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.