ALEXI K - LINGUA MANGA

Circa 2003, I was working for a London illustration agency ( I was a terrible commercial artist - I never did what they asked me ), and well into doing digital illustration. By that, I mean everything was still hand-drawn on paper, but it was then scanned into Photoshop. The result was a nicely organic form of computer illustration, smooth from a distance, but rough around the edges.

I was probably going through a 'Stylish Manga' phase, partly as a hangover from a stint as 'Contributing Designer' for Maxim Magazine ( inspired by the fashion shoots ), and partly because I was preparing for a trip to Japan to exhibit some paintings, in 2004.

This first selection of pictures here are from that earlier phase. Believe it or not, I never liked Manga that much. If your first introduction into the genre is Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA ( both the comic and the movie ), everything else seems painfully dull in comparison. ( With the exception of Studio Ghibli's My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service ).

This second collection of pictures are more recent. In fact, they were bad printouts from an experimental series that I'm currently working on. I photographed the creased pages on my studio floor, and blew them up to bring the print dots into focus. I love the natural abstraction of torn posters and shredded paper. 

The smoothness of my old style is quite impressive, and has an eerie feeling of suspense. Whereas this later, scuffed-up, random work, recalls Bollywood posters and cheap comics, reminiscent of the authentic manga format itself, which is often to be found discarded like old phone directories, in the litter bins of Japan. Compare and contrast!

LEONIDAS GIANNAKOPOULOS - PORTFOLIO

Woman with Gas Mask, Ink on paper, 30cm x 22cm, 2010

Girl with Skull Head, Ink on paper, 15cm X 21 cm, 2010

Man with Gas Mask, Ink on paper, 27.5cm x 22 cm, 2010

Above: Muga, Ink on paper, 2012

Above: Tzitziki, Ink on paper, 2012

Untitled, etching, 60cm x 80cm, 2009 

Untitled, Ink and pencil on paper, 60cm x 90cm, 2010

Untitled, Ink on paper, 60cm x 90cm, 2009

Untitled, Ink on paper, 32cm x 48cm. ( Detail, below ).

Born in Crete, Leonidas Giannakopoulos is an artist and actor currently working in Athens.

A graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, the artist's work is an unsettling yet beautiful combination of early entomological textbook illustration, and contrasting 'Steampunk' fantasy, evidently inspired by Max Ernst, who avidly collected old engravings in order to cut them up and make his unique collages.

He has received an honor by the Spyropoulos Foundation and has participated in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, as well as designing art for bands and theatrical stage productions.

In 2012, he had his 1st solo exchibition at Gallery Elika in Athens, Greece.

For more info, and biography, visit:

http://www.elikagallery.com/index.php/artists/leonidas-giannakopoulos/

GRAPHIC DESIGN: SANDA ZAHIROVIC'S SPACE OPERA SERIES

The world of science fiction publishing, in contrast to the forward-thinking concepts often found in its texts, has traditionally been let down by uninspired marketing and jacket design. It’s as if the publishers didn’t understand the material, and therefore had no trust in the audience having any level of sophistication, either.

Thankfully, in recent years things have begun to change, with reprints of cult authors sporting interesting uses of layout, texture and typeface. ( A great long-running example of this, is Vintage US’ Philip K. Dick reprints, decked out in quirky 80’s computer imagery that neatly captures the nascent collision of counter-culture ideas and Silicon Valley futurism. With a consistent look and feel across all of PKD’s canon, Vintage succeed in making the entire catalogue highly collectable ).

Another reason for publishers trying to make their product stand out, must surely be the advent of the e-book. Presumably, they must hope that, if we are all inevitably going to gravitate to this much more convenient format, aficionados will still want the sheer tactile thrill of a real-world volume - especially if it’s wrapped in a beautiful cover – one that will look great on a bookshelf.

Alastair Reynolds’ book Century Rain ( see photos ), is part of the Gollancz Space Opera series, and recently caught the eye of MONOBLOG for exactly this reason. The smooth matte texture and low-grade photocopied look of the cover is entirely ironic, as the book is a page-turning mash-up of French Noir, and futuroid nano-tech.

Sanda Zahirovic’s work for this series is a great example of inventive and cohesive cover design. Orion Publishing Group originally sent out a brief to students to come up with a design that would bring sci-fi out of its ‘ghetto’, and give it a serious image makeover. 

With a clear concept in mind, Zahirovic followed the brief by researching paper-folding techniques and then setting up a makeshift studio to shoot her ideas. Orion loved the work, and, using their in-house art team, recreated it in the publisher’s studio, taking pains to create images that did not need digital retouching in Photoshop. 

Stark matte black and white, they’re a beautifully low-tech response to the high-tech nature of the material. The designs won a commendation at the D&AD Student Awards, and went on to win a bronze in the organization’s professional awards.

NITA WALTERS - 'BEACONS'

( Above ) Portal: Charcoal, graphite, and white chalk on Fabriano paper, Nita Walters, 2006

Both of these sit on the same hill at a place called The Beacon in Sedgley; it is the second highest peak in the West Midlands ( England, UK ). There is no higher point between The  Beacon and Russia’s Ural Mountains to the east, 2400 miles away.

Even though the technology is centuries apart, the beacons still have to occupy the same space in order to communicate to a wide audience. The original beacon was lit on the invasion of the Spanish armada in 1688, and the 'new' beacon was rebuilt in 1840.

The Friends of the Beacon want to light all of the Beacons across the country to commemorate the The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. I hope they can pull it off. 

- Nita Walters

Beacon: Charcoal on Fabriano paper, Nita Walters, 2006

NITA WALTERS - 'TRAVELLING WITHOUT MOVING...'

Turn the sound up (or use headphones), close the blinds and turn the lights off. 

The Powers of Ten, by Nita Walters, 2011

Inspired by the 1968 film, The Powers of Ten by Charles & Ray Eames. This is an audio visualisation of the sounds experienced in places of arrival and departure; what Marc Auge calls 'Non-Space'. The animation has been designed to be installed in a darkened 'waiting room', and acts as an abstraction of various physical non-spaces.

To maximize screen, view in Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A8-amMZhsA

( More from Nita soon - ! )

MICHAEL CLULEE - ARTIST AND 'CHARACTER'

I knew that I wanted to draw people, a lot of people, not all together, but singular figures. Having a learning disability inhibits your social skills, so I can link the drawing of people to what I wanted to know, but could never quite ask for. My Character works are based on multiple ideas taken from a lot of sources, largely film and music.

Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011. 

Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract, Tarsem Singh's The Cell and The Fall, Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon were the four films that lent a visual link to what these drawings were to become. These four films all contained people coming together - for better or for worse - which takes it back to why I like drawing people.

Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011. 

The Draughtsman's Contract visual exaggeration in it's fashion is fascinating from a design stand point. This is why the clothing for the Character drawings are large and unwieldy; extravagance for the character I would like to be and who I want to meet. The film deals with drawing too, as my late grandfather used to be an engineering draughtsman and went on to painting. His house still contains all his work to this day, on almost every wall in the house.

Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011.

Tarsem Singh is a very visual director, excellent at framing his shots just like paintings, even taking inspiration from Dali and Odd Nerdrum for his first feature; The Cell. His second film The Fall goes one step further, trading the imagination of the human mind to the beauty of landscape and human endeavor. The way the characters position themselves in certain scenes lends itself perfectly to paintings and illustrations. No doubt elements of 'The Golden Mean' were in a effect throughout this film. The fashion for all of Tarsem's films to date is the imagination of the late great Japanese designer Eiko Ishioka, and you can read about her here; http://coilhouse.net/2012/01/r-i-p-eiko-ishioka-july-1939-january-21-2012/. This designer's work is pretty much is the living proof of my drawing style's originality. Everything comes from something else, as they say.

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is a large film in scope, however its now famous candlelit scene - and the fashion of the French aristocracy in particular - led to the somewhat cubic pompadour headpiece. Just like The Draughtsman's Contract, Barry Lyndon's fashion has stuck with me in some form or other, lending itself to envisioning what I wanted to draw, to actually nailing the style of my illustrations.

The drawing style was born from a side project during my final year of my somewhat ill-fated degree as I began to use music to provide inspiration. Out of this came a 200 page sketch book of drawings to music, which allowed me to conjure and contort shapes in my imagination, guided what music that I felt would best fit the imagination. Many of the shapes where pretty complex, resembling two-dimensional Tony Cragg sculptures. 

Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011. 

The pompadour idea was born out of being constrained by life in the city hence its skyline shape. The original idea was to fuse these twisting, contorting shape designs to the fashion design of these characters. Some of the early ideas are still on my website, where the people's faces are defined but everything else is completely out of human physiological conformity. 

Michael Clulee, 2011. 

I have yet to find out why I like doing that so much, but it would mostly describe how my inhibitions interfere with daily life. That or watching the 1982 version of The Thing has something to do with it.

Music is another major factor for influencing my work, not just for its subject matter, but actually forming the shape to what the music is doing to me at the time. The drawings I made for my drawings-to-music book were all but vocal-less, from Ralph Vaughn Williams to Aphex Twin and Autechre, their compositional elements factor into the shape that came into my mind. Amon Tobin's latter, post-2000 work is of particular obsessive interest.

The piece named Structure harks back to the days when I became fascinated by geological processes, the Cornish Coast and its cliffs. 

Structure, Michael Clulee, 2011.

This, like many of my drawings, begins with no real pre-plan at all, I just grabbed the ruler and pen and looked at the piece of card where I was going to draw on and just went in head-first. It's the best way to see out an idea just by plunging in. However for a more complex idea to manifest, it needs a lot of working out. I hope to go back to the twisting contorting works i had done a few months back and start creating some real surreal works from them.

I have many favourite Illustrators and artists who have also lent influence over the years, ranging from Moebius to Les Edwards, John Blanche, Ian Miller, Olivier Ledroit and James Gurney to name a few. I have also had the pleasure of seeing the work of Henry Moore, Tony Cragg and Anish Kapoor up close and have been extremely prevalent in my imagination and hope they continue to do so in the future.

ALEXI K: DISK WORLDS

Here's something a little unexpected. Yesterday, it was Sunday, and I was walking along the middle of the deserted streets in the Digbeth area of Birmingham, heading for an afternoon in the studio. It was an unseasonably sunny day, and from my different perspective - being in the centre of the road, with no parked cars cluttering the view - I noticed the tarmac glittering with shiny dots. I looked closer and realised that I was looking at dozens of metal disks, washers, and off-cuts, scattered haphazardly in different arrangements. Normally, these would be invisible to the naked eye, but with the sun at a low angle, shining directly down the middle of the street, they stood out like miniature constellations. Digbeth is an area that was once busy with engineering firms ( indeed, there are still a few remaining, even in these post-industrial times ), so presumably this is embedded residue from bygone days. I don't have a fancy camera with a macro lens, so I did the best I could with my Exilim EX-Z800. I then turned down the brightness, and upped the contrast in grayscale to bring them into view. There's something otherworldly about the pictures, as if they're predicting various astral alignments. My favourite is the 'Eye of Horus'. You'll know which one I mean.

Author's note: Since these pictures were taken, the street was re-surfaced, so all the examples above have been lost. However, I have noticed a few new ones appear, so maybe they are not residue from a bygone industrial era, after all? We shall see.