Channel 4; "Mummifying Alan"

24.10.11
This documentary amazed me completely when i sat down to watch it last night.
Alan Billis had a teminal illness, and has volunteered his body to be used in mummifying experiments.
Here is Alan with his wife, before he lost his battle against lung cancer.

This is Alan after he has been through the different stages of mummification.

I have always been interested in the human body, and like everybody, i love learning new things, in this case it is how things were preserved all those thousands of years ago. So when i saw the advertisment for this program, i was very excited to see the processes the Egyptians went through to preserve the bodies of the pharaohs.

The people involved with making Alan into a mummy were:
Dr Stephen Buckley, Joann Fletcher, Professor Peter Vanezis and a woman whos name i cannot find ANYWHERE.

They went through every procedure in the same exact way that the Egyptians would have done. After each process, Alan's body was compared with the xrays or photofraphs of the Egyptian mummy bodies.

The leathery texture and appearance of the skin, the size of the scar made from the removal of all the major organs (other than the heart, which was thought of by the Egyptians in the same way as we think about the brain today). The shrinkage of the brain was probably one of the most shocking things on the documentary. Eygptians used to scrape the brain out through the nostrils, but they didnt want to do that to Alan's body, as one of the mummies had the brain kept in tact, and on the xray, it had shrunk and dropped to the back of the skull, this also happened to Alan's mummified body.

I recommend everybody to watch this!

My new fave website of the week

APE ON THE MOON . COM

I have found so many interesting artists on this site, its really good for updating me with the newest people in the art world.

E.W.Thomason

Thomason started as a designer and now he works as a freelance illustrator.
He describes his work as "exuberant, quirky, and excessive".
It interests me for the following reasons;
colour
style
font
text
pattern.


Jess Wilson

This made me laugh, because, if you've read my previous posts, i drew on balloons for the summer project!

Another coincidence between my own work and this of Jess Wilson , i have been drawing mouths in ink and paint and using typography within the drawing.

Tutor Publication Collection

Here are a few of the artsits that my tutor Eve showed my class.

Keri Smith has a really unique look and style to her work.
I chose this peice in particular because of the layering of her work, the colours and her typography.

Nick White

This is something which is mentioned on a regular basis, when talking about image making, using pre-exsisting printed materials, like magazines, books, posters etc.
I was attracted to this peice by Nick White in particular because of the line quality and the face, as these are reccuring themes in my own work.

Tutorial from Grace, 03.10.11

Back at the beggining of the month, when i had just handed in the "crisp and map" project, i had the following tutorial;
Make 'Chrispian' some friends
Put a narrative behind the character
Different versions of him, knitted into tubular patterns, paper, card, fabrics
Can these be worn? Made intercative somehow?
They have a sense of humour
Sell the balaclava 'Chrispian', with a book, child-like, but for adults.

What does he hate the smell of ? ;chip pans, cooking fat.
What are his greatest fears ? ;fires, fat people.
What does he do in his spare time? ;look after his crispy goldfish, "seasalt".
What is his biggest dream/ambition in life? ;To go to Vegas and gamble his 'chips' away!

I drew up a Facebook page for 'Crispian' in my sketchbook, with this information I have imagined.

One of the ideas that kept cropping up in my tutorials, was to up-scale my summer project drawings and incorporate Crispian into them.

So i have looked at posters with a graphic sort of feel to them, for abit of an idea how i could make my own posters look, and so that im not just making things up off of the top of my head!!

looking at artist's sketchbooks

Linzie Hunter

I came across Linzie Hunter's hand-writing and illustration website today. Her typography is the type that is becoming popular in advertising of all types, television, magazines, book covers, dvd covers etc.


Harry Nesbitt

This artist was new on the scene in 2009, he is based in Liverpool. His work is a mixture of photoshop, illustration, animation and design work.

chrispian is here

Artists for me to look at...

Paul Davis

Luke Best

Donna Wilson

All of these made me laugh, so so muchhhhh!!!

My balaclava crisp man!

29.09.11

Tutorial with Richard;
The main part of my summer project was a book, which had pen and ink drawings of my facial features. I am to expand on this, by scaling them up on an OHP, using a paint brush instead of the pen, and maybe take them into the print room.

Then we went onto look at my brain, and the first thing that he said was that it reminded him of "Loose women", on ITV1 at lunch time on weekdays. I hate this show, but must admit that i do watch it now and again. So this led us onto thinking about T.V and soaps. Back to "Coronation Street", which i looked at and did work about in my first year.

Looking through my sketches for my "2 week project", he told me that the humour within my work was similar to that in Harry Hill, The Mighty Boosh and Sarah Lucas.

My drawing of the "balaclava crisp man" made him laugh, i didn't intend for it to be funny, but the more i looked at it, the funnier i found it too! It looks a little like Edvard Munch's "The Scream".