ART

Life

2012-02-08T14:48:00.000-08:00

Digital work....

2012-01-27T03:45:00.000-08:00

Dino Girl

2012-01-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

If you go down to the woods today....

2012-01-04T12:39:00.000-08:00

Life

2012-01-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

2011-09-06T04:05:00.000-07:00

Well its been a while but I'm now finding time to be a bit more creative with my time. Life has its distractions and the mundane everyday bores have to be dealt with. To be honest since finishing the first year at uni I have been so busy with life my work has suffered. A whirlwind of questions surround my thoughts like why, how, what for, why do i do this to my self, where am I going to put/sell it, what the hell is it, whats all that about, where in my imagination did that surface from, am I mad/insane/disturbed, why am I an artist and not something more academically useful.....and so on. My dreams are a huge inspiration to what comes out, I have night terrors and usually wake up panicking or convinced someone is present when obviously there is not. My latest drawing was of a man that was in my dreams. He was at the window looking in at me with an old sack over his head and stood with a farmers fork or a hoe in his hands. I woke, panic stricken but soon went back to sleep ready for the second time he would enter my dreams in the same night, this time in the room and stood above me.
Freaky it was......but I kind of liked it! :s

More and more...

2011-06-30T04:12:00.000-07:00

The Art Warrior lives.....

2011-06-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with old books just a late, and it has been interesting to see what you can do with a smelly old book which possesses strong words and narratives inside the cover. My first finished piece after much prep, is called 'The Legend of the Silver Cup' and was written by George Critchley in 1898, although this is a third edition the work is still produced to the same standards and quality. I think its a massive shame that books get read then put on a shelf gathering dust. Especially when there are some magic illustrations inside, which can go un-looked at for years. So i took it upon myself to find books with interesting characters and stories and bring them to life, enough for you to appreciate this as art as well as literature.

I wanted to keep the idea as close to the original forms as possible, so these are literally just still books!

I have blocked out some of the wording from unused pages to create my own short stories on the inside of the cover, giving the story a modern and up to date taste of my twisted artistic mind, I feel this adds part of me and my style into the works. Looking at the characters you can imagine what scenarios they are creating and build up a story without really needing any words at all, although they are there if you feel the need to read them. My work is based mainly on art without the need for explanations and words even-though it may be available, so this piece works well for the viewer to use their own interpretations and let the characters come alive!

The Book

2011-03-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

4 of us fellow college students are putting a book of art together, named Fragments! Ive decided to update my images within this blog! Ive produced 3 up to date and the book will hold many more!
This was the first i produced titled ‘Heh’ using pen and ink. I had been studying the art of the graphic novel and the layers upon layers these artists work on to make their singular images packed full of visual information. Within one image the viewer is spoon fed a huge amount but then has room to make their own assumptions of what is happening, perhaps in a daydream.
I'm fascinated in the complexity of the unknown.

This was the second called 'Doomed'. I was feeling trapped within my own career and all i wanted to do was experiment! Animation is very time consuming which makes you feel like your on a treadmill and never really getting anywhere until you see the final results, i felt like i had chosen this path and was unable to get off the treadmill to be myself for a while and be creative within what my own imagination was churning out. I suppose a bit like creative forces taking you to where you may not necessarily want to be heading! So i took some time out and this is what happened......maybe i should have kept on drawing the animation exercises!!

This is the third, called 'Sacred Text'. I had found a old book i was using on various projects and a poem just came together from the words and sentences i had separated! I was feeling as if all my own knowledge was being trampled on and new knowledge was being pushed inside my head uncontrollably. Although I'm always thankful for being taught new things, i also want to hold on to the others i have struggled to understand. I suppose i was being left dormant in areas and force fed in others and unlike homer simpson im unable to make space so quickly, i need to process it first! Anyway this peice popped up and im all sorted in the old brain filo fax!
But as artists where would we be without all these little confusing hiccups! :)

Is it real or am I dreaming? I think I may be getting better...

2011-03-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

The lines i create are never premeditated and everything flows organically. I then build layers of story and mystery from nothing until a clear picture of what is sat procrastinating at the back of my mind emerges. This is when i understand what I’m producing….never before, it has become quite a ritual within my work. Every piece is drawn in pen, which means no mistakes. This has become part of my routine, almost a test to see if i can draw, without mistakes, what i see in my mind. The topic changes with my mood so the story can swing from one thing to the next quite quickly almost creating a fast paced visual diary.
At this point i could start spouting of and start being all arty farty about how things evolve and shape themselves using underlying meaning but this would all be absolute crap. My work is very genuine and has aspects of being slightly naive, although i do read lots of art journals and articles other artists have written, i cant bring myself to talk nonsense about an illustration piece i just made up, basically i get absorbed within this little fantasy world i have instantly created. Within this world of towns and places surrounded my myth and fantasy are creatures of hideous nature and are almost always part of a poem i have written at some point, and possibly forgotten about! They may carry dark unsettling secrets, misunderstood beauty and maybe even a degree of bizarre eroticism.
I dont believe you have to have an explanation every time about why you drew that or why i just wrote that poem, i did that because i fancied doing it and that is the only answer any one needs, otherwise they would be me and start seeking answers to unanswerable questions. Confused? so am i!
Anywhoo back to the work! Ive always drawn and this year has been the toughest yet! Animation is defo a style within itself and remoulding the way i have taught myself to create my hideous world is frustrating to say the least! Basically within animation figurative work is an essential piece of knowledge, so out goes the old stuff to make way for this new sparkly brain food you will need for this specific industry! But i have to make it clear that it has made the visual aspects of my stuff so much more pleasing on the eye! A elbow is now in the right place or a hand is anatomically correct rather than looking like a wet tea towel…not that they ever did! Adding that to my ideas that spill out is defo a new era within the Sarah Shirtcliffe world of messed up ness! The world again is my oyster so now to start……wheres my pen…..
TBC………. if it made any sense….

Sketch Books

2011-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

Sketch books fascinate me, people put their spontaneous feeling within the pages….sometimes its crap but sometimes there is a little gem that just cant be repeated! When i first started to play at being an artist i was terrified of all my ideas being caught in a book, being placed on a shelf and never seen again. It took me along time to push this mindset to one side and let myself wild within, what i felt at the time, a box! Since then i have experimented no end and they have become my friends. I take them everywhere (one at a time) until they are full of paint, ideas, sketches, illustrations, found objects and anything else i can squeeze in there! The pages became less precious and i was able to relax and not beat myself up when the drawing was crap because there was another opportunity to retry on the page after. I could now look back and see where i was going wrong! This has played the biggest part in my development as an artist and still does to this day, as im always scribbling away recreating my ideas in the only form i know how to express it!