Charlie Fairbrother

PRESENTATION

• Window mount a postcard behind an A4 sheet of mounting card

I redid the edges a few times in an attempt to cut the line in one smooth motion, which while an improvement over my initial attempt, did make my corners messier than I would have liked.

• Surface mounting 6 A6 postcards on an A2 sheet of card

• Draw the outline of a perfect 45mm square on layout paper, in pen

• Embossing of 50mm high circle, square and equilateral triangle on shared baseline

CUTTING

• Hand cut perfect circle in the centre of an A4 piece of card

I struggled the most with this task, re-doing the circle at least ten times until I got a result I was fairly satisfied with.

• Hand cut intricate pattern with scalpel

3D

• Create a perfect Cube, cylinder and pyramid using card. Cube 60mm long, Cylinder 60mm high and diameter 50mm, Pyramid 60mm high and base width 50mm

• Using black card, create a 3D capital letter ‘R’ using the font Rockwell extra bold. 140mm high, 40mm deep

• Experiments in creating surface patterns, utilising shadow and light to exaggerate folds

• Create a 3D pop-up book based on a well known saying or idiom, using colopured card with minimal additional drawing

I chose ‘cat’s got your tongue’, with the main action of the pop-up being the central figure opening and closing his mouth, inside of which you can see his cut-off tongue. His ears and hand are attached to other aspects of the face and therefore stay still, although I did have some trouble with his moustache sticking.

ARTIST MIMICRY

HENRY LAMB

• Qualified doctor – brought his understanding of the human form into his artwork
• Famous for his portrait drawings and paintings particularly

I used very soft graphite pencils on a fairly rough textured cartridge paper to attempt to imitate the same roughness Lamb’s lines exhibit.

MERVYN PEAKE

• Largely influenced by his love of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson
• Worked as a newspaper illustrator depicting war scenes in the 1940s
• Use of traditional ink and dip pen methods
• Also wrote and illustrated his own books – notably Gormenghast

I used black Indian ink with a dip pen on very smooth paper to attempt to imitate Peake’s original. I got the proportions of Silver’s face slightly off, but I was otherwise happy with the result that I managed.

ROCKWELL KENT

• Predominantly a wood engraver – which he used for bookplates and illustrations – but also known as a painter
• Active during the mid 20th Century
• Influenced by the painters he studied under; notably William Merritt Chase and Arthur Wesley Dow

I used scratchboard to imitate the effect Kent achieved from engraving in wood.