Christmas gifts

For christmas this year I wanted to make something personal for my secret santa gift, including all the specific things she said she didn't want on a joke list.

Louise Lockhart's work

What did I learn?
- Took inspiration from Louise Lockhart's process to create a screen print quality aesthetic digitally
- Liked having a play without much pressure, opened up my creativity of how to portray simple objects

What could be improved?
- Spent more time focusing on shapes of unusual items, such as planes and robot
- Over-reliance on text to signify items- could this be done through image?
- Same limited colour palette

What next?
- Continue to create things for personal, fun reasons!
- Tackle depicting items I'm not comfortable with to expand my range

Ceramics

I hadn't done any ceramics for a few years, so I really enjoyed experimenting with them in the studio.

I got help from my coursemate and the technicians regarding the techniques and good practice.

I ended up creating a range of different earrings and brooches, all expanding on the pattern making I have been using to create wrapping paper.

WHAT WORKS:
- Fun just to play and see what came of it without pressure of final pieces
- the colour contrasts make them very attractive and versatile

WHAT DIDN'T:
- The yellow didn't show through very vibrantly
- Some curling occurred, despite flattening them during drying- need to figure out how to stop this!

WHAT NEXT?
- make them into sellable jewelry pieces
- Expand my medium use and see what other ways I could sell my work

Wrapping paper

I was very interested in creating some fun, abstract patterns which I could apply to cheap to make screenprinted wrapping paper.


NEXT STEPS:

- Although this was a fun, quick project, I need to make sure my future work is imbued with thorough meaning and intent

Time Management

I've been able to effectively plan my time this term due to a series of printed calanders

Pros:
- Easy to balance different projects work, SU commitments, work and relaxation time
- Colour coding has given me a good chance to see an overview of how I'm spending my time, and allocate more to certain areas if necessary
- I've been able to take some more time out to spend with friends and family this year, and value it as much as work, which has given me a lot more grounded approach to my practice

Cons:
- I do sometimes get a 'shock' of how little time is left before deadlines, so I added little numbers to countdown the weeks
- I do still commit to taking on a bit too much in certain times, such as the SU, but I still feel I'm able to balance these activities by just leaning on another day to focus on areas
- I've been struggling to sleep recently, as a recurring issue, which means I often don't sleep until 6am or later, and so I wake up late. I've tried to timetable the tasks flexibly, so I don't feel behind when I get into uni later than I would have liked.

Emmi Book

For my niece's birthday I decided the make her an 8 colour bespoke fabric photo book.

This was really good practice for skills within fabric printing

PROS:
- Learnt about layout and techniques for fabric printing
- Learnt a great deal about bitmapping
- Improved my finish and crafting skills

CONS:
- Miss-aligned one page due to white space at edge
- Didn't account for extra room on cover to fit pages

WHAT NEXT?
- Think more about image creation
- Continue to expand materials used
- Think about relationship between text and image

Testing bitmap prints

Tutorial

EVALUATION ONE

Statement of Intent

From starting to look at briefs I could undertake and talking to my tutor, I noted how much I was aiming to undertake, and decided I needed to quickly tone this down.

This year it's important for me to:
- Only undertake projects I'm enthusiastic about
- Not take on too much work
- Expand as much as possible on key skills (Print, packaging, design, colour)
- Not worry about completing briefs quickly/ taking time

Therefore, I will aim to undertake a selection of these projects:
LIVE:
- Morley Newlands Academy mural brief- Done
- Grown Up Chocolate YCN brief
- Hookworm
- Secret 7"?
- Batsford
- Starpack tea and coffee tins
- Workshops?
- Manchester gallery?
- Lifting Tower?

EDITIONS:
- Drawing sketchbook
- Emmi's present

STATEMENT OF INTENT:

PLANNING

Thinking about what I want to achieve this year, I want to make sure I make the most of the time available, whilst still not pushing myself too much

I'm hoping that I can try and undertake the following, but still feel able to drop them if I won't have time/don't feel passionate about them

Morley Newlands Academy mural brief

What worked:
- Thinking about use and appropriateness of design
- The use of colour
- Interpretation of educational and healthy brief through reflection on the schools ethos

What did I learn:
- To scale up and think about appropriateness of size
- How to explore and focus on key educational ideas
- How to research extra information from the brief and interpret it in my own manner

Comfort Zones Task

My practice is extremely process driven, with a drive to create 'finished' outcomes. The main strengths of my practice are select flat colour combinations, the use of pattern, and composition, and I struggle with more instinctive, figurative work.  My work tends to focus solely on natural forms, and I often shy away from drawing manmade items. I can become fairly stressed when I present simpler processes and thoughts, and as a result my practice often relies on 'safe' tried processes, such as texture and traditional print.

As a result of this, I wanted to create a piece which isn't refined, I will set myself some rules and just submit what I make:
-No rubbers
-Don't consider colours too much
-Draw figuratively
-Draw man made
-Don't revise
-Draw scenes

I made this as a result, which I'm fairly happy with considering it's so far removed from what I'm comfortable with.

What I learnt:
-  To not worry about the 'finished' outcome all the time
-  To enjoy playing and experimenting within the 'safe' space of my sketchbook
-  The importance and freedom of drawing quickly and intuitively

Self Portrait

My self portrait was a struggle initially, as I find it difficult drawing figurative images.

After speaking to Ben and a couple of my friends, I decided to abandon my attempts at fitting my practice to suit styles it doesn't work with. Therefore, I took key aspects from my personality and combined this to create a more personal outcome, reflected through the colours I use most often.

The pink of my vitiligo, and how I have come to accept this over the past year, which represents the growing in confidence with my work. The green is the growth I am experiencing, and how much I want to explore and develop. The yellow shows my positivity and the optimism I hope to present across my life.

I was hoping to screen print the outcome, but decided to take a break and visit my niece for the day instead, which really helped to increase my positivity about the coming year, and I think it is especially important this year for me to not make more work for myself than I need to.

Extended Practice presentation

Applied Illustration- Evaluation

Applied Illustration- Project Report

Applied Illustration- Design Boards

Applied Illustration- Final Outcomes

Applied Illustration- Revisiting 504 skills

I looked back on my aims from the start of the module to see whether I had attained them, and it was really interesting:

One thing I will take forward from 504:
- I want to further explore print, especially in reference to colour and overlay

One way you will push yourself outside of your comfort zone in 505:
- By trying to incorporate more simple shapes into my work/ try to include character

One thing you want to accomplish by the end of May:
- I want to be more confident in my work, and strengthen my ability to pursue and execute ideas as tests without the stress of having them as finished outcomes necessarily


I feel like I have pushed myself a lot in this module, but I'm still avoiding character- maybe that just isn't an aspect of illustration I'm determined to work with!

Applied Illustration- Presentation

For submission, I made a couple of folders and a box to put my prints and mock ups into.

- I'm really happy that I had enough time to properly display my prints, as if I had just put them in clipped together they would have lost their polished feel, and I wouldn't have felt as positive about my submission

Applied Illustration- Time management

Revised timetable for April/May:

 I found using physical paper timetables really useful to plan out what time I have and how I can use it most effectively.
On reflection I didn't spend as much time on this module as I would have liked during April, but I did manage to sneak in periods of time to work on it which are not reflected on my timetable, as I really had the motivation to work on this project.

Applied Illustration- Proposal revisit

At the end of my project, I thought it would be interesting to revisit my project proposal and make alterations to reflect the outcomes of my project.

It was a fairly interesting exercise, as most of the intent had stayed the same, due to me trying to stick to my proposal as much as possible, yet I did highlight a few changes. Most of all, as previously analysed, the audience to being more appropriate to women, and not feeling the need to expand the range to include other make up such as lipstick and mascara.

Overall I found writing and adhering to my own proposal a really interesting and fun experience, and I'm really looking forward to repeating it next year.

Applied Illustrations- Final Applications

Box mockups:

- I cut and constructed the nets I made earlier then photographed them in the studio, it was really useful to refer back to how we photographed my 503 project for this task

- Overall I'm really pleased with how the products and photos came out, as I think they offer a good overview of my products, and how they function

- Although it would have been a lot quicker to just use digital mock-ups, the fat I was forced into constructing them myself made me feel a lot more resolved about this product, and I ended up with far more appropriate photos

- I did, however, forget to print the 'In collaboration with Changing Faces' onto the lids, so I photoshopped them onto the photos after, and I think it gives a strong overview of the product and it's intent

Final Images:

Applied Illustration- Extra Applications

I thought a lot about what other applications I would have, as I didn't want to go over the top, but I wanted to show the versatilities of the designs

- I thought this application would make sense, as having a branded bag may make the range feel more like a luxury make up range rather than a prescription you get from a pharmacy, which is more similar to the current range

-The selling of prints was suggested by Bronte in my crit, and I feel like this is a very appropriate way to easily and cheaply raise money for the Changing Faces charity

- I also thought the selling of tote bags would be a good way to create a useful, tactical product which again may be an easy way to raise funds
- The primary function is decoration, but which will hopefully remind people of the campaign and link to the skin conditions, thus raising awareness of them, and helping people feel less alone living with the conditions

Applied Illustration- Poster mock up

- I made a set of three posters with information about the three skin conditions I was focusing on, I then mocked them up onto poster templates

- I wanted to focus on the wellbeing of the sufferer, with a secondary intent of informing the general public about a key issue with the condition

- I would imagine these posters would be displayed in GP surgeries, and similar healthcare places, where it is a difference to the normal medical information posters, which mirrors the beautiful uniqueness of the skin of people who have these conditions

Psoriasis:

Info from:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Psoriasis/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Rosacea:

Info from:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Rosacea/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Vitiligo:

Info from:
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Vitiligo/Pages/Introduction.aspx