Well its been a while since i posted on here!

Turns out three blogs is more than i can remember to update! To see what I've been up to, check out my tumblr and Facebook pages;

www.imaginationistheammunition.tumblr.com

www.facebook.com/pollyrichardsillustration

So in the spirit of new year i aim to update this blog, starting now with my last piece from a project which was based on an excerpt of text about the meanings of different hand gestures. The final idea took much longer than usual to develop, mainly because i had so many thoughts whizzing around, but i'm pretty satisfied with the final piece. It's based on the weird and wonderful art of palmistry, I used the different meanings of each part of the palm to create a theme about love. I really enjoyed using typography as it's not something i had fully immersed myself in before.

work in progress...

Finished piece.

The Mermaid familie's day out to the beach!

We drew some blobs with a paintbrush attached to a stick and this is what it developed into!

The Imposters Rollergirls!

A little while back i did some illustrations for my teams latest recruitment. Matt Smith (visual archive) used his magical Photoshop skills to put it all together to make this awsome flyer that we've been harassing freshers with!

Social Conflict

    Following on from the characters we created during summer, we were asked to include them in an illustration based on the idea of a social conflict.I decided to choose two of the characters that i enjoyed working on the most which was robot man, in the style of Phil Wrigglesworth, and mime girl  in the style of Gary Baseman. This is the finished result...

    The Painting took longer than originally thought, because i had to work out the perspective, which is not one of my skills, i must admit!

I tried to create a visual dialogue between the characters, which i think works quite well with the poses i chose to paint. If i had planned my time a little better i would improve it by neatening up some of the execution of the paint and maybe slightly changed the different tones of the colours to really make the perspective work.

It's been a while Mr Blog....

I'm afraid my absence was due to moving back to university and settling in.I'm nice and comfy now so i will share the rest of my summer project characters. These were inspired by Gary Baseman, Sara Fanelli and Charles Mackintosh. 10 brownie points if you can guess which inspired which!

Wishing tree and other fun stuff in Manchester Art Gallery

Had a great little mooch around Manchester Art Gallery and took some WONDERFUL photos,which i have accidentally deleted. So i guess i'll have to paint a picture with my words.

Good points:

• There was an 'interactive' exhibition where i held some red ice and drew in the dark.
• Great illustrations by Alison Erika Forde of which some were in a cute little shed.
• Added a wish to a wishing tree, someone had wished for Ryan Gosling to be their boyfriend.(That wasn't my wish......honest)
• Took some 'to do' sheets by various artists that i may try.....

Bad points:

• ummmm...I'm not very eloquent at describing what a brilliant art gallery it was.
• The Whitworth gallery,which is just outside the center of the city, was pretty disappointing. 

EDIT:I found the pictures!!

Ralph Steadman

     During my recent visit to London i went to the cartoon museum which was a hidden gem! The main exhibition was a Ralph Steadman retrospective which featured over 100 of his works as well as a really compelling documentary about his way of working. I love Steadman and admittedly,got a bit distracted in the research stage.  Some of my favorite pieces are his illustrations for ' Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' by Hunter S. Thompson. If you haven't read the book, i implore you to!

'Steadman sees through the glass very darkly' Hunter s. Thompson

    Steadman frequently uses satire to highlight social issues, mainly about politics.Motivated by this i wanted to create a character that mocks the ridiculous ' beauty standard' that our culture has set for modern women. To be socially 'accepted' as 'beautiful' magazines, advertisements, films etc constantly reinforce that we need to be white, young, hairless,wear make-up, and be skinny but with large breasts. What emerged after sketching a few ideas was a barbie doll like figure, which i suppose incorporates all the attributes of a social acceptable woman.

    I really liked the idea of the character having no arms as it makes her look even more passive and vulnerable but i didn't think it would be very practical. So i decided that she would be able to remove her arms at will, which i think is great because now she is simultaneously vulnerable and aggressive.

Robot man!

Finished my third character based on Phil Wrigglesworth's work.This wasn't too challenging because his work is really fun and lively. I'm pleased with how my character turned out,i think he looks a bit like a walking x-ray machine!

Where are all the women?

So I Visited London for a few days and of course went to every art gallery i could find. There was some brilliant street art as well and now i feel refreshed, inspired and ready to carry on with my summer project. Here's just a few of some that caught my eye.

 This ones pretty freaky....

     As much as i enjoyed consuming as much art as possible, it left a sour taste in my mouth. Where the Hell were all the female artists? If you don't believe me, the EDL conducted an audit which looked at works from April 2012-April 2013 gathering data on 134 commercial galleries in London, which collectively represent 3,163 artists. Here is what they found...

• 31% of the artists were women

• Out of the 41 pieces of public art audited in east London, only 14% were made by female artists

• and the 386 pieces of public art in west minister and the city of London, only 8% were made by female artists

• 25% of the artists selected for the 4th plinth are female

(http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/may/24/london-art-audit-female-artists-represented#_)

    It's hard enough starting a career in the creative arts,without the blatant sexism of the art world making it even more overwhelming.

Finished second character

Phew! This one was challenging! So this is my second character, a chameleon who cannot change her colour ,so has to make herself clothes so she can fit in. Hopefully I've done it in the style of Stephanie Wunderlich, i'm not overly pleased with this character, i must admit.

Developing second character

I chose to study the style of Stephanie Wunderlich for my second character design. She creates wonderful paper cut illustrations, which is something I've never tried before. Here are some of her pieces :

 This is quite a challenging medium to work with as alot of patience and a steady hand are needed! I'm not happy with the experimental characters I've tried out so far,like these seals below, but if i keep practicing this technique,hopefully ill create a character who looks more professional soon.

When i'm not drawing, i'm skating (or i'm drawing pictures of people skating)

My roller derby team is self promoted and funded which gives me the opportunity to actually put my art to some use.I was recently asked to do a drawing for our newest poster, so this is what i came up with...

Roller derby is pretty ace drawing material, mainly because they are the sort of bad-ass women that i love depicting however, i am terrible at drawing shoes and feet. That's a pretty key thing really, you need to draw them actually skating.

Anyway, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out in the end,now i need to clear all the unsuccessful sketches of skates that have spread all over my room!

Summer Project : First Character!

So I've finally finished my first character inspired by and (hopefully) in the style of Josh Taylor. The character is in acrylics, as that is Taylor's most preferred medium to use and coincidentally,mine too. Here's one of Taylor's paintings entitled 'An Executioners work is never done' and my own character which I've unofficially called 'Freak show twins'.

When creating the 'Freak show twins' they started to remind me more and more of the freaky twins in Stanley Kubrick's film' The Shining'. Knowing this i was initially quite apprehensive about continuing to develop them as i felt like i was stealing someone else's idea. However i really like how the character turned out and think it shows my influences and adds and even more 'creepier' feel to the twin's. Salvador Dali once said; 'Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.'

Today i'm going to make good art..

To create is to destroy

I've had this great book by Kerri Smith for ages,but never really had the time to get started on it. Well nows the time i guess! Here's some of the pages I've done so far...
I do get some strange looks when i try and do some of these page on the train.

I'm a bit of a magpie...

I found this little beauty in a car boot sale last week and couldn't wait to paint it. I found it a bit harder than i anticipated actually, as I'm not really used to working with 3D objects, so as a result the painting isn't as neat and precise as i anticipated.

However as Scott Allen simply said; 'Done is better than perfect'

She is currently scaring away the birds and my dog in the garden.