This is my case study that I did of the Jon McNaught book Birchfield Close. I looked at this book in detail as after copying and emulating his work I wanted to explore it further and look more into the techniques and processes as it interested me.

I did an artist copy of Jon McNaught. Whilst doing this I wanted to make it look as if it had been screen printed as that is the way that he works, but I didn't actually want to screen print it, so I did it on photoshop instead and created the effect that way.

Artist emulation thing

                     

After doing an artist copy of Toby Morison, I took the technique and style that I had leanred in doing that artist copy and emulated it in a way that would fit in with my book. The use of line and colour is different to how I usually work so doing this gave me another possible different way to work on my final piece.

Toby Morison artist copy

I did an artist copy of the artist Toby Morison. I was drawn to his work because of the interesting use of line and colour that he creates. I also liked the subject matter of the work. I enjoyed copying his work as it is very different to how I would usually work. I got a better understanding of using watercolour through this and it gave me other options to work in a similar way for my final piece. The overlapped layered technique was something that I enjoyed working with.

Test lino prints for double page

For the double page spread of my book, I used the lino printing technique. Here are some trial pieces of the lino I cut for the double page. I experimented with a rough edge by not rolling the ink all the way up to the edge of the lino to give a different effect. These trial prints were useful as they showed me that I needed to use more ink. I also hadn't cut out the entirety of the design as first, and the trial told me this and I rectified this before I went on to do the actual print for my book.

Intaglio prints

Here are some experiments I did using intaglio printing technique. Using this technique you have to scratch your design onto a piece of plastic and then print the design with oil based inks onto wet paper. The paper and the plastic have to go through a printing press to make sure all the detail is picked up. I don't think this technique worked for the look I was going for with my book as there was too much white space left and therefore too much messy ink.

Artist Emulation: John McNaught

For this, what I did was look at the work of John McNaught, who uses monochromatic colours with different shades of the same colour. As I find it difficult to use colour sometimes I wanted to try out this way of working to see if it was easier and it was. I think this colour technique takes the harshness out of work as if all the images were in the colours they're meant to be in, it would look very busy and not as unified. The Jon McNaught book Birchfield Close that I looked at features lists of different things in the back, so I took this idea for my book and chose to contain 24 moments in pop culture that I find most interesting/my favourite. I chose:

• Jarvis Cocker going onstage during Michael Jacksons performance at the Brits in 1996
• Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol
• The Velvet Underground and Nico is released
• The murder of John Lennon
• The death of Marc Bolan
• The Shining is released
• The Smiths royalties scandal
• David Bowie creates Ziggy Stardust
• Electric Dylan controversy at Newport Folk Festival
• The Smiths first television performance on Top Of The Pops on the 24th November 1983
• Syd Barrett’s departure from Pink Floyd
• Jeff Buckley’s death
• Salvador Dali paints The Persistence of Memory
• Alex James wearing an Oasis t-shirt on Top Of The Pops in ‘95
• The making of The Wicker Man
• Blue Monday by New Order, the best selling 12” single of all time
• The Flaming Lips March Of The 1000 Flaming Skeletons in Oklahoma each year
• The feud between Morrissey and Robert Smith
• A Clockwork Orange is released
• Psycho is released seeing the birth of slasher films
• Ian Curtis’ suicide
• The Stone Roses Jackson Pollock inspired album cover/photo shoot
• Joe Meek’s obsession with the occult
• The Mothers Of Invention ‘We’re Only In It For The Money’ album cover.