STRAND
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Art//Illustration//Photography//Fiction//
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N.B. if you would like to contribute anything this magazine, even if it’s just corrections please email us at r.wilde@artybuzz.com
Welcome to STRAND. 28 pages of photography, illustration, fiction, reviews, interviews and comics! (I’m a big fan of comics So I saved that for the end of the sentence). The aim of this publication is simply to be read. I don’t mind where you read it: toilet seat, train carriage, lecture theatre or lunch hall. I don’t mind how you read it (a friend of mine has a habit of reading magazines back to front). But do read it. We have no political manifesto to promote, no religious message, or higher meanings to extol – just pictures and words..In your hands is the result of a lot of hard work. Serious amounts of energy were expelled to bring this magazine to you, the reader. So return the favour and have a look.Please.
3. Ian Jackson
5. Photography
8. Fiction
9. Illustration
12. Alice Duke
15. Photoshop Tutorial
17. Collage
20. Henry Lyon-Smith
23. T-Shirt Feature
28. Comics
Chief Editor - Luke Carragher Editor - Richard George Wilde Designer - William Plant
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Interview with Ian Jackson artinliverpool.com What’s your reason for reviewing art? Do you do it for arts sake, for the people, or for the money? Money? No chance! I do it because I love art and I want as many people as possible to see and experience it. I’m not really bothered whether people ‘get it’ or not just as long as they see it. So most of my reviews are quite superficial, encouraging people to visit the galleries and see for themselves.
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Harry Lyon-Smith You review a lot of art, has it inspired you to create some of your own?
ing in the right place at the right time with the right ‘product’ or talent.
Quite the opposite, I used to paint but now don’t have the time and am more aware than ever that it would take so much time and effort to be anything like as good as most of the artists I see.
Who/what is your “must-see” artist/art work/art exhibition right now?
As with most creatives luck can play a major part, being in the right place at the right time with the right ‘product’ or talent. What critics/blogs do you follow? So many, I subscribe to 100s of blogs through google reader. Favourites are probably Stuart Burns ‘feelinglistless’, David Lloyd’s ‘Skrift’, the NML, FACT and Dot-Art’s blogs and photographers Pete Carr and Mark McNulty
China Through the Lens at the Maritime Museum, a fascinating collection and the story of the intrepid photographer John Thompson who travelled all around Chine taking pictures from 1868-72 ‘The Rise of Women Artists’ and Aubrey Williams both at the Walker and Afro Modern at the Tate which has a lot to see and think about covering over 100 years of influential black art. Interviewed by Luke Carragher
ArtInLiverpool.com is run by Ian Jackson with the help of Minako Jackson and other occasional contributers. Its ‘The Best British Art Blog’ and has been running since before the start of Liverpool Biennial 2004. Ian also runs other websites including the Hope Street blog http://www.hopestreet.co.uk and The Independents Biennial website
Do you think great art and great artists will always be found, or do they need business know-how to get noticed? Not always found no, business and marketing knowledge can help in a lot of cases. As with most creatives luck can play a major part, be-
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http://www.independentsbiennial.org There are now several thousand postings covering news, review, previews, interviews etc. relating mainly to the Liverpool Art & Culture scene and sometimes even national or international news.
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Photography
Andrew Ellis
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T-Shirt Review
Olivia Ford
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T-Shirt Review
Ben Fenton
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Fiction
MIRROR
PARK
by Tom Gorton
She was back again. ‘Pull over, come on.’ I said. Her head nodded to the music in the car. She’d told me fifteen minutes ago that she’d done it. Her breath smelt like gas and her eyes stared straight ahead into the road. It was night. She started trying to smoke but couldn’t match the thread on the in built car lighter. I tried to concentrate. Her left hand was down by the clutch. ‘I swear it’s down here,’ she said. ‘Robyn!’ I screamed. I got out of the car and scanned the road with the light of my phone. I found it, bloody and injured but still breathing. It smelt terrible. I touched its hind leg and it whimpered. I watched its stomach bulge. Robyn came up behind me. ‘Shit Fran, a fox. It’s alive still.’ ‘I know, let’s move it to the side of the road.’ I said. ‘No. There’s a spade in the boot. We’ve got to kill it.’ she replied. I looked around. ‘OK, watch out for cars.’ I said. I took the spade from the boot. Standing over the animal, I arched back. The spade over my head I waited for a second. Then I brought it down. I did it
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again, and then one more time. Robyn gripped my arm. ‘Fran, it’s dead.’ I stepped away. When I turned back Robyn was wrapping it in her coat. ‘We have to bury it.’ she said. ‘OK, Mirror Park then.’ I imagined it would be empty at night. Robyn put the fox in the boot and its rotten odour engulfed the car. We drove along The Bends to the park, to an area of woodland where I knew there’d be no roots. I took the fox, Robyn took the spade. She held two phones whilst I dug a grave. She tried making conversation, ‘I got caught by the police here, remember? They came through the bushes and I said I was your sister, so I’d get taken to yours.’ It took half an hour to dig a hole big enough and I was tired at the end of it. Robyn laid it to rest. As I was filling in the hole back up she kissed my cheek. I patted down the soil and she gave me my phone back. ‘I’m sorry about before. Hey... there’s no-one around y’know, maybe we could..’ I said. ‘Not now Fran.’ she said. Then she took my hand and led me out of the bushes. ‘Can we sit on our bench?’ she said. ‘Yeah OK, my coat’s big enough for both of us.’ ‘Look Fran, I’m not coming home tonight.’
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Illustration
James Clapham
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Illustration
Amee Christian
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illustration
William Plant STRAND Strand.indb 11
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Alice Duke
A is for Alice STRAND Strand.indb 12
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Alice Duke Tell us a bit about how you got started. A work experience placement when I was 15. The publishing company wouldn’t even let me make tea. There was one guy there who had a graphics tablet and would draw caricatures of the boss and other cool stuff. I came home and begged my parents to get me one. They agreed and I spent a lot of time staying in and illustrating. I probably should have been socializing more at that age but there’s no way I would be able to find that time again. Could you tell us about some projects you’ve been a part of. There was the Edgar Allan Poe graphic novel. I got selected to illustrate A Tell Tale Heart. The stories had been re-imagined by other writers and in mine the killer was a blind girl. Also I’ve designed for a collectible cards game which was pretty cool. I like to pick jobs that look fun. So when you’ve been given a brief, how do you go about completing it? I don’t have a set routine or anything for work, but I will often start a freelance day with some coffee and the various admin/emailing tasks that build up (this is necessary but always takes a disturbing amount of time). Research is also pretty essential, there’s the obvious looking for reference and information on a job, but also looking up clients to find out what sort of work they will expect from you. This is often more informative than the brief that they give (as well as hopefully confirming that they legit). When the time finally comes to draw something it’s all pretty straight forward - I’ll often make a pencil drawing which is then scanned and taken into Photoshop for further work and usually some colouring. I prefer to
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take lots of breaks and work until late rather than try and cram everything in to the 9 to 5 work day. What emphasis do you put on self-promotion. I have a website, and a blog and a twitter, but you really have to do it all these days. I’m looking to establish myself as a brand... get a coherent image and portfolio together. It’s all about networking and getting people’s attention. Self promotion is a necessity. Where do your jobs come from? Most of my jobs come from people getting in touch after seeing my work online. When I feel like taking a risk (usually as a direct result of being poor) I check the jobs section on either deviantart or the conceptart.org forums. I’ve got some great clients through those sites, as well as some that I’d never work with again. I’m never entirely sure where people who contact me have seen my work, this is because I shamelessly spread myself all over the internet. Generally I prefer the unexpected and slightly strange requests that I get out of nowhere to the usually poorly paid fantasy/ science fiction jobs that I tend to apply for. Could you name some designers/artists you follow or publications websites. flickr (actually no one cares about me on flickr so I lost interest in it a bit, but I need to start putting things on therehttp://www.flickr. com/photos/aliceduke/) http://alice.cghub.com/ http://melora.deviantart.com http://twitter.com/aliceduke http://alicedraws.blogspot.com http://alice.inprnt.com/
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Alice Duke What’s your attitude towards working for free? Generally speaking, I don’t. You get plenty of people offering “free publicity” and “opportunities” but the fact is you’re going to put time and effort into something you want some guarantees. I’ve done it for people I know, when the brief has been right. Like once when a friend needed an album cover and we worked together. that was good experience, and I know he’ll help me back in some way. but otherwise no I wouldn’t work for free. you have to carefully evaluate if someone else’s brief is a good use of your time.
“I’m never entirely sure where people who contact me have seen my work, this is because I shamelessly spread myself all over the internet.”
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One of the key features of Photoshop is the ability to use layers to combine lots of images and type together to create one image. This is a quick guide to layers and the best way to use them. When you first open Photoshop and start to add the various bits and pieces you want to use for your image, you’ll see the layers palette on the right hand side begins to fill up. Each individual part has its own layer. Having each part of your image on a separate level means you can re-size or change the colours or alter in any way one part of the image without affecting the rest of it. Think of layers as being like lots of sheets of acetate containing a different part of your image piled on top of each other to create the whole picture. Layers allow you to experiment with parts of your image to see what looks right. The layers palette itself has some drop down menus of its own, you can add a new layer, delete a layer, add an adjustment layer and so on. Layers do take up a lot of space, it isn’t unusual to have very large files if they contain multiple layers. It’s good practice to name your layers, especially if some have very small images, which can’t be seen easily in the palette. The layers are numbered and if you left click the text, the drop down menu with ‘rename layer’ appears. Names like ‘dog’ or ‘tree’ are fine, but sometimes more detail is needed depending on what you’ve done to that part of the image. You can drag the layers around to change the image, the ones at the top of the list are at the front of the image, the bottom ones are at the back.
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Tip: Photoshop always starts with a ‘background’ layer which is locked. You can unlock it by double clicking and that will become layer 0, or you can duplicate the layer (in the palette options) leaving the background one locked but allowing the next one to be altered.
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Photoshop Masterclass The opacity of single layers can also be changed, which is really useful. If you wanted to trace an image, you could lower that images opacity making it easier to trace in the layer on top. Plus, by pressing the eye icon, you can make a layer invisible without completely getting rid of it. Be careful about which layer you are working on though. It’s annoying to do a whole drawing or alteration then decide you’re not sure about it only to discover you can’t change it because it wasn’t done in a separate layer. If this does happen, all is not lost. You can select that part and go to ‘Layer’ on the top menu, then ‘new’ then ‘layer via copy’ or ‘layer from cut’ creates a new layer from that image. Layers also feature blending modes, the default choice is ‘normal’ but click that menu and a whole range of options appear. The best way to learn about these is to try them with lots of different images. Remember, you can always undo any action, so try them all until you find one that looks right with the design. However, don’t just pile them all on top of each other, subtle is better than lots of over the top features which can ruin your original image.
Louise Murphy
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Collage
Catherine Horner
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Collage
Misha Hollenbach
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Collage
Mary Naylor
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Interview with Harry Lyons-Smith
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Harry Lyon-Smith At Artybuzz, we have a wide range of illustrators that include students, what advice would you give to an illustration student looking to break into the industry? There are some basics, such as getting as much feedback from potential commissioners as possible. As an agency it is rare that we represent artists who have just left college, what we like to see is how they have got on for a couple of years knocking on doors and honing a portfolio that they have had feedback from real-life commissioners. You have to work very hard at this, developing new work and adapting it all the time so that it is relevant to potential marketplaces. Keep realistic and honest with yourself. We represent illustrators who we class as being in the top 1% of talent, and the reality of their success is more or less; 1/3 do really well, 1/3 do fine, and 1/3 we struggle to find enough work for. It may well be that we are the wrong agency, the style and subject of the work is just not what is resonating with commissioners. We are always trying to retune the presentation of artist’s work to get the formula right, but sometimes it does not work and we have to shake hands and wish each other bon voyage...so to speak.
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How important do you feel it is for illustrators to have a strong web presence is in this modern age? Essential, and it needs to include a website, blog, Facebook, MySpace, Linked in, Twitter etc. and as much inter-linking as possible. They all need to be kept up to date as commissioners very quickly get what we call image blindness. Furthermore join as many portfolio websites such as Artybuzz, Behance, Stockillustrations.com and Flickr etc, which are free and as many of the fee charging ones (AOIPortfolios, TheIspot, Altpick, Folioplanet etc) as you can afford. There are loads out there and the more out there you are the more potential commissioners will see you. As an agency we try and do this as much as possible on behalf of our artists and dedicate a lot of man hours to keeping things moving and fresh on these sites. How do you feel the impact of new technology and programs like Adobe Illustrator has affected the illustration industry? On the one hand they have enabled a great deal of efficiency coupled with a fantastic new range of styles, techniques and effects. On the other hand they can disguise some shortfalls in draughtsmanship. This disguise is short lived in our experience. There is a slight negative in that clients who work in the same programme know that changes can often be easily made, resulting in some briefs are not being as thorough or worked out as before, so that there are lots of changes to the final work. What is the attraction of illustration as an artistic format. Illustration enables greater individuality and
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Harry Lyon-Smith “signature� when clients are looking to stand out from the crowd. Photography is a great medium and brilliant for many applications, however it is a narrower stylistic solution and whilst individual in many ways it does not nearly have the extraordinary flexibility, diversity and the impact that well used illustration has. In a World that bombards everyone with thousands and thousands of messages a day, individuality and standout is essential. This is understood by the creative industries and more illustration is being commissioned. What in your opinion is the most exciting thing going on in the illustrative world at the moment? The world is opening up and flattening, China is going to be as big a market as anything we have seen before in a decade or two, places like Brazil and Russia are developing the same way. Not only are they producing many extraordinarily talented artists, their media industries are looking further afield to source talent. Illustrators are now able to animate relatively easily and with a booming mobile, Internet/TV platforms the need and desire for visual content, both static and motion, has never been greater and will grow exponentially. Interview Harry Lyon-Smith, a director of illustration limited. An illustration agency representing some of the World’s top illustrators and an increasing number of animators. Offices in London, New York, Paris, Hamburg, Shanghai. We were founded in 1929. Harry has been with the agency since 1985
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T-Shirt Review
Tee-Time In the current economic climate, as everyone involved in the art industry knows, sales of art have decreased rather heavily. This is primarily due to the fact that people have a lack of disposable income to spend, particularly on non essential items like art, which can often be expensive. It is therefore important to seek new and innovative ways to branch out and find new markets and new customers so that you can survive as an artist, designer or illustrator, and carry on doing what you love... creating art. One option that may be suitable but not yet considered by some artists, illustrators and designers is to branch out into making other products, like T shirts for example. Although T shirts are also non essential items, they aren’t particularly expensive, so selling Tees can be another addition to your current revenue streams coming in, so is definitely worth considering. Designing and selling tees is not just a great way to make some additional cash. It can also help get your work noticed in other circles and groups of people, meaning there is potential for gaining new customers. There are always occasions when people ask where people have bought their T shirt. In situations like this, people will obviously tell the people they know that it was made by you, who may then go Google your name, check out your art, or buy from you. By designing and selling t shirts you are effectively creating walking talking billboards showing your creations to the world. So making and selling tees is also a fantastic marketing and promotion tool, and an opportunity to gain new followers and customers. If you are looking to sell tees, or any other kind of art reproductions, a great place to start is Artybuzz.com. It’s perfect for those just starting out designing t shirts because you don’t have to pay anything as Artybuzz print for you upon purchase, so you just earn once something sells and never pay anything up front, which is a huge bonus when trying out something new.
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T-Shirt Review
Cup Of Awesome by Tzvety Petrova
Gasmask by Patrick Lyons
Simon - With its childlike and simplistic design, this tshirt is one of those you either love or hate. I guess I just haven’t made my mind up yet but its certainly memorable...
Simon - Almost a technical drawing representation, this Tshirt has an eerie quality and for some reason reminds me of Pink Floyd’s film The Wall (?)
5/10
6/10
Stephen - Wear this shirt with your ironic glasses while playing a cover tune on Vimeo.
Stephen - This is a great design, but unless it’s on an oversized shirt or a darker color, the combination does not work as well.
5/10
6/10
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T-Shirt Review
Rainsbows by Iasma
Headphones by Peter Grigoriadis
Simon - I think this is my favourite! Cool concept really well executed with a colourful and iconic design. Think I’ll be featuring this one on my site...
Simon -TInspired by the iTunes silhouhette design style maybe, but I like the suggestion of music sharing in this design.   5/10
9/10 Stephen - Great design and the choice of shirt color really helps the design pop. 9/10
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Stephen - This design has a broad appeal, but the simplicity might cause people to overlook it. 7/10
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T-Shirt Review
Sunset Tree Clearing by Stephen Harris Simon - Another of my favourites from ArtyBuzz, this one was featured on www.cooltshirtdesign.co.uk. I love the colours, lines and negative space in this design. 8/10 Stephen - A clean and simple designs that tells a story and has strong unisex appeal. 8/10
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Sky by Yan Mos Simon -I like the idea behind this, but I’m not so sure the execution is perfect. Maybe there’s too much use of white space? 5/10 Stephen - Gorillaz just released a new album, so this design should do well. 6/10
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T-Shirt Review
Stormtrooper by Paul Harckham
Wolf’s Dinner Suit by Squirrel
Simon - There’s probably too many Star Wars tshirts out there but this one’s a little different!Reminiscent of the Designers Republic style from the 90’s, and thats never a bad thing...
Simon -Thought of doing something along these lines myself strangely enough. Been beaten to it though with this simple illustration. 7/10
7/10 Stephen - This would be a good start for a line of Mini-fig shirts.
Stephen - I like the cleverness of this design and it would’ve scored higher, but the wolf looks more like an aardvark.
8/10
7/10
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Comics
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