Barry McGee

ARTIST COLLABORATION- PERSONAL WORK.

This most recent piece of work is a collaboration with a friend of mine Ben Hansen who is also an illustrator. We started off by both thinking of a word each and came up with 'Teeth' and 'Monster'. He started off the drawing on the left of the page and wrote the text 'Teeth'. I then carried on the drawing on the right and added the text 'Monster'. I decided to mainly use my brush pens for this piece and for the detailed parts I used a biro pen. Our aim is to create many of these drawings and either sell them as screen prints or collect them as a booklet to sell.

BOBBLE- PERSONAL WORK

Humour is a major influence in my work. I think it's a great way of grabbing peoples attention and it doesnt make the public take your work that seriously. For this drawing I was influenced by lyrics from a song by the band Wild Beasts. Music is also a big influence in my work and I enjoy creating drawings which tell a story. Although some of the lyrics I am inspired by may be dark, I like to create a funny and colourful image out of it.

CRYING LIGHTNING- PERSONAL WORK

This piece of work is influenced by Arctic Monkeys lyrics from their new album 'Humbug' which involves alot of dark, mysterious lyrics. As soon as I heard this line I was eager to draw something matching the words and album. I have created many other drawings which were influenced by this album and may even create a booklet out of it. I also tried out a new shading technique of lightly crosshatching the darker parts.

SKETCHBOOK WORK AND IDEA GENERATION

Here is a few examples of my sketchbook work and idea generation. I prefer working on large sheets of paper, that way I have alot of room to spread out lots of images and note down ideas. Im interested in the process of exploring with pen and paper and see what i can pull out of that. Im really into sketchbooks but I dont work in sketchbooks quite as much as I used to because it eventually got to the point where I wanted to start tearing the things out but the sketchbook seemed too sacred so decided to abandon that idea. Although I do like sketchbooks as it allows you to generate ideas and explore and i think thats the biggest theme my work involves.

HAIRY HOWDY- PERSONAL WORK

I drew up this idea months ago and was pleased with the idea but I thought I could have drawn it much better with more detail. A fellow friend of mine who is an artist advised me to draw it up again in a 0.1 fine liner pen with much more detail , so recently I took the original image to my lightbox and re-drew it with much more extreme detail. I presented it to the public again and it seemed to be much more popular, this has made me realise if I'm ever unhappy with a drawing I should try and draw it up again in a different style.

SLEEPLESS GEORGE- MUTATION PROJECT

For this project the subject was 'Mutation' and the task was to produce a small comic on it.
The tutors didnt want the generic things linked with mutation such as zombies, monsters etc.
So I decided to base mine on sleep deprivation. I didnt want to set my comic out like the cliche
comic in squares, so I spread it out with basic text and image. Instead of a script I decided to
use a poem I knew by the band 'The Maccabees' called 'Sleepless George' which is about a boy who
is deprived of sleep. I wanted to the pages to be quite crammed to show the stressful side of sleep
deprivation and I used colours which I thought were dreamy, pastel colours. I was very happy with the
outcome and it seemed extremely popular with the public.

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