Jane Horton

This illustration by Alice Tait is an approach to mapping a...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:45:20 +0000

This illustration by Alice Tait is an approach to mapping a route that I find fun and attractive. Perhaps it works on South Bank but not Sheffield? Hmm, will see.

Wow Chris Harris illustration is amazing

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:09:46 +0000

Wow Chris Harris illustration is amazing

Exercise on giving instructions. This is my first doodle to...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:10:55 +0000

Exercise on giving instructions. This is my first doodle to consider how to give instructions on how to get from Sheffield station to my house on foot. I though silhouettes of the major landmarks in a sequence would look good but whether it’s clear enough is another matter! Needs a lot more thought.

The Hockney exhibition

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:20:11 +0000

I liked Garrowby hill 1998 and the watercolour landscapes. The
Charcoal tree drawings are strong.
He enjoys hawthorn but makes it look like worms and I really didn’t like these paintings. He is so prolific he makes a virtue out of the speedy unfinished appearance of a lot of his work. His
early scratched landscape is great, full of joy. I was ambivalent about fluorescent colours in arranged felled trees but yes it worked and I changed my mind about this. His work seems to be about: pattern, marks, joy and simplification. His iPad art is true to the marks that this digital method naturally makes. His iPad Work appears unforced and natural.
I love in particular the iPad images of 4 January, 18 march, and 22 march. I don’t like use of spray marks in his iPad art unless very subtle. I really dislike the whole room full on the Sermon on the mount 2010 but the large landscapes from the iPad work! I felt I could almost walk into them.

David Shrigley

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:09:12 +0000

I took myself to see this exhibition yesterday with low expectations but found it really refreshing and amusing. He makes his ideas and the execution of them appear very simple but in fact the design of many of them is sophisticated and certainly the ideas, though they may be simple, feed and certain 21st century zeitgeist. They take the piss, have a poke at politics, contemporary art, the hypocrisy of some people and society at large, but sometimes his ideas are just plain silly like the taxidermy dog holding a placard saying ‘i am dead’

The next exhibition I went to was on 14 February, again as a...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:45:36 +0000

The next exhibition I went to was on 14 February, again as a study visit, to see the incredibly busy Hockney: A Bigger Picture. We had a great time there with the two tutors sparring about Hockney and great insights into Hockney’s working practices from Tony Hogan, who knows him personally. I took some notes and did a few sketches like the one above, on my iPhone, copying a simple line of trees in the exhibition.

Here’s OCA tutor David Winning talking about Matisse whom...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:41:11 +0000

Here’s OCA tutor David Winning talking about Matisse whom he clearly loves. It was interesting to learn a bit more about Matisse’s printmaking methods. I like the Matisse quote on the wall: ’ I always start from the simple and move to the complex’ … Food for thought in the way I go about my work.

Jason Rhoades Touche from my Medinah was the first exhibit. It...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:36:33 +0000

Jason Rhoades Touche from my Medinah was the first exhibit. It took ages for me to work out what it was about and I felt the connection with Alice was tenuous. But the more I have thought about it the more it’s grown on me. Its about the the role of language and the physical presence of language, here with the words dangling down in neon. That the meaning of the words only gradually reveal themselves and then shock (they are all slang for vagina) adds to the revelation and link to the quirkiness that is Alice.

I love this big scratchy etching on the subject of Alice. Of...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:29:51 +0000

I love this big scratchy etching on the subject of Alice. Of course the scratchy linear style appeals to my preferences in drawing by I especially like the scale of it (it’s about A0) and the random marks that were made in its creation.

Exhibitions

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:14:23 +0000

I have been to a whole bunch of exhibitions recently and failed to blog about them and yet they have all fed my imagination in one way or another. So here’s a brief summary of what I’ve seen and what I thought about them. First I went on an OCA study visit to Liverpool to see the Alice in Wonderland show at Tate Liverpool, followed by Matisse books at the Walker Art gallery. Both were really interesting and the huge Alice exhibition turned out to be an epic survey of magic realism and surrealism through the 20th and into 21st century. There were one or two particularly memorable pieces which follow.

In the wake of my funky coloured veg images I’ve started...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:07:50 +0000

In the wake of my funky coloured veg images I’ve started colouring a bunch of black and white iPad drawings of Sheffield buildings in bright colours. The black and white versions are to be converted into etchings and then hand coloured while these wild coloured versions will end up as cards in an iPad art exhibition I’ve been asked to put together as part of the Broomhill festival in June.

In the end though, I much prefer the selected elements from the...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:02:12 +0000

In the end though, I much prefer the selected elements from the abstract image I created. It’s more lively and free. I enjoyed this exercise and it’s led me to consider using parts of abstract images to focus in on in design work.

This one is more like it. I like the lettering, I think it goes...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:58:42 +0000

This one is more like it. I like the lettering, I think it goes better with the insects and I like it curving around. Changing the wording to firefly works better too.

This is the image I created from the abstract drawing I did...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:56:50 +0000

This is the image I created from the abstract drawing I did listening to music. It was created with collaged paper, powder inks and Indian ink applied with a bamboo stick. The butterfly type insects emerged from the abstract design. The lettering was produced in a new iPad program called LetterMpress, a simulation of old typography, great fun to use but the font isn’t right here.

When I was experimenting with backgrounds I photographed...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:25:58 +0000

When I was experimenting with backgrounds I photographed textures and added them in but chose not to use them.

I think this is a better pumpkin image. A better drawing and a...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:20:02 +0000

I think this is a better pumpkin image. A better drawing and a more sparkly background.

Hi Jane, I've just managed to get my first iPhone (a 3GS but still exciting!) - I've downloaded Brushes and started to play but found very quickly my fingers are too chunky to see what I'm doing on a little screen. Great for practicing sketching without looking at the support but not so good if I do want to make considered marks. I noticed your work on iPad and iPhone and wondered if you use a stylus and which one? Many thanks, Alli (OCA student)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:39:20 +0000

Hi Alison. The only thing I can think of is that you have not yet fully understood what you can achieve with Brushes. You can get to pixel level to play around by pinching with two fingers and then opening out your pinch on the screen. In this way you can zoom right in which makes it possible to work with detail. In my opinion there is no need at all to use a stylus, I only use my fingers and have reproduced a copy of a Rembrandt on my iPhone, you can get quite fine detail quite easily. Good luck!

And even less convinced that this one should go into the...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:01:57 +0000

And even less convinced that this one should go into the submission at all …

I’m less convinced about the yellow behind this .. I think...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:00:31 +0000

I’m less convinced about the yellow behind this .. I think it makes the broccoli look as though it’s had better days …

The lettuce looks more lettucy on blue ..

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:58:59 +0000

The lettuce looks more lettucy on blue ..