At the beginning of the course I felt I wasn't progressing
and my work didn't seem to be improving. However looking back I can see where I have had transformative
moments and where I have began to enjoy myself and come of my comfort zone.
For example, visually narratives was a great opportunity for
me to get on independently and focus and develop on techniques I enjoy, though
we have to show experimentations with media I did not feel pressure to use
techniques I was not confident with- much like what we had to do in A levels
and foundation which I struggled to do as I lost confident and enthusiasm in my
work as I found it hard to show passion and interest in certain media choices
therefore this year has been great for me to just relish as a illustrator.
Over the year I have learned to create work, which has a
purpose and a potential message behind it, which I have surprisingly really
enjoyed. Though before I thought I liked the freedom to draw whatever I wanted,
having a direction, guidelines and specific subject to explore has been much
more engaging and intriguing to see what I can create from a body of research.
Group work has really help me gain confidence and develop as
a learner, though at times I found it frustrating to loose time I could be
using to carry on developing my work, without other peoples options and
possible directions I think my work would not have the same ending result.
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now a year down the line, I struggled to pick which work to show! I feel
other illustratiors have really influenced my work and allowed me to procress
and develop a broader tone of voice.
However this year these artist have
been a big influence on my work, I have started to use different width lines
like the work of Lucinda Rodgers and I have stated to add suble blocks of
colour and use empty outlines shapes like Judith van hoek does here.
It has been frustrating when printing off finalized work and
finding faults which had not notice on Photoshop, this is something I feel I need to, and will
improve on the more I use digital printing methods.
Another thing I have found
frustrating this year is not having the time to unwind and forget about work or
deadlines, though I know this comes with the territories of a degree, I have
sometimes found it very overwhelming and stressful to have multiply projects
with multiply deadlines running alongside each other, at times it has felt like
the thing I love to do has turned into a burden instead of a pleasure.
Another
frustration I came across at the beginning of visual language was being
restricted to certain medias and techniques I was not confident with, I felt my
work lacked visual quality which inevitably made me loose interest and struggle
to find ways to make my work innovative and impressive.
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It was also very frustrating see
other people excess in this module when I couldn’t see myself improving.
Towards the end of the year I think I began to try to hard to
make my ideas more interesting and literal, which inevitably over complicated
them, from the feedback I have received, I recognize that my simplistic
approach has been more successful and visually engaging.
Though I found it really hard to push
myself to use the different techniques asked of use in visually language, I
eventually found a technique I enjoyed by mixing a method I used to answer the
collage and shape visual language task with the detailed drawing technique love.
Though I appreciate
and learn from studio support, I have realized my own working environment is
very important to me to get into the right mindset to work. I much prefer to
get on in my own time, instead of having set times to work, sometimes I can't
create work when im in the wrong mood- and this inevitably leads to poor
quality and therfore a waste of time.
When evaluating and reflecting on
work, I feel I am good at pointing out the strengths and weaknesses within each
piece.
I feel I am becoming more confident
In the media I tend to use and feel that I have pushed myself to develop and
prefect my style by incorporating other medias, this is something I put of
doing in previous years as I liked to stay in my comfort zone.
I feel I have improved on how I show
concept through final work due to more in-depth research before starting on a
piece, where as before this course I sometimes used go ahead with a idea
without background research.
One of my main weaknesses, which I
have struggled with throughout most of my creative education, is the fear of
making ‘bad drawings’
I have
always struggled to try out new techniques in the fear of producing work that
lacks visually quality, and the dread of spending so much time on pieces of work
that turn out to be awful, this inevitably is effecting my development as an
illustrator and is something I need
to address!
Another weakness of mine is leaving
the annotation of blogs post till late. Though I regularly post the progress of my project in picture
form of my and research, I tend to leave the writing till later as I felt it
would take up vital time I needed to develop my ideas practically and might
restrict my creative flow. However when having to revisit the posts it has been
a challenge to maintain my interest and remember each points I have wanted to
make about the work.
This year I have also had a tendency to priorities visual
skills/narratives/communications over
other modules.
Because
these modules have shorter deadlines I have tended to invest most of my time
into them, I have always thought they were the 'main' projects and therefore
the most important, where in fact they are worth the exact same percentage as
the year long modules.
Another weakness of mine is going
into to much detail or explaining myself to much in blog post in the fear of my
work or ideas not being understood correctly, I find It hard to explain myself
directly and I fear that the amount of time I spend trying to do so is minimizing
the time I am spending on the practical side of modules.
I need to remember to explore each learning outcome equally
if I want to achieve good results with my work- this has been one of my downfalls this year, though in some
modules I feel I have put more effort into, I have come out with the same percentage,
which has been a disappointment and a frustration. I need to make sure I
understand what the module is asking of me and how I divide my workloads to fit
each criteria equally.
Though I
have always known a creative careers are very competitive, after hearing first
hand from other illustrators (big heads) about there struggles of staying in
the illustration business I worry that I may not be as driven, strong or good
enough to cope with such a demanding career.
I also want to improve my skills on Photoshop and illustrator
so I can use it to visually enhance the quality of my work.
Such as
print and etching rooms: from the etching induction I really likes the detailed
line effect you can achieve from both etching and dry point, in level 5 I want
to experiment with this technique so I become familiar with the process and can
use it to develop my work.
I aim to solve through more making! As I now know from my own experience in visual language that
though this does involve frustration and awful drawings’ I will eventually find
something that is worth further development.
I aim to
experiment with simpler drawing techniques, which do deal with detail but are
also minimalistic.
But my most important aim I want to achieve over the next
year is to figure out which route of illustration I want to pursue in the
future so I have something to work
towards!
I found the visually narrative one of the most challenging
modules so far; I think I underestimated how long it would take me to produce
16 pages in the style I chose.
Composing the COP essay was also very difficult for me, I
found it very time consuming and difficult to juggle other work along side, as I
had to dedicate a large amount of time to completing the essay because writing is not my strong point.
Also, Especially towards the start of the year where we were
time tabled in for a lot of workshops and studio session, I found it very
difficult to balance uni and time i needed to complete work for deadlines after
the uni day. However as the year went on and I was used to the expectations of
the course, and we were able to have more studio development time this became
easier to manage. It has also been difficult
to balance day-to-day living, which I did not necessary account for when I
studied at home, such as time it takes to make tea, clean, etc.
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