my own hand painted sign

After visiting the fishing museum in Brighton I was massively tempted do make a sign of my own. I decided to use Margate’s slogan of 'Margate the original seaside'' as its on many of the shop shutters around Margate. I went back to the old studio at university to see if there were any old pieces of wood, as I wanted the sign to have that old and battered feel. Luckily I found two pieces of wood that were the same size and thickness. Instead of painting a coat of colour down first I liked the look of the wood underneath and it was something I had seen regularly in Brighton. I do want to add a rope pattern and maybe an anchor to the signs and have them connected together by some chain. 

trip to Brighton

During a work in progress session a little while ago Jonny and Ceri suggested that I take a trip to a seaside town that is still doing well nowadays. So I took their advice and arranged to go to Brighton with some mates on my course. When we got there we weren’t aware there was a huge protest going on and walked right into it, so after staying to watch for a while we decided to make our way to the beach where it was a lot quieter. When we walked along the sea front I couldn’t help but notice all of the old hand painted signs for shops and galleries and we decided to go into Brighton fishing museum. Inside this museum were an old fishing boat and a selection of old shop signs and photos of life on the seafront, this gave me a massive idea that I should produce my own sign about Margate. While in Brighton we had a look around the old town as well as the pier and looked at how Brighton is still very much a traditional British seaside. 

New prints

T-shirt designs

after having a work in progress session with Jonny and Ceri  took their advise and decided to produce my own t-shirt design which i based on one of my early poster designs. i used screen printing to do this so this image was a screen print i done on paper first to test the image before i put it on a t-shirt. the last image came out bad because i tried to screen print the t-shirt again to make it darker.

Over Easter

I know I haven’t done a lot of work over the Easter but before the Easter holidays my Nan turned ill all of a sudden and after weeks of test was diagnosed with cancer and passed away over the holidays. She was the one who took me to the seaside a lot when I was younger and I think it’s because of her and my granddad that I have a love for the sea. Also because of this I have lost a lot of motivation to do any work as of late but did manage to force my self to do a stencil of a pin up girl which I hope to use on my piece for the shop shutter.

Jonny hannah talk

Our tutor Jonny Hannah did a talk today about his work and the techniques he uses to produce them. I must say I was greatly influenced mostly because we have very similar interests such as the sea and text as image. What I liked about his work was that all of his text is hand drawn and he uses a lot of printmaking methods. I also liked how he produces a lot of his work purely for the love of it, even if he knows he's not going to sell a lot of it.