UCLAN 2011 Exhibition

UCLAN Y3 Exhibition: Spent a very pleasant morning catching up with Steve Wilkin who is the course leader of the BA Illustration course at UCLAN in Preston. I enjoyed a good few years teaching at the Uni with Steve and his team. Certainly very interesting to be back in the academic environment for a short time, catching up with student progress, the course evolution and how the nature of University funding is changing (for the worse - much worse) in relation to the new fee structure. Its show time of course and the Year 3 bods have their graduation exhibition now open to the public. Overall its a mixed show, but there are stand out artists and potential stars in the making. The course has gone from strength to strength over Steve's ten year role as course leader, turning out some of the finest UK based illustrators working today. To name check just a few: Rachel Goslin, Danny Allison, Jay Taylor, Angela Swan, Liam Derbyshire Ben Tallon and Kate Pankhurst. Being in the Y3 exhibition room brought back the memory of the frantic last minute preparation, student panic and the relief of completing it all. Wistful sigh! Great to see that the course is thriving with Steve at the helm and his teams passion for the subject appears undiminished, despite the challenges ahead regarding Uni funding etc. Well worth a looksee if you are in area :-)

Storybook

Occasionally projects come along that just raise the spirits. This was one. I was contacted by Art Director Rob Story who is putting together a bound sketchbook of his favorite artists drawings / sketches, to be presented to his two boys when they are older. A lovely idea. I thought it would be interesting to contribute sketch ideas for a proposed set of promo / experimental pieces that will go on to be finished paintings or promo illustrations, the format yet to be decided. At the moment I have no idea how they will develop, only knowing they will move forward - somehow. As its such a personal project Rob wants to keep the website available to the contributors only and out of the public domain, but he has kindly allowed me to share my drawings in my newsfeed. Anyways, a lovely project to be a part of and thanks to Rob for the invitation. More on Rob: http://therobstory.com/

Here's a brief snippet from one of the email exchanges:"Hi Rob. Well, I've finally finished the drawings..! Sincere apologies for the delay in getting them done. Drawing for me is a purpose solely to get to the finished painting or digital illustration, so I didn't want to just 'knock something out' quickly. To me, that would just not feel right somehow, and be a false representation of how I work. So, I waited until the decks were clear and could start planning a series of experimental images, loosely exploring concepts about passing ideas down the generational line. Making the sketches working drawings to progress to either a painting or digital illustration. That way there is a creative lineage to a finished image or even a series (who knows where the direction will lead) from the sketches. But the important issue being, these drawings are very early in that creative process. Concept genesis if you like. So they are fresh and also part of 'something', rather than just a dashed out doodle. Nothing wrong with that approach, just not how I work really. Anyway, enough rambling, time to get busy! "