A - African Art

While searching on the internet for african art to inspire me on my final design I ended up on a website called insideafricanart.com and it had lots of different african artists as well as information on themselves. There was one artist that I found called Hendrick Lilanga whose work I thought was really interesting. I liked how he layer out his drawings so that they fill the whole page as well as how he drew the people in his work the had exaggerated features such as large noses lips or ears, he also added colourful blocks into his work possibly to fill the space a little bit more. His background is colourful in his work and contrasts with the people and objects which i think works well.

O - Orange

The colour orange gets its name from the fruit an orange. It is a secondary colour and is created by mixing the colours red and yellow. Orange is associated with meanings of joy, warmth, heat, sunshine, enthusiasm, creativity, success, encouragement, change, determination, health, stimulation, happiness, fun, enjoyment, balance, sexuality, freedom, expression, and fascination. 

J -

Q -

W -

X -

U - Universe

The universe is known as all matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole or even the earth together with all its inhabitants and created things. I don't know much about the universe so I had to do a lot of research into this to even get a basic understanding. One website I found that showed the scale of things compared to the universe i thought was interesting because it was mind blowing how huge it actually is.Though we have not yet explore our own Solar System fully it is only one of many solar systems in our galaxy. The largest galaxies can have as many as 400 billion stars each with their own star system. There are also more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Most of the asteroids in our Solar System can be found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Some of these asteroids are so large that they have their own satellites. There are about 140 satellites orbiting the eight planets in our Solar System. I couldn't find many real photographs of space or anywhere in the universe but i found a few hyper realistic images that I think were created on some sort of computer program they are actually really interesting and I would like to create my own painting similar to this sort of image. I like the bright colours used and all the different hues and tones of the colours. I also like how parts of the pictures are exaggerated like the brightness of the colours and the amount of colours used it makes them look better than an actual photograph

Y - Yarn Bombing

Yarn Bombing is a sort of street art but not the most popular or recognised, it is basically where artists or groups of artists knit or crotchet colourful patterns in wool and create art on the street with them. Believe it or not wrapping material around things on the street is actually illegal but Im sure you wouldnt be prosecuted vigorously for it. While other forms of graffiti may be vandalism yarn bombing was originally almost exclusively about reclaiming and personalizing public places. Since starting this art form has actually spread worldwide and people even set up public events for this sort of thing in legal areas. My favourite of these is either the bridge or the turtle, the bridge because I can see its been done by a lot of people which shows there is a lot of unity in this work I think that is nice and its on a public bridge so it is shared with everyone to see its beauty and the turtle because he looks like hes wrapped in like a large doily.

H - Habitat

I had never heard of this retailer until my mum told me about it, but basically Habitat Retail is a household furnishings company in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain. They used to sell stuff such as furniture and decorations for houses a lot like the store we all know IKEA. The headquaters is in Milton Keyes England. Terrance Conran founded the company in London in 1964 and the first ever Habitat was opened in Chelsea. The company went into administration in 2011 and was bought by the same company that owns big names such as Argos and Homebase. In 2009 there were around 35 stores in the UK and now only as little as 12. I really like the furniture they currently sell there I love the design and colours of some of the sofas that they sell there especially the two person sofa I have never seen them before they look really interesting.

LIFE

I was looking through some of my Dad's old magazines and I found an issue of LIFE magazine from the 1940's and I just thought it was so cool all the old articles reading them as if they have just happened, all the hand drawn advertisements as well as how amazingly cheap a crunchie was back then, just 6p. A took a few photos of the magazine, my favourite part had to be the advertisement for an old chrysler it was so nicely drawn and laid out

Z - Zebra Finch

Zebra Finches are natively found in Indonesia and are named Zebra Finches because of the zebra pattern on their crests. I have always wanted to have some as pets because I wanted to fight and race them, I think that was the reason I wasnt allowed them to be honest. I have wanted them because they can be legally kept as house birds and they arent as loud as parrots. I like the patterns they have on them they almost look hand painted they are so beautiful, they gain their colour when they reach adulthood as children they are fairly plain and mostly grey. My dad had them as pets when he was younger and said he enjoyed keeping them as pets, I think I inherited my interest in birds from my dad he has always been into birdwatching.

V - Viva La Mexico

I had literally no idea what to do for V so i just tried to work the title around what I had been thinking about today. The other day I bought a t shirt with a crazy but really interesting skull design it just grabbed my attention when I saw it and I had to buy it! I had no idea where I had seen this before so I looked into this sort of t shirt design and its a design based on the masks worn on the day of the dead, which is hugely celebrated in Mexico. I learnt when researching into this holiday that The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for friends and family members who have died in the past It is mostly celebrated in Mexico where it is a national holiday and the celebration takes place on November the 1st and 2nd. The families are said to build private altars honoring the deceased as well as leaving belongings of the passed family member sugar skulls and sometimes their favourite foods. There are a lot of skull designs used during this holiday to do with the death of people. I like how people celebrate death instead of mourning over it personally i think thats a beautiful way of thinking.

F - Favourite Artist

My favourite artist of all time is a graffiti artist from New York called Sento. I like his book so much, the documentation is so precise in the way it has so many quotes from the artist himself, in the graffiti world it is hard to talk to the artists because they work at night and dont want to be known by face for obvious reasons but it was nice to actually read things about the life of the artist I learnt so much about the dangers of this life as well as how addictive the rush can be. The reason that he is my favourite is not just because of his outstanding piece after piece it is more that he has stuck with street art even up to this year, to me it really shows how much he loves what he does. He inspires me in a lot because I would love to still be putting my style of graffiti onto paper at the age of 40 and be loving every minute of it. Throughout the years he has adapted his style which is something that amazes me because ive always found it hard to change mine that frequently, he will do a new piece of artwork and I will question that it is actually his because of the change each time. My favourite piece of work that he has done is probably the same one that is on the front cover and the reason I like it so much is because its such a large piece and I think the large the artwork is the more effect it can have on people, its the sort of size where you think how can you even afford that much paint? I like the basic clear sea blue colour he uses to fill the letters and the lava colour for the outline and surroundings.

I - Inspiration

I own a book called Subway Art written by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant it basically documents everything about the urban subcultures of New York City and it plays a massive part in the inspiration of a lot of my graffiti art work because it was the time I came into contact with the origins of graffiti and really took it all in. What I love about this book is the way all the work in this book is nicely photographed in a way that you can see all the work head on and its framed really well. You can see what sort of train the work has been created on, the surroundings of the piece and the aftermath such as left over food wrappings and empty spray cans. I think these little things add to the work because it tells you that slight bit more about the artist's lifestyle. I like how all the photos in this book were actually taken at the time the work was done it makes it all feel so much more real almost like you were there when this was happening. Another one of my favourite parts about this book is that it has a lot of the artists views on parts of this street art era such as when the buffer was introduced and it says about how upsetting it was to have your artwork washed off trains in a matter of minutes considering it took them hours to create.

K - Keith Haring

Keith Haring was a graffiti artist born in Pennsylvania his work mostly involves colourful characters that are usually having fun dancing and moving around. He moved to New York in the 80's, when the life of graffiti and street art was really kicking off, and he did chalk drawings on the subway to share his art and express himself. I think his work is honestly  breathtaking some of the murals he has created are so wild and bright theres so much to look at. I like how each person he has drawn is doing something different and it makes you think where would all of these things be happening at the same time its really interesting. I like how he creates the feeling of happiness through his work even though none of the people he draws have faces, this shows a lot about how good he is at making the viewer feel something. The reason I started thinking about Haring's work is because I was in a skate shop and saw a few Keith Haring skateboards in like a series, I actually liked how they were designed with a different character on each board.

T - Tattoo

Myself I do not want tattoos in my lifetime because I always see young people getting really tacky chinese letters and the names of their cats underneath, I think people get them because its a cool thing to do. They wouldnt really suit me either. I do however like the idea of designing my own tattoo, it must be an amazing feeling to have your artistry chosen for someone to have permanantely on their body. To me that really shows how much they must like it. I like the look of some sleeve tattoos such as ones with lots symbols or pictures resembeling parts from their life. I know a lot of people dont like tribal art but I do like some of the patterns that I have seen. When starting my own design I didnt really know how to draw tribal art so i had a look at some examples on the internet,

a lot of them were fairly boring but I saw one with a tiger head and thought I want to replicate it but with maybe a cow because I like them more. I used pencil to draw my design but pressed on as hard as possible to create the blackest line like the ink used in tattoos

M - Manga

Since I was young I have been into a japanese graphic novel called DragonBall it is a series about the adventure of son goku as he grows up and trains to become a martial artist, his main search is to find the 7 dragonballs which can grant a wish to the beholder. On his journey he makes several friends, enemies and allies. Who battles with many people who are also in search of the dragonballs apart from they want them for the wrong reason. The show DragonBall Z, which is the sequel, was broadcated on TV between 1986 - 1996.. I have a full set of the old DragonBall comics from years ago and I have always loved them because of the art work inside is amazingly drawn by the artist and writer Akira Toriyama. I decided to try and replicate his work for myself by drawing goku in chalk pastels, I like the effect of the chalk, apart from the smudging, because it looks a lot like the style the original comic was done in.

N - Natural Lines

Today I got really bored and wanted to draw some graffiti but I was completely out of idea, everything I did just looked so samey so instead today I started with a pencil and just did some natural flowing lines and kept putting pencil to paper until the page was fairly covered in lines but still readable. After this I starting looking for letters within the natural lines and found two so I outlined them with a darker pencil, I didnt think two letters was enough so I started looking for lots of other ones in the background so it just looks like a mismatch of letters I thought this could look cool. I then coloured them in with permanent markers.

G - Gym

Keeping healthy is meant to go hand in hand with a healthy mind set and i believe this is true. I used to try and go to the gym as often as I could when I first signed up for it. It definetely helped with self confidence aswell as keepng myself in shape. Everything was good until a few months back when I lost all motivation and basically gave up. I have fallen off massively in the past few months but i hope to get back into it at hit the aims that i want to achieve. I find it hard to keep myself motivated over anything.

P - Portrait Edit

I dont draw people much and I think it is actually a big part of art so I could do with practicing this. I took a photo of myself on my laptop through the webcamera and then got out my pad and paper and started sketching. I actually thought it wasnt too bad of an effort but I could still do with some improvement. I thought it looked a little plain so I sat down and had a think about how I could improve this but to be honest I was stuck for ideas until I looked through my music and the cover art from one album (Squeeks - Presidential Music) really inspired me and made me want to design my portrait in the same sort of pattern and colours. The face of the artist on the cover already looked pencil sketched so I left it as it was and then went to think about what colours would work best and what media. I ended up deciding with red colouring pencil, for the added colourful touch, and a graphite stick to add some darker lines to the drawing.

R - Rose

I dont understand why people always draw flowers I have never seen anything breathtaking about petals but then again I have never sat down at drawn them so I cant really say much until I try it for myself. I was sitting in my garden, while we had people looking round the house from a renting agency, and I ended up staring at leaves for so long i was focusing on the curves and the veins that flow through the leaves, it made me think it was worth drawing a flower or atleast giving it a try. I think im going to try and draw a rose because it has such symbolism behind it such as love, faith, beauty, honor, balance, sense and so many others. It is mostly used as a sign of love given to a partner or girlfriend as a token of love or maybe even part of a plead or forgiveness. I ended up drawing a rose in pencil and shading it but I didnt really like it so I added some colour and added a few more flowers such as bluebells lavender and others.

C - Cars

Over the last few months I have grown an interest in cars, mostly prestige cars and super cars, I dont even know where this came from but now wherever I am they always seem to catch my eye and make me think i would love to be driving a car like that! Even though I am yet to start my driving lessons i hope to really soon and then not too long after passing hopefully buy my own car. My dream car is the TVR Sagaris because of the pure amazingness of the vehicle! The way the front headlights are stretched upwards smoothly up the bonnet of the car, the low exhaust coming out either side of the car at the rear, this is honestly the car for me. I have started to draw/sketch cars that I really like in my spare time i think personally there is something nice about drawing things that you dream of having one day its like being one step closer to actually having it. I decided to get out a sketchpad, some marker pens and a good picture of the car and start drawing. I like the final outcome because it resembles the car completely and I like the look of the hood with a black top to it, it really works in my opinion.

E - Experience in Disneyland

Since a young age I have always had a massive fear of crocodiles and alligators, the way they move, the look in their eyes and their large almost unreal looking jaws. Everything scares me about them especially when I see them in water, its terrifying. I think this all began when I went to Disneyland Paris for my grandparents anniversairy, I remember going to a zoo one day excited to see all kinds of new animals from all different countries. I was loving everything about it until i came into the reptile section and there was a large tank at one side of the room looming over me without even being close to it, the water looked completely clear which made me even more cautious of it. I went closer and saw something swim past and i thought it was just a fish so i walked slightly close but then saw a long crocodile swim back on itself as if it wanted to see me. I looked into its eyes and it struck terror inside me, it was awful! I remember running out at 100 miles per hour as if it was chasing me and ever since I have been teriyfied of them.

L - Lips

Whenever drawing lips I have always drawn them the same for every person that I draw because i have seen them as the same without realising, this has made me think that I really need to work on how I draw lips and mouths so lately I have been practicing by drawing many different mouths from different angles and looking at different shapes within lips. I have that a lot of the time people like to focus on drawing eyes and lips are not as focused on but they are just as involved in the human form as everything else. Hopefully after practicing this I will improve my skills in portraiture as well as my general sketching skills. Ive realised there are differences between the size of the top and bottom when before I just saw them as two of the same thing. I have also realised some people have over bite and under bite which changes the size of whats showing on the top and bottom lip.

S - Sketching

Today I went on a car drive with my family and while driving down the motorway i saw lots of good looking cars, this really made me want to look up some of the latest supercars. I found two that i really really liked and one that i have always loved and set my own goal in life to actually own one. The three cars were Yamaha OX99-11 a very futuristic car with antannae headlights, mclaren p1 and almost alien looking car with a smooth arched front and a more harsh sticking out back and finally my favourite the Lotus Elise. I really enjoyed sketching these cars, darkening the main shapes and curves to create a good feel for how the cars looks, using just lines to show the the design of the cars, it felt good. In a future post i hope to add another media to these, the reason i have not yet is because i am yet to decide which medium will suit which car.

A - Austin

I thought I would use this post to explain what I am doing on this blog, basically I have been set a homework by my college tutors to create one post for each letter of the alphabet, but there is a twist it has to be something art related. I feel like im going to enjoy this homework quite a lot because there are very wide options on what I can do for each letter. Personally I am very into street art so there might be a lot of that in this blog but i hope to atleast keep this exciting and interesting throughout. I hope you enjoy my blog!