Studio Arts blog- Lydon

The basic idea I was going for with my art was to make works which are not necessarily in the STYLE of Pop-art, but inspired by pop-art, pop-artists and the ideas or inspirations in pop-art. I decided on this idea very quickly because it was an idea that I'd had in mind for a while, and took this outcome as a chance to do it. A lot of my design process was focused on the practical side of things, as I would generate ideas while working on pieces and go onto them, and eventually the piece I was the happiest with would become not really a final piece, but the representation of the result of an idea of work.

1. Mass production inspired

Photo copy transfer

Another photo copy transfer of the same image,with attempted editing before I became sick of the technique.

There were a few works inspired by the idea of screen-printing in Andy Warhol's work. I tried to trial different mediums to create the mass produced effect and went for photo copy transfers and linoleum. These were fairly average and I became quite disinterested in them and moved on fairly quickly, though they were a good starting point for ideas and the linoleum (Or easycarve in this case) was enjoyable to work with, so it wasn't a waste of time. Really, I was just playing around with the idea while I developed other ideas.

Failed attempt of photocopying and transfering an origional image

2. Bright colors

The bright colors in pop-art come from the idea of advertisement and propoganda, as well as in some cases comic art (which I looked into later). I also got the idea for using normal wax crayons from crayola, like a child would use, from an Andy Warwhol quote "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it." . This inspired me in the way of a crayon is something anyone can use, and it's going to work the same wasy for almost anyone. And therefore also inspired by a freind of mine, who does drawings in crayon which, even though they claim are terrible, I find awesome and adorable.

I did one drawing in total based on this idea, because I was happy with the first result and it was one of the last I did

3. Insporation from media and propoganda.

A large body of work was done based on this idea. All the water colors were an extention of this because in the process of making them, I would collect the MX on the way to a VCA drawing class, pick the photo with the most rediculous expression or pose and then draw it out and paint it in watercolors. Of the works involved, there were a few examples of the representation of the work I was doing. I also got the words written on the works from pop-culture references and internet memes, as an extention of the popular culture idea behind pop art. The water color gives it an almost demented look which goes along well with my opinion of such photos, they're always so rediculous.

First water color - Was aiming for a realistic look

The extention of 'OMG' where I got more of a realistic look and bolder lines by drawing them in with ink rather than 'black watercolor' (which is an oxymoron)

The first of the less neat and more simplistic water colors. 'Suave and Neat Gentleman' was the extention of this.

'Buy One Today' was the attempted extention of 'Come At Me Bro', but I decided 'Come At Me Bro' was a better representation of what I was going for.

An attempted extention of the idea of Propoganda and advertisement - although I liked this peice I couldn't see anywhere to go from it and so I left the idea in this peice. It's about the misconceptions involving drugs and medication, self-medication and OVER medication of society. Inspired by 'Shock ads' or 'Scare campaigns'

4. Comic art

I took insporation from the works of Roy Lichtenstien and a temporary teacher at my VCA class, Sharon Goodwin as a chance to work on using my comic manga style, and decided to use this familiar style to best know how to represent the emotions I was going for. These works were done on the computer in flash before being copied out using screenshots. They're highly emtoional and depressive because of the constant mood that I was in at that point, and done on the computer so I could be away from everyone, so they are very much vent works. Eventually I put them all together in a tiled way, again inspired by the works of Andy Warhol in some of his most popular works like the tiled Marylin Monroe paintings and 6 soup cans hung together.

All of the digital art works together in the one mixed drawing. I attempted to mass print these, but in a mood I sort of. . . Destroyed them, being unhappy with them. But a high quality version has been printed off to replace them

The surving attempt at the mass production of the digital art. The quality is significantly lower on purpose because what I did was print it off, photocopy it, then photocopy that photocopy, and then photocopy the photocopy of the photocopy. And so on and so forth.

I also did some practices of digital art by doing random animations in flash either just out of the blue or for friends which cannot be uploaded here and has been emailed

5. Observational drawings inspired by the title of the first 'Museium Survey' of Pop Art

Very simply, what I did, inspired by the name "New Painting of Common Objects" was draw from observation stright from pen (fineliner to be precise) in a stylised way. The style I ended up doing also happened to remind me of the stylistic drawings shown in advertisements and such, and therefore can be linked back to 3.