Employment Prospects

We've had two talks in as many days from guys who are doing what we want to do. And one big, scary statistic sticks in my mind;
The number of graphics students graduating in this country every year  - 15,500
The number of graphics jobs in this country                                            - 70000

EEEEK! That doesn't look good.

So I've come to this conclusion.

I'm never going to get a job in a studio. Who's going to take on a quarrelsome 55 year old when there's herds of 20 - somethings out there?

So I'd better find myself a unique selling point. And fast.

Stockport College's new B.Phil course

Blimey, this curiosity brief is going in strange directions. I started off reading 'On Humour' by Simon Critchley, but had to break off to look through these in order to make sense of it. Critchley is, of course, a philosopher. As will I be by the end of this brief.

Check out this blog

Researching the Curiosity brief, I thought maybe a map - style poster would do the trick, so I started checking some out online. I found this site - exactly the kind of non - computer dependant  work I'm drawn to. You can tell she's a Dave Shrigley fan. Follow this link. London Drawings

Killing the frog

The latest brief entails making a poster based on a page of text from Alan Fletcher's 'The Art of Looking Sideways'. My topic is Humour. A big field to plough, eh? Well, so far the only inspiration I've got is the quote about humour being like a frog, in that if you try and dissect it, you kill it. So look forward to images of frogs being hit with hammers, zapped in blenders and run over by steam rollers.

Bloody Hogarth! - part 2

I've just removed the post-it notes from my primary research book on William Hogarth for the context essay. Seventy - five of them!

London, 18th century style

While researching my context essay on William Hogarth I came across this brilliant poem on London

Houses, churches, mixed together,

Streets unpleasant in all weather;

Prisons, palaces contiguous

Gates, a bridge, the Thames irriguous.

Gaudy things enough to tempt ye,

Showy outsides, insides empty;

Bubbles, trades, mechanic arts,

Coaches, wheelbarrows and carts.

Warrants, bailiffs, bills unpaid,

Lords of laundresses afraid:

Rogues that nightly rob and shoot men,

Hangmen, aldermen and footmen.

Lawyers, poets, priests, physicians

Noble, simple, all conditions:

Worth beneath a threadbare cover,

Villainy bedaubed all over.

Women black, fair, red and grey,

Prudes and such as never pray,

Handsome, ugly, noisy, still,

Some that will not, some that will.

Many a beau without a shilling,

Many a widow not unwilling;

Many a bargain if you strike it:

This is London! How d’ye like it?

JOHN BANCKS, ‘A Description of London’ (1738)

Hasn't got much better since then, has it?

Bloody Hogarth!

Off to the Whitworth Gallery to soak up more Hogarth info for Gary's essay. I don't have much time for the Whitworth, it's one of those art galleries where you have a room the size of an AIRCRAFT HANGER with six exhibits in it. But deadlines call, so here I am staring at Hockneys and Hogarths, with The Rake's Progress as a common theme.
Looking at the genuine Hogarth engravings, you immediataly spot details that weren't obvious on the pages of a book - they are so much clearer. I noticed that Hogarth's dog is paying court to a one - eyed bitch in plate 5, mirroring the rake as he marries an ugly old bag for her money. Never noticed it before.

Hockney's comparison doesn't hold with Hogarth's rake, though, because he hasn't died in debt and ignominy. Yet.

Dazzle paint

Saw this at Portsmouth too.

A monitor from the first world war, decked out in dazzle paint. Invented by British artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917, it was designed to baffle the U-boats that were sinking our shipping at an appalling rate. It didn't attempt to conceal the ship - no point in that, when the funnel is belching out smoke visible for miles - but to make it hard to tell how far away it was, or which way it was heading. Check out some more examples here. Apparently it works on facial recognition cameras too. Picasso, of course, claimed that the cubists invented it.

Portsmouth dockyard

I went here over new year. Lots for the eye to dwell on.

Scary sci-fi warships. Type 45 destroyers - shame there's so few of them.

Rigging from HMS Warrior, the world's first iron battleship.

Things for killing people.

And things for stopping your ship escaping.

I've never paid much attention to graffiti before. Then I watched a trailer about, I think, Banksy and co., and was rether impressed, so I started keeping my eyes open. This is nice.