Dawlish Amusement Park.

When I started this project I was looking at railway posters from the 1940s that advertised cities and towns around the UK. I sort of moved off this topic when I got going with my own prints but whenever I've looked back through my research the main bulk of it has been these posters and the artists that created them.

I've moved on from the idea of creating my own posters because that's not what my works about any more but while enhancing my images on photo shop by the simple click of the button 'posterize' it gathers the bulk colour together and creates the image that those posters had, and I really like this effect. 

Dawlish Amusements Posterized

It's interesting to contrast it to the original image because there's not that much difference, it's only the effect of having bulk colours instead of the shadows and shading. 

Dawlish Amusements

Yet because of these slight differences when I look at the posterized image I instantly see the 1940s posters and think that if I have time before the end of the year it could be fun to CMYK it and see if the colours are as clear when silk screen printed.

Stopping off at Dawlish

This is hopefully that first and last time I may appear to look like a train spotter. Once again it's not about the train (ish) as it's not about the type of train going past just the fact that I'm usually on the train going through this sight so really this video is sort of my work but in reverse.

I prefer getting photos from the videos I take rather than just taking a photo, because if I got out of the train to start photographing these sights then it becomes more about me being a photographer which I'm not, if anything I've become a printmaker now in art but only printing shots from a video.

So I don't intend to take any stills from this to then print, I just found it interesting seeing the sight of Dawlish in a different way, a different angle, and I couldn't help but to record it.

All things Disney!

My blog for Creative Project this year!
http://bradley-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/

Prints 4 and 5

Paying my full attention to printing the past few weeks I now feel that my prints are getting better and better, next to perfect in being lined up and getting brighter after increasing the amount of acrylic compared to mixer I'm using for the prints.

River Start

It appears that I've been working backwards, the first print that I did 'Splash' will actually be the last in the series and this most recent print with Exeter Cathedral in the background will be the first. These five prints now show the journey of leaving Exeter St Davids Station through to going through the tunnels of Dawlish, and the train being splashed with the rocky waves breaking over the walls that protect this stretch of the railway.
As I've been moving on with each print I've been experimenting with different amounts of acrylic seeing what ratio creates a better print and I've come to the conclusion that using 33% is much more effective (while not being too much) compared to 25% that I originally used on Splash.

Cathedral 

Now that I've got my five prints of the 'Dawlish' Journey I now need to decide what to do next, start with a completely new journey altogether? Keep going with this original footage? Or find a way to extend it, keep going on the same journey. Either way I need to go and get more footage, luckily I've got tickets booked to head home so I'll be getting the camera back out and looking completely normal filming the journey as I go with the camera looking like it's glued to the window, with my hand also trying to keep the whole thing steady.

Happy Mistakes

Once again I appear to have created an error when printing. However unlike last time it didn't ruin the whole 5 prints I was doing that day, only one of them I messed up by now paying attention to lining them up fully, so once again I decided to keep on going and just see what the print ends up looking like instead of wasting the piece of paper by giving up.

The next layer (yellow) then went upside, this was me completely not paying attention and printing when the paper was the wrong way round, however I quite like the end effect. Looking like a yellow sky on this image creates a completely different image, and only having the cyan and magenta layers at the bottom makes the once green grass appear to be a pond or a lake, so it's interesting when things going wrong could end in disaster creates a good image in itself.

Printing Error

When thinking you're on a roll things can often go wrong. Being distracted meant that I wasn't paying full attention to the forth print I was doing for this series meant I ended up printing magenta through the yellow part of the silkscreen so things ended up rather more pink than they were meant to.

Slightly more Magenta than there should be

I carried on thinking I've paid for the paper may as well keep going with the four layers and see what the print looks like in the end, and considering this was my first print where I was able to get some real colour onto the paper with the green bank in the foreground it wasn't too disastrous as I ended up making the yellow more strong to try and make up for the added amount of Magenta. If I was aiming for more abstract work then I could actually pretend that this is what I was aiming for but of course that's not what my work's about and just have to put this print aside as a trial and error and pay more attention next time!

Experimenting with just a Cyan and Black layer

Forgotten London Underground posters

Even though my project isn't exactly on the old railway posters from the 1930s and 40s any more they still catch my eye when I come across any that I haven't seen before. There's a wide section of the posters to view at the London Transport Museum which I'm hopefully going to see next month but until then I've already been able to have a sneak peak when the Telegraph had an article on posters advertising London and the Underground.

Underground for Business or Pleasure; by FE Witney, 1913

London Transport Museum in Covent Garden cares for one of the world's finest poster archives and includes images that are now over 100years old. Many of the designs featured were inspired by the creation of the modern graphic poster, which dates from the 1890s and revolutionised the advertising industry. The posters featured in this gallery span decades of the museum's collection and replicas are available to purchase at the museum or on-line. Until March 18th, the museum is also running the display Poster Parade - Painting by numbers which features a selection of statistics relating to the London Underground Tube network.

The first graphic posters were commissioned by Frank Pick, who was responsible for London Underground's publicity in 1908. Then as now, the Underground was primarily used by commuters but the works he authorised sought to promote the benefits of the transport network and provide London Underground with a more coherent corporate identity.