Abstract: The Art of Design - Thursday 6th April

The Abstract documentary series was something that I had not previously heard of however I found it incredibly interesting and relevant to my work. The episode we watched in the lecture was about an illustrator called Christoph Niemann. He spoke about his harsh upbringing being taught by Heinz Edelmann who is famous for the Beetles, Yellow Submarine album cover. Neimann's way of defining abstractionism as getting rid of everything that is not essential to making a point, was something that I found as a particularly interesting take upon this. He also spoke of finding the middle ground in your work between being too abstract and something being realistic. I think this shows in the Yellow Submarine album cover made by Neimann's teacher, Heinz Edelmann. As it is still quiet clear that the figures are meant to be the Beetles band members, however they are out of proportion and do appear how we would possibly envisage a human. Also from the small section at the end of the documentary that talks about the next episode I was able to find out the name of a famous Nike trainer designer which I can then use as research in my self negotiated studio project.

After this lecture I have gone back and researched the style of Edelmann in particular the ways in which he draw people. Theres a cartoon like style to his work with a very busy, colourful backdrop in many cases. The people are still recognisable, like on the Yellow Submarine cover, however the features are out of proportion. For example the head is visibly smaller and the legs are very wavy. From these observations I decided to try and drawing a footballer in the style of Edelmann. I felt this would work well in his style as with a crowd there is a lot going on in the background much like his work and on the field to there is also a lot of colours. My outcome is shown below.