TOM HAGARTY 0800982 Independent Practice
CCTV
LINO From the end of second year, over summer and the start of the third I have been experimenting with lino cuts. I have looked at artists such as Edward Bawden to look at different ways of cutting in to the lino and patterns that seem to work to a high standard. I so far have six 30x30 plates of lino all with something to say to the viewer. My work has looked in to themes of feminism, inspiration, ‘Big Brother’, scientific and spiritual, deception and hope in darkness. With these prints I feel that I have gained a strong amount of skill with using just black and white but colour is the next step from which I would need to master. Either using watercolour to fill in the white or colour based prints. Colour is something I would need to try out as I would need to find it if it suits my style of work.
CCTV came to me one day when i was walking round my hometown seeing all the cameras on every building and how Twitter and Facebook tags where you are or what shop you go in to. I wanted to desgin some imagery to express how every person is being watched. The perspective of how the robots move down the hill help create some depth within the print. Having no typography on my print puts a lot of pressure on the imagery to narrative the message I want to convey. I have looked at the artist Edward Bawden and others to get ideas and see different skills. His work really inspired me to do lino.
Anyone Can Wear A Suit
These two lino cuts were experimenting with using typography within the design. Both have different apsects, where in Anyone Can Wear A Suit the typography is secondary to the image but with Life Stage the typogaphy is the main focus and the imagery supports it. With ACWAS the four corners have planetary symbols of Earth, Mars, Venus and Jupiter. I added these to go with the rhyme of Men are from Mars, Woman are from Venus, to hopefully
show how it applies to different people. The closer rough cuts within her face help her stand out and give a nice personal bespoke feel. Life Stage was based on a quote I heard from the film Sucker Punch. The film really inspired me to use a stage as a frame for the text. The ‘g’ was lost off the word something, which was due to a mistake by me. Now I have been unsure about taking off the ‘g’ on anything but I feel that it gives more personality to the print.
LIFE STAGE
OM
With OM i was looking in to spirituality and how OM has the same frequency of the world, so they say, at 7.23. As well as being linked to the Chakras of the body. This is a very simple design but carving out all the lino so there would be white all around the lotus flower took some time, but in the end the effect it gives works really well and give texture to the print. The border around this needs to be a bit thicker, an extra centimetre cloud would make the difference of being good or bad.
Dive
Dive was an experiment on trying out having more of a black image and getting shading to work with it. I find that this design is not as strong as the others I have made. I was trying to show how someone can find their treasure even in the darkest times.
Deadly Beauty
Sharks are one of natures beautiful but deadliest killing forces of the sea. I wanted to show the more beautiful side to them. From watching a load of shark DVDs I felt the best way was to have the viewer as he was at the sea bed looking up with sharks swimming around them. Playing with the refelection of water and getting it to give the feeling from light to dark was tricky but I feel I have successfully.
ME To describe ones self is the hardest thing someone can do. So I made up a list of what I like and what I do and decided to create a split screen effect video. This was to show the crazy jumbled mess of everything about me. If you know me the video would make sense to you, but as an outsider would deem me odd or crazy and my video a jumbled mess with too much going on. This is something I would need to work on as it wasn’t a video for a friend. My idea and experimental test was successful but the video itself was a failure. The sound was off and some bits were louder than others. Maybe if I was going to redo this I can use a more up to date programme for the over complicated split screen, or edit it so it jumps from one to the next on a single screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8OtnZFlHzg
Dogme 95 So in response to my “ME” video the challenge was to make a Dogma 95 film. We had to follow 8 of the 10 Dogma 95 rules and if they where broken we needed to explain why. With my film I did break one rule of using digital effects at the end for the credits, as my first attempt was too long. But all sound was natural and filmed by hand. The storyboard was useful to explain to my camera man and plan what I needed to do. The films intentions was to show how preperation leads to a good outcome. When I first made this film the dance was too short (edited like ‘The Amateur Drummer’) and the ending was too long. As well there was a jump from one room to the next. With my final film I corrected the jumps by linking a small 3 second walk, and added a digital ending to give more time for the dance. I feel that with more planning I could have made it even better. From this I have learnt that I need to take more time and not rush in to an idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo
http://vimeo.com/30731070
BIKE MAGAZINE
Here are some ideas for the front cover, content page and ideas of laying out the content for my bicycle book or magazine. Content was something I struggled with as I felt I didn’t have enough to make a book, but designing it was fun with sketching ideas out. The only thing I had to put in was something I was experimenting with to cover my bike in comics. So a ‘how to’ feature was going to be placed in my book/magazine as people all like customising their own stuff. I found finding other things to put in for content was hard as I wanted something more of my own and not take off some other magazine. In uni I found a book of 100 greatest bicycle posters so I decided to play around with the posters and create them in a new way for an artistic style and entertaining look.
P U S H
After re-designing the posters I felt I could use them in my book to help my experiment of making a handmade book; a book for people to have for entertainment and their love of bikes. For the cover I used one of my ideas of a close-up of a sprocket taken from one of the old posters. Using a sans-serif typeface to play with the contrast to the old poster design. With the typography this came randomly as I was playing with the leading. With the typography like this it looks more like a worded logo. I printed the images on to cartridge paper back to back. So planning how to print each image to be next to the right one took some time to print right. With using cartridge paper it gives some texture to the book and its content as well as giving good weight to the designs. I have made a more complicated book in my previous years in workshops, but they were just small hardback notebooks. With this book though it was more about making a cheap, abundance of books.
I decided to make ten editions within a week. It took a day to print it all out in the correct way and a day to cut out the pages and make the books. While I was making the books I realised how I had no bleed and some images when they were back to back were not in line with each other. Next time I will give some bleed so my images match up. Now with ten books I took them to handmade and bound to sell for ÂŁ3.
P U S H
THE PURPOSES OF THIS BOOK IS TO SHOW A SIDE OF BICYCLE POSTER IN A REDESIGNED STYLE. TAKEN FROM 100 YEARS OF BICYCLE POSTER BY JACK RENNERT I HAVE CHOSEN THESE POSTERS BECAUSE I AND I HOPE YOU FIND THEM ENTERTAINING AND WELL DESIGNED. WITH RESPECT TO THE ARTISTS AND COMPANIES.
MADE AND DESIGNED BY TOM HAGARTY
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1. Henri Thiriet. Omega Bicycles 1895. 2. Engelmann. Pirelli Tires. 1952 3. Unkown Artist. Kynoch Cycles. 1923 4. Fleet Illustrations ltd. Raleigh. 1972 5. Integral Propaganda Tecnica ltd. Caloi bicycles. 1972 6. Decam. Ceatenol Bicycles 1897 paris. 7. Luis Velez. Windsor Bicycles 1971 8. Unkown Artist .Clement Bicycles. 1900-3.
http://issuu.com/hagarty/docs/push
HANDMADE & BOUND
Here is the Handmade & Bound video that me Justin Devon Moore and James Devereaux-Ward put together. Justin asked me and James to help out filming as he felt more cameras would be better, as it was so busy. I loved working and helping out a friend, more so when its for something so amazing as Handmade & Bound. I have had some filming experience before so I felt comfortable. While at the event some people got very moody with filming but others didn’t mind at all as it was for the event. As it was in a new venue, we also got footage of around and in St.Brides. The letterpress workshop was very interesting to film with all the small leadings and typography on show. When editing the film we had a lot of footage between us and picking out what was good to use took some time but it was worth it in the end. The final outcome is very pleasing and shows the busy vibes of the event. http://vimeo.com/33186725
ROBOT BOXER Now this might look a bit random but this was an experiment for improving my drawing skills so when I live-trace a drawing in illustrator the detail would not be lost, as well as helping with using illustrator for digital imagery. When I screen print I like to vectorise my images so they will be nice and clean for when they are printed out. This also helps me test out colours and positions for when i print any design. The reason I drew a robot boxer was that I made a list of things I like and randomly picked two words, those words were ‘Robot’ and ‘British’. I added colour on illustrator as well as adding some lighter colours to represent shine off the robots body. The colours can be seen to be very stereotypical towards Britian, so hopefully the viewer can see what I have drawn.
ROBOTLAND Robotland is something I really enjoyed doing but was very different to what I normally do. I was having a really strange day where I was just fed up with all these people who are fake to themselves; pretending to be something they are not and how magazine, music, celebrities and TV create and inform how people should be. One example can be questionnaires about either sex, how people try to attract the opposite sex and so on. I know how this might not apply to everyone in the world but it does to most people. I overhear peoples conversations about a boy they know and how now he’s changed because of his new friends or his girlfriend. I chose Wonderland as I felt, being a fashion magazine, it related to these themes. I then played with the peoples faces inside the magazine - not because I dislike Wonderland, some articles are not too bad, it was just the first one I saw. Turning every person in to a robot seemed like a strong way to put my message across. I used lots of different ways to cover their faces but mostly I drew on to a piece of paper and glued it over the heads of the models. This way was easy and also gave me a lot of options for both colour and creating different robot heads. Another was just using a fine liner straight on top of the face and body. The third technique I used was tracing paper which I coloured over the top to creat a filter, as the background image still came through. I feel that the tracing paper is the strongest visually, mainly down to the fact that you can see what is behind. If I wanted to make this more public I would have to take my own photographs. I could see these works in a book or for a poster mimicing certain adverts in a comical way which expresses my initial mesage.
http://issuu.com/hagarty/docs/ robotland
B&W&Red. Black & White animals: Killer Whale Sheep Panda Penguin Pager Zebra Magpie Tiger Scunk Cow Leama Badger
Trying to find ones self is hard and trying to figure out how you work is harder, its easy to tell someone what they do but when it comes to self analysing that is the tricky part. I just had the idea of playing with lots of black and white animals and try and find a comical disabilty that they posess or a funny design side. After listing what black & white animals I could think of I started designing my first one which was the penguin. As everyone knows penguins can not fly but put a rocket on its back and it will, and that is what I have done. After drawing it out I scanned it in to illustrator to vector it and seperate the colours to screen print. When I was screen printing I used a high gloss black paint and then a matte red paint for the rocket. This created a nice look as the black gloss stood out compaired to the red matte paint. While I was designing this I was also working on somthing else which is next.
FAIRY TALES
The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales are world famous. Penguin Books are holding a student competition to create a new book cover. These are my designs for the book. I wanted them to have a lino print look to them. Getting a good enough drawing to represent a story out of the fairy tales was fun and a good challenge. I read most of the fairy tales in the book I have to get an understanding for the stories and help sketch them out. I wanted two charcter from each fairy tale or an iconic part of the story. And interacting in any possible way e.g. the bird eating the bread. One story that stuck out for me was Little Red Cap (Little Red Riding Hood). Have such an iconic symbol for fairytales is a must have. But how I wanted it to look was the wolf was on the front cover looking toward Little Red who was on the back cover/spine. So the viewer would look at the whole book, and that with the wolf on the front it could be any old wolf out of a story. The Second was Hansle and Gretel. A well known scene from this is a bird eating the bread they lay down to find their way back home from the dark woods. The bird was tricky to draw it in a natural postion. Pictures off the internet helped but I had to take different images of a crow to make the postion I wanted but in the end I feel happy with my outcome.
What I found hard over all was drawing people in a lino printed style with a childish twist, all I ended up with was a cross from a lego man and a playmobil man. If I add an nose or something more human they would look more normal. This applies for Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Cap. For the third I used the story of Rupunzal. The prince every day rides past the tower hearing Rupunzal sing and falls in love with her. So I wanted to have the prince looking at the tower listening to her song. I felt that by intregrating the two with a tree to add to the forest. With the tower I tried to show how high it is being taller than trees but it could maybe a bit more taller. As for the prince he is intergrated with a tree leading against it looking toward the tower with his back towards the viwer. Now the prince’s hair and hands are outlined so they stand out from the tree and his body. Compaired to the other human figures I have drawn the prince differs and is more like the wolf with its actions and playing with the tree. The prince would be on the front cover looking towards the tower which is on the back cover. With the drawing finished I scanned them in to Illustrator to lay them out for screen printing.
SCREEN PRINTING OVER LAY My intentions of my design was to overlay the storys to create different darker colours to play with the aspect of the dark side of the fairytales. I seperated the different stories to screen print in Cyan, Yellow and Magenta. With them all seperated like this I could move them and play with different positions and colour effects. I felt these prints were most successful. With added an extra yellow tree to some of the prints as it had some negative space. Working with overlayed colour is an exciting process as you are never too sure what you will get. My favourite print is the one below which has a load of colours blending together.
Penguin wanted the title on the front cover as well as the spine and the given information on the back. I personally wanted the design with no text on the front cover so passers by would be intrigued as to why there was no title.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
From the land of fantastical castles, vast lakes and deep forests, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected a treasury of fairy stories, full of giants and dwarfs, witches and princesses, magical beasts and cunning children. From classics such as ‘The Frog-Prince’ and ‘Hansel and Grettel’ to the delights of ‘Ashputtel’ or ‘Old Sultan’, all hold a timeless magic that has enthralled children for centuries.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Let the Brothers Grimm take you on an amazing adventure . . .
This is the the print I decided to use for my book cover. The process of using analog in to digital is a key way of how I work.
COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED I S B N 978-0-141-33120-1 U.K. CAN. U.S.A.
9
£7.99 $5.99 $4.99
780141 331201
puffin.co.uk
P U F F I N P U F F I N
C L A S S I C S
C L A S S I C S
The typeface used is Helvetica. I wanted to use something less fancy as my first idea was to use a Gothic German typeface. I feel that having a sans-serif typeface revitilises the book and makes it contemporary.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
From the land of fantastical castles, vast lakes and deep forests, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected a treasury of fairy stories, full of giants and dwarfs, witches and princesses, magical beasts and cunning children. From classics such as ‘The Frog-Prince’ and ‘Hansel and Grettel’ to the delights of ‘Ashputtel’ or ‘Old Sultan’, all hold a timeless magic that has enthralled children for centuries.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Let the Brothers Grimm take you on an amazing adventure . . .
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED I S B N 978-0-141-33120-1 U.K. CAN. U.S.A.
9
£7.99 $5.99 $4.99
780141 331201
puffin.co.uk
P U F F I N P U F F I N
C L A S S I C S
C L A S S I C S
INTAGLIO GRIMM This was a workshop offered by the uni and it really interested me in having a new way to print, using greyscale photographs. My design was linked to Little Red Riding Hood, taking photographs from my own file to collage together. What I wanted to get was a creepy dark feel with the print and image. I feel this is achieved by the man and girl looking straight towards the viewer as if they are being watched. This workshop really gave me a strong idea for other printing methods, as we were shown chine-colle technique, a fancy French word for tissue and glue. Cutting out the shapes we wanted, we then layered the tissue paper on top of the inked palet, glue side facing up so as the paper was pressed on to the plate it would sick on. With my experiment of this one of the eyes fell off the masked man and the girls shape moved. Yet this has added to the strangeness of my print.
EVALUATION
This first semester has been a crazy ride as I have been unsure with what I should do as I have skills in different types of mediums. Despite this by the end of the semester I have found what I really enjoy doing. Printing is a very strong way of expressing myself, and having something in your hands instead of on a screen. With all my work together in this portfolio I can see that I love being hands on with what I am designing. Drawing up ideas and designs to be scanned in to my computer to clean up and use for screen printing or trying out different colours to a drawing and seeing what works. This process of analog to digital back to analog is a strong way of how I work. My lino prints have a strong social message, their black and white contrast and way of combining the text within in imagery works really well. I feel they would work well for illustrating stories. The next step would be using different colours in more of a jigsaw style or suicide prints to create a one off coloured print. Other ways would be using the chine-colle technique I have learned or using watercolour paint to fill the white space.
The Dogme 95 brief and the other videos I have made were very helpful with learning how things need more of an in-depth plan and understanding why things are needed to be improved upon. Even the small things such as using a tripod can effect the outcome. These ideas can be taken in to all different ways of creating. With this in mind I started to sketch out editorial ideas for my
book, looking at different books and magazines. From a fashion magazine to a book on bikes and how they differ. In the end, I chose to do something a bit different than I planned but the idea of the experiment was to understand books, magazines, and the processes of making one and without getting worried about the content. Halfway through I lost my way, making designs I had never done before. I do like the outcome of Robotland as it touches on a subject that I feel strongly about but maybe my choice of medium was wrong and I should have made a screen print or a lino print. After I finished Robotland I wanted to create some screen prints and try and find my style. From looking at old work, I concluded that I worked in monochrome mostly every time. This is something I am strong at and looking in to ways to create an image with just black and white, which people can recognize. That is how I came to the idea of black and white animals in a book. This was a fun idea but something felt wrong, I was not challenging myself enough. By using black and white animals, I was finding something to fit in to my style and taking an easy way to create something.
While making, the designs for the Brothers Grimm fairy tales I found what I enjoyed doing was designing imagery for book covers or illustrations for text. The reason I did not design them in a Lino print was that I could not get the colours blending to create a different colour as I can with using screen-printing.
This was still a good skill to learn but I feel that my lino work has something I can look in to more with this. I have been blind to my work and not considering what interesting design I accomplished with lino.
FMP So with this in mind I would like to explore in to lino cuts more. By illustrating stories or poems to make my own book. As I will be using lino I could be able to make more prints than if I was using wood as lino is softer and not as complicated as wood. Some ideas I have had is looking in to the Grimm Fairytales with a new contemporary twist. As there are so much different stories, I will have a wide range of subject matter in which to create. Another is poems, they also can give a wide range of subjects to create from. One of my favourite poets is Ted Hughes. By making a book I look in to designing the cover, headings and illustrations. This will also help with showing editorial skills. The possibility of creating bookmarks and other extras that comes with a book.
BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS
DVDs
Artmonsky, R. (2010) Art for Everyone: Contemporay Lithographs LTD. Artmonsky Arts.
Shark Week, Box Set (2010) Directed by Jeff Kurr. [DVD] Discovery Channel.
Bass, Kirkham (2011) Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design. Laurence King.
Soul Bass: On Titles (2004)
Bliss, D. (1964) A History of Wood Engravings. Spring Books, Westbook House. London
EXHIBITIONS
Edwards, Leonard (2009) Fixed. Laurence King. London
The Fry Art Gallery (2011) The North West Essex Collection. Saffron Walden, Essex.
Grabowski, Fick. (2009) Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes. Heller, S. (2007) New Vintage Type: Classic Fonts for the Digital Age. Thames & Hudson Ravilious, E. (2005) Edward Bawden: Design. Antique Collectors’ Club. Suffolk. Rennert, J. (1973) 100 Years of Bicylce Poster. Darien House: London. Wilson, E. (1994) 8000 Years of Ornament: An Illustrated Handbook of Motifs. British Museum Press.
The Natural History Museum (2011) The Collections. South Kensington, London.