Over the course of this year I've created what I think is my best work, and I'm glad I managed to find more applications for it. In the past I might have created work which I thought was strong on its own but I've never felt that I've been able to apply it to different scenarios very easily. My favourite work has always sat in a slightly more fine art side which I always found slightly disconcerting. I felt I wouldn't be able to take in my work in many professional directions, certainly not ones which would make me any money to speak of. This year though I managed to make a fair amount of work I was happy with, which was created with a specific purpose in mind. I still have reservations, and definitely my favourite pieces have been created as part of research/personal projects, but I've managed to reassure myself that editorial work and things like posters are definitely within my grasp.
I've also managed to be much more proactive this year than in the past. I was particularly pleased that I managed to keep working on an extended project (Son House biography) without getting bored or losing momentum, and it is probably the most I've been absorbed by a project that I can remember. I was much less self aware and restrained whilst making it, and whereas I often have tendency to freeze up and agonize over unimportant choices and succumb to option paralysis when I give myself too much freedom, working on this project has helped me loosen up a lot. It also helped me come to quite a concrete decision that limitation is my friend. The less options I give myself, the better the work becomes. I really enjoyed working on irregular/found paper and letting the content of the images dictate their final shapes and dimensions. It really helped me to not to feel hemmed in.
My drawing skills have also improved massively over the course of this year and this has had a big effect on the work I made and want to continue to make. Before I was often using bits of photomontage in my work and even drawing separate pieces in isolation and then collaging my drawings together because I was scared of getting something wrong or ruining something. The fact that I'm more confident with drawing now has developed in conjunction with the idea of limitation, so that now I'm not trying to fit in bits of photograph and photocopied drawings which, despite fitting in my head don't always work out on the paper. I realised I was spending/wasting a lot of time trying to wrangle different elements together. Once I stopped doing that and just started diving in and making work that was self contained, and grew a little more organically, the work improved and everything started flowing much smoother. It also felt a great deal more honest. My approach now feels a lot less contrived.
I still want to try and make more posters because, despite doing a few and being happy with them I feel like there's a lot I could learn still. I particularly want to start studying type a little more, maybe learning some graphic design principles, because I'm still not very confident with it. I would also very much like to learn some more colour theory and start thinking about how to incorporate colour into my work because that's something that I rarely tackle and I think could be a potential game changer somewhere down the line. I also want to try and make a lot more editorial work just to get in the habit of working quickly, not procrastinating and thinking in terms of visual metaphor. I have realised through doing editorial pieces that visual metaphor isn't necessarily the best approach and that tone of voice and representation are just as valid, but I really liked the concept I came up with for the insomnia article. It felt very tidy and satisfying wrapping the article up like that.
I have an interview at the 'Royal drawing School' for the 'Drawing Year' post graduate course they run which would be amazing to get on to. It would be really exciting to have a chance to develop my work through observational drawing practices for a whole year, particularly at this point, when it's become such an integral part of my practice. Other than that though I just really want to make sure that I keep making work and practicing and emailing people, getting my work out there as much a possible.
Monday, 6 May 2019
Reflective Post 4
The last project I undertook this year was a sustained and self directed one which I had actually had ticking away in the back of my mind since the start of the year but only started on in earnest around January. I had originally planned to create an illustrated history of delta blues music and house it in some sort of publication, probably a book, the idea just cam from having started listening to a lot of that music towards the end of summer and making portraits the musicians for something to do when I didn't have any uni work on the go. Once I actually started properly considering the project and how I was going to work on it and quickly decided that I would have to narrow my focus considerably given the time frame I had. I decided I would instead try and create an illustrated biography of one musician from that era, choosing Son House because he had a fairly interesting life, is one of my favourite blues performers and there was a reasonable amount of information available on him to research.
I was a little worried that undertaking such a long project would cause me to get bored but actually I ended up keeping my engagement with the work throughout, and even now am still considering adding more to it or creating a similar body of work based around a different musician. The fact that I was able to divide his life up into scenes and places in a (more or less) chronological fashion meant that I was only focusing on one piece (drawing) at a time so it didn't feel like a large undertaking, it was only towards the end that I realised the amount of work I had actually amassed.
I was conscious to try and reflect the tone and age of his music in the images so worked predominantly on off white paper and newsprint in all analogue media. It was really nice avoiding Photoshop completely, because it kept my options very limited and allowed me to avoid breaking up the flow of the work. I think one of my biggest struggles is avoiding option paralysis, it always ends up clouding my judgement and slowing me down. As a result of just constantly churning stuff out I also improved at drawing a great deal (at least to myself) and became more confident, decisive and less precious. This is now very important to me and an attitude I want to continue to cultivate. I think I often used to fall into the trap of trying to save pieces of work which I didn't think were working by fiddling with them in Photoshop whereas during this project I got myself into the habit of accepting something hadn't worked much sooner and just drawing it again, or working over it/back into it.
I also enjoyed giving myself limitations in the form of colour and also using mainly paper I was able to find around the studio, which led to more interesting textural qualities and also allowed me to let images grow very organically. If, for example I drew right to the edge of a piece of paper but felt the image needed more I started just sticking extra pieces on, or sticking the whole thing onto a new piece of bigger paper. All of this helped to alleviate the pressure of staring at a blank page or planning an image. I was able to work much intuitively which was important to me, because House's music is incredibly intuitive and honest and his delivery is very visceral.
The plan is to exhibit the original drawings for my degree show, but also to house all the work chronologically in some kind of publication, which I think I may try and get printed outside of university, as a sort of artist book. I really need to carefully look into different printing/publication/binding methods carefully before making any decisions. I also haven't decided whether or not I want it to be wordless or not but if I do include words I think it will likely only be quotes from Son House and his song lyrics. I might even try and work with a graphic designer because I'm not really confident with that side of things and don't really trust myself to make it the best it could be on my own.
The title will be "The Devil beats God to you every time."
I was a little worried that undertaking such a long project would cause me to get bored but actually I ended up keeping my engagement with the work throughout, and even now am still considering adding more to it or creating a similar body of work based around a different musician. The fact that I was able to divide his life up into scenes and places in a (more or less) chronological fashion meant that I was only focusing on one piece (drawing) at a time so it didn't feel like a large undertaking, it was only towards the end that I realised the amount of work I had actually amassed.
I was conscious to try and reflect the tone and age of his music in the images so worked predominantly on off white paper and newsprint in all analogue media. It was really nice avoiding Photoshop completely, because it kept my options very limited and allowed me to avoid breaking up the flow of the work. I think one of my biggest struggles is avoiding option paralysis, it always ends up clouding my judgement and slowing me down. As a result of just constantly churning stuff out I also improved at drawing a great deal (at least to myself) and became more confident, decisive and less precious. This is now very important to me and an attitude I want to continue to cultivate. I think I often used to fall into the trap of trying to save pieces of work which I didn't think were working by fiddling with them in Photoshop whereas during this project I got myself into the habit of accepting something hadn't worked much sooner and just drawing it again, or working over it/back into it.
I also enjoyed giving myself limitations in the form of colour and also using mainly paper I was able to find around the studio, which led to more interesting textural qualities and also allowed me to let images grow very organically. If, for example I drew right to the edge of a piece of paper but felt the image needed more I started just sticking extra pieces on, or sticking the whole thing onto a new piece of bigger paper. All of this helped to alleviate the pressure of staring at a blank page or planning an image. I was able to work much intuitively which was important to me, because House's music is incredibly intuitive and honest and his delivery is very visceral.
The title will be "The Devil beats God to you every time."
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| Fourth 7x7 |
Reflective Post 3
I don't really tend to do many editorial briefs and always feel like it's something I should be doing because it's probably the most consistent work one can get as an illustrator and they're also usually very quick turnarounds. I really wanted to put myself under some rigorous time constrictions for a change because I tend to procrastinate and get sick of briefs often because I've stretched them out too long and my brain has half moved into the next thing. Then it always ends up feeling like a chore finishing ideas off.
Gerry Brakus was supposedly coming to give advice/feedback on some responses to articles from 'The New Statesman" which she had sent over as examples for students in second year to work on so I thought I would try a couple of those.
The first article I illustrated was the most satisfying process from beginning to end. This was because the idea popped into my head really quickly and I was subsequently able to execute it quickly without losing momentum or getting bored. It only really took me a day in total. It was for the article "My Eleven Sleepless Nights" which concerned the author's experiences with insomnia.
I had had my bed frame replaced in my house recently and the people who came in and set it up left the instructions in my room, which I decided would be perfect to re appropriate somehow for the article. I thought the image of a deconstructed/incorrectly assembled bed would make a really strong visual metaphor for the content of the article. I actually ended up pushing this idea a little further in conjunction with a quote from the article referring to the bed as a "deconstructed wreck", and the final image was three beds, each a little more broken and "deconstructed looking".
The second article I tackled, "Blonde Ambition" caused me the most difficulty, and I ended up dragging it out and getting sick of it, which is weird because it was really the most simple, all it needed was a portrait of Beck. I ended up with an image of him sat on a fourposter bed which is how the article described him during the interview. I was not particularly happy with this.
For the third article, "Count From The Splash", I took a very literal approach and just illustrated a scene from what was a kind of short story. I ended up procrastinating over this one a fair bit as well but I really liked what I ended up with, which came about through a happy accident on Photoshop where I was just playing around with level and colours sort of arbitrarily. This image did look the the least like my work but I was still really happy with it.
I found it really satisfying to put the finished illustrations into context with the articles, it was a nice way of finishing them them off and was actually pretty helpful in determining their success.
The work I made for the MassArt collaboration was a really nice surprise, in that I actually didn't end up having to compromise as much as I thought I might for a collaborative effort. It was really nice working in a group which comprised of graphic designers and illustrators because it meant I didn't have to worry about any of the things which I don't like doing and was actually pretty free to just get on and crank out a load of images. The tone/theme of the project our group went for was fairly dark as well so it suited how I work a lot of the time. I ended up with quite a lot of drawings I really liked and just tinkered a bit with them in Photoshop to get them to sit a little better in the publication we ended up making.
I also made some drawing on location at Leeds Library as part of this project which I haven't done for ages and really enjoyed. It really made me think it's something I should be doing a lot more of. Drawing on location can be much more applicable and useful to briefs than I previously thought.
Gerry Brakus was supposedly coming to give advice/feedback on some responses to articles from 'The New Statesman" which she had sent over as examples for students in second year to work on so I thought I would try a couple of those.
The first article I illustrated was the most satisfying process from beginning to end. This was because the idea popped into my head really quickly and I was subsequently able to execute it quickly without losing momentum or getting bored. It only really took me a day in total. It was for the article "My Eleven Sleepless Nights" which concerned the author's experiences with insomnia.
I had had my bed frame replaced in my house recently and the people who came in and set it up left the instructions in my room, which I decided would be perfect to re appropriate somehow for the article. I thought the image of a deconstructed/incorrectly assembled bed would make a really strong visual metaphor for the content of the article. I actually ended up pushing this idea a little further in conjunction with a quote from the article referring to the bed as a "deconstructed wreck", and the final image was three beds, each a little more broken and "deconstructed looking".
The second article I tackled, "Blonde Ambition" caused me the most difficulty, and I ended up dragging it out and getting sick of it, which is weird because it was really the most simple, all it needed was a portrait of Beck. I ended up with an image of him sat on a fourposter bed which is how the article described him during the interview. I was not particularly happy with this.
For the third article, "Count From The Splash", I took a very literal approach and just illustrated a scene from what was a kind of short story. I ended up procrastinating over this one a fair bit as well but I really liked what I ended up with, which came about through a happy accident on Photoshop where I was just playing around with level and colours sort of arbitrarily. This image did look the the least like my work but I was still really happy with it.
I found it really satisfying to put the finished illustrations into context with the articles, it was a nice way of finishing them them off and was actually pretty helpful in determining their success.
The work I made for the MassArt collaboration was a really nice surprise, in that I actually didn't end up having to compromise as much as I thought I might for a collaborative effort. It was really nice working in a group which comprised of graphic designers and illustrators because it meant I didn't have to worry about any of the things which I don't like doing and was actually pretty free to just get on and crank out a load of images. The tone/theme of the project our group went for was fairly dark as well so it suited how I work a lot of the time. I ended up with quite a lot of drawings I really liked and just tinkered a bit with them in Photoshop to get them to sit a little better in the publication we ended up making.
I also made some drawing on location at Leeds Library as part of this project which I haven't done for ages and really enjoyed. It really made me think it's something I should be doing a lot more of. Drawing on location can be much more applicable and useful to briefs than I previously thought.
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| Third 7x7 |
Sunday, 5 May 2019
Reflective Post 2
Around the same time I started working on the two posters briefs some fellow students started a sort of creative enterprise/collective called 'Gross studios', and set up an exhibition at Hyde Park Book Club with an open call for people to submit work to it. The theme was 'Gross', and I thought I would submit something as I was still only really taking on short briefs to get myself back into the swing of things and this wasn't anything too serious and was a pretty fun and very open theme.
I quite quickly came up with the idea of making drawings from the warnings on cigarette packets which are obviously fairly 'gross' a lot of the time and which I often think are darkly humorous, particularly the image of a baby with a cigarette in its dummy, and one of a mother blowing cigarette smoke directly into the face of their crying child.
The drawings turned out really well and as I was doing them and I decided I would try and collate them as a big A2 screen print for the exhibition because I never really do any screen printing and then I might have something to sell after the exhibition ended.
Unfortunately I discovered that screen printing really doesn't agree with me and I only really got one serviceable print, which was fine for the exhibition but I was also saddled with a load of unsuccessful ones which I had to cut down to A5 to try and salvage the bits which came through OK.
I did still have a lot of fun making the work though and ended up using one of the images to print some t shirts later on in the year which came out really well.
I entered the Penguin Student Design awards last year and enjoyed making the work for it so I thought I would enter again this year as I do often find that my work sits in a narrative/publication field. After doing a bit of research into each book in the adult fiction category I decided I would find 'Norwegian Wood' by Haruki Murakami the most suited to my work, so I started reading it and making notes of any significant imagery or concepts in it.
The first idea I had was actually based around the first chapter, and it involved me basically creating a sort of abstracted depiction of the landscape described in it. I tried to keep the imagery quite delicate and minimal in keeping with the tone of Murakami's writing.
I had been playing around with some monoprint in some keyholder print sessions and incorporated some of this in to the imagery in this design. For the second design I simplified the design further and used only the monoprinted textures and shapes as I thought they worked so well in the first design.
I really liked this design but it took me a long time to figure out to decide whether i thought this use of type worked. In the end I decided it did and this is the entry I would have submitted if I hadn't stupidly missed the deadline. I had actually carried on making some designs after this one but I started to go off the boil. I was spending to much time on what should have been a fairy short brief I think.
Early on in the year I also entered a competition by SoYoung Magazine, which was simply to make a piece of illustration based around one of a big list of musical artists or their songs. I picked Johnny Cash and made a fairly straightforward portrait which didn't take long and was all analogue, which is how I best like to work. it ended up coming sixth in the competition and the top 10 entries got a shout out on SoYoung's instagram so that was a nice bonus.
I quite quickly came up with the idea of making drawings from the warnings on cigarette packets which are obviously fairly 'gross' a lot of the time and which I often think are darkly humorous, particularly the image of a baby with a cigarette in its dummy, and one of a mother blowing cigarette smoke directly into the face of their crying child.
The drawings turned out really well and as I was doing them and I decided I would try and collate them as a big A2 screen print for the exhibition because I never really do any screen printing and then I might have something to sell after the exhibition ended.
Unfortunately I discovered that screen printing really doesn't agree with me and I only really got one serviceable print, which was fine for the exhibition but I was also saddled with a load of unsuccessful ones which I had to cut down to A5 to try and salvage the bits which came through OK.
I did still have a lot of fun making the work though and ended up using one of the images to print some t shirts later on in the year which came out really well.
I entered the Penguin Student Design awards last year and enjoyed making the work for it so I thought I would enter again this year as I do often find that my work sits in a narrative/publication field. After doing a bit of research into each book in the adult fiction category I decided I would find 'Norwegian Wood' by Haruki Murakami the most suited to my work, so I started reading it and making notes of any significant imagery or concepts in it.
The first idea I had was actually based around the first chapter, and it involved me basically creating a sort of abstracted depiction of the landscape described in it. I tried to keep the imagery quite delicate and minimal in keeping with the tone of Murakami's writing.
I had been playing around with some monoprint in some keyholder print sessions and incorporated some of this in to the imagery in this design. For the second design I simplified the design further and used only the monoprinted textures and shapes as I thought they worked so well in the first design.
I really liked this design but it took me a long time to figure out to decide whether i thought this use of type worked. In the end I decided it did and this is the entry I would have submitted if I hadn't stupidly missed the deadline. I had actually carried on making some designs after this one but I started to go off the boil. I was spending to much time on what should have been a fairy short brief I think.
Early on in the year I also entered a competition by SoYoung Magazine, which was simply to make a piece of illustration based around one of a big list of musical artists or their songs. I picked Johnny Cash and made a fairly straightforward portrait which didn't take long and was all analogue, which is how I best like to work. it ended up coming sixth in the competition and the top 10 entries got a shout out on SoYoung's instagram so that was a nice bonus.
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| Second 7x7 |
Saturday, 4 May 2019
Reflective Post 1
I didn't have much of a plan after handing in COP, so couldn't immediately start getting on with any extended projects. Luckily my friend was putting on a gig and said he needed a poster. I haven't really done many posters and thought t would be a good opportunity to improve at what could potentially become a more commercial application for my practice. In particular I wanted to try and improve my confidence with type, as this is something that I've always struggled to incorporate into my work and usually get really wound up by. He sent me over a picture of an example of a poster he and the event organisers liked, which was largely a floral pattern with birds and skulls in, saying they wanted something like that but "with less skulls". Although having complete creative freedom would have been a great opportunity, I think I actually benefited from being a little tethered as I tend to succumb to option paralysis a lot. This way I didn't have to think too much.
I made three quite careful drawings of birds, loosely linking it to the fact that the gig had three bands playing, as I was coming straight off the back of COP which had got me into making quite detailed, representational drawings. I used photographs of flowers, scanning them into books, although looking back I'm not sure why I didn't draw them as well, I think probably because I didn't have a concrete plan for the visual structure of the poster, only of the elements I wanted to use, and I wanted to get on and make something. I arranged all the elements in Photoshop until I ended up with a composition I felt worked. The poster they had sent me had quite a vintage/retro feel (it was for a Grateful Dead reunion tour) so I took this into account when considering the colour scheme and type. I didn't try anything particularly adventurous with the type, my main concern was clarity,, but I was surprised at how much I liked how it turned out.
they actually asked me to change the colours because they thought that colour scheme wouldn't stand out or be bold enough, and I can see where they're coming from, I also didn't consider how they're computers/printers would be calibrated differently to mine so maybe the colour choice was a little risky. In the end I sent them several alternative colour schemes and they picked one I didn't really like all that much. I was still really happy with what I created for this though, in a pretty short space of time.
Around the same time as this, I came across a competition brief from a band called 'Shadowlark' who wanted a poster designing. They provided a link to a Google Drive folder with a selection of examples of things they like, and although none of it really fell into my wheelhouse I thought I'd have a crack anyway as I had enjoyed doing the last one so much.
I took a very different approach to the 'Shadowlark' poster and actually re purposed some photography from my COP project, just playing around with colours and layering things in Photoshop. They were after a fairly clean, minimal look so I tried to take that approach. I was actually pretty happy with what I came out with although I don't feel much of it was particularly exciting or close to what I usually make. I ended up with a few that I quite liked but didn't really have a clear favourite.
Overall, the posters I made at the start of the year were not my favourite pieces of work, but I had fun making them and they were a little out of my comfort zone as well, particularly the type element which I think I managed to incorporate successfully in most instances. They also got me back into the swing of things nicely without eating up too much time.
I made three quite careful drawings of birds, loosely linking it to the fact that the gig had three bands playing, as I was coming straight off the back of COP which had got me into making quite detailed, representational drawings. I used photographs of flowers, scanning them into books, although looking back I'm not sure why I didn't draw them as well, I think probably because I didn't have a concrete plan for the visual structure of the poster, only of the elements I wanted to use, and I wanted to get on and make something. I arranged all the elements in Photoshop until I ended up with a composition I felt worked. The poster they had sent me had quite a vintage/retro feel (it was for a Grateful Dead reunion tour) so I took this into account when considering the colour scheme and type. I didn't try anything particularly adventurous with the type, my main concern was clarity,, but I was surprised at how much I liked how it turned out.
they actually asked me to change the colours because they thought that colour scheme wouldn't stand out or be bold enough, and I can see where they're coming from, I also didn't consider how they're computers/printers would be calibrated differently to mine so maybe the colour choice was a little risky. In the end I sent them several alternative colour schemes and they picked one I didn't really like all that much. I was still really happy with what I created for this though, in a pretty short space of time.
Around the same time as this, I came across a competition brief from a band called 'Shadowlark' who wanted a poster designing. They provided a link to a Google Drive folder with a selection of examples of things they like, and although none of it really fell into my wheelhouse I thought I'd have a crack anyway as I had enjoyed doing the last one so much.
I took a very different approach to the 'Shadowlark' poster and actually re purposed some photography from my COP project, just playing around with colours and layering things in Photoshop. They were after a fairly clean, minimal look so I tried to take that approach. I was actually pretty happy with what I came out with although I don't feel much of it was particularly exciting or close to what I usually make. I ended up with a few that I quite liked but didn't really have a clear favourite.
Overall, the posters I made at the start of the year were not my favourite pieces of work, but I had fun making them and they were a little out of my comfort zone as well, particularly the type element which I think I managed to incorporate successfully in most instances. They also got me back into the swing of things nicely without eating up too much time.
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| First 7x7 |
Thursday, 2 May 2019
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