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.