#reflectivereport

During a workshop for my Variations group, Man v Rat, I had brought in all the required materials and research items, examples spot illustrations, a simple gif that I’d made. But only a couple of other people had done that as well, because of this I had to show my stuff in front of the group and show everyone how I animated my gif in Photoshop. Now, this may not sound like something worth reflecting on, but for me, it was huge. I hate public speaking. Hate is maybe the wrong word for this, I fear it. I have incredibly bad social anxiety, the thought of a presentation fills me with an incredible dread. This surprise presentation shook me to the core, when he asked me I froze, I was in shock, but I couldn’t worm my way out of it. I stepped up to the MacBook and attached TV to teach my way of making a gif in Photoshop, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, and I think I talked way too fast, but, I did it. And after that I was speaking to my pals and I know they were probably just being nice but they said I spoke okay and got it across well. A terrifying experience for me and something I need to work on, massively. There were presentations recently for the dissertation rough project, and I was absolutely terrified again, went through my slides too fast and was almost incoherent, hopefully I will someday overcome this, but I don’t know when that’d be.

Group work is usually a fearful time for me, new people, new anxieties, fears of not being good enough, not pulling my weight. However, my group for the exhibition are fantastic, we’re all similar people and get on really well, I must say, it does help having a few friends in it too, I’m able to find my voice, give opinions, ideas and help others. In fact, my group have decided to use my idea of running a drawing workshop. I’ve never felt so appreciated and it’s given me quite the confidence boost. Like, my ideas are okay, and to not be afraid of sharing them. As a group we have overcome and ironed out all the various obstacles that creating a half hour workshop in a week throws up. Thinking about it, group work with the right people is fantastic. I’m getting pushed into making more and it gives me a great feeling. Hopefully there’ll be more group work with friends and similar minded people in the future.

The exhibition was a great success in my opinion. We all worked hard and it culminated in a good fun evening for all. There was a small amount of last minute drama with my groups workshop, two people didn’t turn up. I don’t know how I feel about it now, at the time I was annoyed. But after some sleep, I’ve been reflecting on it and the day before we were talking about how we probably wouldn’t need everybody to be there and talked about four people running it, the rest mingling. I don’t know if maybe the stress of the occasion led to some crossed wires or miscommunication, one of the two doesn’t have Facebook so wasn’t in our chat, it was my job to text him and keep him up to date. So, it could all be my fault, I mean, I asked him where he was before we were set to start but I should probably have messaged sooner. Hours sooner. I guess if I’ve learnt anything from this, it’s that close communication is key. It’s incredibly easy for things to be misconstrued and things to be missed.

One of the most memorable experiences of last year for me was the project I did about Jim Hannah who sells The Big Issue in Norwich city centre. I first met Jim when I decided to focus a project around a big issue seller, I wanted to create something that I could give to him and something that I could use to make more people want to talk to him and get to know him. I looked at lots of different ways of creating something including showing where he stays, works and has come from. However after looking at ways of incorporating all of this I decided I wanted to just show Jim, I found that this was the most respectful way of creating a book. I made a vine with a series of edited black and white pen and ink drawings of Jim working. I filled the book with quotes of things that Jim had said to me and used the colour of the Big issue sellers jacket on the cover and the back.

I was very conscious through out the project that I had to be respectful to Jim, this made me quite critical of the work I was producing as I didn't want to make him in to a sob story. This meant that my final outcome could look quite simple and unimaginative however I was very pleased with it because I think it shows what a kind man Jim is despite his circumstances and everything thats happened to him through out his life. He doesn't expect mucho have much, he just wants to be happy and able to live and provide for himself, because of this I didn't make the booklet to complicated of extravagant although I tried out ways of doing this.

The vine worked well. It showed how kind Jim is, and how open and chatty he is with strangers. I would have liked to develop it further and show where Jim stays and him doing more everyday things however I wasn't able to do this in the time and still make it as respectful as I wanted. I also would have liked to play around with scale more and what the book was printed on and having some stand alone prints. However I didn't develop my ideas quick enough to be able to do this. I enjoyed approaching him and telling him about my work and asking for his involvement and this is something I would like to do more of. Something I need to improve this year is my time management, it was a problem of varying scale throughout last year and meant that I couldn't  develop the outcome for this project as much as I would have liked. One of the positives of this work was and the development of my practice was beginning to realise how I prefer reportage work to narrative illustration. This way of working really took off for me during the open project especially because the work was self initiated which is a way of working I will look in to further in the future. through out this unit I found working to the brief quite challenging, I didn't develop my research enough which led to poorly though out aspects of some projects. I also found myself wandering from the brief during this unit often because the idea of palimpsest wasn't developed enough within my work, I have learnt from this this year and am going to spend more time on research through out the projects so I have more ability to develop my work. Within this I will also develop my time management, I will try and do this by putting more planning in to projects, focusing more on elements of work I am weaker with rather than avoiding the area until the last minute.

I know more about the way I work this year after struggling and loving various projects last year, I know from the Jim project and the first look book project that I have a passion for work that has a social justice aspect. I made my look book about the refugee crisis and what is happening in Syria and then continued to work along those lines during open. This way of working is especially important in the world currently with Brexit, the American election and the refugee crises and it is something I will develop within my work from last year. To do this during this year I will continuously read about current political events whether or not they are related to my current practice, I will also look in to ways to work within crisis zones, I have learnt from last year that I work well when my project directly involve someone else so this is something I will develop this year at any given opportunity. I developed my digital skills last year which previously was something I was completely novice at, although I will continue working on some areas digitally when appropriate it hasn't been something I have excelled at or enjoyed as much as I enjoy printing and painting. The use of mixed media in my work, especially through out the interaction and look book projects developed a lot and lead to new ideas and work. This is an area of my practice I will keep working on and developing as I think it works especially well in the focus areas of my work and with in reportage illustration which is an area I want looking to more.

During my first year I encountered many situations that affecting the way and how I work, I think this specific experience I had was the most important and definitely the most significant. I started my projects in very much the same way; Beginning by coming up with a few concepts for the brief given, I would then run with the idea I felt best or most interesting. After this process I would start researching into my chosen content and context of my project, creating drawings and doing research that would take up quite a bit of time. As I got closer to my deadline I would begin questioning the idea itself and how well it conveys the concept I was trying to put forward. This questioning lead me to doubt myself and my capabilities of actually being able to finish the work I wanted to produce on time, which in turn began to reduce the rate in which I was producing work and the progress I was making.  This wasn’t a consistent thought process I had throughout the duration of all the rotations, in some projects I found this only happened slightly but it happened more severely in my Publish rotation. Thinking this way brought me grounding to a halt mid way through the Publish project

 I felt a lot of negative emotions in this situation, feeling very frustrated caused me to get too caught up in the concept and how it would be seen by others as well as the fact that I wasn’t motivated by my own concepts and ideas to produce. Knowing my work wasn’t at the stage that I wanted it to be, made me view the whole project in a negative way and this thought process transcended into presenting my ideas as well as handing it in, because of the idea that I wasn’t happy with my work and that influenced my ideas of what my peers and others would think to a point where I saw no way of continuing with my work and that I wouldn’t be able to finish my work in the time given made me feel like I had already failed without even really trying. I also experienced a lot of distraction; I felt that I was becoming easily distracted by non-work related events; I think this could of happened because every time I sat down to do some more work, I would try and start somewhere but have so many areas (within the project) I needed to address that even thinking about it would automatically put me off. The looming deadline created this idea of claustrophobia, feeling like I was trapped in failing and had no way out, as time was just counting down and I could do nothing to stop it. I feel like I needed to see this, to realize that the work wouldn’t do itself and that time will just continue to go by regardless of what I planned to do. There is one positive aspect to the situation, after this situation I began to research more in depth, giving my work a slightly different concept but similar enough to still use my drawings and so I began to look at my work in a different way; I saw that I could create a body of work that would be somewhat simplistic in concept but still convey the ideas that I wanted to. I found that a few people also experienced some of the same problems, as well as some anxiousness about presenting their ideas to the rest of their peers. I feel that this could have been the case for many reasons; possibly the worry that I also experienced of people either, not understanding my ideas or thinking the work being produced wasn’t at a good enough standard.

For this project, I found that looking for audio clips/tracks that I could use in my Radio show/Podcast was rather difficult. I had a clip/track in mind to use but quickly found that even if I only used 20 seconds or less, I would still need to check it over with the owner of the clip/track to stop a breach of copyright.

I overcame this by having to look purely for Royalty Free sounds or sounds that I could use through Creative Commons where I would need to give credit to the creator of the sounds (and rightly so).

I found that working with Adobe Audition was easy and fun, especially for a first time user.

I did meet the requirements of the project, just not by the deadlines that I set for myself. I found that I put a few things off in favour of other parts of the project and that I spent too much time searching for clips/tracks.

Exploration

First Year focused on exploration, experimentation and a sense of play in artwork. Mark making was the defining method and idea that was encouraged and became embedded into my approaches to image making. Tools were crafted, objects were found, paper was chopped and an abstraction developed within my illustrations. I used a variety of different traditional media and techniques in accordance to what I was to respond to, which was also influenced by location. The pace was fast and so an eclectic variety of work was made in a short period of time, thus some pieces were more successful than others. My method of making was broken down and then rebuilt with a fresh view on what I considered to be ‘illustration’ that came from the questioning of what drawing is and the liberation of being able to make mistakes and it be okay. It was a chance to experiment with different media and processes without being too precious about what I was making.

This brought about a state of mental chaos, because I was readjusting my preconceptions of illustration and how I worked creatively. I found it difficult, initially, to understand why the scribblings and markings I was doing had any weight or purpose in my work. It felt as though I was being swept in a wave of ideas and possibilities that I simply allowed myself to be swept along with rather than seeing it as an advantage to push further. The concept of ‘play’ was a daunting thing to embrace, because I felt that by being in University I should be learning to produce more ‘professional’ illustrations. It took time to move away from the idea that producing abstract and experimental work was childish and understand how it was enabling me to develop further as an artist. I felt stressed, confused and frustrated, but also intrigued as to how I would produce a piece of work in an experimental and thought-out way. The desire to create something I liked from these new ways of working pushed me to interweave meaning in order to add depth and intrigue to something I would have previously dismissed.  

I came to realise that for me, incorporating emotion into artwork is key. Without it, my motivation and desire to be experimental faded, thus resulting in work that I didn’t particularly like. For example, I struggled with designing three album covers focusing on the typographic of the name for an imaginary band in three different genres. Music is very much connected with one’s emotional responses and so on hindsight, perhaps the reason I struggled is because I didn’t use music as a trigger for my work, thus I was disconnected. 

Mark making enabled this realisation, because with it came a practical understanding of how a particular mark, texture or colour could signify a great amount without being literal.Through drawing sound, or taking shapes out of context to produce a sculpture in collaboration with others, I was being guided into grasping the potential creative outlets without fully understanding at the time. While a photograph is indeed a photograph, I feel that I can now comfortably accept that Photography is a form of image making that can also be considered illustration through its potential to express a story, emotion, ideas or information to the viewer.

I particularly enjoyed the final project of BA3 which was to produce a book based on something to do with the Castle. It enabled to try to incorporate things I’d learned throughout the year in a format I have fondness for. I decided to focus on two themes: death and immortality, and set upon trying to visually reveal the connection between them through imagery of things within the museum. Using a mixture of modelling “fossils” out of clay, photography, printmaking and traditional media I produced a collection of illustrations. I was intrigued by the themes which kept me driven, while the castle museum was rich in inspiration, however in retrospect, I feel that an aspect of experimentation was lost. While I explored different media, my images were very literal. I’d subconsciously moved back into aspects of how I worked previously, which is not necessarily bad, however it’s a slip back into the comfort zone- something that I was pushed out of greatly in the BA1.

This brief was much harder than the last, as it was unlike any Graphic Design brief I have ever had before. The basis of the project was to creatively fill a space, with the theme being ‘vision and seeing’, and whilst implementing some typographic elements. This is what I found challenging, the 3D aspect of the project. I am used to Graphic Design being me sat at a computer, occasionally sketching and doing photography, not creating things that fill a three-dimensional space, so at the beginning of the project I was left slightly confused. I can’t say I liked the brief and I can’t say I would ever choose to do anything like it again, it just wasn’t in my comfort zone and not an area of graphic design that I would go into.

However, I rose to the challenge and found that the best way of tackling a brief like this was to stay within my limits of what I know I can do, whilst fulfilling the brief’s requirements, so obviously I wasn’t going to go around producing sculptures etc. I know that the brief states that only conceptualising your idea is suitable, but I prefer to actually create the ideas I have. I concluded that whatever I made would have to be minimalistic in nature, and would have to take advantage of empty space to gain dramatic effect. My original idea consisted of the creation of six books, each of which would represent a different way of seeing. I would create one short book, and I would write one chapter for each of the six ways of seeing that I had chosen.

After creating the book, I would redesign it from each of the six perspectives (for instance the colour blindness edition, I would have dulled the colours and removed reds and blues). The first chapter would focus on the topic of seeing clearly (20-20 vision), thus the respective first book would be printed normally. Correspondingly the last chapter of the book and thus the sixth version of the book would depict blindness, for which I would print a completely black book, with the hope of it being highly impactful on the viewer, reinforcing the horrific reality of being blind. Between the chapters of 20-20 vision and blindness, I would cover Diplopia, blurred vision, colour blindness, and psychological ways of seeing the world. These books would all rest on stands inside the 3D space, and I had decided to place typography on the wall behind them. This idea was more of an exhibition-based concept, instead of the shop window idea that many others had gone for (but the brief requirements did not specify you had to do). I designed this space to be greatly personal for the user, and not as a highly commercial/public area of interest. I had decided I would have these books printed, and that I would photograph them in the photography studio with a model. In the end though, a week before the deadline and during my 1 to 1 with my tutor, we discussed this idea again in detail, and although I was told that the idea itself was promising, my tutor decided it would be more fitting to the brief if I merely conceptualised a way of advertising this book as a shop window. Whether I liked it or not, I couldn’t disagree that was a much easier way of fitting the brief, and so I settled on creating a mock-up image of a shop window involving screens that displayed each of the book’s chapters’ covers.

I researched a plethora of artists for this project, many of which were book designers. I didn’t feel like I needed inspiration for the shop window as I already knew what I was going to do with it, so I dedicated my efforts to the book itself, which was going to be over 30 pages long, all of which were to be individually designed, so I had my work cut out for me. Aside from artist research, I had an incredible amount of studying to do in order to find interesting topics to fill my book’s pages. This took a very long time. I read dozens of articles on ocular health, and even had to scour internet forums for partially sighted people in order to complete my chapter on blindness.

I did minimal sketches when creating my page designs, as many featured my own photography, and I found it better to have the images on the page first before finding ways of displaying it. Although, I did sketch out initial ideas for the vector-based designs. I’m incredibly grateful that I decided to collect so much photographic research at the start of the project, as these photographs really brought the layouts of each page to life. I did a lot of experimentation with layout during this project, one of my main flaws from the last brief that I had been told to tackle in this one. I read a book titled ‘Layout Workbook’ by Kristen Cullen, and that really helped me to develop my skills in this area. Typography was another huge area that I wanted to advance in, and after reading ‘Basics Design: Typography’, I felt much more comfortable with which typefaces to use and how to use them. Finally, when it came to creating my mock-up of the window display, I simply created the image from scratch in Photoshop using photo-manipulative techniques. I tried my best to make it appear as realistic as possible, playing around with 3D space and lighting a lot, whilst also adding some movement to the composition in the form of a passer-by who overlaps the shop window and frames the main focal point in the centre of the image. I also added rain, to darken the areas around the main focal point, whilst bringing a bit of life to the piece and again adding movement.

If I were to attempt this brief again, I think I would invest more time into actually creating it physically. I would want to go with my original idea and see how that worked as a physical piece, and if I had the resources I would be eager to recreate my final idea too.

Throughout my time within my course I have been introduced to and encouraged to use new practice methods to develop and widen my skills within illustration. By doing so I have been taken out of my comfort zone to produce thought provoking work which in turn broadens and challenges the way I work today. During the beginning of year one I restricted myself with being fixated on perfection and not being happy with a piece of work unless it was exactly how I envisioned it. Being set in my ways really hindered my progression and I found it very difficult relating myself to set briefs as I was repressing my potential which was incredibly frustrating.

  However with the help from tutors and being introduced to workshops that slowly eased me into using new techniques and experimenting with mark making I was able to let go of my need to be perfect and allowed myself to expressively work with new perspectives. I also learnt how to use other materials to their full potential and started making interesting marks and details I never knew were possible. For example I was then able to user something as mundane as kitchen foil and transform it into a took to produce marks not possible with the conventional pen and pencil. Progressing this way really opened up the many possible ways to complete a brief and gave me a new found confidence in my ability to approach tasks. This new way of working also influenced how I thought about work, my own and conceptually when looking for research material. I found myself open to a wider range of work which allowed me to broaden my skills and knowledge by working with emotion and communication rather than simply aesthetics.

   Working within year one also encouraged the use of a more varied medium selection and tried to steer me away from fine liners and biro pens, which I think the majority of my class used most often. Again broadening my abilities as an illustrator. I was able to then develop an interest in printmaking and pattern production. This can be seen in my latest set of imagery for BA2s project one, where I produced a series of illustrations for the brief Fiction: Narrative Illustration in which I chose Roald Dahl's 'The Landlady'. If I had not let go of my insecurities of working with a finished piece in mind I would never of found the work of John Virtue, a very influential artist within my practice, most importantly in this unit.

   As well as practically I have also been able to progress conceptually. Being involved in critical feedback and peer assessments has been a lot easier with an open mind and the ability to recognise and appreciate others work. Working within groups is another aspect of the course that has allowed to expand and progress the way I work and approach tasks. Being given constructive advice and feedback on my work is very encouraging and has given me more confidence in working with experimentation and planning by doing  and not planning within my head and through note taking, which was restrictive and wasted time I could of spent making.