Empty Spaces

In May of this year I spent a month in Sandnes in the West of Norway as artist in residence at KINOKINO Art and Film Centre. My experiences of Sandnes were all positive and I found the city had a friendly atmosphere, combining it's industrial past with it's more recent modern development.

I particularly enjoyed walking through the pedestrianised 'Langgata' with it's cafés and markets but couldn't help noticing the numerous vacant premises on this street and some of the surrounding streets. It seemed a shame that the otherwise vibrant atmosphere was being shadowed by these empty spaces and I felt they were having a negative effect on the atmosphere. 

I believe that opening the spaces up to creative individuals or collectives to use as work or exhibition spaces at affordable short-term rents would optimise their use until they become commercially viable again. It would also bring life to the spaces making them a more attractive prospect for retailers. I have conducted some research and have found projects successfully using a similar model in Australia and Canada and across New Zealand. 

Using these projects as a model I am developing a similar project for Sandnes city centre that will bring mutual benefit to creative individuals and collectives, property owners and the people of Sandnes. The project requires further development and funding (that could be acquired from both private and public sources). If this is a project that you would be interested in supporting or contributing to in any way I would be very happy to hear from you. 

Meanwhile, to help digest all of this, here is another sketch from the collaborative project with photographer and writer, John Hughes. 

This one is from a piece of writing about a larger than life character who works as a 'head of security'.

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Illustrations and book design completed! Plus more from John Hughes collaboration

We are excited to announce that we have completed all of the illustrations, redrafted and expanded the text, and designed 14 double-page spreads! 

Over the coming weeks, we will be presenting the work to 

publishing companies in Norway. If you know of any publishers that may be interested in the book, please let us know. We would like to talk to as many publishers as possible and we are interested in publishing the book in different languages. 

This is one of the final illustrations from the story showing the main character waving goodbye to the astronauts after they have dropped him off at home.

Now that all of the preliminary production work is complete for the children's book, we are focussing on our collaborative project with Oslo-based photographer and writer, John Hughes. 

We have already posted one sketch from the project and here's another one about the complexities of interpreting and explaining abstract art.

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How we make illustrations for the book

We hope to complete the current phase of our children's book project by the end of this week. Our aim for this phase is to produce an expanded version of the text and to design 14 double-page spreads showing the finished illustrations and the position of the accompanying text. For now, the text writing is complete and we only have a couple more illustrations to complete. 

We thought it would be interesting to give you an insight in to how we develop the illustrations so we have posted images showing three stages of process. 

Each image starts life as a thumbnail sketch only a few centimetres across. It communicates the basic information from the narrative and is used as a starting point to develop further sketches that include more details and how we intend to use light.

The more detailed sketches are approximately 20cm x 20cm and are a combination of pencil drawing and indian ink that are edited in Photoshop. The sketches are used as a guide when building the models and shooting the photos for the finished illustrations.  

Where necessary, the photos are edited in Photoshop, although we prefer to get the photographs just right and minimise post-production. 
This particular illustration shows the main character of the story trying to sleep.

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White Hole in print, Collages from White Ink and a collaboration with writer John Hughes

Last week, we were excited to receive our copy of 'Norwegian Illustrators no.4' featuring work from White Hole. The catalogue contains some of the best in contemporary Norwegian illustration, presenting work from 92 illustrators and cartoonists. It is a great resource for anybody interested in illustration and can be purchased from Magikon Forlag.

Our sister company, White Ink design studio has been posting some interesting collages made from fragmented remnants of old religious propaganda. Produced by Tine Merakerås at White Ink, the compositions disrupt and rearrange the printed matter to suggest new order and meaning. 

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One evening in December 2011, Ian attended a poetry and story recital by Oslo based photographer John Hughes. Inspired by his tales of chance encounters, missed opportunities, drunken lust, the joys of smoking, desperation, loneliness, success, failure and contradiction, we contacted John to ask if he would be interested in collaborating with us on a project that would combine John's words and White Hole's pictures. 

We were over the moon when he said that he would work with us so we started developing ideas immediately. Unfortunately due to other commitments, we had to put the project on ice for a few months but we are pleased to say that we are now picking it back up again and are excited to see how it evolves. 

The image above is a sketch based on one of the poems set in and around the Belle Vue pub.

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Update: Why Does The Moon Shine Whilst I am Trying To Sleep?

Producing the book has been great fun allowing us to experiment across a range of disciplines. Over the last week we have been writing, model-making, drawing, photographing, photo-editing and designing page layouts.

The model house now has windows and a door as well as some interior walls and furniture. We have been experimenting with lighting to create the illusion of moonlight shining through the windows but there is a bit more work to do here before we achieve the effect that we want. 

We have also been developing the narrative and the text has been expanded, redrafted and combined with the images to create a series of double-page spreads. 

More images next week. 

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