Embossing

As I had feared my multi-depth postcard idea was a tad ambitious. It could be done, but I would have had to stay there throughout the whole 6 hour acid bath and black out a frame every few hours so that it stopped eroding the copper. That was 6 hours I didn't have. So I settled for the single frame, which to be honest I now think was a better choice anyway - because the embossing is so subtle it would have just been crazy on the eyes if I had too much detail.

I did a test emboss on cartridge paper and it worked perfectly but it was generally a bit flimsy and crap for a postcard - I got on the good stuff: canaletto paper. Worked like a charm, sexiest piece of paper I have ever laid my eyes upon. I made 12 to start off with as the pneumatic press was rather laborious and time consuming - I just need to cut them down to size and they're good to go!

I also created the embossing plate for the cover of my book box. Yey I love spending nearly £15 on copper! Oh no wait, that's right I don't. I used the image with the black text to make the plate, then once the erosion was complete I trimmed the plate down to the black edges of the border to make it easier to align.

I whacked some of my faux leather fabric onto some grey board and did a test run - worked a treat so I stuck the plate on top of my bound cover and threw it in the press. While I was pumping the press up, I noticed that the previously sharp, crisp lines of the embossing on the test piece had relaxed an obscene amount due to the elasticity of the leather. DAMN YOU SPRINGY SURFACES. So I majorly increased the pressure of my cover press and prayed. It came out. All seemed fine. Lovely sharp edges. So I took it away and walked up to Blehiem - by the time I got the the same thing had happened. I spent so long trying to make this look perfect and professional and everything just keeps going down the shitter, fantastic.

It's a really good job I anticipated this and purposely chose not to bind the cover to the tray/lid of the box. This means I can retry next week. I think I need to take a much more aggressive approach to make it permanent - I've done a bit of research and I can't find definitive instructions for faux leather but for real leather to permanently emboss it you need to dampen it, heat it up and leave it in the press for at least 6 hours. So I think an overnight job is in order.

Thomas Chippendale

Since I've spent a lot of time in the 3D workshop recently, I've been talking to the technicians quite a bit. One of them took a look at my work and suggested I look at Thomas Chippendale, an 18th Century cabinet-maker who was commissioned to produce pieces for most of the aristocratic houses of the time. Above is an example of his work in the form of a four poster bed designed for King George III - although it is not a frame, you can definitely see how the intricate detail would be something that could easily influence my work. As my wall piece is focused on really ornate frames it is quite fitting to look at Chippendale's furniture as he was one of the most sought after British designers in an era that thrived on elaborate decoration. Had I known about him before I started drawing out the frames then I suspect my piece would have looked a lot different. I hate how many times this brief insists on kicking me when I'm down.

Postcard

Sticking with the same underlying idea as the wall piece, which is the creation of depth and imagery without actually resorting to mark making, I want my postcard to be produced through embossing - again incorporating the images of the frames.

As stated in my last post I don't know exactly what embossing entails and what I'd be able to do with it. I've been having a plan around with some layout ideas and I really hope that it's possible to achieve a variety of depths on one plate. From my understanding making an embossing is the same as making an etching plate, only you leave it in the acid for much longer? In which case I would imagine that different shades of black/grey will achieve different degrees of erosion and therefore varying depths.

Ifff this is right, then I'm aiming for the image below, if not then I'm going to have to settle for a single frame. Hopefully it will still look quite interesting but I'm pinning my hopes on the overlapping idea.

Box Cover

My collection of Vogue illustrations are now going to be presented in a book box so I've been thinking about the cover and the effect I want it to have. I've decided to call my book 'My Vogue' because that is essentially what it is - a collection of drawings of pages taken from my collection of Vogue, and the images I've drawn are a representation of the things that I, personally, see.

I started constructing the box this week but I could only go so far without having the materials to cover it; they only have buckram and I quite fancy leather. There's drop in tomorrow so hopefully I can crack on with it tomorrow.

I want to emboss the cover because I obviously need to include a title and my name but I'm not keen on sleeves and I don't really think you can print onto leather.. I'm having difficulty designing the cover because I don't know exactly how embossing works - will the content in black be indented? Will it be put through the press with the plate on the top or the bottom?

I've made two designs to cove both bases - the first is imagining that the black will be embedded inwards, and the second is if the black is raised from the page.

Deep/Shallow Learning

I've done this whole module so backwards. I'm really happy that I'm doing loads of work that I'm actually enjoying and excited about but everything is so messed uppp! I've realised so many things that would have been immensely useful to have understood at the beginning.

Spent way too much time pissing my efforts away on random pointless pieces of work. Then realised that I wanted to do the fashion illustrations.

I've been manically trying to get all of this work done and now that I know what I'm actually doing I'm looking at it and thinking 'man if I had just decided on this at the beginning instead of pissing away my time on random briefs then I could potentially make some fucking amazing work'. It sucks so bad. What's pissing me off the most is the fact that the wall piece/postcard were just an idea decided upon on a whim purely because I had to have something I wasn't considering my visual language much - there was no purpose behind them, no reason, just something I could rustle up that wouldn't distract too much time away from the drawings since they're so time consuming. But now that I've started it, the idea of going back and having to spend time on the 'book' element is so unappealing.

Due to the fact that I wasn't majorly concerned about the wall piece/post card element I didn't really put much thought into it in the beginning which is really bugging me now. I should have done all of this research into frames and made that my collections submission and not my drawings. I'm still happy with the work that I'm doing/done but seriously hindsight is a mother fucker.

The frame idea would have been perfect for collections for so many reasons. Undeniable ties to museums, galleries and curation. They are used as a fundamental tool to present collections of objects. They have an history just as intricate as the art they hold. They themselves are often of more interest than the art within a collection and, whether actively or not, each museum/gallery hold their own collection of frames. There are countless angles I could have taken.

I suppose this still all counts because I've it's still within my collections brief, just not in my book, but the wall piece and the postcard are only meant to take up 25% of our time and it would have been nice to realise the potential in this idea sooner and be able to develop it further.

I briefly mentioned before that this originally had no consideration of my visual language at all. However because the idea was so simple - 'frames' - I've been subconsciously developing this in a way that's reflective of who I am and how I work. I've tied in my ideas from the D&AD development involving no mark making and it arose from an element of my collections book work. So even though I thought it was irrelevant, it's actually an example of my visual language starting to come through without having to force or over think it. This is the sort of work that I enjoy and this module has helped me realise that.

Frame Sizing

I'm quite fond of this arrangement, it definitely looks much better to vary the range of sizes and the way they seem to crawl across the frame is quite nice as well. Obviously I can't decide on a definite layout until I've cut them out but I reckon something like this would go down a treat.

Wall Piece Development

I managed to fix all my Illustrator files today. One thing off the list. I'm pretty sure that I went such a long way around it but I'm finally starting to get to grips with Illustrator, thank god. I realise now though that to save myself an unimaginable amount of time I should have avoided live trace altogether and manually traced the lines with anchor points. Wow hindsight is a mother fucker.

I want to be a lot more prepared when I turn up for the cutting session on Monday so I need to have the files sized correctly to save time. My predicament now though, is that I've made the illustrations quicker to cut out, but because I'm having less they will consequently need to be bigger which will essentially take more time. I need to get a balance of size/time.

I've been toying around with rough sizes on Photoshop to help get a better idea of the final visual: