Reflection 3

 I have begun to try and get stuck into slightly longer projects. My most recent 7x7 is probably one of my favourite pieces of work that I’ve made. I am trying to work with more restrictive colour schemes in order to make the work more easily transferable to screenprint, risograph etc.

This recent project is a personal passion project that I’ve had in the back of my mind for years. About 5 years ago I wrote a short story, and feel like extended practice is a good time for me to try and illustrate it. The 7x7 is part of the front page illustration for my publication. The story itself is about 900 words long, and I have tried to illustrate some of the main points within the story. This is yet more character-based work, but I think that the illustrations within this publication are some of my strongest work. I’m really pleased with the sense of humour and tone of voice that comes across within this project, it’s exactly the sort of feel that I would like my work to have.

I’m also really enjoying the new process I have been using to create work recently – using pen and ink and then a limited colour scheme and bitmap textures. I find that this work looks quite bold and eye-catching, and it’s quite quick to create making it a very practical process to use.

For a few years, I have also really wanted to risograph my own publication, and this feels like the perfect project for it. It’s a short publication, and the limited colour scheme lends itself to a printing process like risograph. However, I have found it incredibly difficult to balance the illustration style with the graphic design side of the publication, like the font and layout. I have experimented with a few different ways of presenting it all together, but if I am going to commit to printing out quite a few of these publications I want it to look as good as I possibly can. I think I will need to get the opinion of someone from graphic design.

Aside from this publication project, I have just been doing a couple of other smaller projects. I did a poster design for an upcoming print fair that me and Katie are hosting, and I also printed some t-shirts using a similar design. I used the same character for both, and this has been a fun exercise in branding. I think it was quite effective, as it was instantly recognizable as being part of the same event.

I also did a New Statesman editorial for the article about Beck. For this I chose to experiment a bit with monoprint and monotype, because I had never properly explored this before. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to try something that wasn’t character based. I’m actually really pleased with the result, but I also printed the designs as t-shirts and I think this was probably a more appropriate outcome. I imagine for the editorial they would probably have preferred something character-based, or more literal.

3rd 7x7

Reflection 2

Since my last reflection, I have predominately been focused on the COP deadline so there hasn’t been a huge amount of progress with my extended practice work. This was to be expected though and now I can focus most of my time on this module. I have done a couple more smaller projects plus some idea planning for a few more to begin soon. The first project was for an exhibition at North Bar, and this is my 2^nd 7x7. The exhibition was up during the superbowl, and the brief was to create a beer label inspired by a football team. I got given the Denver Broncos. This was another fun project because again, it was on a subject I didn’t know anything about. I did some research into the football team and also on the Denver area. I tried a few things out but in the end, I decided to take the most inspiration from the Denver Broncos logo. Since my character-based work is generally the most successful, I chose to go down that route for this brief. I reimagined the white horse logo as a more playful character, and used the colour scheme of the logo as well for the rest of the design. Overall I’m quite pleased with the outcome of this project, I’m not sure what else I could have done that would have worked better with my personal way of working. I also really enjoyed this project because I just worked on it solidly for a couple of days, and this showed me that I could probably work quite well in this way post-graduation – maybe for editorial or other projects with a quick turnaround time.

I have also recently made a video. I wanted to learn how to use premiere pro, so I took footage from a recent snowboarding holiday with my family and tried to recreate a sort of 90s style, funny snowboarding video. I had a huge amount of fun with the project, and I think it was exciting to use a different medium to explore narrative. It was a steep learning curve since I had never used the program before, but I’m really pleased with the outcome and it is pretty much exactly what I was going for. While this isn’t necessarily illustration, I think being able to use premiere pro could be a valuable skill for the future. Me and Katie Day are beginning to establish our studio a little more, and if we put more events on in the future it’ll be really good to be able to create videos after the event to help promote more things in the future.

2nd 7x7

Reflection 1

So far this module I have been mostly focusing on smaller projects and just having a lot of fun with them. I’ve been producing a lot of work for the upcoming exhibition, such as the paintings I’ve been doing and some linoprints etc. I’ve also done a large scale interactive painting, which people put their head in.

I have mostly just been experimenting with a variety of different processes and approaches to smaller projects so far. For example I’ve been doing some painting, some short comics (based on Wallace and gromit), some 3D work, and some work for other exhibitions.

I have been enjoying these projects because they’ve been quite short projects but there hasn’t been too much time pressure, which has given me the opportunity to experiment with some different approaches. For example, my first 7x7 for this module is for my So Young Magazine submission. The brief was quite loose, we were just given a list of artists and bands and you could create a piece of work inspired by them or their music, or a line from a song etc. I chose Mark E. Smith because I didn’t know much about him so it gave me the opportunity to do some research into his music and what he was like as a person. This was a lot of fun, and I ended up combining linoprint with some analogue and digital techniques to create the final product. I’m really pleased with the outcome because it’s not a way I usually work but I think it’s very effective for the subject matter.

The Wallace and Gromit ‘parody’ work that I’ve been doing has also been a lot of fun – it has allowed me to explore the dark but humourous tone of voice that I have been hoping to achieve, and has also allowed me to focus some work on characters and on narrative. This is something I’d like to explore further through the module, however I don’t know how far I could take this project. It would be a lot of fun to do a lot of short one-page comics and then possibly collate this into a publication or something along those lines, but on the other hand I would prefer to focus my time on creating my own characters and maybe some longer stories. I will have to see how this progresses.

1st 7x7

Statement of Intent

I intend to continue with a similar tone of voice that has been developing over the first two years of the course. I would like humour to generally be a continuous theme, regardless of the subject matter. I also like that some of my work has a dark undertone to it sometimes, and this is something that I would like to continue to explore. I think the character-driven work is the best way to get humour across, because of the facial expressions used. However, I would like to try and branch out a bit more than purely character-based work to add a little more variety to my portfolio.

In terms of themes and subjects I would like to explore, I am still very interested in comics and narrative so this is something I am going to try and focus on during this module. Narrative is very important to me, whether it’s telling a story over a few panels in a comic or if it is just within one image. I really like doing work that is based on real life but my work exaggerates or embellishes it.

I’m unsure on the audience I would like for my work. I’m very interested in the possibility of editorial work, and I really enjoyed the editorial project from second year. In that case, I think the audience would probably be politically-minded people who read newspapers/online articles. This works with my character-driven work and would also give me the opportunity to explore gifs a little further because I had a lot of fun with that last year. For my more personal work, I think the audience is a little less clear. It would probably just be people with a similar sense of humour to me.

I have a few goals and ambitions for this year. I am working towards an exhibition next month, which I am putting on with some other people from the course. This will give me the opportunity to think about curating, and also events management. If it’s successful I’d like to try and put on some more exhibitions throughout the year. I would also like to try and produce a publication of some sort this year – whether it’s a zine, comic or illustrated story.

Since I enjoyed linoprint so much during second year, I want to continue this even more in third year. I would however like to try and explore some more printing processes like screenprinting and monoprint while I still have access to the resources. I really enjoy the unexpected results of combining processes too, so I’d like that to be a focus during this module as well.

Who Am I Presentation? slideshow

Who Am I? Presentation

Script:

SLIDE 1:

The main processes I am interested in tend to be print-based, specifically linoprint. However, I would like to try more screenprinting this year. Another thing I really enjoy doing is combining processes within my work to give them a different feel – for example on the Donald Trump gif I began with a linoprint and then added painted textures into it and animated it. This is another reason I’d like to experiment more with screenprinting because I think this would open up more opportunities to combine processes in interesting ways.

SLIDE 2:

In terms of themes across the content of my work, I tend to do a lot of character-based stuff. This isn’t really intentional but I want my work to have a certain kind of humour to it which is easier to achieve with facial expressions. This is something I’d like to push further this year, both doing more character-based work but also figure out how to make scenes funnier. I also really like the use of depth and perspective in images and this is something I always try to exaggerate but I need to work harder on it.

SLIDE 3:

Sophy Hollington is one of my favourite artists at the moment because I love her linoprints so much. I discovered her work last year when I was first properly getting into linoprint. I really like her use of the medium of lino to create contrast and texture, and also the way she combines processes within her work – eg colouring digitally and animating. I also really like her use of type

SLIDE 4:

Ines Estrada has been one of my favourite artists for a few years. I like her work for its humour and narrative, and the surrealness to a lot of her work. I also really admire her practice. She works as a freelance illustrator creating her own comics and prints etc to sell and she also does a lot of event posters. This is the sort of route I’d really like to go down within my own practice and this is why I take a lot of inspiration from her.

SLIDE 5:

I chose Yayoi Kusama because of her use of colour, and her approach to spaces when she’s displaying work. I want to think about exhibitions and the use of space a lot more this year because it’s the subject of my cop work and I find it really interesting.

SLIDE 6:

This is my most successful work from first year. I think I’m pleased with this because it has the sort of funny tone of voice I’d like my work to have, and it combines processes in a way that I think is quite successful.

SLIDE 7:

These are two of the most successful pieces from second year. The first is probably my favourite piece of work I’ve ever produced. This is because it combines everything I really want to include in my work. The use of print processes, character-driven work and humour. I’m really pleased with the depth and perspective in this too.

These are both images I’ve already included but I’m really pleased with this second image for the same reasons. I’d like to try out some more animated stuff this year.

SLIDE 8:

I’ve included both of these pieces of work as failures from second year. This first I think could’ve been good but I didn’t leave myself enough time to properly develop the idea or to print it.

The second was something I enjoyed making, but in retrospect linoprint just isn’t an appropriate process to use for comics and it could’ve been a more effective piece of work if I’d made it a different way.

SLIDE 9:

I wasn’t really sure what to include in this slide because I think these are probably the same external influences everyone else has but these are all things that I think tend to inform my work. Books, films, music and travelling etc.

SLIDE 10:

I think these images represent my current aspirations because I want to continue to experiment with processes and funny, character-driven work. This is also stuff I’ve been producing for an exhibition which I’ve been really enjoying working on and this is something I want to do more of in the future.