With experimenting I wanted to see how I could take it to the next level. I started out by painting a few oval shapes which consisted of various colours within each one. When I had created these oval shapes I wanted see how things would turn out if I added some ink on top of the watercolour...





...Once the ovals were dry I started to add my pen to the green card I had painted on. I chose the green card as well to see what would happen to the colour of the watercolours. I had to make the paint quite thick so it would appear more opaque than if I applied a lot of water and not enough paint. Even though in some parts you can see the green background coming through, there are still parts with block colour. I really like this effect! I really enjoyed creating the background to my illustration first and then adding the line work on top. It was definitely something different to what I'm used to and can see this as a way of definitely improving my illustrations...



...With all that that in mind I then went on to create some more characters with watercolours and a pen. This was one that in my eyes turned out quite well. I had to think a little before I created the coloured background. Like where I was going to position the nose and the ears (I didn't think too much about the eyes and the lips, I just went with it) because I wanted to used various colours to differentiate those parts before adding the linework. I realized after that I could've done this the other way round as I could've used a water proof pen, but like I said within using this technique I could really improve my illustration style and start creating some interesting stuff.

These are a selected few images that I've accumulated from experimenting with watercolours. It's been a long time since I've used watercolours and I must say I have been enjoying it very much. Using a brush seems really alien to me, but I can see myself getting the gist of it if I keep at it.

Sourced some watercolours...

London, 10.11.10

Got loads of photos from the march yesterday, just need to get the films developed. Here's a couple from my phone...



I took this just as the group of people got onto the roof. It was definitely a sight to see, everyone was going crazy at this point. We decided to move closer to try get some better photos, luckily we left the scene just before they started hurling objects from the roof.



Later on me, Robo and Garry came back as we wanted to make most of our time there. We planned to leave with enough time to catch our coach at 7ish, but before we knew it we were surrounded by riot police along with about 200 other people. This happened at around 5:30 and instantly we knew we weren't going to make the coach. After standing around in the cold, waiting in a crowd of people to be let out of the circle of police, then being searched and having my details taken, we were finally freed at about 8:00pm.

RECORDING - II

Went back into the booths today and recorded this...



Really glad with how this one turned out!!! I recorded it all live with 5 microphones in total. The overheads placed to the left and right of me, the SM57 placed near the sound hole, the AKG placed just behind my chair and another mic (which I didn't catch the name of) placed about a foot in front of my face. I think it's a diaphragm condenser, which had a pop shield attached to it. This picked up my voice much more clearer than not having it there at all. I managed to pan the two over heads before exporting the track, which I am very pleased about.

I am glad to say I now have an easy and very cheap way to record my music. I shall definitely be using the booths a whole lot more in the future for various things. Once I had recorded the first time round Mike Flower was very interested in how the recorded went and he wanted to have a listen. So I sent him an email with the url for my sound cloud and this what he said -

"Hey Michael, nice playing! and nice recording too, very professional sounding. test IV is the SM57? it's hard to tell on my computer speakers, they all sound really good - i like the style of test 1, reminds me a little of John Fahey. Your guitar has a really good tone."

Tee - II

I originally drew it on A3, but after our first crit it was brought to my attention that the line work may be too thin to print on a t-shirt. So I scanned the original in, printed it smaller and traced it with a thicker pen...



If it ever gets printed the lines will be much more prominent. I have lately been trying to experiment with different line widths within my illustrations to make them more visible and to give my illustrations more variation.





I wanted to create my own type of texture rather than just using block colour to fill within the lines. I scanned the texture in, which I created with a green pastel, and used the magic wand to select the area outside the line work. I then cut out the excess texture around the lines.



Once cut out I placed the texture within a new canvas.



I changed the colour mode to grayscale and then to bitmap which brought up this window.



I then went through to the halftone screen. I put the frequency to 40 and the angle to 45. I also changed the shape to round.



Dragged the half tone layer back into the canvas with the line work.





Went into blending options to change the colour of the dots, but nothing looked right. Whatever colour I chose ended up being too light or too dark. Couldn't really find anything in the middle, so I knew the half tone some how needed to be different.



After playing around with it in photoshop I ended up making the contrast much higher to make the texture darker. This was much quicker than trying to create another texture.





This half tone looks much better, there is a significant difference between the lighter and darker parts of the half tone. It stands out more and gives the illustration some kind of skin texture.

I found this process quite easy to get my head round. I found a tutorial online on how to do it and followed it step by step. I still need to play around with it more if to was use this process within screen printing or if I was going to send off a design to be printed.

Collaboration - III

This is what I added to Robo's creature. This time I made sure I completed the illustration in its entirety before scanning it in. The only thing I really had to edit was filling in the hair.

REEEECORDING - I

Today I spent most of the day in the soundproof booths at college having a bezz at some recording. The computer technicians here at the college were kind enough to help me set the room up and show me the basics in using condenser microphones. I originally set out to just use the space with my own dynamic microphone, my USB audio interface and maybe another few dynamic microphones, if there were any available at the college for me to use. I learnt how to operate phantom power which enabled the condensers to work. This was pretty daunting as I didn't want to blow any microphones up at all today! I told them I had used the recording software "Audacity" before when I was younger, so they opened it up and got the audio interface and the microphones working, then they showed me how to change between the different input channels. After doing all of this I got on with tracking some stuff.





This is the space I used today to record. It was reasonably sized but at times I did feel quite claustrophobic. Maybe this was because it got hot really quick. I couldn't turn the air con on as the noise it made was picked up on the recordings.





This is the audio interface I used today. It's a good bit of kit and was easy enough to operate.

The microphones I used today :-



AKG C 1000 S



Sure SM57





I didn't get the names of the over heads as they had nothing written on them like the AKG C 1000 S and the SM57. All I know is that they were made in Australia.


- These are a few of the more successful tracks I managed to record...

TEST I


I placed the AKG C 1000 S in front of the sound hole on the guitar. Should have moved it a bit further away as the track is clipping at points, making it uncomfortable to listen to in places. Parallel to the left and the right of me I placed the over heads about 2 metres away. I adjusted the stands about 6ft from the floor. A lot of the room got picked up

TEST II


TEST III


The next two tests I basically used the same set up but tried varying the input levels and moving the mic's further away. I am satisfied with how these tracks were turning out but there is still clipping in places (not so much on test III as test II). The AKG microphone wasn't really working out, maybe it's the type of guitar or the way I was playing.

TEST IV


This is by far the best recording I got out of the day. For this particular one I tried placing the SM57 in front of the sound hole. This gave the recording much more clarity and less clipping. I also swapped round the over heads to see if this made any difference and also managed to pan the two tracks 100% left and 100% right before exporting the .aiff file. Can definitely tell the difference here, the sound is much fuller especially when listening through headphones.

Today was very valuable indeed and I have learnt quite a lot through doing it myself. Even though I got a little help at the start of the day. I have record many things previously with various bands, but in them situations I didn't have to set up any of the recording equipment. I'm glad that I can now go into the booths and just get on with it. Next time I shall book it out when I have some completed songs.

Take into consideration next time :-

- Microphone positioning
- Editing before exporting
- Focusing on one song/Push myself to make a finished product
- Experiment more with microphones and other instruments

Collaboration - II

Tonight I got round to starting my part of the collaboration with Robo. The quote I went for was "You are only as old as the last time you changed your mind.", here is what I came up with...



Ended up with this old wrestler kinda looking like he's just about to nail someone. I'm happy with what I've created but it's not about the content, it's about the processes that were used to end up with this end product.



- Original sketch, I drew this without the help of any reference material.



- Made it slightly bigger, this enabled me to get more detail and to thin out the line width.



- I refined the lines that make the different components by repeatedly drawing and tracing them. I made sure I got the lines as consistent in width as I could. It didn't take me very long to end up with something that started to resemble to the final outcome.



- It took me a few goes when trying to draw it as a whole sketch, but I got there in the end and I am happy with what I've drawn. I did this by scanning 3 different sketches into photoshop and putting them together. I took the legs from the drawing on the right and placed them on the left hand sketch, as it is shown above.



- I cut the eyes out of this sketch and placed them onto the final to finish the drawing. There is a lack of detail in some places, I shall add bits when it comes back my way.

This in all fairness is not really the an ideal way to be creating my illustrations. It took me quite a while to create the final piece, even though I wanted to draw it over and over to refine it, I didn't end up with something at 100% complete. I had to take bits from other pieces and put them all together.


Will now have a go at adding to Rob's effort towards the collaboration and try end up with something totally complete...

KINGDOM - II

We printed our father a tee for his birthday the other week and he kindly agreed to model it for us...



Didn't have a camera on me when were setting up the screens and printing. Will make sure I take one next week!