Personal Work- Brushes

A lot of my personal work goes towards developing my brushes, mainly because this is the large part of my income at the minute and I do enjoy it. However, I'm not entirely sure it belong on here because it's not exactly 'illustration' in the strictest terms, but I'm going to put it here anyway.

I want to respond to my brush making, and how I feel it influences my practice. So here goes;

- It allows me to constantly develop a new aesthetic and 'voice', my having me create new textures and linework constantly. If I make one I like, I'll use it.

- It pushes me to look at other illustrators' work. If I'm asked by an illustrator to make a brush for them, I need to know how they work and how their work looks.

- It pushes me to work towards deadlines within the creative industry, which is always useful.

- It gets me talking to other creatives constantly, talking about brushes generally leads to a conversation about the industry and their own practice, which is good.

I just don't know weather this work can be put towards the responsive module. I need to ask Patrick.

Responsive

I am a bit lost with responsive at the minute, well just with the blog really. I am fully aware that they're isn't really a lot of blogging done on it, but I feel I want to be sure to assess each brief properly at the end of the brief. I think responsive is the kind of thing where responding at the end is really important, as the module is about how we perform on each individual brief and how we respond to and manage it.

I'm not really worried about it, as I feel I am definitely on track with the workload, I just feel much better about blogging each one as I go and then collating the small notes into one blog at the end of the individual briefs, to respond and reflect on each.

PPP Presentation

I wanted to do my presentation without a script, hence the lack of one on here. I wanted to have my presentation sound natural and not rehearsed, as I feel that I definitely better when preenting ideas. So I just decided to have a rough idea of what I wanted to say and let the prompts on the presentation guide me through it, which I think worked pretty well. I said everything I needed to in a way that was simple and coherent. I think.

Pitcha Pitcha

The pitcha pitcha presentation we did in part of responsive was actually a really good way of assessing my practice; how i feel my practice is now and where I want to move it.



Looking at slide 1 above, my work, it's pretty obvious that I hate using colour, in fact it terrifies me. Being colour blind has definitely lead my to move right away from using colour, out of fear of doing it wrong and it just being too hard, I need to start pushing myself to use colour in my work, as it's definitely key to not being pigeon-holed

I am fairly happy with my practice at the minute, I just need to draw more.

Moving on from 504

504 was a bit of a nightmare for me, I had a few issues outside of university which meant I wasn't really in the mood for working on the project. I have held back on giving feedback to myself until I received my grade back, which now I have.

I was fully expecting to fail the module, as I produced less work than 90% of the group and in my opinion my work wasn't nearly to the standard of others or what I'm capable of. Aside from attendance, which was poor, I struggled with getting used to printed media, something I had never really worked with before to any sort of substantial level. I kept stuck in my usual routine, which definitely didn't help.

Anyway, one thing I realised I really was bad at was screen printing. For some reason I'm just terrible at it, so now I need to work on that as I feel it could really benefit my practice, in both how I work and how my work looks. That's priority number 1; priority number 2 is probably to work on attendance, which actually hasn't been to bad recently and I've enjoyed being in uni a lot more.

I feel my work in 504 lacked concept, and I found myself constantly having to justify the concepts behind my ideas, which I want to avoid doing because it's boring, and I want people to be able to read the image straight away, so concept is definitely something to work on now.

'Just go in to uni and don't fail'

Illustrator- David Doran

David Doran
I love David Doran's illustrations. Especially his use of character and shape within all of his images. His work is heavily shape based, focusiong on simple block shapes with texture heavily involved as well. As far as I'm aware, David's process starts off by working out compositions and ideas in a sketchbook then working digitally to block out shapes and work out colour. I think this is definitely why his work still has a 'hand made' feel to it.




I'd like to approach my practice in a similar way to david's; starting with sketches images and working directly with them digitally, I think it creates a much more handmade feel with imperfect lines and shapes and better compositions, something I feel my practice is lacking.

Inustry Contacts- Questions

VO Agency

- Ask about being a smaller agency and the challenges/ benefits of this. (i.e. is it harder to get illustrators work out there than larger agencies to get work).

- Where/ How did they start, and where do they want to move with their artists/agency?

- Ask about language barriers, does it make the process of getting work harder?

- Ask about their way of combining illustration and design, and weather they think there is a link between them or do they work as two separate entities.

- Ask about the process of picking illustrators to work with (do they choose them or are they selected and approached?

- So they strive to work with a certain aesthetic within the practice consciously or do they just with illustrators with similar tastes to them?

- Ask about HOW they find work, is the agency commissioned more and they select the artist or does the artist source most of the work and work through the agency.

- Ask about the crossover with illustrators working in other media i.e product design/ set design. Do they select based on aesthetic or skills.

Gradients in screen printing

I have been investigating how to change gradients in screen printing. I thought the process would be quite straining, but on investigation actually looks simple, I think you just need to get the nack of it.

Hopefully I will be able to experiment with using this technique (505 could be a good excuse), and try to achieve some subtlety with the process and use within my practice.

Subtelty in Image + Shape

So recently, I have been investigating what I can do with my work to make it look less flat and less clinical. I have been playing in the past with complex textures with bold contrasts, however, recently I have been experimenting with really subtle textures and changes in tone. Which I think has worked out really well.


This example shows a simple pink block. The one on the left without any texture and the one on the right with a subtle texture and a slight colour gradient to show the difference it can make. I will look to start using this technique in my future practice to give a bit more depth to it.

Thomas Danthony- Illustrator

I have always been a fan of Thomas' work, but until recently I haven't really sat down and thought about WHY I like his work. On face value his illustrations seem very simple and quite blocky, but I think with his work it's more about the subtlety within the shapes.

He uses a lot of really subtle gradients in the colours and shades, which definitely helps towards creating depth within the image and helps set the mood of the illustration. A lot of his work ends up being screen printed, which I think would be quite a complicated process considering the gradients in colour. I need to investigate this.





















He also uses really subtle textures, including what looks to be a custom brush for defining shape and texture, something similar to what I use in my own practice. I will look to incorporate these techniques into my practice in the future.

Working Digitally

I really want to move away from sketchbook work. I am really getting used to the roughing process, and am really starting to get some good work out of it, but I hate the process of working in a sketchbook  to then transfer over to digital.

Recently I have been working with my iPad pro and Pencil a lot more, and find the process much more rewarding, I can adjust roughs, undo mistakes and work much quicker than on paper, plus I don't have to keep buying new sketchbooks and pencils etc. However, I feel pushed to use sketchbooks in my practice to tick boxes in modules, which I don't think is particularly fair but has to be done I guess.

Industry Contacts

I have considered who I would want to contact within the industry to interview and I think I've managed to narrow it down to my main 5.

David Doran
Although Patrick advised us to try to avoid contacting illustrators, David's practice is similar to where I want my own practice to move towards. Also David has recently left university studying illustration so I would like to find out how he coped with moving from studentship into working as a professional. (david@daviddoran.co.uk)

Jon & Tom  (Owners at Handsome Frank Agency)
I love the work that comes out of the Handsome Frank agency, and would like to know more about how they choose which illustrators to approach/ take on and how they go about finding work for the illustrators. (jon/tom@handsomefrank.co.uk)

Sam Arthur (Co-founder of FlyingEye Books)
Sam was one of the co-founders of FlyingEye books, a great publishing house producing some really interesting works which fit the general aesthetic of my own practice. (sam@nobrowpublishing.co.uk)

Jim Stoddart (Artistic Director at Penguin Books since 2001)
I'd like to know what Jom looks for in an illustrator or designer, and the way he likes to work with regards to offering/ finding illustrators.

Screen Printing

I tried some screenprinting today.. Which as you can see from the images below didn't quite go as well as I'd anticipated. As bad as the outcomes turned out I did quite enjoy the process and I actually like the textures the are created through it.

I need to carry on experimenting with trying to achieve different textures within screen printing as I think it can fit in really well with my practice and the way my practice is moving.