Status update: Louise is...

Nightmare - sneak preview

Here's a sneak preview of what I'm working on this week. One of those projects I started ages ago, but never finished (there's a dull story involving a broken pinkie that kind of explains it, but none the less it's a rather pathetic admission).

This week will be the week! Considering the pile of drawings I've made just to get this far - serious respect to animators. Phew.



click to view animation

Design Week Hot 50: drawing/making

Design Week have published their Hot 50 people, organisations and movements for 2011 to keep an eye on, and interestingly they've included:

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DRAWING AND MAKING
http://www.designweek.co.uk/hot-50-drawing-and-making/3023080.article
Surely the best way to generate ideas is to put pen to paper. So the alarm was raised in design when the coalition Government cut funds to arts and humanities courses last year, with drawing as a casualty in some colleges.

This scenario prompted the Hot 50 selectors to highlight activists promoting craft skills. The Sorrell Foundation’s National Art & Design Saturday Club, for example, seeks to provide Saturday drawing and making classes for teenagers of all backgrounds, while Sue Grayson Ford’s charity, The Campaign for Drawing, raises the profile of drawing as a tool for thought, cultural and social engagement through its two programmes: The Big Draw, a month-long community-led public festival held every October; and Power Drawing, a professional development programme working with schools, higher education, museums and local communities.
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It's extremely exciting to see drawing/making having such a comeback at the moment. In London, you feel it all around. And in design and advertising, illustration has had what feels like an enormous resurgence in recent years. That hasn't always been the case.

In my early days at art college the much berated 'craft' word took a back seat to 'ideas generating' or 'expressing yourself'. Drawing wasn't taught - a drawing project would involve being sent out of the studio for 6 weeks on your own with a couple of critiques in between. Probably a good chance for tutors to get a nice long tea break. Interestingly, I did an Erasmus exchange in Belgium, where the Art College was almost straight out of the 1950s. It gave me much confidence being amongst students/tutors who saw the value and discipline in drawing, but I don't think they'd quite got the balance right between tradition and cutting edge.

But over here recently it has felt like the tide is turning. Universities like Kingston actively promote drawing and you can see it in the quality of their graduates. Designers, photographers, fine artists all embrace the need to craft their work as well as come up with great ideas.

And sometimes, dare I say it, representational drawing/painting is enough without the ideas generating or going overboard expressing yourself:
http://www.matthewcookillustrator.co.uk/content/war1.html