I feel that the beginning of this module was a little odd because at the time we’d only just started the course and I was confused as to why we began looking at other peoples work immediately as I’ve only done this before to try and replicate what I’ve seen in terms of their style or methods. However through the course of the year and through the different blog tasks we were set such as the picture book research into books that fall into different categories and the blog post about ourselves as learners, I realised that the point in this module was not to try and emulate other peoples work, but to give us a better understanding of where us and our work could end up sitting within the world of illustration. Once I realised that I felt a lot more engaged with the activities we were being set and was ready to be reflective about myself and my practise for the final presentation and poster.
I have learnt that as an illustrator its not enough to just make aesthetically nice work, there needs to ideally be some kind of driving thought or ethos behind it that you want to convey through it otherwise its going to end up looking how a lot of my work looked at the beginning of the year- soul-less. The illustrators that we looked at and researched have both very distinct visual styles and clear messages and themes in their work which makes their intent very clear and their work easier for people to relate to and that is what I believe makes them successful. It was also helpful to learn about the different categories of picture books as it helped me to see that we don't all have to strive to make things that will only appeal to the very mainstream publishers, we cans till make our work how we want it for ourselves and then find the category in which it sits best.
Throughout the year this module has also helped me to examine the way in which I make pictures, mainly I’m happy using watercolour, gouache and occasionally mixing a bit of coloured pencil in to give a bit more detail. And at the start of the year especially I really tried hard not to get too stuck into using only those methods as I know I’m confutable with them already so instead I used collage, ink and particularly tried hard to use digital methods. Looking back at it now I’m really happy that I pushed myself to trial all those different methods as I think not only they've given me more confidence in knowing that I can work with those if I choose, but its also given me more faith that using watercolour and gouache is a good method for me and my practise. I think combined with my heavily emotion driven work, wet media are the perfect method because they give images a more sensitive feel, and they help me to make the image more evocative, whereas I struggle to translate all those things in digital work. I also think wet media look a lot more organic and you can really see the hand of the maker coming through in those images which is a look I really like. However I can also see that for more commercial work like the sticker brief my illustrations and digital methods can combine really well, its more being confident and sure enough to choose the time and the place appropriate to using them.
The thing I’m the most glad of from this module has been the end few weeks where we’ve had to reflect on our practise and formalise what we've discovered in the poster and presentation. During the course of the year during this module and others I’ve discovered what a reflective person I am, I like understanding the world around me and in understanding that, trying to understand more about myself and where I fit into the world. This is important to my practise and I can see its influence in my work as I’ve made a lot of pieces that seem to be asking a lot of questions and talk about reflection and discovery, in fact that was the big thing I was aiming to convey in the final poster and I think I achieved it. I also came to the realisation that my struggle with OCD and mental health issues has massively impacted the way in which I tackle projects, at the beginning of the year I was frustrated at how linear my thought process was especially compared to those around me on the course who do really well at abstraction, and although I still find this irritating sometimes, I am now more aware that this is my compulsive brain trying to find an order in everything. It can hinder my progress and make the beginning bit of a brief where everything is a bit messy really slow and difficult, but I’ve learnt during the course of this year that the way to combat this is just to power through it and immerse myself in my work. The tics of my OCD probably wont ever go away fully but I’ve found I can quieten them by replacing their negative compulsions with thinking deeply and reflectively about my work and the tasks at hand and using that to motivate me.
The presentation has also helped me to realise what kind of things I want to use my work to discuss, this is something I’ve been coming to terms with this year as I’ve often struggled to bring that personal side of me into my work, but now I can see how real human experience influencing work makes it all the more interesting and relatable. I now know that feminism, escapism, sentiment, mental health and emotions are some of the strongest influences on me and are also what I want to discuss and convey more in my work in the future. Similarly another one of my aims for the future is to continue making the work that I enjoy both the process of making and that I enjoy looking at and talking about when its finished, I’ve realised that when I make things for myself I am first of all more motivated to finish them which is something I’ve struggled with this year on projects that I’ve not been that mentally engaged with. I’ve also realised that this helps me to be much more enthusiastic about them and I find it easier to talk about them with other people with conviction. Finally, in the future I am going to make more effort to perfect the methods of watercolour and gouache and make them look really polished. I’m really pleased that these methods mix so well with my practise and what I want to convey with it, so I’m going to make it my mission to champion them next year by investing more time and effort into individual images and by mixing those processes with a bit of Photoshop just to give them that polished, finished look. Overall this module has helped to make me more confident and self assured of both myself and my practise and I look forward to bringing all these influences together to make more exciting work next year.
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