Respond to your chosen artists' work

Respond to your chosen artists' work 

It is now time to emulate or translate their style or process. As a starting point, you are to use a thumbnail idea from earlier in your book and attempt to create it fully using your chosen artist or style as a guide.

Take characteristics of their work and merge them with your own work. Translate the work into your own ideas. Don’t spend hours copying whole images. Copies don’t earn many marks - your personal response does.

Feel free to be as creative and playful as you wish. Ideas that are out of this world get better results and are much more fun!

5 Lessons. 2 this week and 3 after half term.

Deadline: Wed 5th June.

Artist Investigation

Cover lesson work.

Objectives
To further your understanding of graphic communication practitioners

Task
Using the web, the list below and my books, research and present a contextual investigation of a relevant artist, illustrator, photographer or designer. 

REMEMBER - You will be working in a similar style, so pick something that suits your project and that you are going to enjoy investigating and making.

Feel free to ask me for suggestions. The list below is just some interesting suggestions. Remember that you are looking for a designer or artists that could influence your work and that you will be working in the style of. 

Feel free to look through my Pinterest boards HERE

Some are linked, some you have to copy and paste into Pinterest

Craig Thompson	Felicita Sala	Depero Futurista	Daniel Danger
Beatrice Alemagna	David Carson	Petra Eriksson	Digital Paint / Photo
Marcus Walters	Jamie Reid	J Grant Brittain	Barney Bubbles
Paula Bulling	Laura Carlin	Joohee Yoon	John Dilnot
Martin Parr	David Hockney	Francesca Woodman	Double Exposure
Oliver Jeffers	Busy Collage	David Downton	Robert Rauschenberg
Jonny Hannah	Andrea D’Aquino	Isabelle Vandenabeele	Carson Ellis
Privat Livemont	Art Chantry	Victor Moscoso	David Carson
Killer Acid	Dave McKean	Jamie Hewlett	Tom J Newell
Peter Saville	Rick Griffin	Martin Sharp	Kate Moross
Clare Caulfield.	Jon McNaught	Gipi	Mark Hearld

The contents of the investigation should include the following:

1 Gather 4+ pieces of their work - bullet point why these pieces are characteristic of the artist’s work. Don’t describe them separately, look for similar traits. 

2 Explain your personal response and criticise and analyse their work. Use the relevant questions on the LOOKING AT ARTEFACTS sentence starters sheet to help your questioning and responses. 

The full 'Looking At Artefacts' sheet is HERE

3 Respond to their work by emulating their style or process. Take characteristics of their work and merge them with your own work. Translate the work into your own ideas. Don’t spend hours copying whole images. Copies don’t earn many marks - your personal response does.

For those students wishing to achieve the top grades:
Context GCSE Stretch and Challenge 1 Write about the context. What other designers are working at the same time? Include a range of illustrator's work

Influences GCSE Stretch and Challenge 2 Research to find out who the designer has been influenced by. To do this you may need to read an interview with the illustrator. 

Just Google "Interview with [illustrator's name]" and read a few passages

Thumbnail your initial designs

Objective
To work through your initial ideas in an uninhibited fashion. Working in pen means that you can work quickly and not worry about making mistakes. Consider the fact that one of the ideas that you make will eventually make it through to be a final design. Get all of your ideas no paper now, however strange.
For those who consider themselves not able to draw... think of these as diagrams rather than drawings.
The work at the bottom of the post is not A grade standard, but they have a lovely looseness to the drawing.

Task
Using a pen, draw out your ideas over a couple of sketchbook spreads or more.
Firstly, pour all of your ideas out. 

Then, if you like one, in particular, develop that one for a few scamps until you have a better, more refined version.

By refining, you are looking at improving the placement of the title, or the direction of an image. 

Presentation
Sketchbook.
You may colour them if you wish, but do it loosely and don't spend too much time on it.

Checklist for assessment
Loads and loads of different ideas being explored and refined.

Time needed
3 hrs

Deadline
First lesson back after Easter

Investigate using photography

Objective
To gather further primary research for your Component 1 project. 
To enable those who feel drawing is weak to collect useful primary research.   
Within the mark scheme, AO3 states: 'Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to their intentions in visual and/or other forms.'

Task 1
1. Consider the subject matter for your project. Take a collection of 30+ photos that you could either edit and use in the final artefact or just use as drawing/illustration reference.
To get the best results from this task, be as creative as you can with your subject and composition. 
As an example, if you have a wise old wizard in your book—and don't have a wise old wizard to hand—dress up your friend/dad/self in a bed sheet, cardboard hat and long stick. Pose them in different, relevant positions. 
Or, look on YouTube for tutorials about how to create wise old wizard make-up. There are loads of tutorials (plenty of zombies) on make-up. Make sure you then photograph the 'making of' period.
You will get plenty of good results from using your initiative. 
Do not make excuses as to why you couldn't get interesting images, there is no excuse.

Task 2 2. Print off and annotate -

• Note images that are good. This might be due to them being in focus, correct composition etc. 
• Cross out images that are not to be used. Out of focus, badly cropped, wrong position etc. 
• Write simple notes against the photos, 'out of focus', 'too far away' or 'too dark', 
• Make your annotations obvious - write in pink? 

Within the contact sheet presentation, comment on the following:

• What were your intentions for the shoot? Why take these images? 
• What are the successful elements, What worked well? 
• What were the unsuccessful elements? What didn't work well? 
• If you were to take these images again, what would you do to make them more suitable? 
• Do you believe that you have all the shots you need for the project? If not, what others do you need to take? 

Checklist for assessment
Lots of interesting photographs with concise and insightful evaluative annotations. 

Deadline
Start of the lesson, April 29th.

Conventions of the form

Objective 
To increase your understanding of the elements needed to create a successful artefact. The 'form' relates to the artefact that you are making for component 1. Graphics products come in various 'forms': game covers, packaging, magazines boo covers etc.

Task 
Annotate a few examples of artefacts to indicate the elements that are typically included.
If you find that there is not much on a single digipak or book cover, use a few different examples - especially if you are aiming for a 7 or 8.

Tip
Those looking at children's' picture books, you will find that once you have noted down things such as title, author, image etc, you will wish to examine some in a little more detail. Notice general things about the use of type, is it straight? what sort of typefaces? Maybe look at the size and shape of characters, how big are their heads? what expression do they have? You are after generalisations, not specifics fo these tasks.

Those looking at album cover design, once you have completed stating that most albums have a title, image and barcode, you will want to look a little deeper. Try gathering some example from different genres (metal, country, indie, Blues, EDM etc) and noting the similarities or differences that they have. As an example, you may wish to spot at how Blues albums mainly feature musicians holding or playing their main instrument - probably guitar. This is due to the audience's fondness for seeing blues artists and being able to actually play rather than mime. There is authenticity.

Time needed 
2 hrs over at least a double page spread. 

Deadline 
April 1st

Writing and presenting your brief - Homework

Task 
Use the presentation to properly compose and structure your brief for component 1.
Then present it beautifully in your sketchbook.
Simple.

Deadline 19 March

Thumbnails of other designs - Classwork

Objective

To further understand the part white space and layout plays in a graphic artefact.

To become aware of how designers balance elements on a page.

Task
Gather a range of similar artefacts. This can be via Pinterest or your own examples.

Draw them in your sketchbook.

Pay close attention to the light and dark tones—allow your brain to 'threshold' the greys into either light or dark tones. See my measly example above.
The images above are of magazines - not book covers, or CD Digipaks or Children's book covers but you get the gist.

Remember, you can to look at my PINBOARDS if you are struggling for examples...

Checklist for assessment
18 examples or two pages.

Deadline
March 19th