! We are supposed to portray something of the subjects character/achievements or something about them through these illustrations (I have definitely not achieved this in every one!) So, for example- Darwin was a naturalist so have used natural(ish) colours, and made a picture of him from apes (evolution theory), stitched a picture of him onto a world map (supposed to be a ship's course- as he went on a 5 year voyage around the world on his ship 'the Beagle) etc etc, some links I've made are more tenuous than others!! This is a selections of some of my efforts- I'm not amazingly pleased with any of them- I probably like the one made out of pins the best though, if I had to pick one. I have to say I have not enjoyed this project at all- I dislike drawing people and have found it quite difficult to be inspired by my subject choice.

Logo Idea






This is a logo idea for me (to use on my website if I ever get around to making one!)- it needs work but thought I'd put it on here anyway.

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Hot Air Balloon






This was part of a group project at college to create a poster on an assigned section of the college handbook. Our group was given appeals and we used a hot air balloon to symbolise your appeal 'taking off' with weights hanging off it that would hold your appeal back. My job was to make the hot air balloon which I did using cut out paper and stitching. I have also made it into a repeating pattern. Mainly just because I like repeating pattern! Not sure what I think about the clouds though. It looked a bit plain without them but maybe they need to be more ordered rather than random....

Saturday 13 November 2010

Poppy











This year I have seen several people on T.V with sparkly poppies- at first I couldn't decide what I thought about this- good idea or disrespectful? After quite a lot of thought I've decided that decorating my poppy is respectful in my own way- illustrating/making/decorating things is what I do and I think it's nice to be able to do it to draw attention to a good cause.
I've just been doing some research into these 'sparkly poppies' click here to read more.

Friday 12 November 2010

Camper Van Pattern


I made this a while ago as a present for a friend who really likes camper vans!

Me, Myself and I Posters






So... this time last year we did a massive module for college entitled 'me, myself and I' one tiny bit of this module was to produce 3 A3 posters depicting ourselves. I went for the idea of doing 3 different 'sides' of me- each has a 'side view' of me (which incidentally was one of the first vector images I ever managed to make- I am rubbish at using illustrator!! so I was pretty pleased with that even if it did take me a ridiculously long time.... all good practice I suppose) The three themes were arty/student me, ill (m.e) me and 'grown up'/responsible me (ha ha). I don't know if you will be able to see them that well on the blog as they are supposed to be A3 but each one has little illustrations and text which illustrate my three 'sides'. Not my favourite pieces of work but I thought I'd post them up for you to look at all the same!

Monday 8 November 2010

Time Line- Close Up







My brother in law requested that I put up a post with 'close up' pictures of my concertina book/ timeline- (see earlier post) so, here they are!


Copyright © Joanna Birkett. All Rights Reserved. 

Card making with Emma and Helen




My sister and her boyfriend got engaged recently and the girls that I child mind sometimes wanted to make them a card- this was our result! (Quite restrained for us really, we usually end up making something with lots of glitter and glue and making a lot of mess!)


Copyright © Joanna Birkett. All Rights Reserved. 

Our Etched Kitchen Tiles





These are the tiles that we are now using on our kitchen walls. I had to do a project at college on print processes- part of which involved using laser cutting. I decided to do some simple illustrations of kitchens gadgets/utensils and to etch them onto ceramic tiles using the laser cutter at college. I'm quite happy with the results although they do tend to get dirty quite easily- I wonder if there is some sort of varnish? I could maybe use to fill the etched section...


Copyright © Joanna Birkett. All Rights Reserved.