Ted Nasmith - Painting to a theme

I found Ted Nasmith while searching for some cool gouache artists and I was immediately amazed at his work. He illustrates for books like Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit ( as you can see below) and also Game of Thrones, and some other stuff. But he works with Gouache, which is my preferred media of all time, its like watercolour but opaque and chalk based.

but yeah heres some of his work which is absolutely flabbergasting.

Media Handling Evaluation

So we were asked to create work on the theme "Environment" for a unit called Exploratory Media Handling. I really enjoy doing little gouache illustrations of my first rabbits, Vincent and Edgar in space, I just think its a fun, light hearted way to think of them as they were let out of their hutch by someone who broke into our garden during the night, Vincent never came back and my neighbour found Edgar and he died during the following night. Sad times. Err. anyway, I was inspired by Beatrix Potter, and I learned that she too, was inspired by her rabbits, Benjamin and Peter, who inspired the Peter Rabbit books, I decided to make a little story about Edgar going to find Vincent as he never came home, and deciding that Vincent is on the moon so he goes to buy himself a rocket ship and away he goes, while wandering the moon he bumps into a friendly green alien and is invited back for tea, and then out of the blue Vince knocks on the aliens door and they are re-united... yeah..
I feel it is related to the theme environment because first of all I built Vince and eddies home haha, and also it uses the idea of imagination and creates this world where rabbits can fly a rocket ship and go to space I guess haha.

I feel in some boards I could probably have done a better job on some of the story boards as I feel a couple of them were rushed, I've not included all 15 pictured in this evaluation however.

 Page2/15

Page7/15

Page8/15

 Page10/15

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I also, sketchbook wise, had more drawings and paintings of my rabbits that I didn't include but I should have stuck them in there and or done more. I'l know that for next time though.

yeah..

Photography - UPDATED WITH ORIGINALS

As I posted earlier in my "photography experiments" thing.. we were given a brief on the topic of "My point of view"

In total I've taken about 300 photographs and out of that 300 I've selected 10, live I was asked and then selected a final two out of that 10.. so here it is.. my 10..
the "My point of view" way I went was nature and landscape, I took a load of my photographs in the north of Scotland, which I think really helped me... I struggled a lot trying to find a topic for my photography so I find my trip to have been beneficial.

***I need to get the original of this off my memory stick, as ive been an arse and deleted it off my phone and my laptop is screenless****

This photograph was taken through a decayed doorway or maybe window of Ardvreck Castle near.. I want to say Elphin and Ledmore which are tiny little villages which are, really, the closest place to it haha... umm.. but I decided to choose it because I genuinely just like its composition...

This was an old, broken down ruined stone wall I found in the middle of a field, I liked it because it feels to me, a sense of old Scottish ruins and history, essentially my heritage... I love finding old Scottish ruins and I love reading the history behind it and I love to imagine what it looked like when it was first built and lived in/around. 

I just enhanced the photograph with settings on my phone and played with the contrast so its all bright and shiny. 

Original

****Also need the original off my memory stick for this one****

I chose this photo simply because I love the way the rocks are formed, where we were was a very volcanic rocky area where literally the majority of the North West of Scotland was built on a type rock called Lewisian Gneiss, which is the oldest rock in Britain aged at 3000 million years old.

impressive...

again I just brightened up the photograph on my phone and played with the contrast.. yeah..

I took this photo in the middle of a squelchy field on a hill, on my way to try and find the Old Man O' Stoer... I didn't find it because it was getting too dark and we didn't want to have to attempt to get back to the car through this mud and cow poo mine field in the dark because that would have been a disaster!! However I did meet some very friendly baby cows! I love cows!!!! 

I love this photo because you see the side of the building where the cows live but also, in the distance, you see mountains!!! I love the contrast between the bright foreground and the misty cloudy mountains in the distance!

again with this I just played with my brightness and contrast.

Original

I almost died taking this photo (Just a little exaggeration)... Was SO icy! 

The only thing I done to this photo was crop it a little and put I think it was the Lark or the Reyes Instagram filter over it?? I like this photo because of its composition. ya..

original

This is a photo of my precious giant rabbit, Winston, it was taken because while feeding him and the others, he was looking out the garden room (Basically a rabbit room now.. oops) doors and I thought it would make a really cool/cute photo.. the way it turned out was as if he was a silhouette and I have a couple more photos in the topic of silhouettes on my Instagram of my boyfriend hanging up Christmas tree decorations.

I brightened up the photo using the auto adjust setting on my phone and then I just cropped this photo and put the filter Lark over it?? I'm not sure on what one but it was something...

original

I took this photo the first day the snow came and I was waiting on my bus to get me into Peebles, but of course out crappy little bus didn't show up.. but anyway I loved the way the street light was illuminating the street opposite and the snow was basically untouched as it was like 7.15 in the morning.. I cropped the photo and put a very slight blue filter over it because I think it made it look cooler and I think that was called Clarendon?? but there we goo...

original

AHHH I think this is my favourite photo ever! Compositionally its great, got the sheep over there and the sun over here and the hills and mountains in the back.. 

I took this in Stoer, the sheep were super friendly and let you get right up to them.. was great. 

I think this is classed as a rule of thirds??? not quite sure 

I had to auto adjust this one on my phone because I couldn't manually get it correct.. after I did that though I played with the contrast and saturation and I personally think it turned out pretty cool...

original

FINALLY MY FINAL TWO

I just cropped this photo and put a light filter on top. it was sunset and really really misty.

original

This was the inside of the cow house thing in Stoer. I really like this photo because you get the slight silhouette of the cow and the sun takes everything else away and all you're left with is the reflection in the muddy puddles and no colour other than the sky.. I think it's super interesting... meh

don't think I did anything to this since the original seems to be the same?

original

In total the majority of the time I had no idea for my end game.. I wasn't quite sure what it was I was trying to achieve? but I quite like the photos I did get and I understand a lot more about settings on cameras and my phone... I think I'm going to take some of these photos to use in my Painting to a Theme unit because I think I'm going to have a change and do some landscape... 

Yeah... 

Photography experiments...

We were given a brief for a Photography unit with the theme "My point of view" 

However we were first given activities around playing with a camera.

These were my attempts of playing with shutter speed

Was kinda fun and I got some really interesting photos from it!

Theres some more which are on my memory card.

Ive lost my other experimental photos, might be on the Mac in the classroom??? 

We also experimented with different types of photography like, Street photography, lighting, reflection and a thing where, for a week you take a picture of whatever you're doing at that time at the same times every day, for example a picture every day at 12.00pm then one at 3pm and another one at say 8pm... I tried my best at this but forgot most days.. 

Those photos you can find on my Instagram because I was stupid and deleted them off my phone after I uploaded them since I needed the space - @mitten_face_

Moving on... We got to play around with photoshop!!! In truth.. photoshop is hard!!!!! 

I played around with merging photos, playing with effects and colour.. and LIQUIFY!! then selecting parts of the image and putting that in colour/b&w

heres soon photos I edited with great difficulty at home!

I merged 3 photos together and then selected around the people and played with the contrast.

And this was just two photos merged together, I wanted it to look like the window/doorway was leading onto the road but I just couldn't get my head around PS...

Ben Rider - Printmaking

Ben Rider is a london based print maker who was introduced to screen print as a recommendation. He is a commercial illustrator and teacher along with professional printmaker. he works with collage, drawings, florescent ink and multi layered colours. His work is very vibrant and gives off punky vibes.
Ben has done commissions for companies like Brew Dog, Film4, Heineken, Samsung and 5 Seconds of Summer.

I think Ben Rider is my favorite screen print artist as he has his own unique way of doing things and every print catches my eye and draws me in.

"Firestarter/Prodigy" 

In this particular print, he hand painted, with a rough dirty roller and stout white paint, onto black paper and made an edition of 40 prints, inspired by the song, Firestarter by the Prodigy. 

"Cyclops Queen"

Scott Minzy - Printmaking

Scott is a teacher, book illustrator and relief print artist who works along the themes of fear, regret and longing, he likes to indicate these feelings with wiry lines and finds that relief printing is a good way to show that. His favorite materials to use are lino & ink (Of course), book cloth, and newsprint. 

"Last Glance"

6"x8", Linocut, 2011, Edition of 30

"The Committee"

6"x8", Linocut, 2011, Edition of 30

I like that the faces in his prints are completely soulless and look super creepy. I think they're super interesting and i will most likely do a couple of prints like this for experimental purposes, perhaps see how they look screen printed with the same sort of ideas? hmmmm...