Presntation script pdf

For me, my second year of studying illustration has been all about finding myself as a practitioner. At the beginning of the year I was feeling very unhappy with my work and didn’t know how to change it. It got so bad that around Christmas time I was seriously considering leaving university altogether or perhaps transferring elsewhere to study fine art, as I prefer to make detailed drawings and paintings and figured I would fit in better in the fine art world. This all changed once I spoke to my tutors about how I prefer painting and drawing in a more detailed way, and they told me it was fine and there was room on our course for all sorts of different work. This made me feel a lot more at home and more comfortable about my work so my aim since then has been to make the work I want to make, and to try and enjoy second year as much as I could. This being said, I do like the things I used to make and I enjoy the colour and playfulness of what I did before, however when I make this sort of thing, I look at it and I know I am capable of so much more, cute, colourful, happy, fun stuff just isn’t me. Since finding out that it is okay for me to work in a way I feel happy working I have tried my best to incorporate more detailed work in my modules, although this has been hard due to the narrow time frames I have had to work on my briefs.

I found 504 quite a hard module as it was all print and shape based, 2 things I don’t enjoy. Print is not one of my strengths and I found this module rather boring as we had been working on it through the summer, right through to January. My final outcomes aren’t on here as I am not happy with them in the slightest. I was working on 504 around the time when I felt the worst I did about my work and being at university and I think it shows in my work as it all looks very half arsed in my opinion. I don’t enjoy many printing methods apart from screen print, but I limited myself to just doing lino print as I am too scared to go to the print room and work around other people. This sounds stupid but I am autistic and I struggle with social interaction so I decided to work in a way that I am comfortable working and settled on lino printing, since I could do this in the safety of my own bedroom. I also found making a sting quite challenging as I am not great at using digital software as I have never used Photoshop prior to coming to Leeds College of Art, let alone after affects. After this module I can safely say I don’t plan on doing much or any print based work in the future as it is definitely not for me.

Responsive has probably been my favourite module of second year. It has given me the opportunity to work in a variety of different ways and has forced me out of my comfort zone as I am not the type of person who would ever take part in a competition brief as I would probably tell myself there is no reason to as I wouldn’t win anyway. The responsive module has changed this however, as I found it rather rewarding to work on these competition briefs once id gotten into them, as I enjoyed coming up with advertisements and book covers whilst taking the brief into account and considering tone of voice and the target audience among other things. At the beginning I was worried about responsive and didn’t really want to take part in any of the competitions as most of them didn’t appeal to me or asked for digital work, which I am not at all capable of. I was glad to find the Thirsty Planet brief as it was very open and gave me a lot of freedom to create whatever I wanted and I enjoyed making work for this brief a lot. I also enjoyed designing a cover for ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ as part of the Penguin Book Award because I had a lot of fun researching different themes and motifs to form the base of my overall design. Although I enjoyed responsive, I am not sure if I would ever take part in these sort of competition briefs again as I do prefer just doing my own thing and having more time to spend on things.

My favourite brief for responsive was ‘illustration 12”’. I was excited about this brief from the off as I am very into music and couldn’t wait to start designing 12 inch covers and it was an even bigger bonus when some of my favourite bands were on the list. I think this brief has helped me feel a lot better about my work as it was very open and gave me the opportunity to draw or make whatever I wanted, using whatever medium I wanted. I often feel very frustrated by the fact that my work doesn’t flow or have a consistent visual signature at all and I am constantly trying to combat this and I feel like illustration 12 definitely helped with this. Two of the covers I made were very detailed and showed my skills for detailed portrait drawing and oil painting well. I am glad that I had the opportunity to make work for this brief as it was really refreshing to make something I am happy with and work in a way I actually enjoy, such as pencil drawing and oil painting. Responsive has made me realise that in the future I would like to be mainly a painter, perhaps a painter of portraits, and do commissions for people or maybe even companies.

Collaborative was a hard task for me. Every since discovering during first year that we had to collaborate in second year, I have been worried about it. As I said before, social interaction is an extremely hard thing for me and I don’t really enjoy or find meeting new people easy. As we were in control of finding our own groups to work with for this task, for me, this simply didn’t happen. At one point I very nearly decided not to bother with collaborative practice and decided that for me it would be easier to just fail and resubmit than struggle to find a group. It was only through the help of a friend that I ended up doing collaborative in the end. For our collaborative project we worked on the UK Greetings brief and it was quite fun to make work with another person and consider how our styles would compliment or clash with one another. Because I worked with someone I knew fairly well I don’t think I got the proper collaborative experience but I was glad of that, as it would have probably been hard for everyone in my group to work with me as I am not the best when it comes to team work. On the back of this, would like to try collaborating again but I think I would like to stick to just working with one other person as I feel it is much simpler to sort things out between two, rather than a large group.

One of the best things about second year has been making mock-ups for responsive and for 505. I have really enjoyed considering how my work would fit on different products or within different environments as this was something I have never really thought about before. It has been really fun to make mock-ups and actually see my work on a product like a bag or on a billboard in the middle of a city and because we have had to do this, I am definitely considering making designs I can then get printed onto different products over the summer. Doing this has definitely opened my mind to the possibility of applying my work to things and I am excited to see what I can do in the future. Making mock-ups for the responsive and 505 modules has been a huge benefit to my professional practice as it has made me think about how I could potentially promote my work as well as the possibility of applying my work to products and sell via an online store like Etsy or even a personal website. I am looking forward to the summer and life after university as I can’t wait to make and sell different products with my work on and so far I have considered making tote bags, badges, zines, clothing and posters.

Overall I feel like second year has had a lot of ups and downs but has made me want to improve on lots of things and carry on until I am where I want to be with my work. I feel like I have learnt a lot about myself and my practice and because of modules like responsive, I have now figured out a rough idea of what I would like to do as a professional, which is to become a painter, taking commissions, from individual clients and companies, hopefully gaining enough commissions to make a living from! Up until second year I had no idea what I wanted to do after university and I am pleased that this year has helped me figure that out, as well as teaching me useful ways of promoting my work and selling it. I am looking forward to what third year has in store and am determined to carry on developing my visual signature and pushing myself as much as I can in the meantime. For summer I have plans for a quite a number of paintings and I aim to try working on different materials and am already set on having a go with oil on wood panel. I am also thinking about opening an online store and having my work printed onto postcards, posters and maybe even bags or clothing that I can hopefully sell and make a bit of extra money from. To sum up, second year has been tough but definitely worth it for the amount I have learnt about both my personal and future professional practice.