Personal and Professional Practice: October 2013

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

what is illustration part 1

We made a list of criteria which we feel is involved a lot in illustration, we then had to choose five of the points and find five illustrations that relate to each of the criteria.

TONE OF VOICE

Lorenzo Mattotti
The monotone in this image, really adds to the tone of voice. The big section of black, and long outstretched shadows gives a sinister, scary feel to it.

Bill Bragg

Kathe Kolwitz

Sam Bevington

Vintage Bournemouth Travel Poster by LMS

USE OF MEDIA AND METHOD OF PRODUCTION

Jonathan Ashworth 'Too Early' - woodcut

Edouard Baribeaud 'Au Pavillion des Lauriers' only two colours
Only two colours have been used for this, but he has managed to create such a variety of different tones using varying line marks and density of the ink.

Illustrations for a children's book published by Icinori - screen prints

Ana Juan 'Dawn over lower Manhattan' - paint and print

Linda Linko 'Kaiku' - pen, paint, collage, print

Philip Igumnov (Woodcum) - collage, print

ATTENTION TO DETAIL/SKILL/COMPLEXITY

Oliver Zwink

Lucinda Rogers
the use of different line thickness means that where there are thick lines, it gives a sense of heaviness to the object - very effective.

Ernst Haeckel

Nigel Peake

Michael Landy

NARRATIVE/SEQUENTIAL IMAGERY

Bill Bragg
I really like Bill Bragg's work, I am not usually into comics but his are very intriguing, and the lack of words I think advantages it as you're forced to understand and follow the images, which carry such atmosphere about them.

Tom Gauld

Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Tove Jansson - Moomin

AUDIENCE SPECIFIC/ENGAGEMENT/INTERACTION

'Horrible Histories' book series

Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr Seuss)
His work is very much aimed at children, though his bright colours, surreal worlds and characters.

Noma Bar

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

why am i here? what do i want to learn?

5 reasons I chose to study on this programme:
- I love art and drawing and felt this course would develop this passion into a profession
- I don't know much about the profession of illustration, and would like to know more about it
- I have been up to Leeds a few times and really love the city, I think the architecture here is really diverse and interesting, and there are lots of galleries to go to - so there is lots of forms of inspiration
- all the facilities at LCA looked really up to date and exciting. I haven't had much experience with printing facilities, so can't wait to try
- I like the fact that we will be the first year on this course, we haven't got anything to try and live up to, we get to set the bar which I think is really exciting and challenging.

5 things I want to learn on my time here:
- I want to learn where I stand as an illustrator, as I feel I definitely don't have a set style yet and want to experiment a lot throughout the year, but I want to have an idea of what direction of illustration I should go down; editorial, reportage etc.
- I want to try out all the printing facilities, I love the aesthetic of screen printing, mono printing etc. and would like to try them out
- I very vaguely used photoshop during my foundation just to fix up bits of work but I would like to be confident working digitally. Though I am not very interested in digital illustration, I want to know how certain programmes can benefit my analogue work
- I want to learn about illustration as a profession, I know very little about it - how people get into it, what the job entails, how different illustrators work

5 skills that are my strengths:
- I feel I am good at analysing and criticising my work, seeing what is wrong and working out how to make it better, I enjoy keeping blogs/journals where I can document how I'm working because I feel it helps me think better about what I need to do
- I can paint considerably well, I really enjoyed fine art at school, doing big oil paintings etc. and feel it has given me a good sense of colour and how to mix colours well
- I think I use my sketchbook well, I often need to draw things multiple times before they start to look good, I need my sketchbook so to gain an understanding of my subject matter before I can start to make finished pieces
- I like research. I loved English at school where I could really analyse books and learn the meaning behind the story. And I enjoy doing that with art, I find art pieces become so much more interesting to me once I know the reasons behind them. I find that while doing projects as well, I become much more motivated and intrigued once I gain an understanding of it

5 things I want to improve:
- I am quite a slow worker, and often find myself doing really controlled, detailed pieces that take hours to finish. So I want to be able to create fast development work, and not be too concerned with how it looks at the beginning of a project
- my time management during my foundation was sometimes an issue, as I often misjudged how long something would take me, or I would spend too long developing and not enough on the final image. So that will hopefully improve over the year
- I want to become more confident talking in front of a group, I've never been a very good public speaker but I know it's something I will have to do throughout my life so I need to be comfortable with it
- the amount of personal work I do, I used to draw all the time for fun but my foundation course was so intense, I found I didn't have much time for it, I did a bit over summer but want to make an effort to make more time for my own work

5 ways in which I will evaluate my progress:
- I will continue to update this blog regularly, posting my work and evaluating it myself, saying what I want to do next, and where I can improve
- take on board constructive criticism from other illustrators in the group
- keep all the forms from tutorials, and take note of any criticism/advice my tutors give
- regularly look back on work I have done - in sketchbooks and on my blog, to see past ideas, or where things did or did't work in the past
- take note of everything said in progress/final critiques throughout the year

Sunday, 20 October 2013

blog group work

We were put into our blog groups and came up with 5 words that we think accurately define our idea of illustration. We each had to then go off and find images that relate to each word:

FUN/PLAYFUL