Chris Howker was assigned as a mentor figure for the final year of the course.
Chris gave me my first real constructive critical review. At a time when I was used to being told what I wanted to hear, at first I took his critique personal until I sat and thought about it and realised he was right.
Asking him to be my final portfolio made sense really, to see if I had taken onboard the points he made and more importantly whether I had managed to apply them to my work.
Here is what Chris had to say this time around
Hi Mark,
Thanks for getting in touch again, glad to hear the course is going well and all is good.
I'm sorry I couldn't meet up to have a look at your portfolio but I have managed to take a look at your website and the work you're exhibiting there. I hope I don't repeat myself too much in regards to previous conversations but at least let me recap for my own piece of mind.
The first and most striking part about your work is the style/method in which it's created and the subject matter. From a commercial point of view, the use of celebrities from music, film and sport is an excellent choice as you can almost guarantee that you will find an audience who is already a fan of your subject matter and more likely to buy/commission a piece of work if it is something that appeals to them. On the flip side, the images are produced from stills or photographs made by other creatives and as a result are often over saturated through the likes of t.v, print (magazines, newspapers, billboards) and the internet. This means that despite being all your own creative work (no computer technology/filter is involved) that the original image has been seen so many times before that it sometimes loses impact.
I am not a football fan so all the portraits of Manchester United players (both old and new) are very niche - only football fans will like the work and that limits your audience - I'm not saying start creating portraits of every team in the UK but have you considered making something that is a little more universal?
Your portraiture work is so instantly recognisable which is a good thing when you are painting familiar likenesses, but the down side is that if you want to make this a source of income then you are competing against shops that digitally print the artwork onto canvas already and have a quicker turnaround. What can you do to make these unique and something that someone will say "I want a painting done by you because ........" and will draw new people to come and look?
The wall mural you initially created for the "fish bowl" consists of various musicians spanning a few different genres - from Bob Marley to RUN DMC and from Marvin Gaye to Jay Z - which dont necessarily all go together but you have collaged the portraits together to create something more interesting on a whole, the overall shape draws the eye in, the simple black and white doesnt distract from key features of each portrait, the scale of each portrait is different which almost leads the viewer across the image but could also suggest that each of the artists featured actually makes up your own personal music choices with small influences from specific areas. If you took this method of collage and applied it to the other portraits (maybe creating the entire starting 11 for Manchester United in this style) then it would progress the work from a recreation of a photo or fan made piece into an individual and unique illustration.
There is nothing wrong with using photographs and found imagery but it's how you use the images that can make the difference between illustration and artwork. Illustrations often have a narrative that inform the viewer of the message either directly or sometimes in an abstract fashion. Going back to the musician mural, that would suggest to me that it is a journey through music and progression of black musicians throughout the decades but the single image of Ian Brown doesnt suggest a narrative. If music is a large part of your interests then creating a collage of Manchester musicians could be something to look at. Whilst looking through the rest of your artwork - so I dont get too caught up on one piece - I remembered how I spoke about Banksy in our past conversations, he again uses photographs/found images but juxtaposes unlikely ones together to form a satirical but almost protesting opinion on a chosen subject. You could take portraits of celebrities but instead make them funny, exaggerate details in their faces (if they have a big nose, big ears etc) and make the images almost like caricatures. This could then turn a regular celeb portrait into something more unique and interesting. However, saying that, you may not want to do any of this and stick to your initial method in which case I would suggest just trying to use some of your own photographs (not of celebrities, unless you have famous mates) but of people showing the emotion on their faces as you seem to focus and tightly crop around the head.
I also remember asking you how you made these images, if it involved the computer at all or if you were to stencil them with spray paint. I'm glad your answer to both was no, but I still think you could do some interesting experiments with screen printing in the way that you build up layers to form the shadows and highlights of the face. I really like your watercolour and ink pieces, these show your true talent in my opinion (and the so do the newest images you've sent through to me - snow white and the mirror/picture frame). You have an understanding of proportion and I think your composition on each of these portraits draws the viewer into the centre of the image - the subjects eye's! The watercolour piece "the Model" is my favourite because of the placing of the hand at the bottom of the image which balances the piece on the page.. I also like that they are just black and white, there is nothing to distract from the image and more attention is paid to shadows that create the form of a human face and even the negative space in between (e.g. the dreadlocks on "the landlord". we dont need to see each individual dreadlock but we can read from your image that he does have dreadlocks and isnt bald for example).
the one piece that throws me and stands out is the Biggie Smalls portrait. The expressive use of basic flat colours reminds me of Jean-Michel Basquiat's artwork on an aesthetic level and your other portraits also remind me of Andy Warhol's famous works but what I don't see from your website is the scale at which these works are created. Warhol for example created some portraits at a huge scale (http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/how-andy-warhol-explains-chinas-attitudes-toward-chairman-mao/282665/) and he didnt accurately colour the images nor did he use realistic colours, this too could be something you could look at in the future.
If you dont mind me asking, what is the idea behind the 7 dwarves and the new roles/characters you've given each of them? I too have taken well known characters and tried to create the idea of "where are they now?" and the narrative of what has happened to them since their celebrity lime light has passed. the only downside I had to this was I wasn't creating anything original. I was taking an already existing character design and just altering it slightly for my own amusement, but if given the correct context this can work amazingly well. Ron English has taken an old favourite of mine (Tony the Tiger) and altered it to make you think more about yours and your childrens diets (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ron+english+tony+the+tiger&safe=off&es_sm=119&tbm=isch&imgil=qZTac1eyceNUtM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRBmeQKlZMPHc_IEGJpgnyvWBFD6rCAn0X7LG6d_4-aq4RqioMU%253B600%253B410%253BFffVI7cVqKneaM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Flaughingsquid.com%25252Ffat-tony-vinyl-figure-by-ron-english-satirizes-kelloggs-tony-the-tiger%25252F&source=iu&usg=__Hd0wtBuy3_zUvfqU_gAzHmYC5KU%3D&sa=X&ei=0SJUU9qlCNKv7AaCxYH4Bg&ved=0CDEQ9QEwAA&biw=1347&bih=659#facrc=_&imgrc=qZTac1eyceNUtM%253A%3BFffVI7cVqKneaM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Flaughingsquid.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252Ffat_tony_toy.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Flaughingsquid.com%252Ffat-tony-vinyl-figure-by-ron-english-satirizes-kelloggs-tony-the-tiger%252F%3B600%3B410).
BUT EVEN STILL.. this is not an original idea...Topps used to create Wacky packages which later led to the creation of the Garbage Pail kids - http://www.retroland.com/wacky-packages/. both designed to poke fun at existing brands and products.
The snow white image, I can't quite make out whose face you have replaced her's with, but I was actually drawn to the method you have used to create this piece. Because it is pencil, I am immediately more interested in it as I know it's hand drawn and later the addition of the red shaded layer looks like this is going to form an interesting work method. I actually like the tracing paper layer over the top of the original drawing as it flattens the large black areas and makes the red jump out more. The mirror/picture frame is amazing! theres so much going on in there and its all subtly created by the white space you've left, yellows and orange for the shadows. What is going to happen with this?
Overall it's great to see that you've started developing your work as well as keeping what you already know and can do. I would love to see more development and experimenting in specific areas but that's easy for me to say, I always get excited trying to suggest ways in which to be creative but you may have a strong solid idea of where you want to take your work already.
I hope some of this has been useful at least.
take it easy and hope you had a good weekend fella.
Chris H
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