David Mack...

David Mack is a comic book illustrator. The images in his graphic novel, Kabuki, have influenced my own image making, and have inspired me to create a graphic novel of my own or create graphic outcomes which tell a story. I particularly like Mack's use of watercolour and photography, as well as the colours he uses. I think what makes Mack's work particularly effective is his layouts, which make the images tell the story in an interesting and unconventional way and really help each image to connect with each word.

I am also particularly influenced by Mack's use of repetition of a certain image of shape, the way he repeats a shape or image and develops it slowly into something else so that it morphs into something new and links other images together.

Dave Mckean...

Dave Mckean is a photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, and filmmaker.
His mixed media work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpture. I take inspiration from Mckean's work because of how he incorporates so many things in his images, his work is busy and beautiful. He can also create a huge amount of atmosphere in a single image, making them perfect for story-telling. His work evokes eeriness and is strange and sometimes even scary but is at the same time very beautiful. His images seem to be made of many,spliced up and layered to make one perfect graphic outcome. I am also influenced by the colour palette Mckean uses in many of his images,from palettes of mainly sepia tones to images with rich,bright colour.

I think Mckean's use of photography and repeated images is particularly effective here.

I like the sepia colour palette and the accidental mark making in this image.




I think Mckean's use of scratchy,sketchy line drawing makes this image particularly effective.

I like the layering of photography and the many different elements in this image.

Chemistry book...

I have draw and collaged inside and altered an old chemistry book. Around these drawings etc. I have begun to write a story involving the reincarnated carcass of my decorated chicken. I would like to try and create a graphic novel, possibly using this story. The drawings in the pages of the chemistry book are just rough sketches and doodles but I think when combined with other images,photographs etc,they might make a good graphic outcome.

Decorated Chicken...

When decorating the raw chicken, I decided primarily to use brightly coloured jewels as I thought these would produce a garish and tacky-looking effect and evoke ideas of false luxury and bright, distasteful disguises like the wrappers on sweets etc. I created a pattern of jewels on the back of the chicken first, starting in the middle with a flower shape as the centre-piece. I picked the flower shape because it reminded me of chintzy fabrics and tacky curtain designs-patterns designed to make something cheap look attractive,most of the time unsuccessfully.

I also used feathers in a deep magenta colour which reminded me of fancy dress costumes and feather boas, bringing the idea of disguise to the forefront. I felt that placing the feathers symmetrically on either side of the chicken made it look like it was dressed in some gaudy and extravagant ensemble, and thought they contrasted well with the plucked skin of the chicken itself. The magenta colour of the feathers clashed with the pale pink of the skin.

Finally I embroidered directly onto the back of the chicken. I thought this drew a contrast, between the traditional purpose of embroidery-to beautify an object,and the repulsiveness of the fact that this object was a raw, dead animal. I would have liked to include further embroidery, but it proved difficult to achieve good result when embroidering directly onto the chicken's skin,which was slippery and wet and moved out of place easily.

I thought it was fitting for my themes that I should have to overcome my repulsions about touching the raw meat,in order to decorate it.

I decided to present the chicken itself as the finished piece rather than present photographs as I thought that seeing the chicken in the flesh would produce a more disgusted and shocked reaction. I left the chicken in part of its actual packaging because I thought this would help get my ideas about food packaging across.

Embroidery Practice...

In order to embroider the chicken I first had to teach myself to embroider. I used this video on YouTube in which embroidery artist and designer Jenny Hart demonstrates some simple stitches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExuIHDPD1dw . She demonstrates the split stitch which I found was my favourite. I practiced on felt first with very thick thread and then with thinner thread which achieved a more professional look.

This magazine cover inspired some of my designs.

Lettering was difficult and I thought it would be too

tricky to do it directly onto the chicken.
Some of my first attempts using very thick thread.

A close up of my last practice before embroidering
onto the chicken. I think this design was quite
succesful and for this I used very thin thread.



Another close up-this is my favourite bit.

The last practice.

Artist Reasearch-Francesco Vezzoli...

I have researched artists who use craft embellishments in a non-traditional way.


Francesco Vezzoli is best known for his use of needlework in portraits of celebrities which are simultaneously beautiful and disturbing. He has an obsession with high and low culture – he draws inspiration especially from cinema and advertising, themes which are not normally associated with needlework and embroidery. I took inspiration from Vezzoli's juxtaposition of traditional media and modern themes.

Portrait of Lady Gaga as Pierrot (with tears) 2009

Developing the idea...

I think that a raw chicken would be the best food to decorate because of its shocking nature-being a dead animal and also looking pretty disgusting. I also thought that raw chicken was quite an interesting subject and carried lots of connotations about food and animals. I thought covering a disgusting looking food specimen with embellishments which are usually used to beautify things would, in this case make a garish and disturbing visual effect. I started to explore different types of craft embellishment including jewels,buttons,beads,sequins and feathers-which I thought would have a particularly ironic effect, and used a creative methology exercise-a morphological analysis- to come up with several ideas for the types of food, decoration/embellishment and types of presentation I could use.

Morphological analysis: