Food Packaging

How now brown cow.  This is a coloured version of my finished black and white print - I actually printed it in these colours, and I like the 'old-paper' colour of the background.

I knew that I would be fairly short of time for this project, so used my stint in the gallery to draw and re-draw my ideas so that I could start on my dry point etching fairly quickly.  I had two ideas, using snakes and ladders for snake sweets, or using the image of a cow and strawberries for strawberry-milkshakes. I decided on the cow as she had more character, and thought she made a more attractive label.

I wanted to do a classic portrait of a cow, with strawberries around her.  I have made her eyes more human.  As she developed into a happy cow, with a smile, I decided to angle the strawberries and the ‘sweets’ lettering in different directions to give them some more movement.  The lettering just developed to fit in with the strawberries, with curved edges.

I decided to use dry-pint etching as I will not have the opportunity to use this technique again after college, as I don’t have access to a roller-press like the one in the print-room.  The scratchy quality of dry-point lends itself nicely to fur and hair.  I mapped out the image twice the size of the label to give me more space for detail.  I bought some thick acetate sheets from the art shop so that I could work over the weekend.   I had to etch different areas of the acetate and give my hands a break as the tools I was using (a brawl and a Stanley knife) made my hand’s ache. 

I wasn’t sure if I had etched the lines deeply enough, so I did a trial run in the print room.  I was pleased to see that I didn’t need to re-etch the acetate and could get several images to work from.

I cleaned up the image  in Photoshop, and will submit it tomorrow.

One Day (ish) Zine

Day trip at the museum

It was really good to have a day out and get some observational drawing done.  I particularly enjoyed drawing the insects, the sea-creatures in their glass jars  and the machines and models at the museum.  The images are all in my sketchbook.  It was a good chance to generate some black and white images for my portfolio.  My group for producing the Zine were James, Izzey, Kerri, Toby and myself.  Once we had got back to the studio, we quickly worked out when we looked at our sketchbooks that we had concentrated on different things, so it was easy to divide our work into natural history, birds, culture, decoration and machines.  We each played to our strengths.

I used a dip-pen to produce a finished drawing, which I've never used for a finished illustration before, but will do again because I liked the lively feeling it gave the line (Must look at more Quentin Blake work).  I used a separate layer of charcoal to give tonal depth underneath.  I have been looking at Shaun Tan’s the arrival, and really love the way he makes those soft images.  I scanned the images together onto A4 Landscape in preparation for getting a Zine together.  I think I made my images too little, and could have used some more interesting cropping to make it more dynamic.

We knew that we would have to move fairly fast and make some quick decisions to get the Zine produced on the photocopier.  Once we had all adjusted our images and had fair prints, we laid them all out and after some re-shuffling we had a running order.  We worked as a team to cut and paste them together into a dummy book and then made decisions about paper.  I really enjoyed working with this team. 

In true Zine  tradition (according to “Whacha Mean, Whats a Zine?) we scrounged some cream paper.  As our look and artwork was quite traditional, we wanted a more ‘antique’ finish with sepia printing on cream.  Photocopying it was less stressful than it could have been (although the paper did cause the copier on the 1st floor some problems).  We had put our texts together to make a front page, but when it was held up against the others, it didn’t reflect the content of the Zine, so we decided to re-do the cover (and elected Toby as the scribe) with our own images to give a sort of ‘limited edition’ .

This is another project that could be done on an A4 printer (ie at home) and could be produced fairly cheaply.  There is a long tradition of chapbooks , and some of the contemporary ones look really attractive.  I can imagine having a personal project like this.  I also liked some of the ideas from the book like having fold-out covers or posters.

Envelope task 2

Developing my own coin card

I quite like a technical challenge, and I enjoy problem solving so I decided that the self-promotional stuff I produced for this project needed to be printable on A4 thin card or paper.  I want to be able to produce these without needing to come into Plymouth if necessary.

The coin cards that I had looked at relied on someone picking it up and tipping it to make it spin, but I thought that if I added a curve at the base of the card, all it would need was tipping one edge down to make it move.  I still had to fit the card into the envelope as well as keeping all the artwork with the boundaries that the printer seems to set even if you hit the ‘print 100%’ button.

I made a couple of paper mock-ups and kept adjusting the curve until it worked.  I then made a proper template.

My artwork was actually A3, but this time I managed to scan it in at home in two pieces and join it up.  I tidied the painting and put the outlines on top in Photoshop and then added the text in In Design.  I decided to used the same text , Papyrus, for this part of the project to give some continuity.   I added the template on top and printed the result.

 

The first card took me ages to make,  but by the time I had made my third, I had a routine.  I had a roll of double-sided foam tape that I had used on a previous project, and used that to keep the layers of card apart, as I had seen on the tutorial.   You are supposed to use tow pennies behind the spinning object, but I was afraid that the weight would make the sticky foam come apart, so I used buttons instead.  I now realise that I needed the weight to make it spin better

To finish off, I used the same  star icon for the address label on the envelope and the label on the back . 

I need to do the following things before I send this off to potential customers:

·      I  will use washers rather than buttons behind the spinning object.

·      I will post it off to friends and family and get their feedback as to the condition it arrives in when it goes through the postal service.

·      I will research the equipment and products that are in card-making and hobby-craft shops more (the one in the Pannier market is like an Aladdin’s cave!)

·       

I have really enjoyed this foray into card engineering and card design.  I  have found it a challenge and have found a couple of folded books that are really attractive, one of which I am using as the base for my Contextual artefact.  This has been a very useful exercise.

 I think this makes a more intriguing book than a zig-zag book, but it would be difficult to add text and make it sequential for people.  A good way to show just images.

Envelope task Development 1

I wanted to make a card that carried on with the theme of the Star Who Stayed Up All Day, with the possibility of getting a double page spread in the envelope that Mel gave us. This is an image of  starfold I worked on.

My thinking behind this piece of self promotion was to produce something that showed me to potential publisher in the following way:

·      That my images are painted

·      That I enjoy character design

·      As a piece of artwork that carried my personal statement

·      That my contact details were easily read and could be acted on

·      That it could be kept on a desk/pinned to a wall, but would DO something rather than end up in the bin.

One of the websites I looked at last year was a commercial outfit that produces interesting promotional goods to send to people in the post.  Pop-up-Mailers does just that (One of the graphic’s guys has ordered a whole box full of their samples - open box and stand back).  They do some interesting card and Paperfolds that are fairly simple to do and would fit into the envelope nicely.  

I started to research the star fold, and then got onto some internet tutorials. I made a couple, but it didn’t quite have the punch I wanted. There are lots of very earnest American ladies who do greeting’s card tutorials on Youtube.  I started by watching a couple for folds (they have immaculately manicured nails!) and found myself watching a tutorial for a spinning card.  This lead onto a coin card, which spun and that I thought had that playful factor that the star folds had lacked.   I made a rough card sample, but quickly decided that I wanted my card to be more of a thin box. After that, it was a case of developing the artwork and the template

Badge Making

The Badge Making workshop was only a few hours long, and really got the adrenaline going. 

I have made badges on my little Badge it machine at home, which only produces badges that are 3cm finished.   The college machine is FAR superior, but about 7 times more expensive to buy, so I won’t be investing in one quite yet.   I do like the size of the badges that the college machine produces, which is closer to 4 cm and are more attractive and commercial.

I wanted to do some badges with a painted background,  with a scanned drawing on top which meant moving quite quickly with the artwork.  I got it scanned in and into Photoshop quite quickly, and then into In Design to put in text.  Getting the college photocopier to print was another matter!  I just managed to get the badges made on time, and then discovered that the card I had prepared as a background was too large for the cellophane envelope.  Mel suggested that I did the writing in white rather than black, and as I was dissatisfied with the colouring that the first badges had – there was too much black in them -I decided to do a new set.

 

After brightening everything up in Photoshop, I altered the writing and bought the card size down to cellophane bag size.  I used thicker card and a hole punch to get the badges onto the card.  As I had used thicker card, the badges still didn’t go on very easily.  In fact, the most success I have had with getting badges onto card has been to use a thinner card but laminate it.  This gives a shiny badge on a shiny surface. Which isn’t as attractive as the badges on a matt surface. 

I still need to produce sharper images that the badges I have produced.  The writing is nice and crisp, but the badges look out-of focus.

checking blog working or not

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