Zoë Power

MASTERS PRINT BLOG Illustration, murals & signs by Zoë Power: www.zoepower.com

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Another surfer screen print dusted. I certainly did a few tumbles this week in the sea, at the mercy of the waves. 🌊 #art #illustration #sea #surf #surfer #womenwhodraw #print #printmaking #screenprinting #drawing #painting #inkdrawing #waves #gnarly @surfersagainstsewage @wsl (at Spike Print Studio) https://www.instagram.com/p/BpHspVaHxlH/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=tz2eey4vswx0

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Electric Moon Mural - it’s gone live!

My mural in Bedminster, Bristol went live this week. It incorporates the use of LED tape, which light up the faces ad phases of the moon.

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My murals for Leeds College of Music.

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Some photos from my mural for UPFEST this summer, commissioned by Bristol Women’s Voice. The theme for the mural was based on the 100 year celebration of some women getting the right to vote.

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My finished mural for Portishead Lido. 

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The final show!

Getting ready for the show!

I’ve wanted to include an element of mural painting in my show and so decided to paint the background of one of my walls.

The images themselves are quite busy - with texture, lots of colour and patterns. I didn’t want to take away from the images and so painted a simple black and white, stripe pattern. Black and white pattern appears in the triptych of prints ( “Spring’ ‘Patience’ and ‘Flourish ), and so the painted lines worked synonymously with the prints.

The inspiration for paining on the floor came from looking at a lot of my influences, particularly from Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhe (known as duo ‘Jessie and Katey’), which I wrote about in my Critical Journal a few weeks ago.

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Jamaica Street Open Studios

It was our open studios this weekend (phew! What a load of work!). Getting the studio clean and tidy, I hung up my new framed prints. It was so nice to see them together and a relief that the colours and frames all sat well against each other.

me in my studio (above)

Comparing my worth to others, I think I could easily up the price of my work a fair bit, especially as the price of my original screen prints doesn't differ hugely from the cost of a digital print. In the future I think I’d aim to have a spectrum of works and prices, with their being a significant different in the nature of the digital and original prints - loosely based on ’ you get what you pay for’, to highlight the uniqueness and quality of the original prints compared to the digital prints.

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Droitwich Mural

I recently applied for a mural at Droitwich Spa. I was unsuccessful with my application however thought I’d share my design.

My design was themed around local nature and culture, including local flora and fauna. The mural was to be 98 metres long (!) painted over the summer.

This is the second application I have made for a mural in a spa town - the first being Corsham. I have the gut feeling that my style is too bright and playful for these more conservative areas, usually with lime stone buildings and an older population. With this in mind, I still toned down my colour palette (the colours are much duller in my version than in the pictures above!), using shades of colour from the Farrow and Ball range.

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Lasercutting letters

To go in my final show, I had one last shot at making a piece. I wanted to go a bit more experimental, mixing painting with laser cut lettering. My idea was that the metallic lettering would sit flush in a plywood background, that would them be painted using 3D lettering techniques.

Unfortunately, whilst my tester worked, the laser cut lettering just wasn’t fitting into the plywood background (which probably shrieked or warped in the heat). If I have time I’ll re-do this, but I’m not sure that is likely!

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Designing an A-board

I’ve been asked to design an A-board for Blaze, on Colston Avenue.

This was the perfect opportunity to blend the elements of my practice that I have been working on this year. Using a similar colour palette, block shapes, stripes and block typefaces, I designed the board that is functional but instantly recognisable as my work.

I’ll be painting this in the next week or two!

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Website finally up to date (ish)

After many, many hours of slogging, I’ve finally got my website up-to-date - the separate pages, webshop and about section, complete with a new logo and favicon. Phew!

I wanted it to look bright, colourful, bold and clean. The homepage went from complicated, separate galleries and blurbs, to a simple gallery showing all elements of my practice.

I thinned out the illustration page, excluding old bits of work that were inconsistent with my current style. Looking back at my notes from Fig Taylor’s (AOI) talk last year, this was something that I was really trying to bear in mind, as was excluding work or projects that I didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of.

There’s still a bit more work to go, but it’s certainly a lot more tidy and consistent than my last version.

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It’s logo time

To go on my business cards, I wanted to design something that communicated all of the elements of my practice - printmaking, illustration, mural / sign painting. Using or cropping one of my prints or murals I didn’t feel would achieve this. And so, I made a new image / logo that would encompass all of these practices. Meet my self-portrait brush:

I wanted a logo that was fun but also crisp and clean, that would work well printed large or tiny. I decided to go with a brush as it’s a nice illustrate image, but also communicates the painting side of my practice. This is most likely the area for which I’ll be giving most people my business cards (which I’ve ordered in a rainbow of colours!)

I created hand lettered type for a logo that will be printed on the back of t-shirts. This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for ages - so that people can see my business name when I am painting and when people take photos of me painting. I also feel it adds an air of professionalism to my business.

Now I’ve got to get busy printing those t-shirts!

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It’s branding time

Getting prepped for the show and open studios in the next few weeks, I’ve been busy working away at my website and making business cards. 

First of all, I've tackled my website banner which felt quite out of date:

I think this banner feels a bit too ‘ children’s  illustrator’ as well as busy, for a website banner.

Working with colour schemes that I’ve recently been using, I then came up with this for my initial re-design:

I use convex lettering in a lot of my work, so wanted to replicate this in my banner. However, I still felt like it was a bit busy and also felt quite characterless / bland. Whilst I tried to avoid this by creating the lettering my hand, the mono style and sized text makes the lettering feel un-original. I also thought that the banner needs to be easily replicated to fit small and large prints and easily replicable in one colour. So then I came up with this:

Cleaner, simpler and bit more original. Great. I made the colours pop a bit more, whilst still maintaining consistency with my newer work. I wanted the logo to carry a sense of fun and play, but still be sophisticated and simple.

 I also made several variations which could be made as letter headers / business cards etc:

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brush me up, baby

I’ve wanted to make a gif for ages. With an online tutorial to hand - taadah! 

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Gromit Unleashed goes live!

I can finally reveal photos of my Gromit sculpture that I painted for The Grand Appeal! It took just over 5 days to paint in total, with a lot of time being taken up getting under and in-between some very hard to reach spots. 

I thought that the theme of Bristol words / dialect would be fun to paint, as well as put my lettering skills into good use. I’ve been wanting to cross over my signwriting / painting / illustration , making my work and skill set more consistent. Including lettering in my design was a good way to put this into practice, as was using overlays in the colours and geometric shapes.

The sculpture is covered in phrases like ‘ Wherez zit to,’ ‘Gert lush,’ ‘me babber’ and ‘hark at ye!’

With the design, I took a lot of time considering the colours I used and focusing on limiting the palette. My initial designs were much more complicated, and over time and with reflection the design became a lot crisper, cleaner and consistent.

I wanted the colours to be consistent with some of my other public work, such as the mural I painted on Church Road and the Piano I painted: 

To make sure I achieved this, I designed the sculpture with these colours in mind and used some of the same paints. 

I used a fix of different typefaces in the design and incorporated colour overlays, such as those I’ve been playing with in screen print. 

Working on a 3D sculpture was a new and difficult task for me - especially getting those crisp lines, but I’m chuffed with the result. 

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Photoshoot

Taking advantage of our access to the photography studios, me and Vicky took photos of our large prints to put on our websites. Having myself in the picture gives the prints a sense of scale, though I would also like to photograph them in frames.

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Designing a mural for Portishead Lido

I was approached by Portishead Lido to create a mural for their renovations over the summer. The mural would be painted next to the children’s area of the lido. The client wanted a 40′s / 50′s beach themed mural. With this in mind, I sent the client the following mood board:

I then mocked up these very rough designs, to explore the initial concepts:

Having had the go-ahead for a synchronised swimming themed design, this is the final mural design that is to be painted:

Wandering slightly from my more abstract style, the main inspiration for this design was the ‘Piscine’ series of prints of Virgine Morgand and the pool paintings of David Hockney :

Working in screen print has forced me to limit my colour palette and consider the composition of my work carefully. This is useful when applied to murals, as working in colours affects both the time taken to paint and the costs of materials. 

The work of David Hockney has been a life-long inspiration to me. His use of line and colour and pop art style appeals to me. I also like how he mixes painterly patterns and brushstrokes with block colour and graphic composition. 

I love Virgine Morgand’s use of simple block shapes and limited colour palettes. I also like her looseness and colour overlaps, making her prints feel painterly.