Exquisite Corpse

So I never knew what this game was called so I decided to find out a little more about it. I was surprised to find out it was a surrealist game created by Andre Breton called Exquisite Corpse, I originally started out as a word game but eventually progressed into images.

'Andre Breton, Yves Tanguy and                    ' Andre Breton, Max Morise, Jeannette Ducrocq Tanguy,

Jacqueline Lamb'                                                     Pierre Naville, Benjamin Péret, Yves Tanguy,

                                                                                   Jacques Prévert'

Combining Creative Crazy Minds

Humour requires a lot of imagination and creativity. Children are bursting with imagination and are constantly coming up with crazy scenarios, imaginary friends and can create imaginary worlds and places. Remember how fun a big cardboard box could be when you were a child.

I began to think of some games I used to play as a child to spark some ideas. The one that came into my head simply involved a piece of paper and a pencil. The first person started of by drawing an image at the top of the page then folding it over and letting the next person continue the image without knowing what the first person had drawn.

My housemates and I gave it a go and these are the results:

Funny People making Funny Art

So we got a new brief, we had a choice with this one. There were two options: Protest or Humour. Both very interesting topics but I think I'll chose humour and although the pressure to be funny might be a bit of a challenge I'll give it a go.

I started off with a brainstorm and then went on to research some artists that create humorous works to get some inspiration from people who were successful at creating work that people would find humorous.

Aled Lewis

Toy Stories

Mixing creativity and humour is something Aled Lewis has done cleverly in his work. He shows how a dialogue box with a witty caption can change an image into something funny and humorous.

Hairy Stuff

I had a little time between the lithography process's so I began researching some artists that use hair or draw hair. I found Alice Mahers work really interesting especially how she makes the drawings look so textured and realistic. Female hair, similar to the moustaches and beards has many different styles and for women hair is also a form of identity. 

Her work is also inspired by Mythology and Folklore, where hair was a symbol of strength.

These are some experimental monoprints where I wanted to include texture so I used hair, placed it on acetate and printed it to achieve these results

Ghostly Looking Print

Tickle Your Fancy

Reenforcing the sparked contemporary interest in facial hair, showing how moustaches and beards can reflect personalities and they can also decieve. It is an installation of over 100 works on paper. The beards and moustaches are isolated, seperated from all facial features giving them a sence of importance. They are quite lighthearted pieces

'Sprouting of Millions of Moustaches'

When I was looking through the Movember website this quote stood out to me. The word sprouting is associated with plants, trees etc, so I tried to combine plants and moustaches to create some images. First off I wanted to familiarise myself with different moustache styles so I looked up some images on the internet. There were so many different styles from handlebars to horseshoes, walrusus and pencils....

Some pages from my sketchbook where I began to combine the different moustache styles with little sprouting plants

I played around with the sprouting plant idea a bit and came up with these two images. I think they are effective and convey the ideas I'm trying to put across so I decided to use the image on the left for my lithography. It is quite a simple design and maybe a little flat so I thought it needed some more detail so I added hair texture in the background and on the moustache.

Proof print

finished print

This is my lithography print, I am quite happy with the composition and registration however if i were to do it again I would choose a slightly different colour, I think the orange colour should have been brown but that was due to my lousy attempt at mixing colours.

Mansome

Here's a trailer for the film Mansome, which is gives us a humorous insight into mens identity in the 21st century. From Paul Rudd and  Zach Galifianakis the film stars many funny men who entertain us throughout the film while discussing their grooming habits and masculinity.

Heres a little sneak peak of what the film is all about! the full version is available online if anyone fancies watching it

Playing Catch Up

After missing nearly a month and a half of the print brief I had a bit of catching up to do so there was no time to waste and I got straight to work.

Headlines and Stories

I began looking through newspapers both online and printed copies! Since it is the end of October and the start of November or 'Movember' as we call it now there was no shortage of articles about how men were about to showcase their manliness by growing a moustache for the month! 

Whats Movember all about?
The Movember challenge is taken on by men all over the world throughout the month of November. They grow a mo' in hope to raise awareness and money for prostate and testicular cancer and mental health.

I have a few ideas for the brief i need to work on so I must-dash...

Newbie...

After starting off in Visual Communications I wondered what I had got myself into, it just wasn't for me and I wasn't loving the course at all so I needed out.. I loved printmaking when I did the elective last year and I'm still wondering why I didn't chose it in the beginning but after a few talks and meetings with tutors here I am, I am now a printmaking student in LSAD

I'm excited to get stuck into my new project and hopefully will have some work to post very soon!