Olivia Agass

Album roughs

2009-11-25T11:47:00.004Z

I'm working on some designs for album cover ('Life in The Bush of Ghosts' - Brian Eno); here are a couple of the initial designs. I'll post more, along with a more fleshed out description of the design concept when I've got a free moment.

And the original drawing -

Songs for the wild things

2009-08-21T19:04:00.002+01:00

Cover designs for a mixtape CD. Reiterate what I said below about descriptions. Later, later.

They know all about you #2

2009-08-21T18:57:00.003+01:00

Reworked these a bit, still reworking these a bit. There's a third on the way, but I am trying to update this a little more frequently. I've been working like a demon this week, so we're very much back to slogging away on the night shift with a steady stream of coffee, some form of booze, tobacco and the ipod shuffling away merrily. All of those at once usually.

Proper posts with overly elongated descriptions to come soon, once I have a minute. Which I don't have now as I have to pop to the shop to buy cake making equipment. Else there will be no Saturday Cake. Or cider.

Clearly not an option. Never say I don't live a rockin life.

G2

2009-08-12T20:08:00.001+01:00

G2 cover illustrating this story -http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/28/usa.searchengines

Drop in images which accompany the text coming in a bit.

Indy #2

2009-08-12T19:50:00.001+01:00

Rubbish.

Narcotics Anon

2009-08-12T19:43:00.003+01:00

First few roughs for an NA campaign project - more images and finished pieces up soon (as well as one of my obligatory rants about what it's all about. Probably.)

Sketchbook

2009-08-04T00:42:00.001+01:00

New sketch for a campaign project, which I'll post more details of soon - completed work and further images on the way.

Indy

2009-06-08T23:48:00.002+01:00

Been a little lame with posting new stuff lately, but here's something to hopefully kick off a summer of mega productivity and my dramatic morphing into a drawing machine (and prompt posting of new bits too) - the first in a series inspired by the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of The Lost Ark.

War and Wanderlust

2009-04-10T03:15:00.012+01:00

So I had a little epiphany while on one of my many train journeys. Illustration is by definition a powerful communicative tool, but so much of contemporary illustrative work takes as its basis light hearted whimsy and somewhat flimsy banter. It seems to me that beneath a thin film of decorative embellishments, this sort of work contains no real substance, is of no tangiable mettle. I don't mean to say this kind of work isn't worthy of attention and praise in its own right, but it makes no point and pushes forward no argument. It is in short, a fog horn cry of style of substance. Don't get me wrong - there's certainly a place for decoration, for pattern, for whimsical humour (or humour of any other, darker sort -all of which I'm a massive fan of), and I can't be excempt from this either. You only need to look at some of the older posts on here to see me whacking in little symbols with no particular thought to what meaning that might infuse the image with, other than that I liked the way they looked and they helped sew the compostion together. So I was thinking about all of this, and also musing on some of the bits I've been reading lately in the many art history books that I've got piled up all in wonky stacks all over the flat (from my previous incarnation as an academic student!), and I realised - Illustration can be the antithesis of vacuosity, needn't be arbitrary, definately not a pretty embellishment and nothing more. Beneath a veneer of aesthetic good looks, there should be statement, meaning, purpose, and it should shout out to whoever sees it in a punchy, arresting statement. In addressing issues that matter, illustration can be politically astute and present and just as important in the debating of issues as finely constructed text, studded with argument and proclaimations - but more than that too, it can be humanistic. In fact, it should be. Like the very best of fine art, the images made by illustrators should make their audience feel something, possibly to make them reevaluate a point of view, or at least see another side to it. An illustrator needs to take experience and infomation and refract it through the medium of aesthetics just enough that when it's presented back to us it creates something of a blazing comet of reactionary provocation.. Ah, I dunno. What I'm trying to say is that illustration is important and it's crucial to sometimes do serious work which questions and takes issue with considerable and heavyweight subjects. Everything in life should be questioned and debated, with nothing taken at face value. The image is a powerful tool, more instantly communicated than text, and accessible by a universal audience. When literacy in the general population was anything but the norm, stained glass told the stories of the bible to congregations. As most people could neither read nor understand latin (which the service would have been conducted in), these sequential frames of imagistic glassware acted basically as a tranparent graphic novel. Which I mention just to underline my point about illustration as an educational/persuasive/relevant tool. I've been doing a whole lot of research into the Constructivists recently, and I suppose it's helped me to realise all this - that particular realm of work is a perfect example of this marriage of beautifully constructed image and powerful undercurrent of intent and drive of values.
All of this might seem really obvious, but to me it was a small revelation. I hope it doesn't come across too pretensiously, I don't mean it to.

So with that in mind I've been working on a personal series about war, the first finished image of which is below. I should explain that some of the other images are slightly more hard hitting, and this is slightly more humane.. that's because I was thinking through all that stuff I've written about above, and then at Paddington something so totally opposite happened that slightly knocked my socks off. I was outside having a smoke, in that grotty bit round the back where the grey faced and wizened cheeks gang are forced to huddle, drawing frantically on their smokes before they run for the train. Anyway, so there's this tiny kid and she's kicking around one of those cardboard holders coffee shops put round drinks to stop you scalding yeself, playing footie with it. She kicks it onto my foot by mistake and looks concerned, obviously I didn't mind a bit and just grinned at her. But her parents tell her to come and retrieve it, which she does, and then she goes and hides shyly behind her Ma, peeping out at me now and again. Then she whispers something to her dad, who looks up at me and taps his finger on his cheek. She runs over and plants a sweet, dainty little kiss on my cheek and gives me this huge toothy grin. Her dad gave me an equally massive smile as I left and went back inside. It was so unexpected and so lovely as to be completely wonderful. Just a tiny little couple of moments between strangers, and these people were totally unaffected. It made me feel happy all the way home, and somewhat expelled all these murky thoughts about war I'd been having on the train up to Victoria. So I went and made this picture - it's humanity in war. An american G.I helps a wounded teenage German solider. Sides don't matter, the greater sphere of the war doesn't matter, for now all that matters is this older guy helping and comforting a scared, young fellow squaddie.

And after all that I made something a little more light hearted! Below, two pics on the theme of wanderlust. Because it's been far too long and I need to get away and go someplace strange and beautiful. Or just not the bloody Brighton-London-Oxford-Bristol farcial pattern I've gotten into.

Penguins

2009-03-28T16:49:00.006Z

Some roughs for obscure Penguin titles - above, cover design for 'How Green Were the Nazis?', with meschersmitts over mountains, only with the recycling symbol replacing the propellers, and below a promotional poster for the same book with Hitler as the 'Keep Britain Tidy' chappy, or the 'International Tidy Man' as I've learnt his proper name is. I really wanted to use a nazi foot solider or something similar instead of Hitler, but the complete deficit of any type of nazi at all, stiking their arm out in the correct manner (not necessarily performing a hitler salute) on the web, in a size translatable to be worked on in Photoshop, is completely amazing. Really, barely anything at all. I spent many a long hour looking, goddamit. Also, a tip - don't go perusing nazi themed stuff on google with your 'safe search' turned fully off. Bruised retinas all round. Didn't find what I needed, did however unwittingly find such delights as executionstoday!.com and the like. Images from which are now branded onto my eyes with scolding pokers of woeful evilness. (Altho no worse than any of the images I've seen in the various atrocity spots I've visited in Rwanda, Vietnam, Cambodia and Germany. But there's an element of unwelcome surprise to seeing that stuff when you're sat at home doing scribbling research)

Anyhow, the brief stated that one of these images should be photographic in basis, which is why they are a little different from my usual stuff. Quite pleased with the top image though, a little less so with Hitler, but he's alright.

Below - rough for 'The Joy of Sex', using the sexy lady previously posted a while ago. For the purposes of dignity and commerial viability, the 'real' book cover comes with a round magnet attached, covering her up a bit. It has the word 'Play' on it. Notice the play with the gender symbols in this one. Below that, the peeping-tom-man who also stars alongside sexy lady on the cover, just because he's not been here before, and the sexy lady again so you can see them both together. There's also a counterpart to sexy lady of a man in a similar pose, and similar jester style get up, who I'm thinking will be in that far left circle instead of peeping tom. Who will appear on the inside right flap of the cover, only flipped so he's still looking at the jester lady - and a countering peeping lady (thomasina?) inside the left flap. Or I might subvert expectations and flip 'em round.

There's a third cover design for the title 'Bombproof Your Horse' which I'm just finishing off and will post later on - the basis of which is the tank picture in the previous post. I'm going to print each of these onto white book cloth and bind them to hardback books; I'll post pics of the finished things once they're ready.

I feel like I'm beginning to get somewhere with my work lately - although I have a nasty feeling some of it is looking way too photoshopped, even tho its all hand rendered in origin. I want to get back a rougher, more textural, more hand made approach I think.. so next up is a personal project on war and wilderness doing just that.

Tank

2009-03-21T12:17:00.002Z

I drew a tank. I may not draw another one for some time (bleedin thing kept morphing into a more complex thing every time I looked up. It took a a while and many coffees/smoke breaks. Still, interesting to draw new stuff.). Rough for new book cover - this image still only in the planning stages and will have more elements added to it later on today.

The Joy of Sex

2009-03-13T13:45:00.002Z

Slightly risque rough for a new book cover design project. Only brainstorming really, will flesh it out properly later but thought I'd post it up anyhow.

Sketchbook stuff

2009-03-01T23:10:00.002Z

Did you know that the russian word for light blue - голубой - can also be used to mean 'homosexual'? Nope, nor did I.

Dark night of the soul

2009-02-27T21:43:00.011Z

Mixtape Cd project - 'Dark night of the Soul'. Above is the cover, and below the back on which the track listings will be written. I've been looking at a lot of constructivist and old soviet posters lately and I really like that aesthetic - simple graphic shapes, block colours, stong composition. I've also just returned from a trip to Berlin where I saw a ton of really ace graffiti and street art - I particularly love the combination of messy layering and torn appearance of olf fly posters and strongly tonal stenciling. So I wanted to play about with elements of those two things, although because the Berlin trip came quite near the end of this project, there's not so much of the graffiti aesthetic in here.. but that'll come next!

The basic concept of this album was brooding and inner darkness - nights of worry, a general feeling of unsettlement. All cheery stuff! So I wanted to create imagry that was by turns a little disquietening and sad and slightly surreal too (and obviously compliments the music on the cd) The roots of the images are taken from things and images that come to mind when I hear the songs I chose; snow, bleakness, night terrors, cold, blue. Initially I was going to make a rather more abstract album about colour, or perhaps more specically the colour blue playing along the lines of the blues (music), feeling blue etc. I've also been reading Derek Jarmans 'Chroma' lately, in which each chapter forms a paen to a different colour. It was written as Jarman, a hugely visual and visually literate man, was loosing his sight as his HIV escalated. So it's suffused with poignacy and sadness, and it's a beautifully written mix of prose and poetry, a love song to colour, a lament to the loss of sight, and his musings on facing his impending death. He used the text of this chapter as the foundation of his final film, also called 'Blue', which consists only of a single shot of a deep blue screen [which has a celestial meditative quality reminding me of Rothko] over which various actors read the script. You can read this text here if you're interested - http://www.evanizer.com/articles/blue.html. It's pretty ace in my opinion.
Anyway! So those are the kind of things that have been floating 'round my head lately, and I knew I wanted to make something a little off beat and with a serious/sad edge. The idea of a concept album proved tricky - and neither yielded much in the way of visual inspiration nor fiited my music collection brilliantly (the mixtape was supposed to be the music we are passionate about). So after a couple of hardcore brainstorming sessions I settled on 'Dark night of the soul', which I was much happier with.
Alongside obviously awesome music, I wanted to include some spoken word on there too - so near the beginning of the album I popped in old Jarman (the very last section of 'blue') and at the end there's Dylan Thomas reading 'Do not go gentle into that good night'. Because it's wonderful and because poetry rules, even if Thomas does have a slightly odd affected RP accent.

The text here means 'Surrender' in cyrillic. I also made it into a little jigsaw! Because if you're ruminating away during your dark night of the soul, you might like to do a little ponderous puzzle right?
I've been really enjoying having a muck about with this new more tonal drawing method I've been working lately. It takes a bloody age to do the originals, mind - I have to work on speeding that up. But rather than leaving the pencil/watercolour pencil drawings as is, I've found photocopying them and then working in ontop of them really adds to them - and also gives them a really cool scratchy, grubbiness which I'm keen to keep. So most of these images are multi-staged collages - pencil drawing first, photocopy, paint, collage, photoshop. Seems to be going ok and I am feeling the colour play at the moment (I do enjoy a bit of colour in my life), but I am slightly concerned about over photoshoping and have resolved to retain a bit more of the hand rendered quality from now. Getting there tho.

Design printed on the CD itself. Cyrillic here - 'escape' (well, as far as i know). I used cyrillic by the way - a) because it looks cool (being honest), b) to enhance a sense of confusion or the unknown (unless you speak russian) c) slight reference to those soviet posters I dig. Ooh and the repeated pattern in the background is a mass drawing of monsters and ghouls and the like, all grossly simplified from paintings by Bosch and Brugel (think night terrors, inner demons. Y'know, that kinda stuff.)

These last two aren't used on the cd by themselves but I like 'em anyhow. Might do something with this last one later on, add some stuff.. dunno. Red rules.

Sewing is bad for bunnies

2009-01-25T21:00:00.001Z

Dead bunny skull and crossbones with sewing tools.

Pelt/Pelt

2009-01-25T20:48:00.004Z

Three versions. Undecided. I've had about three hours sleep in the last three days so probably loosing all sense of judgement now.

'Cant dig your way out.' Cont.

2009-01-25T20:43:00.004Z

Not entirely happy with these ones yet so will continue to play about with it. I've got a whole folder of blood splatter patterns on my laptop (from a happy morning spilling and throwing paint violently at bits of paper), which I'd like to add in perhaps. Running out of time on this one now tho, also beginning to get totally sick of bunnies/shackles/the general morbidity of this recent stuff.

photocopyingrulesok

2009-01-25T20:17:00.005Z

Spent a happy hour or two engrossed in a photocopier recently. Blowing things up, shrinking them down, discovering new compositions, the usual sort of thing you do at a photocopier. Some of the images came out quite well with a nice grubby quality to them.

Sketchbook

2009-01-25T20:12:00.003Z

Can't dig your way out of this one.

2009-01-14T13:46:00.001Z

Pelt = Pelt

2009-01-12T00:29:00.001Z

Clowns on the rampage

2008-12-22T13:33:00.000Z

Naughty

2008-12-22T13:31:00.001Z

It could be me

2008-12-14T15:56:00.004Z

Something I made last night for a little exhibition. It will have some text on it but will add that later. They're supposed to be a gang of probable crims in a (rainbow!) police line up but actually turned out looking more like a bunch of kraftwerk-esque kids and purveyors of pared down germanic industrial electro. Whatcha gonna do.

Don't

2008-12-14T15:56:00.001Z

Fighting Talk

2008-12-14T15:54:00.001Z

Banjo Joe

2008-12-12T00:23:00.001Z

Before.

After.

Electro Boyz

2008-12-10T16:22:00.001Z

Don't look now.

2008-12-08T22:45:00.000Z

Don't think.

2008-12-08T22:43:00.000Z

Stand strong and clap.

2008-12-08T22:25:00.000Z

Slightly reworked it.

Do it.

2008-12-08T22:03:00.002Z

Don't Panic!

2008-12-08T21:41:00.004Z

From a little book I made on imperatives. I think I was sort of thinking of that Anthony Burrill poster 'Keep Calm and Carry On'.

Inside I'm clapping

2008-12-06T15:13:00.000Z

Thataway

2008-12-06T15:11:00.002Z

'Advance on several fronts at once'.

Tom

2008-12-06T15:10:00.002Z

Tom the life drawing model, missed out his special alice in wonderland tattoos though (the disney version).

Vices

2008-12-04T23:29:00.004Z

I thought I may as well make something from all the old fag packets I accumulate rather than just letting them amass then chuck them. These photos are from some old slides I bought in a junk shop a while ago, got a whole bag of them and I like this one in particular - just a whole lot of guys walking into the sea together (they're surfing I think). It's quite a strange image in some ways. Anyway, I've got lots of these so will put more up soon. At least defacing them like this means I don't have to look at the foreboding warnings and makes me feel less bad about knowing I've smoked my way through all of them. Yes, denial is obviously the best plan.

Slip!

2008-12-04T21:15:00.003Z

From a new little book I'm making which continues the overheard quips thing. I heard some grungy kids saying 'Yeh and then this guy appeared in like, a tabard? And he was like, running with an onion? We thought maybe he was in a race or something so we tried to make him slip up. Ha. Yeh. Don't think he was though, think he was just mental'. Classic. What's wrong with jogging about in a tabard with an onion for company if that's what grabs you? He possibly was slightly bonkers but in an endearing kind of way (maybe). Nevermind, nice idea - thanks kids.

Brillo babe

2008-12-04T21:10:00.002Z

Reworked this. The text will be 'So I saw a man pushing a buggy and eating a scotch egg at the same time and the thing is right, the crumbs kept fallin onto the little 'uns head 'till it had this big orange brillo pad hair goin on'. I like the idea of a baby being scotch-egged.

Rah!

2008-11-26T16:51:00.004Z

Silly thing, done in about 5 minutes. Underneath the layers of brylcreem and the corporate veneer, he is a python wrestlin macho man! Or the tragically now de-mulleted Wolf from seminal 90's Saturday night faux brawn-fest tv, Gladiators. (Wolf trivia - after briefly retaining his celebrity and 'even appearing several times on The Weakest Link'!' , has now retreated from that blinding lime light to run a kiddies playgroup and reconsider his mullet. Whadda guy.)

Three

2008-11-23T21:03:00.003Z

Not sure this works especially well, bit muddy maybe? Anyway, used a photo I found in an old magazine of these three crazy kids and they looked like they were sharing a slightly risque joke so I thought - I'll have a go at messing about with that!

Leaflet

2008-11-21T03:32:00.000Z

Something I did a while ago and just found lying about. Thought I may as well put it up too - it's a design for a leaflet, but without the text yet on it. Obviously it has the requisite amount of retro exclamations on it (rad! wicked! fresh!), along with horse men and cow headed babies. All very odd. Above is a detail of the right hand side which is my favourite and was thinking of adapting it in some way to become an image in it's own right.. we'll see if that happens.

Power woe!

2008-11-21T02:23:00.001Z

So I made a series of posters and a little book in response to a brief of 'In distress'. Just played around with it really and had fun with it, no pretence of a solid concept or anything. And used lots of little rainclouds too. I wanted to explore various states of woe and despondence but also to team that with a darkly comic edge, so I coupled the images with lyrics from some rad and very special power ballads. Those tunes really do have some of the best quotes. Found some pictures in a 60's sewing magazine of hugely grinning people with sad eyes and in cheese-tastic poses, clad in heavy knitwear which set off the quotes nicely. Also, found a book on dobermans - complete with stickers! - which I wanted to use but it didn't prove quite as handy. I'm saving it for a rainy day. Or a project on dog love. I want to take this project a bit further by using some old slides I found and projecting the images onto people, then also collaging and painting onto their skin - on top of the projection to make a sort of moving collage. It's all about exploring mark making on the body, scarring and the manifestations of emotional well being on the physical body, which is quite a common thing apparently. Soon.

The image above - 'I think I'll go smash my face on my knees now' - the quote isn't from a song but a is a little sardonic quip from a friend and I thought it was vintage and just really had to be used. Not a specific distress I guess but nevermind. (The little bit of text at the top says 'She's a funny old bird alright'. Didn't mean it about my friend though, that would just be rude. The other bit of faint pencil text you probably can't read says 'She smashed her face up', lots of times.)

I found these magazines lying 'round in the studio and they had all these brilliantly gauche ads in the back for sex lines and that. It was all slightly sad and silly and funny too. So I played around with the idea of medicating loneliness with sex and teamed that with a slightly adapted quote from a tune by seminal power music makers Journey. Yeh! I cut up some of the phone line ads too and collaged it on. The repeated scrawled sentence on this one is 'But it never numbs it for long'. Should really start using a pen for this stuff shouldn't I?

'George he loves them mutts.' Not sure about the red stripe, think it's a bit wrong somehow? But quite pleased with the trio of dog up the top. I had this idea about someone who only really has their dog/pet for company but holds out forlornly for something more. Also, this (and other images which I'll put up soon - baited breath!) sprung from a half joking conversation I had with someone in the studio about doing a project on dog porn, an idea based entirely on my special doberman book - I decided against doing that in the end though.

Apathetic cows, risque cocklers, mulleted men.

2008-11-20T21:30:00.000Z

Hello! I suppose this is it then. Not much to say at the moment other than that I plan to make a noble attempt to post on here regularly.. 'Attempt' being the key word here. For now, I thought I'd post some old stuff to get rid of what at the moment looks like a looming nothingness, and fill it with some of my favourite slightly 80's rainbow stripes and the like. I hope you find whatever does make it up on here rad and totally wizard! Yeh!
Or just quite interesting.