A Book of...: Pigeon Shape and Buildings

With this being the last chance I'll get for a few days to do any work as I have commitments until Jan 2nd (when I return back home to York) I tried to get a bit of work done today.

I began by investigating the basic shape of pigeons and trying to break them down so that I have a better understanding of them. I used water colour to highlight certain areas of pigeons to be aware of when looking at different angles/positions. This helped me greatly in understanding pigeon physiology.

After this I began the process of drawing buildings. I can't draw buildings very well in my opinion and today cemented this. To get around this I think that when it comes to creating my book I may use a college of images when it comes to buildings.

A Book of...: Christmas Period

With the holidays being a very busy time of the year, I haven't been able to get as much work done as I intended. I feel somewhat behind in my planned work as I wanted to be at a stage now where I would be making mock up copies or at the least creating concept scamps. I'm going to have to work hard over the next week to get back to where I planned to be.

I have also been reading The Gigantic Beard that was Evil by Stephen Collins which I received for Christmas. The book is beautifully drawn and is a great example of excellent narrative use.

A Book of...: Indian Ink

I've grown to enjoy creating line work with matchsticks after discovering it in Visual Language. The lines, although a bit heavy for my liking, have an unkempt feel to them which works well within the context of pigeons.

However my favourite images of the day are the latter pages of matchstick use. I began to ask myself why I should create a pigeon book full of grey, dull illustrations. So I coloured the illustrations in a more vivid range, again turning to watercolour. Whist looking more visually appealing, the down point to this was that my pigeons ended up looking like tropical birds from the Amazon.

A Book of...: Watercolours

I decided to give watercolours a shot after experimenting with pencils and fine liners. I love the look of the lines produced by my brush pen; they are at times quite bold and I can create lovely curved lifework with it.

I also used watercolours. I love the pace at which you can fill a shape with colour using them. However I feel I used too light a tone with the first two images. If I am to use watercolour it will have to be of a darker tone.

A Book of...: Visual Reference Drawing

Today I began reference drawing in preparation of creating my book. I want to explore and examine different methods of illustrating pigeons and buildings to help inform my book's design.

I began by using pencil crayon then introduced fine liner. Although there is a certain appeal to the scruffy texture created with pencil crayons and fine liners, I feel that there is a better media out there for this project.

A Book of...: York City Museum

Today my girlfriend and I went to York City Museum where we learnt about the 5 mass extinctions throughout history. Whilst there we also discovered about extinct species, currently endangered animals and the effects humans have both of positive and negative consequence on wildlife. It was interesting to think about human interactions, as its due to people that pigeons thrive so much. Its just a shame that we consider them such horrible creatures when it was in fact us that originally bred them so much.

I also discovered an illustrated book by Mark Hearald with some interesting images of pigeons in. He appears to use collage to an effective degree. Maybe this is a method that I could use to produce my book.

A Book of...: Further Research...

Today whilst thinking about my book I realised that with a book surrounding urban environments I'll most likely need to draw buildings. So I decided to research illustrations of buildings and remembered an artist called Stephan Wiltshire. I've included this research in my PPP blog as I felt it relevant to both.

A Book of...: Proposal

Today I prepared my research thus far ready for my proposal tomorrow. My plans have changed somewhat already. Instead of my book being about pigeons pooping on people it'll now be about pigeons within modern urban environments. I fully expect my ideas to change further as my research develops, however I'd be surprised and somewhat concerned if my plans changed drastically away from pigeons at this point.

(Proposal sheets)

What's the Story?: Bookbinding Tutorial

A group of use went down to Vernon Street today to learn the basics of book binding. This will come in useful for our Visual Narrative Module (OUIL405).

We ran through the process for Japanese fold stitch, concertina and. We were also shown how to use the surrounding equipment correctly too such as the guillotine, the book edge rounder and the hand drills etc.

I left the tutorial with three self made books. This tutorial will com in extremely useful as we later will create our own books for Visual Narrative.

Observed Drawing

This week, for our final week of Visual Language before Christmas we sat and drew objects from in front of us repeatedly. I drew my bag from a long distance. I really appreciated this task as I do struggle to do repeated images; I find myself lacking in patience for this aspect of development.

I also began to use pencil crayon, something I've been hesitant to use in the past as my peer Will has dominated this media so far and I didn't want to appear as though I am trying to mimic him.

What's the Story?: Peer Review

This morning in the studio we got into groups to discuss our research so far in preparation of our proposals on Thursday. This gave us the opportunity to talk about what we'd found out, what we still needed to do and other things such as common issues within the group.

(Notes from group crit)

My feedback was positive. However I was made aware that I have done a large about of primary visual recordings and secondary book based research so far and maybe need to look in a different area for information. I could also look at pigeons in different cities; are they different? If so, how? I also need to do more drawings of pigeons.

As a whole common issues were; how can we make researching interesting and make sure its relevant? It is so easy to get lost in information as I found out when I began over analysing the contradictions from different sources.

I have until Thursday to build my research further before I make an informed proposal to the rest of the studio.

What's the Story?: Contextual Research

Over the weekend I travelled to my local library and collected a variety of books about birds that I knew contained information about Pigeons. However, only three of the books were of much use.

Cocker, M. and Maybe, R. (2005) Birds of Britannica, London: Chatto & Windus
Taylor, M. and Arlott, N. (2008) Identifying Birds by Colour, London: Collins
Perrins, C. (2009) The Encyclopaedia of Birds, Oxford: Oxford University Press

(Research Books)

Whilst gathering this secondary source information I discovered that there are actually a very wide range of pigeon species, so for this project I will concentrate as much as possible on the feral pigeon (columba livia) which is most commonly found within the city. Furthermore, although I feel there is an element of humour to be had about how pigeons decide who to poo on, I feel this may end up only being a small aspect of my final piece and my proposal itself may well change over time too.

Whilst doing my research I found that there were minor contradictions about certain areas of pigeon biology, habitat and diets etc. I found myself getting lost in deciding which source to trust, however eventually I chose to simply draw a line under this area of research and move on. I may not ending up using this information anyway when it comes to my final piece for this brief.

Hot Dog Fold Screen Prints

Today we had our Screen Print Workshop and made the prints for our Hot Dog fold books. It was then simply a case of cutting out the print and folding it in the correct fashion!

I really enjoyed the process of Screen Printing and plan on using it again in the future. I'm coming to realise I prefer image making that is more about process and shape rather than having a focus on line quality.

However the colour order chosen by my group didn't complement my work to well. My spaghetti piece would have looked far better with a red fill colour and yellow outlines. But the majority of other pieces worked better with the colours presented the other way.

(Sophie's page)

(My page)

What's the Story?: Museum Gardens and York City Centre

I partook in some more primary research today by heading out around the York Museum Gardens and later York City Centre to take photographs of Pigeons within the area.

In the park I was lucky enough to witness several people feeding the pigeons and seagulls and jumped on the opportunity to take photos of the 'kits' of pigeons.

This will benefit me when I come to produce my book as I can reference these images in my study of pigeon physiology. I found it quite interesting that in certain areas feeding pigeons is discouraged while it was quite actively happening here. It amuses me that years ago when pigeons were necessary for delivering letters they were well kept, now they are pretty much treated as vermin...

Hot Dog Fold Book

Today, after showing each other our work, Matt showed us the process of making a Hot Dog fold book. We were then put into groups where we then made negatives for Friday's Screen Print Workshop. We will then make screen prints with these and create our own completed Hot Dog Fold book with the theme of food and drink.

What's the Story?: Posing a Question Crit

(Self Evaluation Sheet)

Over the weekend I gave some thought to potential proposal questions for my book. As I stated in my earlier post the areas that I have chosen to look further into all have potential, however after some thought I have decided to push further with my idea 'How Do Pigeons Decide Who to Poo On?'

I feel that this has one of the stronger possible research areas and is something that I won't get bored of half way through, hopefully being reflected in my work. There are many things I can research concerning pigeons and their toiletry habits. I can do observational work similar to what I have previously done in this brief as well as researching pigeon history, biology, interaction with people. I can also interview people about experiences being pooed on or I could go out in search of the event taking place.

I'm feeling confident and excited by this brief, however at this point I must be aware that although my end product will be a book, it shouldn't be factoring into my research too much at this point.