Whilst in Prague, we had the amazing opportunity to visit the studio of Irina Kaygorodova and do a workshop with her, which was really exciting! Irina is a russian fashion illustrator who works mainly (and beautifully) with water colour and ink. She was super lovely and humble. Im completely in awe of her work and forever wish I could do something like that, it was so inspiring watching her paint, she made it look so incredibly effortless.
After watching her, we all got fashion magazines to paint from and off we went! She said that she doesn't usually draw first, just paints straight on the page. I don't think iv ever really painted anything without drawing it first but I actually liked not doing that, and I don't think it turned out the worst thing iv ever done either which is good! It also made me realise how important it is to have good quality paper/paints/brushes, it really does make all the difference. So yeah, I really enjoyed this day and thank you ever so much Irina for having us :
So our trip to Prague was pretty amazing?! Iv never been to somewhere so beautiful, the architecture, the scenery, even the pavements were nice to look at! Even if you were just strolling down the street, there was always something interesting to look at and everything just looked (at risk of sounding like a complete girl) ...pretty! Truly an amazing place that I need to re-visit. It was a weird feeling when it all came to an end as it was our last residential trip ever (which is devastating, don't even get me started) so obviously it was a bit sad but at the same time I had so so much fun and it really was such a great trip!
During our 4 days in Prague, we went to the Sedlec Ossuary (after many trains and knocking on someones door for directions) which was really good, glad we got to see it. We got to do a workshop with Irina Kaygorodova which was amazing! I loved that (separate post to come for that). We went to the Mucha museum which again, amazing, the work in there was literally breathtaking. We had a lecture on posters from the Terry Posters collection which was really cool. In our free time we went to the castle, Charles Bridge, the John Lennon wall and consumed a hell of a lot of bread/pastries/beer- it was really good. And of course on the last night, we all went out for dinner (all the students that came and all the tutors) and then out to a bar after that, it was literally so fun I wish I could do it over and over again! I think Gary summed it up pretty well…
(Hahahaha, brilliant!)
All the trips we've been on during our time at uni have been amazing and iv experienced some amazing things and been to some incredible places. Im so happy and grateful iv been able to go on all the residentials, I think its so important to take advantage of these trips, to see some amazing places and to mix with other people in the course (I think thats one of the most important things, some of my best friends on the course I got to know because of this). Without sounding too cheesy, its more than just going to a different country and getting told to go to a few museums, we've had the chance to meet some amazing illustrators/art directors, even go into their houses?! We would never get the opportunity to do that on our own. So many cool things we wouldn't of been able to do if it wasn't for these trips. So for that, I am truly grateful! (Okay, getting cheesy now)
I'll finish this post with some photos and a short video of our time and Prague, I think it sums it up pretty well :)
{one of many beautiful buildings}
{Gary throwing some shapes}
{the view from the castle}
{standard tourist pic}
{some of the John Lennon wall}
{Irina Kaygorodova doing her thanggg}
{the "I don't know where we are" look}
{the cathedral}
{one of many "dance offs" on the last night}
{the main square, so beautiful ahhh}
{some traditional food at the group meal}
{Wenceslas square by night}
{the cutest, parisian looking pizzeria with amazingly cheap pizza and also 2 guys playing the violin/paino}
{upside down man/horse/thing?}
{Sedlec Ossuary}
{beers with our tutor!}
Friday 8 November 2013
Work update
From all the research I did I decided to start with trips iv been on and places iv actually been to. I gravitated towards New York and Miami first as I have a lot of collected things I can use for it and so I have started collaging and using my own photographs.
I will definitely be doing some work on Prague as we will be going there for our residential soon. Im going to take my sketchbook everywhere and just get anything and everything in there. I want to use it as a travel journal of some sort, then see what I can do with it when I get back.
Iv also just come across this on (yes, I'm waffling on about him again) Roderick Mills blog which I felt I needed to put on here as I literally share the same view!
"I use sketchbooks when travelling to gain in impression of a place, whether these be drawings, or writing down thoughts for myself, a means of documenting my experience of a place."
This is exactly what I love doing, documenting everything even if its just the food we ate or how cold it was that day. Im looking forward to getting back from Prague and hopefully having lots to work with! Though at the moment I am focusing my project about a range of different places, things might change along the way, as Prague will be the most fresh in my head, I may choose to focus on that, but we shall see!
Tuesday 5 November 2013
New brief - Self Directed 2
For the new brief we had a lot of different choices to pick from. I decided to go with the self directed route and I chose to focus mine around travel. I chose this because in my last project, even though it was about non places, a lot of my work was to do with places like airports/train stations and I liked focusing on that, so I thought I would expand and explore the places beyond the airports and train stations. Here are some of my first notes and research…
I looked mainly at places like Pinterest and Tumblr for map-relating art work. I love the maps Oliver Jeffers has created, "1 city 5 hours" in a number of different places. I really liked that idea, have a little collection of mini-maps that are not over complicated or over worked, just simple and lovely to look at. I perticularly liked the journals at the top, they look quite textural and messy but in a good way. I might look into working straight onto books instead of a plain sketchbook as part of the project, as sometimes it can be slightly intimidating just having all that white space to work with. Or staining a page with paint/collage or anything really so that I can work straight onto that.
