JESUS 2.0
This is a project I’ve been working on called Jesus 2.0. It’s an infographic guide to performing some of JC’s most popular miracles, printed on communion wafers. Pretty sweet huh? Yes, I know, it’s potentially offensive. However, my intentions for this project were primarily to amuse, rather than to offend. I do love the idea of sending these as direct mail to Roman Catholic churches; the edginess and potential to get a big reaction excites me. However, I feel the chances of my concept and design work being appreciated by say, the Pope, is approximately nil. That’s what I like about this idea; it has both the ability to amuse and to offend. So my two target audiences would be the Atheist community and the Christian community. I think I developed some unusual and funny visual metaphors, albeit some more strained than others. I wanted it to be modern and relevant. I’m not concerned about the symbols being instantly and correctly interpretable; it’s that action of puzzling over each metaphor that will engage the audience.
I acquired the wafers online. I couldn’t make do with foam core fakeries, as I felt that tactile element, the texture and weight of the wafers, would help me connect with the viewer through the sense of touch. Rather than sticking prints of each symbol onto the surface of each disc of communion bread, I want to print each symbol in food colouring, so that each wafer would remain perfectly edible. I do think that communion wafers are the perfect carrier for my infographics, and I’m piggy-backing on the powerful inherent symbolism. The wafers are made in such a way that a congregation in practice is able to break them into parts for distribution, and that action of distribution among brothers and sisters becomes a metaphor for the spreading of my message.
I used a nasty compact camera to document my research, experimentation and development of this project. Here I’m feeding my brain with infographic goodness.
Infographics are dead interesting. In case you’re unfamilliar with them, I’m going to be a wikipediaphile and copy-paste some information about them to clue you up…
My dear friend Wikipedia says “Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge.These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information.” wow Wikipedia, that’s fascinating! do go on…
” Today information graphics surround us in the media, in published works both pedestrian and scientific, in road signs and manuals. They illustrate information that would be unwieldy in text form, and act as a visual shorthand for everyday concepts such as stop and go.”
Next follows some of my brain vomit…just throwing some ideas down onto paper 
. I’m trying to come up with a symbol that says “YOU ARE JESUS 2.0″, in other words, the second-coming. You have to be careful with hierarchy of information; if i’d placed the pointing hand below JC it would have given it an Uncle Sam thing, “Jesus wants YOU”.
There’s some experiments on the above sheet that explore the cursing of the fig tree. I’d never heard of this one before, but it’s the equivalent to me hurling verbal abuse at the fridge upon finding it empty. I didn’t develop this one any further as it felt too obscure, but I had fun with it anyway.
Above I’m experimenting with the feeding of the 5,000, curing the lepers and the Resurrection . If you want to feed 5k, why not get a job at McDonald’s? The curing of the lepers kind of became the curing of the social lepers, with symbols including spotty geeks and a tube of acne cream. The Resurrection became the incredible feat of getting out of bed on a Sunday morning after an alcohol fueled Saturday night…I’m going to hell .
Water into wine was a toughie. I was thinking student loan into Jagermeister as an alternative, but it just didn’t work. Eventually I thought why not turn the miracle on its head and do wine into water? Urine is about 95% water.
Experimenting with raising a mummy, walking on water and the calming of the storm.
Ta-da.
Fluttering at the edge of dreams
I found myself messing around with symmetrical patterns this evening, and it got me thinking about moths and butterflies. They both have exquisite patterns on their wings, but moths are normally less brilliantly coloured. Wikipediaphile and proud, I made a quick curiosity-fueled google search. What’s interesting is that there are often ultraviolet patterns and hues in a moth’s wings that we cannot see, but which may be seen by other moths. How cool is that?
I decided that get Photoshop to do what it does best; making me feel like a God. This was just for fun, but I’m sure I’ll find a place for these dudes in one of my next illustrations. If you happen to be a web-surfing lepidopterist with a lot of free time, these may amuse you 
Untitled from AnimateArt on Vimeo.
New Stuff
Here I am, back with some shiny new stuff as promised. I’ve literally just completed this illustration, and I’ve got a couple of alternative versions for you to chew on I’ve also uploaded a video of its creation, which I’ve no doubt you’ll find utterly enthralling 
~Intensify~
The smoke took a few hours to paint, so I cut that part out. Enjoy!
Untitled from AnimateArt on Vimeo.
I don’t even know where to begin!
I’ve been busy. I have so much to show you that I haven’t a clue where to begin. So, I’m going to leave you with a link to my shop for now, as it has prints of a few of my shiny new illustrations for you to look at. I think it’s time I started using my blog properly and posting work as I create it.
Some New Stuff
Hello again, poor neglected blog. It is official, I’m an art student….again.
I’ve had a bit of a shock to my system;this college actually gives you stuff to do, and lots of it! We get live briefs, studio units, visual recording (drawing, painting from life) computers in art and design, AS photography (almost as much work as the graphics!) and contextual studies. I’ve had to become acquainted with a fine liner; all annotation and initial sketching must be done with one. I found this hard at first because I’m painfully embarrassed about the appearance of my hand writing; each sentence is a disjointed spidery trail of inky shame. My tutors assure me that it makes my worksheets look energetic and creative
We have four weeks on each graphics project. The first week is for research, the second for experimentation, the third for development and the fourth for producing a final outcome. The experimentation is a fast and furious business, with inks, paints and chalks flying this way and that across the classroom. This is such a different way of working, I usually sit and work on the same drawing for hours, slavishly rendering every detail…so this is a real breath of fresh air! I feel like I’ve been freed up creatively.However,I haven’t found the projects we’ve worked on so far to be particularly exciting-Christmas wrapping paper (shudder).
Anyway, we’ve had a week off, giving me time to work on some of my own projects. Click on each image to see it larger.
Serpentine Dexterity
This started out as a sketch of a spring, but it evolved into something much more interesting. See, I got bored and started playing about with the shape of the coils as I drew them. The hands idea sprung from the murky depths of my subconscious as I finished the coils. Took me about two hours in total. Credit and my thanks goes to stockyourselfout for uploading a wealth of beautiful hand references.
Hallucinogenic Twins
Chameleons that induce hallucinogenic episodes in both predators and prey with trippy optically illusionary patterns 
Once again, please don’t expect to be favoured with a further explanation, I just felt like it. Alternatively, you could see this as “two chameleons at a Bridget Riley exhibition”, entirely up to you .
I painted the original chameleon in mixed media, using ink, charcoal, oil pastel, watercolour pencils and carbon. I used rubbings and scratching away with a scalpel to get the rough texture down. The tail made my head spin; a spiral within a spiral! I then scanned it in, mirrored it, pieced it together and used a little nifty digital collaging to add pebbles to the skin to further describe the texture.
Tiny Destiny
An epic conflict! Frenetic legs fumble in a furious fight! Two great insectoid titans struggle to control the fate of the die!
I don’t know much about the technicalities of digital art, so I just figured stuff out as I went along…
This started out as a sketchbook doodle. I’d been thinking about the concept of destiny, chance and the butterfly effect; a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory 
It is all built around the original pencil drawing, and elements of the piece remain fully hand rendered, such as the shadows. Most of this was painted in Paint Shop Pro, but I also had a mess around in Photoshop. I might upload the original sketches to show the development. Took about 10-15 hours in total. Click to enlarge and have a closer look…
Panthera Pardus
You really have to click on this one to appreciate the detail I’ve put into it..I drew this leopard on A3 hot pressed paper. I used ink, carbon, graphite, charcoal, a plastic eraser and needle, a cocktail stick (for the whiskers) a water-soluble graphite stick and a fine liner. Took about 15 hours to complete.
Born from pure procrastination, this. I really needed to press on with my college work, but I just had to draw something! For some reason, I was pressing a needle into my plastic eraser (no doubt causing voodoo havoc throughout the cuboid world), when it occurred to me that I had created the ultimate fur drawing tool; just scratch with the needle into the grain of the paper to create clumps of fur, then smudge some graphite over the top and erase out the highlights! The needle creates much more realistic hair than regular embossing tools. I have a bunch of royalty free references to work from (thanks to David Stribbling). I’m uploading a close up of the face too, just to highlight some of the finer detail.
I hold the copyright to all of the work on this blog-steal and I keeell you…
I need to upload some of my college work next weekend. Some of it is pretty interesting.
Laid Back
This is VERY different to my usual work. I got bored watching TV last night so I started sketching some random things
I sketched this guy really quick with an hb pencil. I used a cocktail stick dipped in ink to draw loosely over the pencil lines, then did some quick blocking in and pale washes with quink ink. I scanned it in this morning and added a border to help him ‘pop’ .
I thought it might amuse someone, hence the post
?
Flamingo illustration.
Just a simple illustration I painted using graphic design software. I didn’t want too much detail, I just aimed to capture the warmth and the movement in this scene. I’m starting a National Diploma in Graphic Design in September, so I’m brushing up on my digital illustration skills
Boredom- A5 rhino sketch.
Just a little coloured pencil sketch of a rhino at Chester zoo.
He seemed weary, the tedium of captive life eh?
Boredom
Izu the lion.
Well, I’m in the mood for big cats again today. I was given permission to draw this handsome lion, Izu, by the young and accomplished teen photographer Charles. His photography can be found here- http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlessf/
I spent the entirety of this morning drawing this. The foreshortening was quite challenging, but I think I pulled it off.
Izu’s mane was the most time consuming part of this drawing. I used a handful of cocktail sticks to score the paper and create his long and flowing hair, carefully following the direction of the fur’s growth.
Izu
I wanted to suggest warmth in the prints, so I’ve tinted the drawing with a subtle golden hue.
The original graphite drawing.
Snow leopard pencil portrait.
This drawing was inspired by a beautiful photograph by the talented David Hewett, who can be found here on Flickr.com-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrdehoot/
David kindly gave me permission to reference his work.
I drew this in H pencil, HB, and 5B, then gave it colour glazes to bring out the eyes.
And a greyscale version..
