Post acid or post fun?

I found this gig poster as I was looking through Facebook, and I don't get it.
I've listened to Wavves for years and this poster doesn't suit the style of their music at all. They're primarily a bunch of skaters that take acid and make good music, and this doesn't really reflect that. What happened to the slime green and weird cats and diy-esque photo montages?
It all just looks a bit dull for a band who dressed up as an alien and taught him how to skate for their video "post acid"
I think this reinforces that colour and context of album covers and posters must reflect the music, so it makes sense and engages their audience, I need to make sure I consider this when resolving my one a week album brief for OUIL603.

In comparison to:

Pobiak - Gig Posters

// Original interview here

I stumbled across this article through Awesome Merch and it perfectly sums up everything I want from this year I guess, or at least a big 75% of it. I want to be good at poster design, focusing mainly on music.
Adam Pobiak is really interesting as he draws upon the psychedelic style I'm currently looking at for Studio Brief 1 and 2 for this module. He says he took inspiration from The Fillmore posters of the sixties, something I have being unknowingly drawing upon without knowing the name of, which is pretty cool.
I find it interesting he prints his own, and it raises the question whether my resolutions would have to be screenprinted, a process I find beautiful but incredibly hard to get my head around.

I think the colours are too dark for me but the overall compositions and hidden details are something I want to recreate within my own work.

Can you please share three bits of advice for any aspiring gig poster artists or artists in general?

Don’t get into it for the money, but if you love doing it don’t stop doing it. If you really love doing it, and do it for long enough you will likely end up much better at it and getting some attention for it.... or at least being able to take “business” trips to Flatstock to get drunk with your friends who were also ill-advised enough to get themselves stuck in same profession.

Tattooists that make me want to stab people (in a good way)

I have always had a great interest in tattoos and tattooing, and an opportunity of a possible apprenticeship that is very loose and mostly discussed with my tattooist while he's tattooing me, but I guess it's planted a seed.
Or made the seed that was already there sprout a little. 
If I was to do this, I would begin by shadowing him and learning more about his process, I would also need to adapt my paintings into things that could be tattooed, cleaner edges, outlines and possibly simpler to begin with. 

Armelle STB
Her work is so beautiful and clean, working only in black I think her tattoo's are striking, and something that I would LOVE to have created.

Beatrice Myself
Maybe it's a theme that most of the tattooists I love are French. Beatrice Myself's work is stranger, there's a more definitive style of old school stick and poke. I think my work has elements of both of these artists and a combination of the two could be really somethin'.

One image, multiple opportunities

I recently painted a series of birds for an upcoming deadline. I shared it on my Facebook page and from ONE SHARE I got:

- A message about a commission, which i'm going to take on, it's a simple painting in this style and is a good way to make quick money.

- A message asking me to be involved in some live painting/exhibition on Halloween, painting birds, I'm already painting somewhere else on Halloween so had to turn this one down. 

- A message asking me to be involved in an exhibition at Studio 24 on Mabgate, for christmas, and i've been given free rein on what I put in.

Also from the last one, the organiser of the Studio 24, Dean, wants me to work with him curating an exhibition of emerging artists in Leeds. This is something I'm thinking of discussing with Matt/Fred about our courses work, maybe a call for submissions. I will also ask Sister Said (a collective I'm a part of with the same aims) if they want to be involved too. 

I don't think I realised the magnitude of social media and getting work out there until the beginning of third year, it seems that the more I post, the more interest I have. This shows I need to keep updating these platforms for a bigger chance of commissions and opportunities. 

Questions and dreams and how to achieve them?

In anticipation of my tutorial with John, I put together some questions/things I need help with:
- I've been asked to produce a poster for a festival and I have no idea what to charge, or how to go about it?
- What's the best way to price work and organise the information?
- What needs to be included in an invoice?
- How do I balance commissions and work?
- Tell me what to do?
- Help?

We were also asked to come up with some dreams of ours, I assume professional dreams because my ultimate dream would be to make a massive den and never leave it.
Dreams:
- Have a successful online print store.
- Become a tattoo artist (this is an idea in the pipelines, and if I were to do it, I would want to be great at it)
- Be able to support myself.
- Be able to have time to volunteer with Horses. Something I no longer have time for and it makes me sad.


Aims for Level 6:
- Update website and have an updated online portfolio
- Don't die of stress
- Become quicker at resolving things
- Keep organising everything to make things run smoothly
- Don't die of stress
- Become more professional when responding to clients
- Keep networking because it opens SO MANY DOORS.

The Brunswick - Art Market

I attended an art market this weekend at The Brunswick, set up by I Am Collective. 

I set up the stall with my friend Bobbi, and we screen printed new stock and had a really fun day full of talks about puppies and typefaces. 

It was quiet, but we both managed to cover our costs for the day (not accounting for all the red wine I drank)

I was worried we weren't going to sell anything due to it being so quiet but it picked up around 3:00pm, which cut it quite fine. 

A guy bought two prints of work I exhibited at North Bar last year, and wants to use it for an EP cover. I told him to email me so I have time to work out the details, I'm happy for him to use it but I have a habit of being quite blasé and letting people have my work. 

"Yeah dude, don't worry about it, just have it I have loads!" or something to that effect, so I bought myself some time to NOT do that. 

Overall it was a productive day, and I realised I have A LOT of stock to take to Thought Bubble. 

Thought Bubble '15

I got an email the other day asking me if I want a table for Thought Bubble '15 (I was on the reserve list) and I don't really know what to do about it.
Matt told me to stop being a silly sausage.
Orlaith and I applied for the table about 6 months ago but missed it, so of course we spent our time on other things like watching entire box sets on Netflix and the like, NOT making work for a festival we weren't going to be selling our work at.
Now we have roughly three weeks, and i'm using the word roughly to make it less scary.

Pros
- Exposure
- Fun times
- Make money
- Get seen
- Massive opportunity
- If we say no, will it burn bridges? They might not ask us again

Cons
- We have SO MUCH work to be doing
- Will we have time to get stock together?
- It's pretty scary, what if i'm shit?
- Will we fill the table
- Will I be able to balance uni work and other client deadlines with this?

Even after all the cons I still think we should do it, my heart says yes and my brain is saying "yeah but hang on and think about it and don't be a total div"

So I STILL don't know what to do.

I found this by Michael Gillette and I think it's such a beautiful redesign. He reimagined all of the Bond books by Ian Fleming. 

What really interests me about this is the use of hand lettered type, it's something I really want to work to improve this year and i'm working on redesigning a logo for a local Psychedelic band, and this typeface is perfect. 

I had ideas of going really sort of Pink Floyd/Jefferson Airplane psych posters of the seventies, with a little bit of Mucha composition mixed in, but this has made me think in a completely different direction. 

Ohh Deer - Pillow Competition

I decided to submit my work to the following competition. 

I think it will be beneficial to get my work online and out there, and it was really quick to turn around as I used an existing pattern. If you don't enter, you don't get anywhere do you?

Ohh Deer


It's that time of year again, our annual pillow fight is upon us! We're looking of course for 

cushion designs to add to our collection.

Boring Bits:

All artwork submitted must be in JPEGformat.

The dimensions of your file must be2715px x 2715px

Uploads close midnight on Friday 6 November.

All artwork rights will remain yours.

All commission payments will be sent out after the competition has ended and our 28 day return policy has expired for all competition orders made. Payment will be made via PayPal.

SCORING SYSTEM

You can boost your work to the top of the store page, our ranking system updates daily and is based on Facebook like & shares, twitter and pinterest (1pt each), and sales (100pt each)

Artwork I submitted:

Mister Finch, Embroidery and Moths

Mister Finch is an artist I found a while ago, through my summer sketchbook i've been exploring adding embroidery to my work, something that happened by accident, but I like it.

For my Thought Bubble Zine I'm going to create an amalgamation of the things i've been looking at, which is Moths and Insects. I've gravitated towards pencil drawing and building upon that. 

Process:

- Draw the Moths

- Embroider into them

- Scan, Paginate, add more things (?)

- Print onto lovely stock, maybe different colours

- Hand bind with stitching, and add embroidery to all five zines. 

I think that through adding to each individual zine will make them more interesting and personal.

Mister Finch describes the process of making his insects, which are decidedly more 3D than mine will be, but it's interesting to know:

Each is made with vintage needlework and is stuffed very tightly. The legs are bound in layers and layers of floral tape, crepe and tissue paper and glue.

An artist that is more 2D, and will prove more interesting to scan is Sparklymouse, who prints fashion photographs onto fabric and reworks them. I think for this purpose I will be fine stitching into paper, but it's interesting for future reference (Apparently we can do this process in the print room!)