Illustration is an incredibly broad subject area, this unit has allowed me to take a more in-depth look into specific areas, and how practice changes between each area. I have discovered that there are different considerations to be made for each sector. For the Editorial project, I initially handed in a piece that did not consider the purpose of a newspaper and how the audience were going to respond to such a complex piece. It is only upon reflection of others work and how successful their outcomes have been, that I have been able to develop my illustration, with a change in media and focus, into a simplified more professional response.
Learning from my peers has been an important part to this unit. Everyone has had a different experience of the Art and Design world so far and each pupil seems to have their own technique and working method. I have found working along side my peers in the studio has been a vital aspect for my learning. I have found inspiration within other people’s work to try new things and approach medias in new ways. Having looked into other people’s sketchbooks, I have discovered that many of my peers do not cover their initial research as thoroughly as I do which gives them a lot more time to spend on their final pieces. I attempted this style of working on the Narrative project. I completed some research into Greek illustration and artists which had covered similar narratives, I then started on my final piece and developed composition and media as I went along. The result was surprisingly effective, I was able to produce a professional looking response and experiment with composition and media during the making process rather than separately. I have been surprised as to how the competition aspect of comparing our work has spurred me on to try and test my boundaries and discover new techniques.
Prior to the Narrative Project I had not ever used photoshop before. I had been intimidated by it in the past, but I found myself learning more about it from others in the studio and decided to give it a go. Not only did I complete the Narrative project to a professional standard but I returned to the Editorial Project and remade the Illustration for that. I have also explored collage and sewing into my work, which I feel produces a sense of craft into my work making it seem more professional. I like the handcrafted aspect to the work. I have mixed sewing with photoshop in the Narrative project which relates the work back to its roots, when computers did not exist. I have tried to experiment with my drawing style aswell. When I went out drawing for the Reportage project, I started drawing fish in really quick one-line sketches because they were moving so quickly. I have experimented with this technique further and tried to expand it, to not just animals but humans and buildings. It seems to add a sense of movement and energy to a drawing, hence why it seems to work more effectively on animals than buildings.
I have really enjoyed researching a broad variety of artists for these three projects all specialising in different areas, but all still useful references from every form of art. I have researched through books, the internet, visiting galleries and Zine sales and attending talks. I found the most useful was attending talks and visiting the Zine shop I found when I went to London. I was able to connect with the work more when I was able to interact with it or the artist. I was able to connect when listening to Marcus Oakley talk about how much he enjoyed producing art; I had researched his work before the talk and found it interesting but had not been inspired until I heard his attitude towards his work. Rummaging through the Zines also enabled me to broaden my views even further to the extent of Illustration. After taking the editorial brief quite seriously I had more fun playing around with a sense of humour in the Reportage project. The Zine shop allowed me to expand my ideas on how to portray humour through drawings and also how text can anchor a piece of work in a positive manner in order to guide this comedy. I found browsing on the internet for artists tedious and uninspirational. I was not able to interact with the art in the same way.
Overall, I have really enjoyed this unit and feel I have successfully achieved my goal of testing my boundaries to an extent. It has taken me some time to settle into a working pattern and creative thinking and would like to produce more radical responses to the next projects. However, I feel I have managed to further my knowledge of photoshop and have realised that a quicker response may produce more effective results depending on the brief.
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