I'm On A Teapot

I feel a bit like Eric Ravillious - my artwork has been put on crockery!

The design that I made for Southampton Solent University a couple of years ago was always intended for plates.  This year the project was pushed through at last and, beyond my expectations, expanded so dramatically as to include a mug and a teapot.

Prototype printings, on crockery!

As for the design:  the borders (there are two, for the outer rim and for the bit that dips down) show a lot of tall or long things in Southampton.  The centre is split into several sections representing Southampton's history and symbols, the university's history, the art school, the maritime academy at Warsash and the figures that the university's main buildings are named after.  Here goes:

Buildings at East Park Terrace

• Sir Christopher Cockerell, who invented the hovercraft at Thorneycroft in Southampton
• Lord Mountbatten, Baron Romsey and celebrated elsewhere in Southampton
• John Everett Millais, pre-Raphaelite painter, born in Southampton
• R J Mitchell, who designed the Spitfire at Southampton's Supermarine Aviation Works
• Michael Andrews, mayor of Southampton, who sadly died in a seaplane accident in 1998
• Herbert Collins, suburban and garden city architect, prolific around Southampton

Buildings off the campus and student halls

• Sir James Matthews, educationalist, councillor, and post-war town planner in Southampton
• Lucia Foster Welch, Southampton's first female mayor
• Emily Davies, women's activist from Southampton

It is very satisfying to see the artwork printed out and to see that it printed well.

Working 5 to 9

Back in print.

Look who's back in the printroom!

Solent keeps the facilities open late for the busy illustration and graphics students preparing for their degree shows.  I've been given a supervisory rôle.  On weekday evenings I hold the keys and wear the apron.

When I've told people about the new job, half of them aren't sure what I mean:  it's not about toner; it's not the art collection of a Regency mansion (almost equally desirable).

It means making a mess with the intaglio inks, mopping up the leaking water from the hose cabinet; operating heavy presses...  and, if you've ever seen the sink in an art room, you can imagine the splattering and grime, which I particularly enjoy scrubbing.

When I'm not doing that, or helping students, I can get some of my own prints done.

The university website has an interactive tour of the art school - see here - including a blurry shot of me, a year or two ago, waving some big sheets of paper about.

Class Distinctions

"Class Distinctions" is an exhibition in the Wightlink ferry terminal in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, from 11th January to 5th April 2013, in partnership with Southampton Solent University.

That's my piece, among others from the Illustration (Becka Potter's lovely and informative "Curious Creatures"), Fine Art, Fashion Photography and Make-up And Hair Design BA courses.

You can (and should) read more at the event page from Solent University...  and there's even a tumblr for the Faculty of Creative Industries and Society.

Slow Progress

I'm good at making a big plan for a project... and then failing to stick to it.  After a couple of weeks of slow progress, I was at least relieved to find that no-one in the year-group has got far off the ground.

College has been a good place.  We've had talks from the tutors about their work; I've made Christmas cards; people are using the new studios more (and someone knew of a piano in need of a home, so now that's in there, I like to imagine a tutor playing increasingly fast honky-tonk music to make everyone draw faster); the Solent Showcase gallery opened; and next week our honorary professor, John Norris Wood is giving his annual lecture and leading a one-day project, for which I need "a curious object".

As for the project, I'm still stuck on the its scale.  I could make a whole lot of martyrs, quite simply, or a few detailed ones.  I'm frustrated to be so undecided and to still be making lists of visual tricks to try.

A tutor pointed me to a few artists who make scenes of many extraordinary figures, darkness, narrative and drama:

Steven Campbell - Two Hunters immobilised by an excessive use of Bark Camouflage

Ken Currie - The Bathers

Peter Howson - Acheron

This is all much more extreme than my vision, which is a closer to this, Alice and Martin Provensen's "The First Noel".

The list of possible figures to depict is still long and could include a few more serious modern "saints", such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King.  I feel like I could spend years on this theme, especially when another tutor said that my research could form a part of the project.  I could spend even more hours combing through old books - John Foxe's "Acts and Monuments" and Thieleman J. van Braght's "Martyrs Mirror", whose stories of the faithful defined the identities of religious groups and of nations.  (See engraving).

The schedule that I made for this project says that I should be exploring text styles; body positions and facial features; symbols and backgrounds; light and dark.  It all sounds exciting but it's easier to just make more gingerbread men.

Here are:
a) Sketches from the British Museum, of Greeks fighting centaurs (I just drew the human figures).
b) Simple attempts at the first few of my selections from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints.

Jour de fête - The Creative Process

Here's a poster for the film club at the college a couple of weeks ago.  It was a short project, so here's an analysis of how it came together.

The tutor's brief, which I received on a Thursday morning by e-mail, read

a B&W image, 13 x 23 cms.
title of the film, un film de Jacques Tati, 1949.
Can I have it by monday morning please?

I knew already that it was to be Jour de fête and had watched a trailer (the bande annonce, on The Youtube), so I started drawing with a few ideas about rustic or small-town France in the late '40s; busy bicycles, postmen; disordered farm animals; clocks; French flags and the people scenery of a town.

The brief meant that I couldn't use colours, so no subtle coloured backgrounds; and the poster needed to be fairly simple.  My work usually comes out better when I've done something simpler than I'm comfortable with; and printing and rubber stamps always force simplicity, so I experimented with an old rubber cut into block shapes of a man's limbs and hat; making them into people or patterns.  That only came into the figure of the postman, Jacques Tati; the rest was in brush pen, keeping it good and rough at times.

The second difficulty was the dimension, which I assumed was to be slotted into a larger frame.  With a tall format it's easy to end up with empty space and I'm not sure even now that I used it best.  Eventually I sent the flow of the design outside the frame.

I was quick to settle on the bicycle as the central motif, perhaps with text inside it.  I ride a bicycle all the time but still had to look at pictures to get it right and make it more dynamic.

Still, I wanted more imagery to express the setting and feel of the film.  This lead to all sorts of French items up to and including the Flight Of The Conchords' shopping list from "Foux du Fafa":

Pamplemousse... ananas... jus d'orange... boeuf... soup-du-jour... camembert... Jacques Cousteau... baguette!

The boeuf and baguette made it into the border, mingled with the farm animals and postal items - the postal system seemed a good motif (stamps, packages, bugles, etc), especially as it lends itself to an air of busyness.  I had a stab at a border of French faces but it's not my skill.

For the text I took inspiration from one of my favourite books of type, "Lettering of To-Day" (1937, edited by C. G. Holme) - so many lovely old styles, but I wanted to avoid the ones that looked too English.

Above are all my drafts in sequence, up to the final piece.  I relied on being able to move a couple of things once it was scanned in.  I e-mailed it off on the Saturday morning because I was going away for a couple of nights and was very relieved to get a text saying that it fitted the bill.

When I saw it on the wall (see below) a few days later, in its border, I wasn't surprised that Jonny had inverted it.  It stands out a bit more in his design, so I don't mind.  Later I had a brief play with colour (see the "brown paper" effect), but I'm happy with the design, for a project that really only took one night of work, with time beforehand to think it over.

At five o'clock today the Illustration Film Club is showing "Submarine" by Richard Ayoade.  Fine Art are going head-to-head with us, showing "Blow-Up" in a nearby room at the same time.  It's a tough one, but I have gingerbread men and I'll make ours the better of the two.

Peter Jarvis Watercolours

Peter Jarvis (here is his website - look at his blog) is exhibiting his watercolour paintings in the foyer of Southampton Solent University from today.  The pieces are built around precisely replicated architecture.  The best images include settings of very convincing depth; vivid trees and graded skies.

Most of the exhibition is given to the sites of Southampton's old town.  Tudor House, God's House Tower and the others are rendered with great appeal.  More fascinating, though, are the close-ups of ancient stonework dotted with plant life and shifting shadows of branches; and two studies of metal boats rusting on the River Itchen.  These are more engaging than studies of stone and iron should be.

Aside from a view of Stokesay Castle, Shropshire, the main departure from the south coast is a set of nine round-towered Saxon churches in Norfolk (out of the one hundred and twenty-six in that county):  Bedingham, Brooke, Freethorpe, Geldeston, Hemblington, Morningthorpe, Seething, Surlingham and Thorpe next Haddiscoe.  They take me back to a happy holiday cycling in Norfolk, seeking out these little churches, and they're a great subject for a series.

A case of sketchbooks of all sizes shows Peter Jarvis' practice of sketching on site, usually outdoors.  It's easy to deprecate "Sunday painters" and the washy chocolate-box landscapes associated with watercolours.  These pieces, however, are a concert of three elements.  The stunning architectural draughtsmanship is made appealing by Peter's command of the subtlety of watercolours, making the views crisp, yet softened by every variation in colour.  In turn, Peter's eye for strong colours and warm sunlight in the surroundings brings the viewer half-way into the quiet, unpopulated scenes.

Of course, it's all pretty enviable and very different from my work, but it's a pleasure to see Southampton given such a treatment and, having met Peter now and then in the past couple of years, to see a proper display of his work.


A Point Of View:  a solo exhibition by Peter Jarvis
28th October 2011 to 7th January 2012
Concourse Gallery, Michael Andrews Building,
East Park Terrace, Southampton

Solent Website

Memoirs Of Venice

I'm looking back on my time away in Italy after a couple of months headlong at life back in Britain.

Only now am I realising what I miss.  I've said all along that the effects of the trip would be clearer in hindsight.  Going through my diary, I see how much I did in my 194 days in Italy.

While based in Venice, I had nights away (sometimes multiple) for trips to Florence and Pisa; Ravenna, Rimini and San Marino; and Mantua, Parma and Bologna.  I made day trips to Udine, Aquileia, Grado, Treviso, Asolo, Padua, Vicenza and Verona; and explored the immediate area pretty thoroughly, from Jesolo to Chioggia.

The tutors asked me to give a talk about the experience:  what I did; how the Erasmus experience worked; what I learnt and how my work changed.  It was good to see my sketchbook pages on the big screen - they formed the basis of the talk.  I showed off my genuine Venetian masks and a few pieces of work.

The college is hosting a student from Liège this term, so Miriam will give a talk about her experiences in Southampton when she finishes.

Here is one of the first sketches for the Pisa booklets.

Tooled Up For The Job

"Don't draw your pens."

That's what I told myself when I started my time as an art student. I thought it too easy to focus on the mechanics of artwork and produce images that would strike a chord only with other artists.

Last month I was commissioned to do just that.

Before the start of this term, my tutors asked me to draw simple pictures of each of the items of stationery and equipment that the new students should have. Jonny and Derek came up with a list and sent me away for a few days.

We scanned the best drawing for each item and Jonny arranged them into a poster. He and Pete screenprinted a few dozen copies [pictured right] and I stamped them with "Unsinkable Press", for prints by the tutors.

Most of them were on pink cartridge paper, but here is one of the few on manila.

The posters were folded up and included in the first-years' welcome pack. I like to imagine them all heading down to Perry's art shop and showing the assistants what they need - before wincing at the prices.

It was fun to collaborate with the tutors and to stretch my drawing muscles before term started with time away from the drawing board, working on the dissertation, as I've mentioned.

The sketchbook work started a bit shakily, as it always does. Here is a page of attempts at scissors and stanley knife from the point when I hit my stride; and a couple of early stabs at brush pen and scissors.