Qualities of Materials and Techniques

Different materials are good for different techniques and visa versa like when I was doing a screen printing, Screen printing is a very versatile technique that can be used on most materials from paper to 100% cotton and most materials in-between but it also comes down to task if you are going down the quick production of of a design or piece in bulk then techniques like Screen Printing and Plate Printing and Digital Production are good for quick production because the outcome will never change if you do it the same every time whereas if you were doing Mono Printing or Pen and Ink they outcomes would vary due to pressure and ink usage and they will not always be the same.

The digital design process is the most consistent route of design but it is a lot more complex because there are so many options and tools to use and confusing interlocking components and there are so many possibilities with digital design you can end up with but you are limited to the amount of materials you can print on or use to different types of paper really but the more traditional techniques have more restrictions on what you can do and end up with like etching its very time consuming and hard on the hands and takes a lot of accuracy and patience but has so many more materials that you can use along the way

But the wonderful thing you can do with all these techniques both Traditional and Non Traditional is combine them together like I have in my work I have designed a graphic image through traditional techniques like sketching and paint and then converted them to a digital design on a computer refined them then converted the final design back to traditional by way of a screen print onto T-Shirts so that process alone used 3 or 4 different techniques and materials proving that if you combine different materials and techniques along a design or creative process you can end up with something that might not have been possible if you had stuck to one technique and material.

Computer health and safety

To be safe in the environment of computer working you need to make sure that you take regular breaks from your work on the computer because you will strain your eyes another way of stopping your eyes from being strained is to make sure that the screen brightness and contrast levels are correct  for the environment of the room, say that it is a brightly lit room make sure that the brightness and contrast are similar to the lighting in that room. Also make sure that the seat is the right height for your eyes to be level with the centre of the screen otherwise if your looking up for too long you might get a stiff neck and have a stretch before you commence work so your legs and arms don't seize up and also become stiff during your work. If there are more than 7 people in the room you are working in, according to new EU regulations you have to wear a High Viz vest so you can be clearly visible in the working environment. (last one obviously not true but the way health and safety is going it won't be long until it is!!)

Historic Poster Research

This Poster campaign was clearly trying to tackle the obvious problem of global warming and the ice caps in 2012, its a very good peice incorporating the visual passage of time using an hour glass as the base of poster and then the ice caps in the top chamber visualising how the water and melted ice is literally filling up the bottom chamber which holds a city. The tag line 'act now before its too late' really stresses the point that it is happening but you can stop it. This poster links to my work because its focus is to get people to think about what there doing and the ice caps melting.

This one is clearly not about global warming, it is clearly a poster about Cyclists and Drivers using the road in harmony. This poster has a different style of presentation to the other two, instead of having a full image in the centre of the poster it has just the important part of it the Wheels of both a car and a bike saying visually that we are more alike than you think with the very effective white on black clearly showing the contrast between the two images.

This poster is also aiming at the large problem of global warming using the smoke from some industrial towers forming into the upper half of a polar bear this also links to my work because I plan incorporate polar bears into my final piece wether its my logo, poster or graphic image and I have already used the polar bear in some of my concept thumbnails. The imagery on the poster is helped by the words to the left the text on a poster is very important it needs to be hard hitting straight to the point or a very effective rhetorical question.

Lens Based Image Making

Lens Based Image Making

Different lenses have different outcomes on the image like some distort it and some dramatically improve the zoom and focal length all the way from Telephoto lenses to Macro lenses so that is where I will start ...

A telephoto lens has a long focal length and provides a high level of magnification, allowing you to photograph subjects at a moderate to far distance. They tend to be bigger and heavier than other types of lens, although modern technological advances have made them more compact and easier to handle.

A wide angle lens is one with a short focal length. They provide an angle of view beyond that of a standard lens, allowing them to capture more of the scene in a single shot. Extreme wide angle lenses are known as fisheye lens; these can capture around 180 degrees, making for some intriguing, almost abstract photos.

A standard lens is one with a mid-range focal length, typically around 50mm. They have an angle of view which is roughly the same as the angle that the human eye can comfortably view, meaning that they produce images which appear natural to the viewer.

A macro lens is one designed especially for close-up photography. They have a different internal construction from normal lenses which gives them very good sharpness and contrast, meaning that they produce some really eye-catching photos. Macro lenses are useful for photographing any subject at very close range. Typical subjects include insects, animals, and plants.

Presentation Techniques

 Presentation Techniques

There are many different ways in which you can present your work in a gallery. As part of the project, it is important that I display and explore some of the presentation methods.

Hanging presentation is a more contemporary way of displaying your work if you have done textile, photography or painting work, obviously if your work is heavy then this is probably not the best way to present your work. This technique would be good if your final piece is a series of works displaying them together like this would look fantastic.

An Easel display is a more traditional way of presenting your work but can still be brought up to date with current times with some interesting lighting or extra display on the easel itself. This is good for anything with a quadrilateral form so a canvas to a wooden board and not so good for textile work or sculpture because the easel was never created to display something like that.

Window mounting is a mix of both traditional and contemporary because it has been around for a long time and still looks as good as it did when it first came onto the scene its a timeless piece of presentation that is great for detailed bits of small work to bring emphasis to the work with the white space around it.

Art Movements

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was a movement that swept through the decorative arts and architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Generating enthusiasts throughout Europe and beyond, the movement issued in a wide variety of styles, and, consequently, it is known by various names, such as the Glasgow Style. It has a natural movement too it with the forms of the nature but yet fairly man made because of all the symmetry in the work and there are also a lot of female subjects in the works. Some of the key artists in this movement is Gustav Klimt, Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, Arthur Liberty and Alphonse Mucha.

Gustav Klimt

Abstract Expressionism

jAbstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. Although the term "abstract expressionism" was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates, it had been first used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, regardingGerman Expressionism. In the United States, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky

Expressionism

Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist attempts to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him. He accomplishes his aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements. The main artists for this movement are Georges Rouault, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch, Marc Chagall.

Oskar Kokoschka

Modernism

Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped Modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I. A notable characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness, which often led to experiments with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating a painting, poem, building, etc. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody. Influential artists include Henry Moore, Frank Stella, Barbra Hepworth, David Smith, Henri Matisse

Hans Hofmann

Urban Art

Urban Art is a term which gained popularity in the late 20th century. It was used mainly by the art establishment to encompass art and artists who were originally involved in streetand graffiti art. The term achieved further endorsement when major auction houses such as Bonhams used it to categorise these types of prints. Artists associated with the Urban Art genre, include Keith Haring, Banksy, Dan Baldwin,D*Face and Pure Evil.

Banksy

Dada

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I, and the nationalism, and rationalism, which many thought had brought war about. Influenced by ideas and innovations from several early avant-gardes - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism. The key artists for this movement are Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Andre Breton

Man Ray

Surrealism

Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. Surrealism inherited an anti-rationalist sensibility from Dada, and was shaped by emerging theories on our perception of reality, especially Sigmund Freud's model of the subconscious. Th main artists for this movement are Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst and Joan Miro

Salvador dali

Photoshop Adjustments : Black & White

Photoshop Adjustments : Black & White

Photoshop Adjustments : Colour ISO

Photoshop Adjustments : Colour ISO

Photoshop Adjustments : Contrast

Photoshop Adjustments : Contrast

Photoshop Adjustments : Cropping

Photoshop Adjustments : Cropping

Camera Types

Camera Types

  

A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex", from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured, contrary to viewfinder cameras where the image could be significantly different from what will be captured.

Medium format photography uses a larger film type than 35mm film cameras, allowing for more detail to be captured and the negative to be printed dramatically larger than 35mm film prints. Medium format cameras are great as you begin to learn more advanced basic photography tips and techniques and work well before moving to large format cameras.

Large format refers to any imaging format of 4×5 inches or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the 6×6 cm or 6×9 cm size and much larger than the 24×36 mm frame of 35 mm format. The main advantage of large format, film or digital, is higher resolution. A 4×5 inch image has about 16 times the area, and thus 16× the total resolution, of a 35 mm frame.

A twin-lens reflex camera (TLR) is a type of camera with two objective lenses of the same focal length. One of the lenses is the photographic objective or "taking lens" (the lens that takes the picture), while the other is used for the viewfinder system, which is usually viewed from above at waist level. TLRs are film cameras, most often using 120 films, although there are many examples that used other formats. No general-purpose digital TLR cameras exist

A digital single-lens reflex camera (also called a digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera combining the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor, as opposed to photographic film. The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between a DSLR and other digital cameras.

A point-and-shoot camera, also called a compact camera, is a still camera designed primarily for simple operation.^[1] Most use focus free lenses or autofocus for focusing, automatic systems for setting the exposure options, and have flash units built in. Point-and-shoots are by far the best selling type of separate camera, as distinct from camera phones. They are popular with people who do not consider themselves photographers but want an easy to use camera for snapshots of vacations, parties, reunions and other events.

A compact system camera (CSC) should be lightweight, portable and take great photos. With the ability to change lenses, they offer flexibility in the way you capture a picture and are a cheaper alternative to DSLR cameras. Pocketable or mini options that look no larger than a compact camera and, without a viewfinder, often function very much like one

Bridge cameras are cameras are often comparable in size and weight to the smallest digital SLRs and there are also superzoom DSLR-shape bridge camera with retractable lens to make it more compact, but almost all digital bridge cameras lack an optical viewfinder system. The phrase has been in use at least since the 1980s and continues to be used with digital cameras. The term "bridge camera" was originally used to refer to film cameras which "bridged the gap" between point-and-shoot cameras and SLRs.

The instant camera is a type of camera that generates a developed film image. The most popular types to use self-developing film were formerly made by Polaroid Corporation Polaroid cameras can be classified by the type of film they use. The earliest Polaroid’s used instant roll film, which has since been discontinued. Roll film came in two rolls, which were loaded into the camera and eventually offered in three sizes.

A camcorder is an electronic device combining a video camera and a video recorder, typically used for consumer video recording. Although marketing materials may use the colloquial term "camcorder", the name on the package and manual is often "video camera recorder". Most devices capable of recording video are camera phones and digital cameras primarily intended for still pictures; the term "camcorder" is used to describe a portable, self-contained device, with video capture and recording its primary function.

Lomo- lomography fixed focal length camera with 2 lengths which makes you think about what your doing more. It is a film camera, and has a switch to change between lengths. 

Mobile devise- phone, tablet. Different lenses can be purchased to put over lens to achieve a wide angle etc.