Whose fonts are these?

I’ve often been told in many different and imaginative ways that my hand-writing is, to put it mildly, shite. From being described as looking like a squashed dead spider to a seven year-old’s writing, to my shame I have sometimes even blamed it on being left-handed (apologies to all you lefties out there..) while clutching at excuses.

The truth is, my lack of talent in this area has left me somewhat envious of those who can master not only the perfect artistic stroke of line but who can use it consistently.

What I’m talking about is typography as art, and the smudged chalk line that (barely) separates them. Fonts that not just spell the word, but convey the meaning of the word. Where meaning and visual form become so successful intertwined, you cannot see them as individual ideas.

Of course fonts and typography is a whole deep bottomless well of discovery. So I wanted to keep it simple and share just a couple of designers’ work that I admire.

Gemma O’Brien is someone who I discovered after watching a talk she gave at an adobe conference. Watch the talk here (make sure you watch until the sick bag part!).

She has written a blog for years under the psuedonym ‘Mrs Eaves’ (named after a font, of course) which unfortunately is not longer in existence.

Her work is always a great balance between playful and sincere. Here’s a few examples:

The last image is her in action doing a project which involved hand-painting thirty-something billboards. She is willing to take on huge spaces which must be intimidating.

There’s a lot of things I admire about Gemma’s approach to her work, but the two that stick out to me are:

1. She is not afraid to destroy her work as soon as it’s finished (which is very brave, in my opinion)
2. She always adds humour and personality

Here’s to hoping she starts writing a blog again soon!

Simon Silaidis, on the other hand, is rather more serious. But none the less talented or impactful for it. He creates huge murals/artworks/graffiti/typography/calligraphy pieces, usually on crumbling walls in semi-ruined abandoned buildings. He is now part of a movement creating a new approach to calligraphy, more concisely named ‘The Urban Calligraphy Movement’. (Now selling it’s own endorsed brushes).

This a more open and free approach to calligraphy, a move away from traditional techniques.

He got started after going to a graffiti festival in Athens, and now has years as an experienced graphic designer behind him. You can see it in his movements – how he condenses all of his knowledge, experience and vision into the stroke of his brush. Powerful stuff.

Ok, so if you google him you might discover he’s created some slightly cringing videos that could have been a lot better from just a few improvements (including a car advert). But there is just something so unarguably beautiful and aesthetically pleasing about his work.

Have a look at more of his work here.

 

A few little triangles

So….it’s been a while since I posted any work, or even work in progress. So I thought it might be time to change that.

I’ve recently been inspired to create that most archaic of artistic techniques…collage. Yes. Well…kind of. I wanted to make a series of drawings that would lay the basic structures out for some collages I plan to do.

So I took out the option of any colour (eek!) and started playing around with composition, trying to ignore everything else. I wanted to use basic shapes and keep it very simple to decided to use this idea of the square and the circle.

The aim was to create a relationship between the square and the circle using a few little triangles. As if the square and the circle were magnets, and the little triangles iron fillings, being pulled one way then another between them.

I got a bit carried away with a graphite pencil, but I’m quite pleased with the results. (Although just between you and me I think they need a little colour…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colour in 2015

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2015. I want to start the year by celebrating colour. And not just any colour; but the best, the most interesting colours to surround yourself with in the new year.

This time of year I always get the urge to start things anew, to take a fresh look at my surroundings and question how I could improve them.

So I thought I’d share with you the colours of 2015. Of course interior trends aren’t something that have to followed religiously. The best way is to have a look at the new ideas for the season, and pick out your favourite and also most practical ideas. Use it as a base for inspiration, in other words.

According to the great colourists in the sky, Pantone, the colour of 2015 is Marsala. Which may not mean that much to people when they first hear it. Marsala is a type of wine, a town in Sicily, a type of spice. So of course the colour itself is a deep, flat reddy/brown/orange/pink.

At first I was not blown away by this colour, but the more I began to explore it the more I began to understand why it is the colour of 2015. According to the executive director of Pantone, it is a robust, nurturing, sophisticated colour that lends itself well to both fashion and interiors. I can certainly see that it is very versatile. Immedatiely I can imagine it in thick-piled velvets, matte wall colour, contemporary earthware to add colour to a monochrome kitchen.

Here’s a few ideas of how it might sit in a colour palette:

I particularly like number 7, the idea of pairing it with teals and turquoise. Also I think it would work really well with metallics – copper and brushed silver that you may have from the copper trend last year.

Here’s a few ideas of how to incorporate it into an interior:

The great thing about Marsala is that you can layer it up to create warmth and depth:

Its works well in both traditional and contemporary interiors:

Use bright artwork to create highlights against Marsala. Take at look at www.pollytaylor.squarespace.com for some ideas.

It’s a great colour to use in a bedroom, and it won’t date easily. Bare wooden floorboards look great with it.

I like the idea of using it in a downstairs loo. Perhaps a bit too intense for a whole bathroom though!

If you don’t feel brave enough to use it on your walls, invest in some luxurious textiles with a lot of varying textures such as throws or rugs, and paint the walls in soft greys to compliment.

It looks great with bright white, so an easy way to change a plain interior:

A slightly darker tone would be great for creating a sense of warm and cosiness, without being too claustrophobic.

As an appetite stimulant, it would be great in the dinning room. the name itself references both food and drink!

Have fun and play with it!

Henri Matisse

So. Today is the very last day of the Matisse cut-out exhibition at the Tate Modern. Last week I had the fortune to be able to go to it, after realising with a panic that it was ending soon.

This was an exhibition I had been very excited about seeing. Although I enjoy matisse’s work as a painter, I have always been drawn more to his cut-outs. Perhaps because they were a little mis-understood and under-apprecatied in their beginnings. They have struggled for the recognition they have achieved, which is always admirable. I find it hard to put into words how I feel about them, but I shall very much try!

For those of you unfamiliar, this was a technique that Matisse starting using after having some serious health problems that brought him to the brink of death. Unable and unwilling to hold a paint bush, he took to cutting out shapes from pre-prepared sheets of painted coloured paper to create the objects of his fascination.

 

The first and undeniable impression that you get from these is movement. Of course the subject matter is movement, but always the form, the colours, the composition, are all heavily suggestive of dynamism. You can sense the re-arrangement of the pieces, and I love that he hasn’t attempted to hide the tacks that keep the pieces together but formed them as part of the piece.

The work is in the result.

 

Matisse produced a book of cut-outs called ‘Jazz’. The notes that accompanied the exhibition hinted that this name was’t particularly relevant; but I can’t think of one that is more apt to this bold, strange, unique way of working. The colours and shapes jump off the page in a very musical and scattered way.

 

 

These works I found to be very human, very honest. Also quite scary, violent and dark. Matisse was working on this book just at the end of the Second World War, and some of the ideas and images have a under-tone of terror, enhanced by the saturated colours. His Icarus looks trapped in motion, propelled, pinned, a man falling to his doom.

 

 

The walls of his studio in Vence became covered with these amazing images and motifs, past memories of traveling in Tahiti many years ago. I love that these memories were so strong they came back to him at this time, years later, as his strongest inspiration.

 

 

He was commissioned to design a chapel in Vence by a friend, and designed everything from the windows to the priests’ gowns to the wall murals. It must be an a beautiful thing to be in that space, surrounded by such light. I also like that the Madonna and child that he painted was criticised for being ‘too booby’! (of course not in those exact words…!) A woman breastfeeding a child is going to be booby.

 

This image is one of my favourites in the exhibition. In fact I went back to it a couple of times. It is huge, this image does not really do it nay justice at all. The dancer is so alive. The way it looks too big for the canvas makes me think it’s trying to burst out and get free. I love the different pinks and peaches in the background as well. It is fearless and full of controlled passion.

 

The ‘Blue Nudes’ series are some of Matisse’s most famous cut-outs. He manages to use white to create the lines that define the limbs. In these you can really see how much he understood the medium and used it to his advantage. Very spectacular!

I love that a lot of his cut-outs have names that sound like great children’s books. This one, ‘The Parakeet and the Mermaid’ is a brilliant example. As you can see from the woman in this photograph, it is really really huge. And very beautiful. Even looking at it from a few metres away, it took me a while to see the parakeet. Matisse was a master of suggestion through the simplest and barest of lines and shapes. In order to use the most simple of shapes to define something you must understand it’s visual form completely. This is very brave.

Another work I went back for a send look at was ‘The Snail’. Here the name is undervaluing I think the work itself. It’s very beautiful, the way the shapes curve round. He’s managed to make something made of polygons look somehow soft and sensual.

 

It was a great exhibition and I’m only sad it wasn’t on for longer. If you want to ind out more about Matisse and this period of his work, I highly recommend Alastair Sooke’s book ‘Henri Matisse: A Second Life’.

Tate Britain

So. One bright and breezy Tuesday I decided to go and visit the newly refurbished Tate Britain, to check out the changes. Perhaps I had been influenced by the persistent advert campaign on the tube declaring ‘you must come see’, or maybe I was just looking to be inspired. A bit of both most likely.

First impressions – it is light, bright, and lofty. Well, it would be if there hadn’t been a gaggle of school children clutching fresh sketchbooks.

 

I particularly loved the overlapping tile design on the floor:

 

 

And this beautifully simplistic map to help with orientation, that brought to mind images of a lift in 1920s New York.

 

 

This mural was here before the renovation I think but still adds a great and a little unexpected sense of humanism to the building:

 

 

Genius idea. And now, onto the art itself. Each time I visit something different usually catches my eye, but there are a handful of regulars that always make me stop and stare. The principle one being ‘A Bigger Splash’ by David Hockney. I love the way he’s captured a moment after it has just happened. There is a perpetual sense of a motion drawing to end, a gesture in its last drag that is both futile and alluring. The composition is bodily boring and daringly cold.

 

 

Howard hodgkin has again always been a favourite. That red just pops out with all the life that an inanimate object can ever project.

 

 

On to Bridget Riley, an Op-art legend. She sure knows how to manipulate the eye. I always feel like looking at one of her pieces is like having and eye-test. I love the way this piece, ‘Nataraja’, seems to come out towards the viewer.

 

 

 

This nude by Matthew Smith is precisely the kind of drawing my art teacher at school used to show us before life-drawing class. A perfect example of how colours can be manipulated to create something that is while not a true representation, is still a true likeness.

 

 

I’ve recently discovered this artist, David Bomberg. This work, ‘The Mud Bath’, reduces the human form to vague, geometric shapes that seem to be in constant movement.

 

 

This rather small painting by Edward Wadsworth is by far not his most famous, but I quite like the secret interplay between the two suspended amorphous shapes.

 

 

Peter Doig, ‘Ski Jacket’. Makes me of a friend who recently moved to Montreal, Canada.

 

 

I’ll be honest; I usually find sculpture very hard to understand, let alone like. Tony Cragg‘s sculpture here, ‘stack’, has appealed to me on this occasion I think because it fulfils some OCD thing inside me to have everything slotted in together in perfectly fitting, compact shapes. He must be very good at packing for holidays! His sketches are worth a goggle as well.

 

 

 

I found this composition by William Scott very calming.

 

 

One of the larger works that took up a whole room was this installation by the Chapman brothers, entitled ‘The Chapman Family Collection.’ I really liked this piece. As you walk into the room, the lights are dimmed, its cosy and at the same time a little sinister feeling. You see several what appear to be wooden carvings from what you assume are tribal communities around the world. On closer inspection, there’s signs all is not as it should be. Ronald McDonald peers out at you through the gloom. ‘McDonalds’ is lovingly inscribed into a wooden shield. These objects are highlighting the superficiality of not own our contemporary lifestyles, but our inability of perceive things as they really are. It a simplified version of a lot of wider issues, yet sometimes the most simplistic messages are the most powerful.

 

 

 

Lastly, a question to you:

do you read the description first or look at the painting/sculpture first?!

Katharina Grosse

I came across this the other day and instantly felt like I needed to share it with the world!

This is the latest art installation from German-born katharina Grosse. She has created a series of giant structures in Brooklyn Park, NY, entitled “Just The Two Of Us’

These free-form structures are unexpectedly and breathtakingly beautiful, fitting in around the trees with a certain graceful style. I love the ingenious way she has incorporated an almost graffiti-esk art form into a natural environment.

Definitely an excuse for a trip over the pond I think!

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Searching for labyrinths

Let’s be clear on one thing straight away – I’m NOT talking about the 1986 film with David Bowie’s crotch. Instead, the project by Mark Wallinger to celebrate 150 years of the underground in London.

The reason why I haven’t written for a while is because I’ve been collecting these. Collecting?!

I’ll explain.

The first one I saw was before I was ever aware of the project, or who the artist was. It was at Embankment tube station, – perhaps the most in plain view labyrinth – and I remember standing there for some time looking at it and wondering what it was. After finding out I have become even more aware of them, and have started casting my eye around every tube station I go through in the hope of finding another one. I wanted to wait until I had a few under my belt to give a decent account of the project.

Wallinger, a Londoner himself, decided to create 270 (one for each tube station) labyrinths, each one unique, each one very different from the other, even if it does not appear so at first glance. The idea was to reflect the tube’s strong links with graphic design (through the many variations of the tube map over history) and celebrate the unique-ness and at the same time the same-ness of each tube station.

I think it was a beautiful idea, and, as a lover of all things map-like, the bold simplicity of the designs are very appealing to me visually. I like the fact that he chose to use labyrinths, not mazes, in his designs. With labyrinths, there is only one way in and out. It is a direct path to the centre, it leads you straight into the heart.

Such is their mysteriousness, the labyrinths inspired three men, Andi James, Martin Hazel, and Steve Wilson to ‘collect’ all 270 of them in under 17 hours on the 19th of December 2009, setting a Guiness World Record. What is it about them that is so alluring, and draws out the adventure in us?! Maybe its the fact that they aren’t always in obvious places, sometimes they are cramped in with adverts fighting for space on either side, sometimes hidden on walls in the ellusive something and nothing nooks and crannies of the London underground. Whatever it is, Wallinger has certainly found a unusual and captivating way to make us learn and appreciate the London Underground and it’s history.

Here’s the ones I have collected so far:

Waterloo: I was surprised to find this one as Waterloo is such a big station, but I happened across it by chance one evening.

 

 

Tooting Broadway: Ah, Tooting. My local station. It’s a little blurred, (nothing to do with me having been out with friends that evening…!) but I quite like the optical illusion effect it’s given the labyrinth.

 

 

Wimbledon Park: I think the green door behind quite compliments it!

 

 

 

East Putney:

 

 

Putney Bridge:

 

 

Parsons Green: I love that this one kind of looks like a brain…!

 

 

Fulham Broadway:

 

 

West Brompton:

 

 

I’d love to collect all 270 of them….but as I’ve got 262 still to go, it may take me and while! And of course that means I have to go to Theydon Bois, Totteridge & Whetstone, Carpenters Park, and let’s not forget Cockfosters!

I’ll keep you posted…

 

 

Drawings project – Buildings (part 4)

So, finally here it is, the fourth and final part of my drawing project. As I mentioned in my last post, I did struggle to complete the task I set myself. It seems life is determind to get in the way. Anyhow, it feels good to have finally finished! thought I’d share the last few drawings with you:

Starting at Victoria, I walked down Vauxhall Bridge Road to see what I could find. This drawing is Apartments off Charlwood Street, drawn while sitting on a bench with a statue of a rollerskating woman…

 

 

I then continued my journey to Bessborough Gardens, a little private park surrounded by grand Georgian terraces. I spotted a rather unusual building across the road from where I sat.

 

 

I then decided to draw the whole view, including the above building. An attempt at capturing the great mish-mash of styles, materials, and sizes that these buildings offer.

 

 

Further down the road I took in the view across Vauxhall Bridge from the Pimlico side. Vauxhall Bridge has to be one of the most boring bridges in London, yet the buildings that surround it supply a wide variety of aesthetic nourishment. This is a quick sketch of St George’s Wharf, a fairly recent development that I remember noticing on a visit to London a few years back.

 

 

And finally, a temporary building that drew from one of my favourite places to sit in Grosvenor Gardens. Thought I should pay homage to the building sites and construction part of London’s architectural skyline.

 

 

 

So. What have I learnt from this project?!

1. Although it’s good to set yourself deadlines, restrictions can crush creativity.

2. London has lots and lots of beautiful buildings and even a lifetime of drawing and photographing them would hardly begin to do them justice.

3. Drawing buildings means dealing with angles, spaces, corners, and lots of repetition. Not easy for the impatient!

4. I can remember how to draw if I try. I am also bad at really looking.

5. the material you draw with will change everything completely.

6. Its always good to draw for drawing’s sake, even if the outcome is rubbish.

7. It’s better to try and draw something how you see it, rather than how it actually is.

 

And lastly, thought I’d share my favourite 5 drawings from the whole project. This was surprisingly hard to decide!

 

 

 

What’s your favourite?

 

 

 

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Attempts at photography…

So. I’ll be honest. I haven’t had time recently to complete my drawings project. I know, its disappointing!

So instead I though I’d show some of the photographs I’ve been taking a long the way, sometimes because I didn’t have time to draw a certain view, or because I thought what I saw would be better conveyed as a photograph. Sometimes, dare I say it, a photograph can be better than a drawing. It can still convey a sense of personality and style of the person taking it just as much as a drawing.

My photography skills are not the best, (my camera is starting to slowly die) but I was happy with some of the results:

View from where I sit the park at lunch:

The Barbican:

Around Moorgate:

By the river:

St Thomas’ Hospital:

And lastly a new building on my way to the tube station which I think they should leave how it is!

Drawings coming soon I promise! I’m on holiday now for a week so there may not be a new post for a while. But i shall I be planning what’s to come next!

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Art Everywhere

….I will update my drawings project soon I promise, but for now I wanted to briefly mention ‘Art Everywhere’, a project started by Innocent Smoothie genius Richard Reed.

The basic idea: 22,000 poster sites, 57 works of art, putting art in place of advertisements all over the country. At first I thought this was purely just a London-based project but was glad to learn it’s nationwide! Who wouldn’t rather see an interesting painting or photograph at your local bus stop than a dull advert for EE, Fanta, or Sky you’ve seen a million times before??

I think this a great idea because it makes art free and incredibly easy to access. It also brightens up the place, a Freud, Hodgkin or Hockney is surely more aesthetically pleasing than any advert could be?!

A glance at some of the chosen artworks:

 

One of mine (and Britain’s) favourite paintings, The Fighting Temeraire is featured, and in Victoria Station, where I often work. Keep a look out for the others….or go to the website to see where they all are: Art Everywhere.

My only complaint: that there aren’t more, I would have liked to see every advert in London covered for a while!