Pick me UP!

I was looking again at the possibilities and definitions of the disciplinary "illustration" in terms of the British market and the market culture. Illustrations can be drawings, picture books, storytelling, explorations of games, studies about layout, typography and graphic design, costume making, ceramics, and object of all the materials I can recall. 

Playful character designs using contemporary materials

I am very fond of the approaches, the marks, the colours and the textures this illustrator used to depict her feelings and reflections about the landscape surrounding her. The textures she experimented with on wood was another inspiration for me about recording landscape and my own feelings.

An approach to depict and explore the possibilities of storytelling and the space of scenes: several layers of wooden figures were combined together to discuss the relationships among different characters.

Costume making! THAT is a weakness in my learning. The models were built up on the cupboard.

Wooden and ceramics models can both be toys and tools for character design. To some extent the texture and the colours can show the characteristics of the character or the toys and feelings I wish to lend to the figure

Typography and Layout

Notes of Mr. Squirrel and the Moon

This picture book used its landscape format as a tool to twist scenes between medium shots, depictions of the squirrel's actions and his imaginations.

The highlight point of this book is some humorous actions of the squirrel pushing the moon to try to get rid of it and two wordless spreads about Mr. squirrel's imaginations about what would happen to him. These two spreads are drawn in only black and white with pencils, which distances them from the vivid humorous scenes of the rest of the book.



Children's picture book can be about a very simple idea or story with a lot of humorous and childish thoughts from an adult's perspective but meanwhile imaginations and hope for a sweet ending.


https://picturethisbook.com/2015/11/02/mr-squirrel-and-the-moon/

2016 Ceramics Art London

Some artists I am very fond of

Midori Takaki

http://www.midoritakaki.co.uk/p/gallery.html

Her works are full of spirits with weird faces.

"My world is full of spirits. I find them everywhere in nature; trees, woods, animals, winds, the moon and the oceans. Giving them shapes is what I do. Once I start creating pieces, they guide me through. They tell me who they are. Their stories are the key ingredients of my work. "

Fausto Salvi

http://www.faustosalvi.net/

The explorations of colours and textures lended a feeling of sci-fi novel to this piece.

Vistaerea

sQAURED headed

Dylan Bowen

http://www.dylanbowen.co.uk/gallery

"The clay can be thrown, hand built, carved or moulded depending on what is needed. Slips are poured, trailed or brushed on. "

"...The spontaneity of the making process. ..."

Craig Underhill

http://www.craigunderhill.co.uk/ceramics.html

"... I want an amalgamation of surface and form that creates a ceramic painting rather than a ceramic form that has a painted surface. My work evokes a feeling of places and landscapes I have visited without giving a direct literal reference to these places and landscapes..."

Ceramics can be a flexible material to explore textures, spaces, landscapes and relationships between ones who experience the environments and stuffs mentioned above.