the bounding line as primary human language

Surviving human artifacts tell us something about the way that we seem to be wired. Some of the earliest examples of visual expression are created by the use of elegant contour line drawing:

Lascaux, France

This is interesting to me, because the bounding line is entirely a human abstraction, and has persisted throughout history:

Leonardo Da Vinci

In different time periods:

Medieval Westminster, U.K.

In all parts of the globe:

Japanese Ukiyo-e Block Print

Draw your attention (pun only half-intended) to the fact that black lines do not actually hold in the world around you. Line work is, instead, a human language short-hand to show where one object ends and another begins. It's all about the perception of edges. So what parts of an object are most important for determining a contour? What can be left out?

David Hockney

Egon Schiele

Ingres

Student drawing

welcome, winter 2012 students

Hello, hello! This is the place to go for extra resources, inspiration and direction during your time as an illustration student at SPU and beyond. Start by browsing the side bars and reading back in time. Continue by keeping up with posts as the quarter progresses.

Clare Rojas

Collaboration Stations

Nous Vous
Dumb Eyes

SuttonBeresCuller:

Work in progress from Rodrigo valenzuela on Vimeo.

education paradigms

See above clip for thoughts on education, artists' brains and the power of collaborative thinking.

Unorthodox Storytellers

Check out some more character builders. Below are links for artists who have built a cast of characters and/or alternate worlds that wander through their studio practice:

Ernesto Caivano

Ernesto Caivano "...it is very important to be able to resonate with other narratives. Other stories from the history, folktales, science…. It is kind of like a collage, traditional historic collage of all those different elements also the current collage. We cannot have folktale mythology but by looking at the pictures, we can tell that the contemporary cultures are connected, and in the end, looking at these images, you will essentially find the mythology and how those things are connected.
I am very interested how these images told in school, history and books are connected and resonated. For instance, some cultures have similar symbols but different meanings. I am interested in what kinds of meanings these objects can help bring to the culture and how these objects establish the culture. You make a story collecting these objects and the story becomes something real to us in the end. But in fact they are abstract, very abstract. I like that very much." (mildly edited for grammar)

Matthew Barney

Amy Cutler "Siege"

Amy Cutler "Cautioning writers against merely reweaving the same old narrative threads when translating fairytales to contemporary settings, A. S. Byatt recently wrote: ‘We live in a world very far from woods, castles, and gibbets. We live in a world of urban myths – alligators in sewers, grandmothers on car roofs, and a burgeoning virtual world of gossip and storytelling, real and fantastic, on the Web.’ Similarly Cutler mines an especially productive vein when she draws on current events. The elaborate gouache titled Siege (2004), for example, was inspired by the hunt for Saddam Hussein: flurries of arrows descend like heat-seeking missiles on bewildered people, some of whom clutch geese like their only treasured possessions." Kristin M. Jones-- Frieze Magazine

William Kentridge "World Walking"

William Kentridge

Matthew Ritchie

character building

Chris Ware

Junichi Tsuneoka 

Trenton Doyle Hancock

"The characters which populate his imaginary worlds include the Mounds, half-animal, half-plant creatures, which are preyed upon by evil beings called vegans."

Craig Frazier Studio (Underwater)

Hope you had a terrific summer and are ready to get some good work done! As many of you know, this is the blog designated as a resource for illustration at Seattle Pacific. This quarter is Digital Illustration, during which we dig into exactly what the boundaries are for communicating through and by the filter of ye olde computer. Straightforward approaches toward illustration will be wrangled, but we will also take experimental romps. Get ready get set!

In the meantime, check out this documentation of a design/illustration team working on an album cover for Son Lux:

The Made Shop's film documenting the creation of Son Lux's "We Are Rising" album artwork (CD and digital download available now, LP on 6/28).
www.music.sonluxmusic.com
"The plan is to do the entire record cover for the new Son Lux album in 28 hours, since he recorded the whole thing in 28 days. If all goes according to plan, we're going to shoot 28 smoke bombs going off in a parking lot behind some warehouses on top of a crane, and then cut out the Son Lux title out of the smoke."
Music: "Rising" by Son Lux
from We Are Rising
Anticon. Records
The Made Shop
www.themadeshop.com
Shot and edited by Michael Chiarelli (www.vimeo.com/michaelchiarelli)