The Dawlish Coastline

Continuing with the theme of my own journeys I had the idea to photograph them. I travel by train quite a lot (hence my interest in the original posters) either to visit friends or go back home to Plymouth for the weekend, and I thought you see sights that sometimes go unnoticed. Railways can go places roads and therefore cars can't, but either due to the speed of the trains or whether it's just that people get bored of looking out of a window so always occupy their journey with a book or a film some sights can go unnoticed.

I wanted to try and photograph some of these sights to represent my train journey home (Bath - Plymouth) however due to the speed of the trains it's near impossible to get a clean crisp shot of anything other than when the train is sat in a station. I've also never noticed before just how dirty the windows on trains were until I tried to photograph through them and my camera kept tying to focus on the dirt on the window itself rather than the the view through it.

I didn't want to just give up on this idea so I tried videoing the journey through the window instead, however I didn't have a tri pod on me let alone even own one, so I did try to keep my hand as steady as possible but it's difficult on a moving train and I found it really frustrating when I'd watch these videos back and the camera was moving even if it's ever so slightly in every single one, and also the dirt on the window was really starting to get to me. So the following weekend when I went home again I tried a different tack of having the camera right up to the window so the lens was actually resting on the glass, and in doing this my camera didn't focus on the dirt as much, but more on the view that I was trying to record, and in having something steady to lean the camera on it made the videos more steady, not perfect but a lot better than my last attempt.

This is just one of my many videos that I've taken but I knew even before I took it that it would be my favourite. No matter what the weathers like, what mood I'm in, what I'm doing on the train even if it's some university work or something I will always put it all down when the train leaves Exeter St Davids station because I know that my favourite part of any train journey is coming up. When the train is going through Dawlish it could be the first time I've seen the sea since I've been home last. It could be months, and to someone who spent 18 years taking it for granted seeing the sea every day just by looking out of the sitting room window, I never realised how important the sea side is to me until I came to university and didn't see it everyday. So that's why this is one of my favourite sights, and why I'd like for my art project to continue down this path, perhaps using sights like these to design and create posters advertising the coastal towns of Devon and Cornwall.

Disney Postcards

Between myself, two sisters and my mother there were a good 2,500+ photos taken of this Disney adventure shall we say, so trying to narrow them down to just a few that best represent my summer has been extremely difficult. In the end I've divided my summer into  categories, Disney World in itself the colourful place that it is and my own journey of a summer.

First of all the wonder of Disney:

Main street USA at 7.59am

The cost for some beloved Cadburys at the United Kingdom Pavilion in Epcot 

The level of show Disney World upholds even when renovating

 My Summer:

Mickey's famous high four

All it takes is faith, trust and and little bit of pixie dust

Alice in Wonderland, The character that whether it be guest or cast member got reverenced to me literally every single day  

Of course I've got a lot more photos that represent my summer and Disney World on a whole and I think that it could be such a nice project in itself to print these 30 or so photos (that I've narrowed it down to for each category) as postcards with perhaps a quote on the back explaining each one, and to then present them in a similar box to the penguin postcard box. I think it could be a nice sum up of my summer and own personal journey.

Penguin postcards

During a recent tutorial I was told about these Penguin postcards which is basically a box of postcards and all the designs are the old classic penguin book covers, and I really find them quite cute. The colour and design of them very much remind me of these posters I've been looking at recently and them being postcards sort of link to the travel aspect that my work is starting to become about.












If anything I collect postcards, whenever I go somewhere chances are I'll pick one up, and actually something that I noticed this summer was just how few postcards there were at Disney. You'd think with 4 theme parks and 2 water parks there would be amble of choice for a postcard to send home to your family or friends but there were only a dozen or so for what felt like all or the parks and they seemed really dated, some of them looked as if they'd have been the same postcards 5 or 10 years ago just using the same photo of Mickey and the gang in front of the castle.

Being that my work seems to be becoming about travel and journeys I think it could be interesting to try and collect together some of the photos from perhaps my summer, the ones that best show my own journey so to speak, that could be my postcards that best symbolise my summer.

Hogwarts, It's quicker by rail

Following my research into the 'It's quicker by rail' advertisements I've been playing around with a few of my own ideas and designs for posters, only I've been drawing on my summer in Florida for inspiration. For example I think it would be interesting to advertise Disney World in this style however I thought it could be interesting to advertise somewhere that to me is British it being on American soil.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a newly opened section to the Isles of Adventure theme park in  Orlando, Florida. It's somewhere i've been looking forward to visiting since I heard of it becoming a reality a few years ago, and being in Orlando for a few months I knew that I would visit only just a few times. And as much as I loved the whole set up of going through the gateway into Hogsmeade, seeing the Hogwarts Express with the conductor standing by it's side (who had a very strong Yorkshire accent) and then seeing the Castle in the background was a truly terrific sight, however seeing the fake snow on the roofs of the shops of Hogsmeade in the 30 degree weather I couldn't help but feel that this is a bit surreal.

In my mind Hogwarts is set in the Highlands of Scotland, with the strong winds (which would make the cloaks for sale more appealing) and bitter chills to which a Butterbeer would warm you up in the Three broom sticks rather than cool you down. But I'm not an idiot I no why 'Harry Potter World' is an addition to an existing theme park to keep it more up to date and for guests to keep coming back but it still feels a bit wrong that such a British franchise is in America.

So more for my own amusement I've just done some rough sketches of how Hogwarts and Hogsmeade could be advertised in the 'It's quicker by rail' style (which I think could be very appropriate considering the most well known way of getting to these magical places is by the Hogwarts Express.

It's quicker by rail,

These posters symbolise rail travel for the1950s, when travel became popular to everyone because it was affordable and such a quicker way of travelling. If you were living in city you could escape to the country or the seaside within a few hours even if just for the weekend.

 What I love about these posters is that even though each is done by a different artist they all follow the same style whether they're print or painted. I feel like it's something to do with the line of font along the bottom, even though each of these don't always say 'It's quicker by rail' but since they're still advertising a certain city, then with the symbol for the particular train line, likes them to rail travel. Growing up in south Devon myself I'm mostly taken with the posters advertising somewhere along the coast but that's just me, I love seeing the familiar sights showing that these coastlines haven't changed in the past. 

However I don't want to design poster advertising the same places, I instead want to try and use the style of these posters with the font, the sayings and attach them to my own prints advertising Disney World, in Orlando, Florida. Where I coincidently spent the summer working on Main Street U.S.A in the heart of it all, Magic Kingdom. I just think it could be interesting to try and design some prints of the classic sights of Disney World, but some how make them look like they were done in the 1950s. Of which of course there aren't any because Disney World was built in 1971!

Oh trains,

A new school year means new projects! And this year in art i'm going to be focusing on a subject that I really enjoy, as sad as it may sound, I love going on train journey's, no point denying it, it's not trainspotting, I wouldn't know the difference between trains other than the colour of them (unless it was the Hogwarts express in which case i'd never want to leave it!) But it's the journey that I enjoy on trains more than any other form of transport. 

More than a couple months ago now me and my mother went on the Avon valley Railway (my mother hasn't stopped going on about wanting to go on steam train journey for months, make that years) So as a belated mother's day present we went on a some what short trip along the Avon, 

where I had to nodd along to comments such as, this is how trains are meant to be, hear that? That's how they're meant to sound. but I have to say that this trip did have rather picturesqueness qualities about it, and mostly reminded me of the Railway children going through the valleys, and all I kept thinking about was that how the inside of the carriage are so much nicer than in modern trains today, but then again they remind me of Hogwarts express which I would give anything to go on for a trip up to Scotland. Anyway (I can feel that Harry Potter is always going to be cropping up in this project, this could have something to do with my love of trains, wanting them to take me away to Hogwarts) my mother was telling me about this ad campaigns from the 50s advertising cities around the UK with the quote of "It's quicker by rail" which i'm now going to investigate into! 

Esoteric Illusions

 

It's now been a few weeks since our private view and the week of showing Esoteric Illusions at Walcot Chapel and I do think that we did pretty well we were advertised in papers, we had posters and flyers around the city of Bath and we were even shown on Points West! Well done to Molly Gibbens for sending them the information about our exhibition weeks before we did get several people coming along during the week as they'd seen us on TV!!