Puck Trumps

As well as the prints I made for Pick Me Up I also created a character for the Puck Trumps set. This was great fun and a real challenge because of the small format (about 5 x 5cm) and the imited colour palate.

I also made this one on the day 

It was a challenge to come up with something simple and fun to a theme, especially without being able to get any references on site as I find it quite hard to draw entirely from my imagination.

Pick Me Up set up

I was also involved in the set-up of the collective's stand, which included making tables and chairs, creating and decorating wooden 'battle booths' for activities to take place in and hanging work on the walls.

The space

Vinyls up on one wall with one of the Puck Shields up too

Prints hanging

A shot of the crowd at the private view.

Close up of one of my prints on the wall.

It has been a great experience and talking to all the other collective members has been really interesting as they all have different experiences of Illustration, some being recent graduates and some having been freelancing for a number of years. It has also given me insight as to the work that has to go into curating and setting up a show and will come into use for the degree show.

Pick Me Up

I was given the opportunity as part of Puck collective to show my work at Pick Me Up at Somerset House this year. The theme for the work was War. I immediately thought of taking a more playful spin on the theme thinking of toy soldiers and fantasy battles.

I wanted for my work to have a papercut look and tried to recreate this digitally so I could quickly create images and experiment easily with colours and textures. I enjoyed making the patterns for the camouflage jacket and did some research into camo patterns, especially those used in fashion as they often some kind of play on a traditional pattern.

I used cut paper to try and start creating my own patterns.

In doing this I saw the potential for the patterns to become abstract landscapes that my original 'toy soldiers' could be exploring.

I made an effort to create patterns that can tile so could actually be used for a fabric, then placing the character in afterwards so at a distance you see it as a camo pattern, then on closer inspection see them as landscapes.

Because I needed create prints to sell at the event I decided to get two of my designs Riso'd, and because of this I had to think carefully about how many and which colours I could use. I ended up going with 2 colours per design, one being a florescent orange and a blue and green as the other colour. This was actually a surprisingly difficult task as I had to be quite inventive with layering the colours at different opacities.

Above is a close-up of one of the final Riso prints. The photo really doesn't do the fluorescent orange justice, it's much more vibrant.