Project Report: Sophie Poole - SP256339 BA (HONS) ILLUSTRATION LEVEL 5 OUIL505 Applied Illustration Studio Brief 3
PROPOSAL
Project Rationale: I intend to create work based on people’s experiences, I’m interested in exploring how to capture raw emotion through images. I also want to create a reaction to my images, and combine them with my sense of humour. GENERAL THEMES: The mundane everyday The ignored members/parts of society People’s stories, creating narrative SPECIFIC SUBJECTS: Society Emotion Narrative Humour
CREATIVE SKILLS I intend to develop my general drawing skills as this sort of illustration work requires quick on the stop drawing. With ink I think it will be possible, as well as keeping my expressive tone of voice. I will need to develop my observational drawing skills and to do this I will be drawing from life and spending time outside of the studio in the real world. This will extend my practice in terms of creating atmosphere and emotion in my images. I also intend to develop how I work with text in my images, I plan on taking quotes I hear everyday and using them in my illustrations. KEY TEXTS.
SPECIFIC DISCIPLINARY AREA: Editorial and Reportage AUDIENCE/CONTEXTS: Adult audience
Left to Right - The Cultural Shift From Words to Pictures Problem Solved - A Primer in Design and Communication It’s Nice That Travelling Man - Graphic Novels/Travelogues Historical documentary drawing/illustrations
PRODUCTION / Distribution Methods: Brush pen/Ink I intend to create a zine of my drawings with a narrative.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
CONTEXTUAL REFERENCES
This module, for me, will be practice driven, I will be exploring the world through drawing. I plan on drawing everyday in order to extend my skills in observational and documentary drawing.
ILLUSTRATORS / DESIGNERS / STUDIOS: Lucinda Rogers - Reportage George Butler - Reportage Nina Cosford - Reportage Greg Betza - Reportage Mike Godwin - Monoprint Elanor Spalding - Monoprint Joe Sacco - Reportage Paul Davis David Shrigley
RESEARCH
Initially I didn't know where to go with this module, however I knew I wanted to focus on Editorial & Reportage, mainly reportage. I looked at Lucinda Rogers, George Butler etc and began thinking about what I could do that was similar. This was a bad move as I ended up trying to document as they do which isn’t the direction I wanted to take. My original proposal was to capture everyday mundanity, the parts of your day that get ignored, however to get started I just drew things around me such as my place of work, my family etc which got very boring very quickly. I revisited my proposal and did more research, especially into David Shrigley and Paul Davis, realising that reportage can be anything that’s documentary and that my initial idea of looking at mundanity was still valid.
INITIAL IDEAS
As mentioned before I began this module by drawing everything around me, this wasn’t successful at all because there was no concept to what I was doing and there was no point to it. I think what I struggled with initially was the idea of what reportage was and perhaps needed to do more research at the start of the module rather than having to revisit it midway. I also think that due to a lack of inspiration and concept my drawings are weak and there isn’t much experimentation to them at all, I was drawing for the sake of doing something and felt very lost. I also hadn’t really gained much information to work with which is what reportage is all about really.
DEVELOPMENT AND KEY CHANGING POINTS.
I revisited my initial proposal and decided to really focus in on the mundane element which is what I had written down as a proposed theme in my work for this module. At this point in the module I needed to revisit my research as I mentioned before. This time I looked at David Shrigley and Paul Davis, this informed the way I’ve been working with combinations of image and text and has helped me to strengthen that specific way of working. This was a key changing point for me in the module as I finally knew what I wanted to focus on. I decided that I would apply my sense of humour and personality to a zine of mundane conversations. For me this changing point made the module as a whole a lot less daunting and a lot more fun as its what I’m interested in. I began experimenting a lot more with media and perhaps spent a little too long doing so. I collected the quotes as I went along, listening to boring conversations. I eventually decided that I would go with black ink and water because the images looked boring and mundane which fitted perfectly with my theme. I was also able to be expressive and loose with ink and I’m comfortable working with it, especially with text as it’s something I’ve explored in previous modules, so I was working to my strengths.
FINAL PRODUCT
My final product is a zine that consists of 20 pages including the front and back cover. I’m really proud of my final zine as it follows my chosen theme of mundanity perfectly. However I was a bit disappointed with my final images for this as they’re very clean compared to how I usually work. I think the cause of this is that I spent a lot of time planning out the images along with the text and so drew them out a fair few times meaning that the end result would be a very clean, practiced version and doesn’t have the immediacy that my work usually has. Saying that, I also think that the lack of expression in the images fits the mundane theme really well and adds a lot to the humour of the whole thing. In my final feedback from my peers I received a lot of positivity regarding the humour and the combination of text and image which I’m pleased about as I wanted to strengthen those elements of my work.
APPLICATIONS
My proposed applications are mainly student orientated as the particular zine I created for the module was about the mundanity of student life, however this left me with the flexibility to propose zines that focus on other mundane aspects of everyone’s life, making them very relatable. I have also proposed tote bags, badges, T-shirts and a website/web comic. The tote bags,T-shirts and badges are very popular with students and the idea is flexible allowing for other future applications with the other proposed zines. In terms of the web comic I am proposing that I would post a new illustration each day under the theme of mundanity based around a conversation I have heard. With this range of applications it gives my illustrations flexibility and allows me to continue this brief onwards in the future.
SUMMATIVE EVALUATION
Sophie Poole Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION Level: 05 OUIL505 Applied Illustration Throughout this module I have developed a lot of skills. I have strengthened my skills in documentary drawing a lot which has meant that I’m able to create images fast but still with a lot of character. I have also experimented more with image and text in this module which is something I wanted to focus on for a while and I’m pleased with how much I’ve improved in that department. My skills in creating books/ zines have also improved and I can see my work gradually looking at lot more professional than it has in the past. Although it took a big chunk out of my time frame, I focussed a lot on experimentation in this module as I got a little lost in the beginning of it and had to go back to square one in my sketchbook. However I’m glad that this happened as it has proved to me that I need a strong concept before I can start a brief otherwise a lot of time gets lost along the way. In terms of what has informed this module, a lot of it has been documentary as I’m focussing more on reportage illustration. This meant that it was a very self directed brief and I had a lot of research to gather in order for it to be a successful project. I’ve learnt a lot about reportage illustration itself from working on this module. In the beginning I looked at people like Lucinda Rogers and George Butler and so was under the impression that my work had to be something like theirs. This wasn’t what I was interested in which is why I was lost in the beginning. Regrettably I spent a lot of time being lost and not enough time solving the problem. When I started to look at what I was actually interested in and what I had initially proposed the module picked up a lot for me and started finally moving forwards. In terms of strengths I think that the professional look to my final zine and design boards is something I’m quite proud of as in the past my work hasn’t looked as clean and professional as it could have. Another strength of this module for me has been research, although I started off on the wrong path I picked it back up again nicely and managed to pull it all together successfully and to a high standard. Research has been an important element to this module for me as I had a lot of content to gather in order to make my final product. In terms of weaknesses I think that my final images were perhaps to clean for my liking as I am used to working in a more expressive way and much more fluid, loose way which is why I chose to use ink in the first place. I spent a lot of time perfecting the final images which I shouldn’t have done as the immediacy of my work is what I think works for me and my tone of voice. However, after reflecting on this I do think that the cleanness of the images fits the mundane tone perfectly as they are almost boring looking compared to my usual work. They lack a lot of expression which was unintentional but has worked for me.
Surprisingly I have managed my time pretty well during this module, taking into consideration my change of plans midway through it I think that I kept on track of both my work load and my blog posts. I made a time plan for this module after I had changed my ideas because it panicked me that I had only just found a solid concept, however this obviously helped me and I plan on using time plans a lot more in future modules to make sure that I have a schedule to follow and that I don’t get stressed out as with previous modules.