Tang Yau Hoong

I recently came across an artist while looking through a graphic design magazine I subscribe to called Computer Arts. His name is Tang Yau Hoong, and he is a graphic designer from Malaysia, which is where he is still based now.

 I quote.. "I love to play with negative space and illusion in my artwork. My illustrations are mostly conceptual, surreal and minimalist." - Tang Yau Hoong.

His work is very good and this idea about the use of negative space is something that really interests me . Its very clever and its almost like a puzzle for the brain to look at. 


Here are some examples of Hoongs work. These examples are not commissioned piece's of work, though he do commissions as well as his own pieces. 

This one is called 'Coexistence' and it is about the relationship between our cities and buildings and the nature that we have built it on and the nature that surrounds it. I really like the use of colours in this picture, the watercolour effect means the colours merge into each other nicely and he has stuck to colours close together on the colour spectrum. I think it works really well.

This one is called night and day which is a fitting title as the picture pretty much speaks for its self.

'Little red riding hood'

'Lost Memory'

Photomontage

pho·to·mon·tage 

Noun A montage constructed from photographic images. The technique of constructing such a montage

Basically a Photomontage is where you combine lots of different photo's or pictures together to make a bigger picture. There are different kinds of photomontage now that we have developed editing software for computers, and it is possible to edit many photos together to make them look like one shot. But before we could do this photomontages were much more surreal looking and were used heavily by surrealist artists through the 20th century. 

This picture is a landscape made up of 16 different photos, manipulated using photoshop to make it look real, it is very clever.

Here is a comparison between a photomontage made by Herbert Bayer in 1932, and a photomontage that I found on the internet. As you can see the images in the first picture look like they have been cut out and placed together, where is the woman looks like that actually is her beard growing from her chin, with the use of computers it is much easier to create realistic looking photomontages, but they all stem from the works of surrealist artists such as Herbert Bayer and other artists working in the way around the same time. 

Hannah Hoch 

Hannah Hoch is very well known for her use of photomontage and is described as one of the originators of the art form. She was a German artist working who's work became well known around the early 1920's. She was part of the Dada movement in Berlin and worked closely with a lot of other artists involved in Dadaism. She was a strong feminist and a strong woman, which must have been very hard for her at that time. 

I like her work, although I do think a lot of the work being produced by artists working under dadaism was very similar, but I like this one in particular. Hoch is trying to challenge people's views on femininity by taking these pictures of legs and eyes and lips and other female body parts that are so well known for being considered feminine and beautiful, and used photomontage to create a weird, unusual and not so beautiful image. I really like the way she has changed the proportions to make it look even more unusual and surreal. The more research I do the more I am coming to like the work of surreal artists, but I find it so hard to work in this way myself.

I had to do a project on photomontage at college, we had to chose either a film/game or T.V series but I couldn't decide and I really wanted to do something I really enjoyed as I thought that then I would be able to design it better. I asked if I could do a music label, which I was aloud so I chose 'Bad Boy Records', a record label focusing on rap music in the 1990's.

This is the final poster I produced for the brief, in which I had to pretend I was producing a poster for the company themselves.

Illustrator tutorials.

I have recently become much more interested in the work of illustrators using programs such as illustrator and I have also been doing a little bit of messing around with the program myself. I recently purchased a new Macbook computer so that I could get better at using software in my spare time and also got the new Adobe Suit edition at the same time (CS6).
There are loads of tutorials on the internet but a lot of them are focusing on teaching you a specific thing, where as I wanted some simple beginners tutorials. Another good reason to get practicing with these tutorials is because the more that you do the faster you can do it, learning all the keyboard shortcuts had become useful and I have started remembering them as well which makes my life easier and speeds up my pace a little bit. I found a good blog with 50 good illustrator tutorials so I had a look down the list and picked one I fancied.

I like the look of this cute little strawberry and it didn't look too hard or too easy so I gave it a try and I really enjoyed it. It was harder than I thought it would be but I learned some good tips on how to create shadows which was useful. This is the image that I was trying to create...

And this is my end result. Not exactly the same but I was proud of myself and mine doesn't look bad, especially when half of the things I had to do I had never done before.

 50 Great Illustrator Tutorials You Should Try.

Click the link above if you are interested in trying some yourself.

Dadaism.

Dadaism first appeared durin and in the aftermath of World War 1. People were angry about the fact that over 10,000,000 people had been killed and some people didn't agree with standing about and watching it happen. Obviously it is hard for a group of citizen people to stop an event such as World War 1 but people wanted to make there opinions heard, and some people, starting in Barcelona, Zurich and New York and then also in Berlin, Cologne and Paris, began a movement they called Dada. 

They believed that the fact that people who were seen as 'sane' or 'rational' stood by and didn't say anything about so much life lost was the reason such things were able to happen and they made art that was the opposite, it was insane and irrational. It was completely unusual and unlike anything a lot of people had ever seen before. Especially calling its self art. Often it didn't have any meaning, just like the name Dada, which has no particular meaning. Dada in French is a childs rocking horse, in Slavac it means yes, yes. 

Famous works of Dada art are Meret Oppenheim's Fur Covered Teacup, Marcel DuChamp's bicycle wheel stool and Hannah Hoch's photomontages. 

Eddie Opara.

Born in London in 1972, Eddie Opara studied graphic design at the London College of Printing and Yale Uni- versity. He started working at a few firms after he graduated and then went on to building his own firm, The Map Office in 2005. In 2010 he went on to join New Yorks design firm pentagram, bringing all of his other Map Office designers with him, and being the first ever black partner of the company. Much more a designer than an artist, he works on varied types of project briefs such as brand identity, publications, environments, interactive installations, websites, user interfaces and software. 

Above are examples of a project that Opara did for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design. The first image is the Identity he created, the second some of the designs out of the catologue, and the third a snapshot of there website which he akso designed himself. His work stands out as clean and stylish. Nothing to bright and gairesh, much more sleek and interesting using unusual shapes and patterns. It is clear that looking through his work he has taken big influence from the swiss designers and the bauhaus that became big in the 20th centuary.

He started out his career based on his love for designing posters. In interviews he often talks about design with a purpose, that is shared and contributing to the greater good.

I think that he is a good designer to take notes from as he is very aware of his clients and the job as well as just making things look good. He talks about ‘design thinking’ where he views himself as a psycologist listen- ing to his clients wants and needs, and also picking up on other things about them and their personallity so that he can fully understand them and their needs. 

Pete Mckee.

Pete McKee was born in 1966. A cartoonist and illustrator from Sheffield his work holds emotion that can have you on the floor or reaching for the tissues. He ownes a small gallary in where he showcases his work in his hometown of Sheffield.
Recently he was commisioned by Warp Films, another well to do company from Sheffield, to re-create post- ers from some of their most famous films, for their 10th anniversary. Films included This is England, Dead Man's Shoes and Four Lions.

Pete’s work is heavily based on things relating to Sheffield, especially the arcutecture, the ‘hot spots’ and the music scene. His art is done in such a simple, one lined style yet he still manages to capture so much emotion in the works he produces. His work feels deadly serious, hitting home and relating to real lfe people, but also like something you might see on a childs t.v program. In Sheffield he has become a little bit of a local legend with his work being on sigt in many places including the side of buildings, but also he is becoming more and more recognised internationaly as his name is being wider spread.

This video was made by John Smith. I could tell you about it but I think part of the fun is working it out for yourself. I first watched it in the Liverpool Tate, and I think it could be enjoyed by anyone.