End Of Module Evaluation

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.

Final Presentation Slides

I'm Weird

Just wrote out the main body of what I want to say during my presentation, but I thought the way I went about it literally sums up my weird thought process when it comes to my practise. I couldn't think of any other way to brainstorm it in my sketchbook so theres a few failed plans where I tried to work out some kind of outline, but then I got out my voice recorder thing on my phone and just started talking at it trying to explain my practise and what I wanted to say. I did about 4 separate notes of all the different parts of what I wanted to say then I just typed it up into a little transcript and edited it where I felt it was needed. 

SO ODD

but it really worked, I'd definatley do it like that again in the future. The script for the presentation is quite long and rambely but I'm going to work on memorising more of it on the weekend. I kind of wanted it long and rambly as well as the aim for the presentation is to present it like I think about things in my brain, really scattered and just getting the ideas down as quick as I can and hoping to find one good nugget in there. It almost sounds a little bit like a spoken word poem thing?

I'm going to try and insert some of the voice notes here cause I'm not explaining it very well but I don't know if it'll work:

Stream Of Consiousness

Presentation notes so far:

When we were asked to think about the things are at the centre of our practice I was a bit shocked when I realised how much my struggles with OCD and mental health play a part towards what kind of illustrator I’m becoming. Thats not to say it always effects me negatively, it just really does tend to define the way I tackle things. 

So my experience with OCD means that I obsessively tidy when I’m stressed, I tidy as a way to clear my brain and in an effort to focus on work tasks, so for example whilst I was trying to think of an idea for the book cover brief I tidied the kitchen at 3am until it looked like this:

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Or when we were meant to be brainstorming for our persons of note I decided the reason I had no ideas was because my work space was too messy so I tidied my desk until it looked like this:

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But then the problem was that after that my desk was so tidy that I was physically scared to make a mess by getting stuck into the project. I fixate on germs and I fixate on rituals, I get it into my head that if I don't do something a certain amount of times I’m going to fail the year or get a bad mark. I make lists as a way to try and get everything thats in my brain out on the page otherwise I’m scared I might forget one nugget of a good idea and ruin my project. I think that reflects in my practise in that I like things to be linear and have a narrative otherwise my brain cant make sense of them. I’ve realised that as much as I can admire abstract work I struggle to identify with it on any higher level as it doesn't compute to me. So one way I can alleviate the tics of OCD is to just go along with it and use up my precious time making these lists and tidying to try and get the thoughts out of my head, but throughout this year as I’ve become increasingly wrapped up in this course and the idea of myself as a proper illustrator I’ve realised that another way to get rid of those feelings of panic is to completely immerse myself in my creative practise.

I realised this whilst I was getting really into the process of watercolour painting for the visual narratives book, my desk looked like this:

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And I didn't even care. Whilst we were doing the stickers for visual communication I was so fixated on the responsibility of having to convey and important message on a tiny sticker that I found I’d rather obsess over that than obsessively tidy our kitchen, so it ended up looking like this:

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and I barely even noticed. OCD means that I go at everything with all guns blazing so I love that this year Illustration has given me a healthy place to put all that ethusiasm and obsessiveness. It means I can put it into researching everything I can about someone for a brief or drawing out the same character 100 times until I get it perfect. 

I’ve also found that theres been so many other influences on my practise that have developed during the first year of this course, I’ve got much more into feminism and actively consuming feminist media which I like to discuss in my work, not just because I can now recognise how important it is in the greater scheme of the world but also because its helped me to be empowered and recognise my own physical and mental strengths. 

I’ve also realised how much of an influence music and fiction books have on my work, I find that these take me out of myself when I’m being too introverted and inspire the sense of escapism and fantasy I like to have in my work. 

On the other hand I really enjoy non fiction books and podcasts around topics like feminism, sexuality and science. In my work I use these methods as kind of thinking tools, I enjoy learning and trying to understand more about them but I also enjoy the fact that they help me to understand myself and where I fit into the world a bit more. I’ve realised I’m a very reflective and sentimental person, which in turn makes its way into my work and the way I practise in that most of what I do is very emotionally driven.

My first goal for next year is to improve the way in which I already use watercolour and gouache, these are methods I’ve really enjoyed working with this year as it can look different each time you use it depending on what kind of mood your in and how you use the brush. I think that goes hand in hand with the sentimentality of my work. I want to spend more time next year just working on the individual crafting of each painting. 

I also want to try and combine that with working in photoshop, I feel that a lot of the work I’ve produced this year is good but sometimes doesn't look finished. And I need to start seeing photoshop as a way to finalise things rather than “cheating”.

I also want to change my attitude towards mistakes, in that at the moment I’m still in the mindset of A level that mistakes = failure, which I’m now aware isn't true. I think my tendencies towards OCD mean that for me when I look at work of mine that was a mistake I see it as messy and just want to hide it and not show anyone. But I need to get it into my head that mistakes don't mean failure and instead mistake mean development and learning.

I also want to try and own my issues with mental health and OCD because although I’ve established they're difficult to live with they're there and might never go away. And sometimes they do have benefits like making me more organised or making all my work have a clear narrative. You can definitely see them come through in my work sometimes and whilst that can be annoying if I’m trying to loosen up and do something abstract. it means my work has a real sense of me in it, which is nice.

Finally my main goal for next year is to try and create work that is evocative. I was trying to think what makes illustrations successful to me and I’ve realised that I don't see much point in making a picture if it doesn't make the viewer feel something, whether thats good or bad. These are the images I find myself most often connecting with and those that I find it the most enjoyable to make, and since the success of my visual narratives book where I decided to just make something that made me happy even though it was a simpler idea I’ve seen that the best images are those that you put a bit of yourself into, so thats what I’m going to aim to do. 

Finishing My Poster

Today I scanned the painting that I finished yesterday into photo shop and tried to scale it up to A2 and neaten it up a bit. Yesterday I really wasn't happy with how the bottom of the image looked at all, I thought it had no depth to it compared to the complicated layers of plants at the top. Since I scanned it in I realised it really didn't look right so I went back to the idea I had in my sketchbook of adding fish into the water to make it look a bit more real, I painted them and then scanned them and edited them into the existing image on photo shop. It made me realise how far I've come with both my attitude towards photo shop and using it as a means to assisting with making a hand drawn image look polished, and also to not giving up on paintings that I've made and instead just adding elements to it to make it better. These are two things that I never would have done at the beginning of the course, I also have dropped the file off at the print room to be printed properly at A2, another thing I wouldn't have done at the beginning of the year (mainly due to a lack of organisation and poor time management) but I'm really excited to see how it turns out! I also have realised that during the course of this year I've become more fussy with how I present my work to others and the quality of it, knowing that this poster will be in the exhibition at the end of the term and will be seen by people has made me want to make it perfect.

I also think that after the first year of this course I might have worked out how I can make art thats evocative which was one of my main goals. This image for me represents the journey I've been on during this year, and its one of self discovery, challenges, successes and failures, but ultimately I wanted it to have a sense of adventure similar to the sense of whimsy and fantasy I like to show in my work. Although this poster isn't my idea of perfect and this isn't my favourite composition of anything I've done, I think it gets the feeling of a journey and a sense of triumph through it which was my main goal.

My Neck Hurts

Today I sat at my desk from 10 til 5:30 working on the same painting. I've been planning it for a few days and originally thought it could be my final poster but after today I'm not sure:

Successes:

• I'm so bloody chuffed with the top bit two thirds of this painting, I'd go as far as to say that its maybe some of the most technically good painting I've done. I really like the depth of all the different layers of leaves
• I also feel like I've worked really well with gouache in this piece, its got quite a colourful but not overcomplicated colour palette
• The composition of this I think has worked really well, considering yesterday I couldn't work out how I was going to make all the characters look like they were interacting with each other I think they make a lot more sense when positioned like this and it still gives them all their own space to exist

Failings:

• I really, really hate the bottom part of this image with the water and the lily pads, I think it throws the whole thing off balance and doesn't have nearly enough going on
• thats it, its really just this bit letting it down, I think tomorrow I'm going to take the image into photoshop and see if theres anyway I might be able to crop it down and not include the water at the bottom? and failing that I'll edit some of the fish I drew earlier this week into it to make it look more busy

Tutorial

Notes from my tutorial today:

Presentation:

• I need to find a moral or a maxim that overarches the presentation
• talk about next years goals: to master watercolour, gouache and combine with Photoshop
• what motivates me? Failure mainly, need to change my attitude towards failure
• I like wet media because its different every day depending on how I'm feeling, slightly unpredicatable, human
• Successes of first year- visual narratives, how do I replicate that?

Poster:

• SIMPLIFY
• let the characters sing, white space
• mock up different angles
• if in doubt try the original idea with the mixed character body parts
• REMEMBER= EVOCATIVE

Overall, I've come out of this tutorial today feeling slightly worried about how much work there is, but excited to complete it because it is something I'm passionate about. Being challenged to convey an emotion or the overarching feeling of something is a big responsibility and used to really scare me, and although it still does I think I'm on the right track to making something thats evocative and that I'm happy with. I just have to not panic and try things out until I get it right. And if I finish it and I'm not completely happy with it it doesn't mean I've failed it just means I can learn from it. 

In terms of both the presentation and the poster I know I want the overall feeling of them to be exploration, self discovery and ultimately success as thats how I'm finishing the year feeling. 

Poster Progress

Made these roughs of potential compositions for my poster today, I'm pretty enthusiastic about them all but I think my favourites are the first two and the last one. These mock ups have made me really think about what I want to convey in this poster, at first I was playing with the idea of self-discovery and exploration as I think those two words sum up the overall feeling this years had for me. I like the torch light as a metaphor for discovering things about my practise and being surprised, and I also like the element of this we can see in the last design with the boat. 

Somehow in the middle of the roughs I lost a bit of motivation and started making a lot of images of the characters in water, which I like as a symbol but they ended up making the central human character look a little bit lost and scared, and although that is something I've felt a lot this year I don't want it to be the feeling that defines my practise in my first year, I want the outcome to feel triumphant and brave (how I feel now). This is why I'm tempted to go with the last idea with the boat because I like the strong composition of all the characters kind of intertwined and supporting each other rather than dragging each other down like in some of the other roughs.

Tomorrow I'm going to carry on roughing the idea further whilst playing with a bit more character design and using some materials to get an idea of what I might use for the final piece. I'm feeling really enthusiastic about this project though which is helping me power through it.

Brain Splurge

Just had a really good tutorial which gave me a lot of ideas so please enjoy them (sorry they're messy):


Presentation:

• Specific Is GOOD
• Analytical is good, I do this naturally
• theme: order in chaos, narrative, productivity
• representing my practise and how I've become increasingly wrapped up in it through the course of the year, but told through my OCD and the way I interact with the space around me
• writing/blogging: I write more when I have things to figure out, quieten my brain
• REPETITION, TICKS, GETTING THINGS TO STICK IN MY HEAD
• when I'm creating and wrapped up in it it almost becomes an outlet or a place to put my OCD, obviously it doesn't sure it but it quiets it
• Life= keeping up appearances, inside and out, work, life, mental and physical health
• Rituals can help me quiet a noisy mind, help me sleep, but do they help me focus?
• talking points:
• Digital work: development, has a linear process but also unpredictable to me, chaos but in a good way
• Feminism: important in the grand scheme of the world,but also has helped me to be empowered and realise both my mental and physical strengths
• music, fiction books: takes me out of myself, it takes me out of myself, not that I don't like being with myself, I'm with myself a lot, but just like being with a good friend too much it can get stressful. Being in my brain is a stressful place to be.
• Pod casts, media: thinking tools, I enjoy thinking about things and trying to understand them more as well as use them to help understand myself more
• Visiting lecturers: Krystina and Louise- process and order to their practise, logic which made them successful as well as grafting. Nice to out a formula to it? Also nice that they apply their Illustrations to a product- makes sense to me- function

Sidenote: The presentation list I have basically come to realise will make up most of the script for during my actual presentation, those are most of the points I want to make I just have to put them in order

Poster:

• My brain is busy, shouldn't I present this in my work?
• world building, escapism
• escape means less worries
• village, or maybe staircase? obstacles things with a narrative easier to understand and unpack, linear

The main point from this: 

it takes me out of myself, not that I don't like being with myself, I'm with myself a lot, but just like being with a good friend too much it can get stressful, its good to have a little break. Being in my brain is a stressful place to be.

Magic Ladies

During the easter holidays I said I'd take part in an exhibition thats being held by someone I met on foundation, there was no brief for it I just had to submit or make one or a series of pieces to exhibit in any frame I wanted at a pub in Leeds. I said yes because partly because I wanted a little distraction from COP but also because when I saw her asking for submissions for pieces to exhibit I felt like I was ready for the first time to actually put my work in the public. This is definitely not something I've felt before and I think its down to this first year of the course and the last few briefs giving me a little bit more confidence in my own brain and my own practise (YAY)

The exhibition is to raise funds for Womens Aid which made me even happier to be submitting some work because a lot of the profits of anything thats sold goes to a really great charity (not that I'm actually thinking that anyone will buy my work, baby steps...). Because of the cause of the event I wanted to make some kind of pieces to do with empowering and inspiring women, and I'd been messing around with this witchy lady character that I've become really attached to. I started planning little sketches in my sketchbook at home as I already had an idea in my mind of what I wanted the final things to look like and the kind of feeling I wanted them to have, but I found that the combination of working from home and not having any real brief for once meant that I was really unmotivated and had to do so many pages of trials before I started making anything.

Look how many pages of roughs:

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

final page

What I found out from this:

• My brain can handle a task like this so much better if I give it a title and a rough idea of a brief on my own, even if it hasn't been specifically been given one by the person I'm doing it for it just helps my brain to organise it a little bit better and get to work on it quicker
• I'm really obsessed with drawing hands, legs, arms and female bodies in general at the moment, I had so much fun drawing the nude lady on the rock 
• Roughing really, really helps. It was really hard to start because I had no direction but once I started roughing, new visual ideas kept coming to me and I had almost too many elements that I wanted to add to the picture
• Simpler is better. When I started drawing this lady I drew her in copic markers with a black, fineliner outline like this:

I've realised now from some of the things we've learnt this year that things look better simplified and if you take a few of the lines out of a drawing people are still going to understand it. 

• Ladies are magic

The finished things:

I'm really happy with my time management skills because I made time to do this around finishing my COP which shows how much I actually wanted to make these things. I'm getting them printed at uni to pick up tomorrow before I give them in at the end of the month, the exhibitions on the 11th of May and even if no body buys the pictures I'm still really happy because I've entered an exhibition that wasn't mandatory, like this is the first piece of proper illustration I've just done because I wanted to and wanted people to see it. (although fingers crossed someone actually does buy them because I am v poor, hurry up student loan.)

Map Of Me

Yesterday our task was to make a mind map of ourselves and include all the things that make up us as people and also our practise. I quite liked this activity because the last few projects we've had have been a bit more personal and independent which I think has given me time to think properly about what I want my practise to be.



I identified the main parts of my personality and practise to be:

Sentimentality:

• I collect old things like books, photos and general nik naks
• I keep all my old birthday cards
• music is the biggest source for all my memories, I think this mostly refers to the lyrics in songs but sometimes its just the period of time when I was listening to a song triggers really strong memories
• I keep every book I've ever read and owned- I thought about this one and I think thats because I love each of the imaginary places the books have taken me to and the worlds they've conjured up feel a bit like they belong to me because I keep them after I've read them

Reflection:

• I think way too much about everything, to the point where I get myself down about things I shouldn't
• I have too many feelings
• when I need to make sense of these feelings I write them down to help them be clearer, sometimes in a list but often these thoughts end up turning into poems or stories, sometimes scripts
• I like to give these thoughts narratives because it helps me to remember them clearer, like you can remember how you felt in that exact moment (evocative)
• Its like a bit of a therapy to me

OCD:

• I have all these rituals and superstitions that seem normal now to me but I know they're not, like very particular ways that things need to be done (OCD) but that also feeds into my practise
• The list making helps me tackle and rationalise my OCD too because it gets it all down and out of my head
• I fear messiness both at home and in my work, I'm too afraid of making a mess by experimenting to actually change things up in my practise
• My mind tells me that mess equals failure and as I'm scared to fail I wont make a mess and just stick with what I know
• I find it comforting to work with illustration with a narrative because this follows a chronological order and storyline so therefore "makes more sense" and seems less messy to me
• I actively try and give everything I do a narrative or back story, building little worlds behind projects makes things easier for me, but also harder because then I get lost in them
• I need to experiment more in order to develop

Home:

• I've moved house a lot of times (15 times to be exact) and this means that I'm really used to change
• Although I don't like mess I do like change because it makes things fresher and easier to look at and make sense of
• I get bored easily if I'm stagnant for too long in home and work life, in terms of work life this means that I can be really enthusiastic about a project at first but quickly get bored of it if it goes on for too long
• Experimenting with materials is one way I've found to help this because it gives me the challenge of working out how to use the materials as well as focusing on the project
• This also explains why I feel so passionately about finding home in yourself first before you call anywhere else home

Feminism:

• I like to encoorporate feminism and feminist issues into my work
• A lot of this is influenced by the media I consume whether that be books, films, TV shows or podcasts
• All of this media which I consume could be considered escapism, I am a big reader and watcher and I think I do a lot of that to take myself out of myself sometimes. This escapism is something I really try to feed into my practise, I love that idea of creating new worlds
• Listening to podcasts that look at the world through a feminist lens and also those that talk about sexuality have spurred my interest in feminist issues and the human anatomy and sexuality in my work
• This subject also goes hand in hand with the body positivity movement which I've become more interested in through feminism, I really enjoy portraying bodies in general in my work and think they're something that we shouldn't be so scared of showing 
• This is maybe where my penchant for more graphic styles of illustration comes from, I think penises, boobs and bums make illustrations striking and normalise them/ start a conversation
• I also feel the subject of feminism goes hand in hand with the subject of reflection, I write a lot of my poems etc through a feminist view and also watch a lot of feminist poetry on Youtube

Although I think I can see some links starting to form here already I think I need to work more on how these things all match up, I also need to review which things in particular are the most central to my practise because the lists quite long at the moment.

Learner

Learner:

Weaknesses:

1. When my stress levels are high I lose momentum and often stop working on a project for a few days which isn't great. I can sometimes put off the things that I’m really not looking forward to doing and hope that they just go away, which obviously doesn't work and has the adverse effect of actually making things more stressful. I need to remember that if something is stressing me out the best thing is to make a start on it and then talk to someone when I start to struggle
2. I find keeping up with reading and writing really difficult, whether thats in COP essays or researching something for a brief. It does take me a while to unpack and retain the information I’m receiving which both panics me and puts me a little bit behind
3. I find it hard to ask for help if I’m finding something a struggle, in terms of going to a tutor anyway. I can always ask my peers but sometimes what I need is just a one on one with a tutor just to clarify things, I think this is generally just down to me being a shy awkward person (always have been)
4. I would work a lot better if I got to sleep at a decent time each night, I am starting to see how much of a struggle I find it to make myself motivated enough to do a full day at uni if I haven't slept properly but the lack of sleep could also be partly put down to the noise at my place. Maybe this one will get better next year?
5. I compare myself to others a lot. This is such a bad quality to have as I realise theres literally nothing that can be gained from doing this as much as I do it. And its not like I look at other people and think “If I worked a bit harder or put in more hours I could be like them”, I do in the way that I look at other peoples work and think “I could never have come up with that”. 

Strengths:

1. I am dedicated. This is the only course I’ve ever wanted to do and the fact that I put it off for a year has given me some more time to think about it and realise how much it means to me. I am willing to put in the hours and stress because I know this is what I want to be doing
2. I am self motivated, again probably due to being so sure that this is the subject I really want to do. I know when all my deadlines are and I do really want to do and hand in the work on time because the grades matter to me
3. I am organised. This is something I never did at school mainly because I hated it so much that I didn't want to do the work anyway, but with his course the work is enjoyable (mostly). I have learnt that writing to- do lists works well for me and so does setting reminders, but that keeping an academic diary doesn't as it means I then have to remember to look in the diary to see when my deadlines are
4. I am interested, which in turn makes it easier to stay motivated, organised etc. I consume a lot of media around illustration and think about it in terms of my own and other peoples practises a lot of the time. 
5. I am competitive (with myself more than anyone). So if I do badly at something once I try not to let it put me off now, instead I try to challenge myself to beat my own high score and do better. This is sometimes a massive draw back as it means I can often be unhappy with the work I make as I can tell I could have done better and therefore know that I’ll beat myself up about it, but it also means that I know what I can achieve so if I could have tried harder and didn't then I can think about why that happened and put it right

Practitioner

Practitioner: 

Weaknesses:

1. I am a perfectionist, and whilst this means things will be done well it has also meant that sometimes my work doesn't develop as much as it could. Sometimes I’m so scared to make something imperfect that I don't like but will help me to develop an idea further that I chose to just stick with what I know instead and create something that is within my comfort zone but probably a bit boring
2. I am easily panicked, whilst I admit I do work well under time constraints sometimes a lack of time in which to complete tasks can panic me into not doing anything at all and hating every idea that I come up with but being too scared to go another direction because then I wont be finished on time
3. I am not good at simplifying things. This one has been really problematic in the last few very short briefs we've had, where we've needed to get a point across but in a restricted frame. Its in my nature to make everything look really embellished but I think this course is making me realise that I need to spend more time and effort developing my ideas and making those complex and meaningful but simplifying the way I chose to portray that
4. Trying out new ways of working is something I really struggle with. This course has pushed me to try new things and mostly they've payed off and are techniques that I know I’ll definitely use in the future. But actually applying myself to learning those new things is something I find hard, I think its the same thing of struggling to be out of my comfort zone
5. I don’t have enough trust in myself, my abilities and my ideas yet. This is something I’m learning to develop for instance during the latest brief I was told by everyone that the wet media approach I’d been taking was stronger than the digital but I knew that was just because no one could see how I was imagining it in my head. So I persevered with it and managed to make it work where I might once have gone with what everyone else preferred. That was a huge step for me but is definitely something I need to do more and also quicker in my practise so that I don't waste time by being indecisive.

Strengths:

1. I am a skilled crafts person. For the most part I can make an image look the way I want it to look and I am consistently surprised at how well my images turn out
2. I also think I have pretty good visual language in that I am capable of translating something that I’m seeing and putting it onto paper, but more than that I am good at communicating an idea through my work. It was one of my goals in the last module to make my work more evocative and I think I’m getting there
3. My way of brainstorming and creating a response to something is exhaustive and I wont stop trialling until I can look at what I’ve made and say that I am fully happy with it. Whether thats a side effect of my perfectionist personality or a sign that I am truly a good illustrator I’m not sure (can it be both?)
4. My sense of humour and generally the way I look at life seem to come through quite well in my practise. I think as my sense of humour is such a huge part of what makes me up as a person its always been something I’m keep for people to see in my work and I think I’m only just getting that right now. As well as this its been nice in the last few briefs to be able to talk about and make art about something that interests me as an individual (the sticker brief) and its made me realise that if I carry on talking about what interests me in my own practise then I will likely always find it easier to carry on being motivated to make work
5. I am a very reflective person, I didn't realise until starting this course how reflective I was. At first I think I was scared of using the blog to be honest about my thoughts and feelings, but after writing my evaluation for narratives where I literally just poured my heart out about how stressful I’d found the project, I can appreciate that it was partly down to how self reflective I’d been that I’d got such  good mark and positive feedback. So now I can see the point in reflection and how it helps me make sense of my own practise and to help others understand the process I went through to get to the outcome

Interdisciplinary

We were set this blog post to do quite a while ago now and its taken me until yesterday to get my thoughts together about what I wanted to say, I've found it really hard to think about something that really influences me. Before I starting doing illustration as a degree, I would always say that art was my hobby and my passion, while other people are in bands and are really good at running I've never been interested or good at any of those things, not that I haven't tried, its just that I'd never enjoyed doing anything quite like I enjoy making pictures. And that was always fine, until we were set a project in A level or a task like this where we had to talk about something we enjoyed doing and all I could say was "art?". I initially thought I could do something with my love of films, or books, but then thought that was too broad, so eventually I started to look into what kind of things I consume, and whether there was any common link between the books I was reading or the blogs I followed. And I realised that one thing that really drives and interests me is strong women.

My parents divorced when I was 10 and since then I've lived most of the time with my mum, and although its not always been easy and we've not always completely got on, now I'm older I am able to see how hard she worked to keep a roof over our heads, keep us fed and well looked after and most of all happy, even if it meant she had to make sacrifices. She raised and cared for me and my brother, even on a single income and working full time, and still managed to go back to study phycology at the open university. She has made and kept some of the most wonderful friends, and even though its been really hard she has set the best example both in terms of career and personal life for me and my brother to follow. When she had surgery at the start of 2016 I was able to be around to look after her while she recovered and it was during this time together that I was finally able to see all the positive things she has done for us, and the effect they've had on our lives. Leaving home after this was exciting but also made me really miss my mum and her positive influence on my life, I went from spending every day with her to seeing her maybe once every 3 months. However whilst I worked in Leeds on my year out I found a job at a shop in town which employed mostly women where I found a little surrogate family of strong women. Now I live in halls I've since made friends with a whole house of strong women. All of them inspire me in a similar way to my mum, they each have things that have held them back in life but hearing how they've over come this and become stronger has made me feel like I could do that too.

Me and my mum, nan, great nan and auntie

In a similar way to this I can definitely say that I seek to consume books, TV, pod casts and music that are either made by or that focus around strong women, not only is it a home comfort to me, but it makes me feel incredibly hopeful to see how many independent and successful women there are in the public eye and creating amazing things now. Although all of these different things have effected me in various different ways, I think the over-arching influence they've had on my practise in particular is that they've made me see that women's issues are still prevalent today, and that means we still need to discuss them. These woman have used their platforms and some have even created their own, brand new platforms just dedicated to talking about this issue. And that's great but it only takes one glance at some of the awful things in the news or in magazines to see that we still need more of this. One phrase that comes to mind is that "If you can't see it, you can't be it", growing up I was never told I could be a film maker or a pilot, in PE we were actively banned from doing any contact sports, whilst the boys played rugby we did exercise tapes indoors. When I wasn't getting the grade I thought I deserved in art at A level, my teacher told me it was because me and my friends were too pre occupied with having boyfriends and doing other "girly things". I was never told I could be a lot of things, and I often wonder if I had been told, whether I'd be doing something different now. But that's the beauty of having so many female creators now, young girls will be able to see women being successful and know that that is a possibility for them too. So I do want to be a successful illustrator for myself and because its what I'm passionate about, but I also want to use it to show that there still are so many issues out there that effect us, and to make those visible and accessible to more people, and hopefully if a young girl saw what I was doing now, she'd know it was possible for her to do it too.


(Some) of the things I consume around strong women:

Abstract: The Art Of Design- Christoph Niemann

Last night I watched Christoph Niemanns episode of the art of design series on Netflix and I've literally not felt so inspired in so long. The series follows all kinds of creators talking to them about their practise and what they find difficult, or fun etc, and I find it so interesting now that Illustration has become my life too, and I do it and practise it and think about it all day to see what other people that do the same thing think about it. 

Theres this great analogy Christoph uses in the episode when he's talking about the fact that when he first started at art school his teacher used to hate the more hyper-realistic stuff he'd done and favour the more abstract and quick ideas with more life to them. He talks about how confusing this was to him initially but then goes on to say that he can now understand that this was because the quicker illustrations were more about the idea behind them and not showing off with the actual craft which is a good thing. Anyway he talks about how he deals with abstractness in his own practise now, where he imagines this kind of 'Abstract-o-meter'. So when he's trying to communicate the idea of something to and audience there the most realistic representation of it that he could show, that would likely repulse people and would just look too realistic and boring, then theres the too abstract version which is just the bare bones of the thing which wouldn't be immediate or interesting for people to look at and they might not 'get it'. But then somewhere in the middle theres this happy medium, where everything is simplified enough that it doesn't look to fussy, but theres still aesthetic details that make it pleasing to the eye. I'm a person that struggles with abstraction and tends to make everything way more complicated than it has to be, but this little idea made it way easier to understand in my head that this is something that even the best people don't just simply 'do', and maybe when I'm designing in the future, I need to draw something once then see which details I could consider removing and still tell the story effectively. 








He also talks about the fact that when he was 11 years old he taught himself to juggle, which was a good skill to have and he enjoyed doing it but the one element of it that upset him was that there was always one ball in the air at any given time. He compares this to life and his practice in the way that sometimes with his job there is things that are way out of his control that he needs to just get around otherwise he won't make deadline. He also actually goes on to make the point that although its scary not always having complete control, its also necessary because whilst you're not planning this really magical thing can happen and it can totally change the outcome from what you'd usually create. I really like this notion and any reminder I can get to just stop planning and worrying and just let my hands make things is good. I need to actively think this more and I think one thing that will help me in this is by pushing myself to try new things that are out of my comfort zone like working with new materials and processes just to take some of the control out of my hands and see where it takes me.





 


Through the whole episode he is talking about how he's wrestling with this design for the New Yorker cover where it got to show a kind of augmented reality and it should also have some 3D aspect to it, so you hover your phone over the image and it shows you something else. He's really upfront about how he's never done anything like this before and he finds it really challenging to have his work looked at from every angle like that, but he's aware that the audience is always changing so to keep it fresh and to stay employed he must always be evolving his practise. Although I think sometimes its really scary as an illustrator to hear things like this, its also so necessary, because I have to admit I'm a creature of habit, and if I'm not forced to change the way I'm doing things I won't, but I can see that it is something that's going to effect me in my future and an aspect of my career that I'll have to consider. That's why I think at this stage of my education I think its very important that I try to push the boat out as much as I can and not get stuck in any one way of doing things, because not only will that stop being interesting very quickly, it'll make it even more daunting when I then try and change and evolve my practice in years to come to suit the evolving illustration community.











I think it deals with the things that we all think about but don't always verbalise, at the risk of complaining or sounding un-grateful? I know if I talk about how I'm feeling out loud then in my mind, what I'm worrying about becomes more of a problem to me than it ever was before, because now its out there in the universe and I'm not the only one who knows about it. But this episode made me realise that I'm not the only illustrator having these thoughts and whats more, they won't automatically go away when I graduate and go on to get jobs etc. These are things that realistically I'll be dealing with through my whole career and I shouldn't shy away from feeling those things, instead I should confront them and the effect they're having on my work, its kind of my job to think deeply about the way I feel when I make certain things because that can impact on the success or failure of it in a way. On a happier, less deep note I want to end by talking about this quote that really resinated with me from the episode:



AHHHHH this just sums it up really doesn't it? I'm beginning to realise more that in a way theres kind of two sides to illustration practise, in that theres a side of me that is the editor that picks and chooses which best bits of work will be given to the public in commissions and then theres the artist side. The one which will always keep developing new ways of doing things and making and crafting, this side is working more for myself and thinking what makes me happy and what I enjoy doing, but thats not to say that these two sides aren't linked. The careless artist side will be trying her best to make new things in my private sketchbooks that then if they turn out well will be fed into the editor side and put out for other people to see and enjoy, they'll become part of my portfolio. Doesn't mean I can carry on experimenting and changing when I've graduated and go into the real world, just means that maybe deadlines aren't the places to try new things last minute, but its my job to make sure that I carry on playing and experimenting for myself and my practise.