V & A Student Illustration Awards 2011.

Here's my entry, so here's hoping!

http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/events/illustration_awards/student2011/index.php?section=2&postIndex=175&postSearch=&category=&start=168&show=12

Ian and Callum's Anamatic. from Callum Jackson on Vimeo.

Right now, I've not long started my animation elective (second year running!) which this year has the brief title of 'Hybridity'.

I'm working on this one with Ian (remember him? http://ianosheagi.blogspot.com/) and we're 'responding', as they say in the art world, by exploring food. We're running with the idea of the English breakfast not being so English - a form of cultural hybridity. Anyway, this is the working anamatic.

Seven Champions Poster

When the Champs asked me to knock up a poster, I took the opportunity to rip off some of the beautiful 70's/80's style film posters kicking around. This also demanded that I practice my digital painting, too. Hoping an improved one will be made soon!

Stories Unfolding Part 2.

Right, I think I'm getting organised. Anyway, here's the second half of the Stories Unfolding project, finished late November 2010. I joined the Seven Champions Molly Dancers as a residential illustrator. The second lump of the project had me gunning down these themes:

- Costume of Morris Dancers (very interesting and colourful)
- Patterns (these were based on illustrated dance figures - quite complicated-looking)
- Poverty (which moved the workers to create Molly Dancing as a source of income on 19th Century East Anglia)
- Colour! (I said I do this - lots of paint-only drawings where I banned the pencil!)
- Print (We have some of the best print rooms in the country at the uni and I'll be damned if those lino presses and screen tables will lie idle)
- The Champs themselves (a stout bunch of chaps, pretty serious dancers too!)

Busy busy...

The Seven Champions, Part 1

This year's first project: we have to join, follow or work alongside a organisation, business or group within Kent. I was lucky enough to have a Molly Dancing group, The Seven Champions, allow me to join their group as bad dancer, unskilled fiddle player and resident artist.

Molly Dancing is a recently revived form of tradition English Morris dance, originally conducted on Plough Monday by East Anglian ploughboys, who were out of work and went around entertaining (I say more intimidating) locals for money. This fine heritage of disguise, fighting and tearing up people's lawns with ploughs has been rightly revived by several sides in Kent, of which The Seven Champions are pivotal in the continuation and development of Molly Dancing.

Since we're not really far in this project, I'm not sure where this is going yet. However, I'm enjoying painting with vivid colours, and have discovered chalk painting. So it should be colourful. Animation? Printmaking? Maybe I should make a book.

Pocketbook 2

More hijinks from the end of the first year of University back to Leicestershire.

Cider Labels

Recently I got a commision to design a set of labels for the chaps at Pine Trees Farm, near Doddington in Kent. A company that sold a range of apple-based products among others, they required label designs for a new range of four bottled ciders, which will probably start kicking about around September time. Watch this space!
From the start I mined the traditional custom of Wassailing, which (still!) takes place all over England in various forms. Visually I was going for a china blue effect, too.

You can find Pine Trees Farm's website here: http://www.pinetreesfarm.co.uk/

Marks and Meaning (Part 1)

'Marks and Meaning' was the formal name for our last project, the Maidstone Project. This project had two halves really; the first was experimental and observational drawings within and around the town, and the second was applying those techniques to print processes. Here's a small selection of the first half, culled from two of my sketchbooks (A3 Landscape/10"x10" square sketchbook.) For most of the start of this project I drew alongside the frustratingly talented Mr Ian O'Shea(http://ianosheagi.blogspot.com/) in the intense cold, which is bound to knock anyone down a few pegs. Eventually, though, we split up; he pursued his Victoriana and I followed NATURE!

If you're interested, much of what I worked on this project was trying to improve my charcoal and watercolour skills. Me and Ian were lucky to be able to gain access to the gigantic All Saint's Church in the centre, which isn't usually open to the public, and should really be called a Cathedral. Eventually I followed the elusive River Len which snakes underneath the town up to Mote Park. Straight up, I don't have access to an A3 scanner now I'm back home, so I can't get up the second part of this project for a while yet. Ah well.