Brief Exchange - Final Submission

Here's my final submission to Brief Exchange, as usual I was working right up to the deadline!

I submitted a short rationale as well as follows:

"Nature vs Nurture".

Research on the brief quickly led to the dark topics of eugenics and human animal husbandry.  In these debates the female body and foetus are often reduced to delivery mechanisms and products.  The resulting work references DNA and incorporates female and foetal imagery to allude to these debates.

I'm really looking forward to the exhibition and seeing the other work!  It's all the brainchild of the very talented Noeleen Doheny and the follow up to last year's Full Circle exhibition. Check out the lovely poster below...

Camille Rose Garcia

I love these colourful, imaginative works by Camille Rose Garcia, they have a definite Gary Baseman / Tim Burton feel about them, totally surreal, with distinctly dark edge and a sexual undercurrent.

I came across this great interview with her here, it seems very honest and gives a good account of her artistic path.  Check out her blog as well for insights into her process and approach.

A Brief Exchange - A First Cut

A couple of weeks ago I was delighted when a friend of mine, Noeleen Doheny, approached me to participate in an upcoming graphic design and illustration exhibition she's organising.

The idea behind the exhibition is "a brief exchange".  23 designers and illustrators were randomly assigned briefs written by the other designers / illustrators in the group.  Mine was based on "Nature vs Nurture".  I started off by doing a bit of research into the phrase, where it came from and what it's been used for, pretty unpleasant reading for the most part! After a few sketches I came up with a concept of basing it on an artists impression of DNA. I chose to focus on female bodies and foetuses as these are both often reduced to products or delivery mechanisms in the darker side of the nature vs nurture debate.

Here's where I am at the moment on it.  It's a mix of photography, drawing and photoshop painting.  It's still pretty rough but i'll hopefully get a chance to clean it up a bit before taking the wedding-hiatus!

Good Wives and Warriors

I recently re-discovered the wonderful illustrations and paintings of art graduate duo, Good Wives and Warriors.  I love the incredible detail and intricacy of their work, check out more of it on their site.

Wedding Invitations & Favours!

I'm getting married to Noel on June 23rd this year (aah!).  It's getting close & i'm quite excited and nervous!

We sent out our invites just last week, my good friend Will Sliney did the majorly cute illustration as a wedding present, they took AGES to make but i'm happy I did it! I've included a few pictures here.

I'm also making wedding favours with my awesome badge machine, based on Will's graphic (pic above).

Exciting times!

Printmaking Pt.2

More printmaking! The top two here are aquatints, great fun! They're from the same plate, you can work into the plate and then work back out using a variety of techniques. They're based on a photo I took in India.

I've also included a photo intaglio print, also based on an India photo, i'm getting great mileage out of that trip!

Wild.ie pt2 is live!

Wohoo! The brand spanking new www.wild.ie site just went live! It's the second incarnation of the site i've developed, you can check out the first one here from way back in 2008!  It was definitely time for an update!

I'm really happy with the new site, I think it really showcases Jill's work through the use of the large background images, the "spotlight" image on each page and the gallery.  I'm also really excited to see what Jill does with the site, she's already a whizz with her Facebook and has just joined Twitter so i'm sure she's going to post all sorts of interesting stuff!