Some more updates and stuff

Kumquat Vectors

Updates

So for this week I've spent a lot of time getting things ready to order/print/make for the show, so I don't have a whole lot of new work to show at the moment, but I'll post the progress I've made on said things so far.

First, I reformatted the alien heads from last week to have a higher dpi so I can use them in more applications without worrying about losing quality if I decide to print them larger. I also created a new one, as well as fixed one of the older ones to be a bit less busy and convoluted in design.

Fixed this one up from a prior design and increased the saturation all around

This is a new design based on something I was working on with a more retro feeling

Secondly, I decided to make stickers to sell at the show using some of these more complicated, vector based designs since I think those will be more truly represented in a digital form rather than trying to print them by hand with so many layers involved. Die cut stickers seems like a good option since they are small and relatively inexpensive so I feel they would be popular in this form, especially given the nature of the designs floating on empty space as they are now. Below is a mock up sheet of the stickers I'm planning on having made (the blue line is for the manufacturer, not part of the final designs).  They are each about 2.25x3" with a 5pt white border around the edges.

I've also updated my thesis with a really short summary. If it needs to be longer, I can definitely
expand on it but I wasn't sure how much would be too much, so I kept it short and simple. I also wrote it in the third person since it felt more applicable to something like a press release or website post which is what it sounded like the gallery needed it for.

Alienation is a body of work by Liam St.Laurent that uses extraterrestrial imagery and photographs of empty streets and rainy days to explore the artist's relationship with feelings of isolation. The photographs capturing singular moments in time are offset by screen printing, where the individualized nature of each hand-pulled print reflects the turbulent nature of life.

That's most of what I visibly have done this week, as the rest of it is just formatting images and making sure resolutions and dpi's are at a good point to print at a large enough scale for the show, or turning the high contrast and "grungy" ufo images into bitmaps so that I can retain their old film look when screen printing them over the weekend and into next week. Going on John's suggestion about how to simplify printing, I am going to have 12 aqua-colored shirts at the show that have one of the "photo" based prints on them for sale as well in solid black ink. I've also contacted Andy Bablo about vinyl for the show and will be working with him this week as well to get some type printed as well as the possibility of one of the alien head designs at a larger scale.

So, A Few Things

Thing 1: I finished my 12th drawing, which I think is a good number for this collection.



Thing 2: I named all my pieces words that relate to beauty culture and the makeup industry.

Overdraw (blue lipstick)
Blinding (fan brush)
Bake (concealer)
Contour (rose gold brush)
Highlight (fluffy brush)
Beat (foundation)
Wispy (Gold Mascara)
Matte (gold/purple lipstick)
Snatched (Pink lipgloss)
Voluminous (silver mascara)
Fleek (eyelash curler)
Smoky (Eyeshadow)

Thing 3: I've started the design of my personal show cards. I'm not sure what info has to be on it. Event info? Project info (statement)?

Thing 4: I wrote my thesis statement and will probably tweak some language.

"A drawing series advocating for the freedom to paint your face."

Those who beat their faces on the daily may use these products to build confidence and express their creativity and are no strangers to the words conceded, selfish, fake, and plastic. The truth is, those who choose to wear makeup do for no one other than themselves. Attempting to impress other people isn't interesting. Most people don’t wear makeup to look “natural,” there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look a little plastic and feel a little vain. The word plastic may be responded to with a thank you. This project embraces the creativity and power makeup provides to look and feel any way, every day. This is unapologetically all about you.

This drawing series, drawn entirely with makeup products, displays the tools that represent creativity and confidence; The power tools. What can’t makeup do? The limit does not exist. These are the products that cause worship and wars over the internet and give the power to face anything the day brings with the most snatched face forward.


Thing 5: I did a test with the wall standoffs and I really like the way they look. There will bee a sheet of white mattboard behind the acetate, slightly not touching it so the shadow is visible. I'm still weary about putting holes, but we'll see.

Thing 6: I did more texting of that side piece I haven't mentioned in a while of cutting "PLASTIC" from lipsticks.

Thing 7: I'm planning on making prints available for the show and am deciding the best way to go about this. Scanning vs. Photographing. Doing this myself vs. having it done. Possibly trying to figure out how to use the illustration printer here because I know people in the past have used it for prints. I'm going to select maybe 5-6 pieces for prints and have a number of each made. That exact number I don't know just yet. 

Updates

New Drawings

Not sure exactly how many of these I'll make, but I'm going to keep going. I took some new phots of the previous ones sans-my fingers too. I also thought about maybe displaying them with the plastic a little squished/distorted to make more shapes with light.

More design ideas

Based on the interest in the alien head design that was on one of the book layout pages, I decided to play with some previous and current imagery in a similar way to see how it would look. I think these are pretty interesting, and I think I might order some as stickers to sell at the show. These could be done as either screen prints or digital prints for the show, though I'm not sure if I'd want to do a series like this or keep it to only one or two combined with the photos and other imagery I have from this semester. If I do a series, screen printing would be a pretty easy way to go about it while incorporating the medium I prefer to work with. I've also been thinking about it and wondering if I should spend these next few weeks prior to the show focusing more on bringing my older ideas together with my current work for the show rather than working on a book, since I find the challenge of integrating the two ideas in a way that both looks good and makes sense more interesting than the book I had been toying around with last week, as I think it would be a better use of my time and would make my show wall feel less like "this, that, and the other thing" and more like an overview of what I've been working on for the last year without coming across like a yard sale of varying ideas and mediums which is how it feels to me at the moment and has been frustrating me for the past few weeks as the show draws closer. Also I could experiment with some of the other alien head shapes I had created for last semester, I just used this one initially since it's easily recognizable and I wanted to see how they would look if they were all based on the same shape.

The alien head from the book page in case anyone wanted a closer look at the details

The photo manipulation from earlier this week with the added u.f.o.

Based on a piece I was working on earlier this year for another class

Another photo manipulation - I kept the eyes more subtle in this one

Playing with another design - I like the gradient effect on the eyes in this one

Making the book, playing with photo editing

Spent this past week gathering all of my pictures and narrowing them down to the ones I like most, or best capture the mood I'm going for in relation to the text I have. The text is about eighty percent ready to go, I just need to go through one last edit and then pair them with the most appropriate photos within the book, as well as choose some highlights to put up on the show wall in vinyl type to give people a preview of what they'll find in the book. I've begun to format the book with photos and text with a few different layouts that repeat in order to keep it a little more interesting than a photo and text on facing pages throughout the whole design. It still needs tweaking, but I think its a decent start at least in order to visualize the rest of it. So far it looks like 40 pages should be a good length with the current layout, but it could also be adapted should I stumble upon a different design solution that works better with a different page count.

I also gave more thought on how I want to incorporate screen printing into the show, as I know it isn't necessary to show everything you do at the show, but as someone who predominately uses silkscreen as a medium, I would really like to showcase some of my abilities, and I think I have found a way to incorporate it that utilizes my skills combined with the photos I'm currently working with. I was playing around with the levels and contrast in photoshop and found that some of the photos I had looked really striking when reduced down to pure black and white imagery. After placing them over a colored background out of curiosity, I realized this was a great way to incorporate silkscreen. I wouldn't do many, probably just two or three for the show wall, though I'd consider possibly printing an edition to sell depending on how well they turn out. I'm set to begin printing them by the end of this week provided school doesn't get canceled with the impending snow.

With these I also began to toy with the idea of further distressing them to match some of the photos I have from earlier this semester where things are grainy and out of focus, or play with depth of field to create somewhat vague imagery, as well as combining them with the "alien" elements of "alienation", to give a nod to the work of last semester and my other classes. So I ended up making these to look sort of like those old photos of supposed UFO's from the 50's and 60's. I had a lot of fun with them and think these might be more what I'd like to screen print for the show, but I'm not sure if the distressing is the best effect or if I should just keep them clean like the imagery up above.