Typographic Posters in London

Today I was going through some old folders full of photographs I took while I was still at college and I discovered quite a few things that I was actually planning to write about but never did. For example, I remember in February I went to London for my university interview at Chelsea College of Art. (It was actually my first interview and I was really stressed) But after the interview I had a lot of spare time on my hands so I thought its a great opportunity to visit some Art Galleries without being rushed by anyone. Unfortunately my portfolio was so heavy that a barely could walk (I swear it wasn’t so heavy when I was leaving home!) So, in the end the only place I went to before going back home (Noooo..sooooo many things I could have done in London if I didn’t have this massive folder with me!) was a little University Gallery right next to it. So even though I didn’t get do anything exciting that day at least I was lucky enough to see all those awesome posters! And here they are:

I was also really happy because the weather in London was surprisingly nice that day!

Soo, thats it for today. Thank you for reading, I hope you liked all those great poster (of course you did!) and are looking forward my next post…maybe.. tomorrow?

 

Amsterdam

After a very long time of not posting anything as I was very busy writing an essay about Tradition and Originality as well as writing my personal statement which I think was even more difficult..and obviously applying for universities and preparing my portfolio I have finally decided that its time to catch up and start running this blog properly.

I think writing about our recent overseas trip to Amsterdam is a perfect way to start! The trip unfortunately was only 5 days long but it was enough to visit quite a few truly amazing museums and Galleries. It is really difficult for me to decide which place was my favourite but for now I’ll just say that I absolutely loved Vincent Van Gogh Museum. Firstly becasue I’m really interested in Japanese culture and seeing Japanese art influencing western Art and someone like Vincent Van Gogh is very fascinating. Secondly, I actually wrote about some of his works that were inspired by Japanese woodblock prints in my personal study which I was writing while I was at Sixth Form, and now I had an opportunity to see them in real life which was just amazing. 

 The picture on the left is an original print by Hiroshige and the one on the right is Flowering Plumtree (after Hiroshige) (1887) by Vincent Van Gogh. In his copy he changed the colour a little bit and added borders filled with calligraphic characters he borrowed from other prints. Later on I will write some more posts about all the different places we visited and about our exciting ‘Bike seat cover’ project but for now some photographs of Amsterdam.

Printed textiles

The two-day printed textiles project was one of those projects where we could be as experimental as we want which means that for me it was very interesting and enjoyable. The aim of it was to produce a map that would lead for Christopher Columbus  to the New World. We experimented with three different screen printing techniques that we could then use to make our map.

First technique was Polychromatic screen printing which is when you paint whatever you want to print directly onto the silk screen. (The colours in this technique are very vivid so its important to remember that if you want lighter colours you need to use water to paint the screen first). Once the design is on the screen you wait for it to dry and then use a binder to print it on the fabric.

Second technique was Stencil printing for which we had to design and make a stencil. To print using this technique you have to masking tape the stencil onto the middle of the silk screen and then put the newspaper around it so the ink will only go through the stencil.

Third  technique was Photographic printing which allows you to print more detailed designs and you can print as many copies as you want since the design is created permanently on the screen. The design can be created on computer and it is important to remember that the machine that puts the design on the screen recognizes only black and white colour so our design shouldn’t have any colors or shading but only strong shapes. Below I included some of the experiments that I created that day so i hope you like them!:)