Tag: Skills

I can’t draw.

As a class, we had watched a TED talk by Graham Shaw in which he was talking about peoples perceptions about drawing. In this talk, he discusses how everyone can draw its basically just your own doubts that prevent you from doing so or improving your skills. In the talk, he does give a follow along example explaining his theory in which he gets the audience to draw characters with him, resulting in a lot of people realising they can draw. I am not going to show my results from the experiment as I just feel they’re a mess. They were fine in the beginning but then they just went downhill quick. I believe this was because I don’t work as fluid as Shaw does with his characters, so was more focused on trying to get the lines right and when he was onto the next steps, I had already created a mess. So no, I will not be showing my results, but I definitely think the talk is worth a watch and you may be intrigued to see what you could create, especially if you are one of those people who think you cannot draw.

I feel when people use this quote of “I can’t draw”, which usually follows “omg, you’re so good, I can’t even draw a…” they just assume that it is a natural gift that you must have been born with. This at least was not the case for myself. When I was younger, I don’t believe I was good at drawing but I did enjoy the process so I just kept going. I am quite a perfectionist with my work, and always have been, a trait which I believe I’ve gained from my Mum, thanks, mum! so after making a drawing, I would usually get disheartened when I could see the issues, but this wouldn’t stop me from drawing entirely, I would just try to keep improving.

In my teens, I would regularly use a site called DRAGOART, which I believe is still active to this day, and posts step by step tutorials of how to draw certain characters, icons, images, etc, which are usually inspired by current trends with the media and pop culture. From these tutorials, I would be able to draw the image quite well, but I would focus more on trying to replicate the image as opposed to actually trying to learn from the process. So, once I had noticed this when I would try to draw something that wasn’t from the tutorial,  I did start to try learning from the process, specifically from the beginning steps in which you form the image using shapes. From this day I believe this is still how I work, but over time I have improved my skills by learning the fundamentals of art first, and a lot of practice, more from real life or proper reference photos, as opposed to working from someone else characters/art. In my opinion, as an artist, you should never stop learning or improving or wanting to learn or improve. I feel if you reach the point where you think that you have nothing more to learn or no more areas for improvement, then there would be no purpose for creating work. You would have reached your peak, where else would there be to go from there?

I myself know that I have a lot of areas to improve within my work, and a lot of new techniques and mediums that I want to explore, and although things may not work out, I will be excited to see how my art grows within the next 10 years, or 5 or 1, or even just within a couple of months. Below I have shown two illustrations of mine, the one on the left being one I had made in 2013 when I was 14-15? I remember how proud I was of it at the time, but looking back now, I’m sooooo happy with how much my work, style and aesthetic has grown since, especially when looking at the piece on the right, from late 2018, where I have drawn a more anatomically correct and more aesthetic character of my own, instead of just imitating someone else’s.

In conclusion, from watching the TED talk, I do believe that anyone can draw, they’ve just got to be willing to put the doubts aside and put the time into it for it to look as “good” as someone else’s they may compliment. I can’t think of any artist who was just magically gifted at their craft, at least not with a little practice at first. If I try to think about it in other terms, you don’t just learn maths overnight, you practise and practise over the space of basically 16 years, and once you’ve mastered counting, you then go on to adding, subtracting, timetables, division, then algebra gets thrown in and all sorts of equation stuff. So with this example, an artist is always improving, but it does take that understand and practice in order to do so.

Bibliography

Dragoart.com. (2016) How to Draw, Draw Step by Step.. [online] Available at: https://www.dragoart.com/ [Accessed 6 Feb. 2019].

Garner, C. (2017). Why Should You Study The Fundamentals of Art?. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/the-art-squirrel/why-should-you-study-the-fundamentals-of-art-1368efcbf446 [Accessed 6 Feb. 2019].

Shaw, G. (2015). Graham Shaw: Why people believe they can’t draw. Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_shaw_why_people_believe_they_can_t_draw [Accessed 6 Feb. 2019]

All images are my own unless stated otherwise.

Input-Output – Illustrated Diagram

As a task, the class was asked to reflect on themselves and their workflow, thinking in terms of an input and output system. We had to think of what goes into our work, i.e skills, research, experience etc. And then think about what all these elements allow me to create within my work, so this relates to my business, creating a product, selling that product, branding, socialising, promoting myself and so on.

Once we had thought about this, we then had to create a diagram. As of the Illustration we were to think about imagery that worked in a similar way, meaning that it would have an input and output system. When I got told about this theory, my first thought was of Cat in the Hat, how they had the ‘KUPKAKE-INATOR!’ in which you could make cupcakes out of anything!

“Anything?”

“Yes anything!”

“Anyythiing?”

“I’ll get you and it’ll look like a bloody accident!”

(Cat in the Hat, 2003)

So, in my head, I imagined the input going all into a machine, then the output becomes the amazing cupcakes in the process.

This idea had developed through the drawing phase, but the concept was still the same, the ingredients are all the elements in which go into my input, then the final cake is my output, each layer dedicated to a specific area in which my workflow leads to.

inputinge=redoutputsovenoutput

For the input, the main influences within my work process I believe come from my skills, knowledge and experience. Each of these elements can link back to one another, like how my knowledge can grow from the experience, more experience can help improve on skills, etc. From each of these elements, however, I have expanded on them, showing more detail of what factors go into my work.

With the output, I have categorised things that are produced from my work, and have separated them into layers of cake, the bottom is my small business that I wish to expand on, which includes all of the elements that would go into that, such as branding, selling, packaging, promoting myself, and actually creating the product I would sell. The next is based on freelancing, which I would associate more as a commercial side of my work, as I would be working more one to one with a client/brief. The third layer is based on a global context, i.e. where I could potentially show/sell my work, but it would also mean connecting more with other artists and businesses on more of a global scale. This could be done either through social media or travelling around the world to events like pictoplasma, or even going to conventions like Designer Con, which a few of the artists I follow attended last year.  The final layer is Self Development, as I do always try to improve on my work with every piece, whether its trying new techniques, playing around with colour pallets, or experimenting with current trends. I have actually tried to do that with this diagram, as I believe the colour halftone effect is quite popular at this moment in time due to the release of ‘Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse’, so have tried to incorporate the pattern within the shading.

 

Bibliography

Cat in the Hat. (2003). [film] Directed by B. Welch. Universal Pictures.

 

Learning Plan: Semester Two

Overall Objective:

Since the last learning plan I created back at the beginning of semester 1, I believe I did achieve some of my goals within that time and have made improvements within my work. My main goal with this year is still to keep on improving, but within semester one I was able to gain more confidence with traditional mediums and printing techniques, I did this through my inktober challenge and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe project. I was also able to achieve my goal of creating more narrative based illustrations, as again, I had created chapter illustrations for the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I made two book covers for the Penguin Student Design Awards, these were based on Wonder (the children’s book category) and Norwegian Wood (for the adults fiction category) and finally, I did make a set of 3 illustrations for House of Illustrations Book Illustration Competition, which were based on the book Howls Moving Castle, which I had also made a cover for.

In my previous learning plan, click here to read, I had mentioned that I would like to potentially create more editorial pieces, so as I could not do this during the first semester, I would like to try create something along those lines this time. I wouldn’t necessarily be illustrating an article, but I would like to create a piece with a deeper meaning, possibly more thought-provoking as this is not an area that I have really ventured in as of yet, but by doing so I may be able to show themes or communicate current topics that I feel strongly about through my work, potentially allowing the audience to get to know me better.

As I had worked on the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe project during semester one instead of the Wizard of Oz one as I had initially planned (I swapped the two around as I felt the LWW project would be better suited to the module as it was going to be more experimental testing out the multiple printing techniques) this semester I will be working on the Wizard of Oz series, and I still wish to work somewhat in the style of Tina Nass, who I had mentioned in a previous blog post which you can read here.  This means again I will be working with more traditional mediums, this time pencil, which hopefully I will gain more confidence with.

In my original proposal for the year, I had planned to work on branding throughout the year, and although I did redesign my business cards, created a depop and did sell two inktober zines along with a couple of prints, there is still a lot more that I want to create before finishing college later this year. This includes: creating a website, (including my portfolio and possibly a shop) creating more products, i.e. prints, t-shirts, pins, bags, stickers and so on. Then working on a promo pack which I can send to possible clients/agencies, I believe this will include a creative cv, business card, a print, stickers, a pin and then I want to create a sort of box that will contain all of these elements.

I did have a better experience with screenprinting so I believe this will be the main method used to create my products especially for the fabric based items like the t-shirts and tote bags, for the prints, however, I may use the risograph. In the past when I have created riso prints, I have really enjoyed how the textures and colours turned out, especially since I used a bright pink combined with a deep blue, so when making my prints I may stick with this form of output as when imagining all of my prints together (old and new) there will be a sense of uniform, right now I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing though but I will give it more thought closer to the time.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

From the last module, my biggest issue was that my projects ended up overlapping one another, which ended up making me more confused and more stressed towards the end of semester two. I believe this was because I was reading the books one straight after the other, so when I should have been focusing on just one project I would be reading a book for another and feeling like I should be taking notes and creating work for that specific story. So this may not be as much of a problem within semester two if I am not working with as many books, but I will still try my best to remain organised and on top of things, and just focus on one project at a time.

I believe my strengths last semester were my book covers for the Penguin competition, I was able to create them within a short space of time and do feel they are of an industry standard. What I underestimated when starting and initially planning this year was the time frame of the projects. I had thought that since the personal projects were of my own doing that they could be done quicker, however, I had found that they were actually the lengthier projects. Since the commercial ones did have set deadlines I believe I had more incentive to finish them, but with the personal ones, as I did not have a set deadline for myself, I believe there was more time and room for doubt and I always felt I could add more or make changes and so on, but that took time and time which I did not have. Saying this, however, I believe the most improvements came from the personal projects as I did become more confident working traditional, specifically with ink, lining my designs with fine liners then bleeding the ink out with water as to create tone within my work. I also gained more experience and knowledge with certain printing methods, I learnt what worked well and what did not, i.e laser cutting plates as one had not worked as well as the other, as the ink had bled into the sections that were supposed to be left white. This project also renewed my faith in screenprinting, you can read about it here, so it does encourage me to use it more as an output method in the future.

 

Professional Development Plan:

Within the next few months, I do want to create more commercial work, exploring more areas of illustration such as editorial, so that I can expand my portfolio and potentially gain experience from doing so. I will attempt to do this through competitions and live briefs, the only one I am currently aware of and interested in is the Cheltenham Illustration Awards, which I have created work for in the past, but I hope to find more competitions as the module goes on, as some may not have been announced yet and may come out later in the year. If this is the case then I may have to make quick turnarounds so that the potential addition of another project won’t clash with the ones I already have set in place.

As of my personal projects, my goal is to create a series of illustrations based on the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, so with this project I will gain more experience showing narrative within my work, (in a different sense to how I worked in the previous module, for instance, I want to show the characters continuously from one piece to another, whereas in the previous projects I just drew backgrounds, items or a created a slight suggestion of a character) but in this project I also want to try working more traditionally, using pencil to create the linework and textures within the piece, then I would scan each of the illustrations to colour them digitally, adding the vibrant colour palette that the story already suggests, for instance, the yellow brick road, the emerald city and so on. (I would have also mentioned the ruby red slippers, however, in the book the shoes are actually silver).

When focusing on my branding, I’m sure I will gain a lot of knowledge from that experience as well, as I have never made a website before, I’ve never created pins, screen-printed designs onto clothing and so on. I feel I will also learn more about myself, as to create your own branding I feel you do have to do a lot of self-reflection, thinking about your style of work, what imagery you feel would best suit you, how best to sell yourself and your work through elements such as business cards, websites or creative cv’s. Then there is more thought about promo pack’s, who would you be sending them off to? Agencies, potential clients? You have to consider who you feel your work is best suited to and who would most likely give you a job. All of this I believe will help more once I’ve left college, as I feel it will create a strong base in which I can establish myself as a freelance illustrator, applying to agencies, gaining work, but also selling work like prints, pins or t-shirts etc, on the side as I will hopefully have more knowledge of how to make/where I am able to get these products after this project, for instance, if I am to order pins or any product for that matter, from online, if I have a bad experience I will know not to use a company again, but if it is a good experience I will have a reliable source to create more products with.

Research:

In terms of research, I don’t believe there will be as much as I had in the previous module. With my Wizard of Oz project, I do intend to read the book and take quotes directly from it, so that I can illustrate the specific scenes as accurate as possible. I also intend to research artists, looking more into their process, how they may create their work, and I will try to take in that knowledge and apply it to my own work in my own style.

For the more unknown projects, I believe I will mostly be forming research from social media, for instance, Pinterest or Instagram, finding artists, illustration styles, colour palettes, or images to inspire my own work. When doing this, I do try to go in more depth, researching the artists and their processes, inspiration or thought process behind the piece more. If I do work with stronger themes (as I intend to) I will be doing more research into that theme as well, because although I may feel strongly about it, I would want to know all the facts and information first before creating the piece, so that I could best communicate the issue and strongly stand behind it if someone were to question it or if they wanted to know more information.  This information could potentially be sourced from websites, articles, blogs, interviews and so on.

Anticipated Challenges:

Time again may be a big challenge, but I believe with this module I am going to work more loosely with my timetable. In the last module, my projects did overlap too much which did get me confused and did cause more stress as I ended up trying to work on multiple projects at once. Although this was a bad experience, I do believe I learnt from it, as I feel I now have a better idea of how long my commercial projects may last in comparison to my personal projects, as I was able to produce commercial work a lot quicker as I felt I was more critical of my personal work and since I didn’t have as short of a deadline, I was allowed to be more critical, but that allowed me to take more time on the project, time which I did not necessarily have. SO, with this next module, my projects will not overlap with one another and I will only be focusing on one at a time. When I say that I am going to be working more loosely with the timetable, however, I mean that  I’m going to try making a loose plan of what I believe the dates will be, for instance, what time competitions will be released, how long I will be giving myself on certain projects, but as this module is more unknown, these deadlines will not be set in stone, and if the competitions are announced earlier or later than expected, it will be alright as I can swap around some of my personal projects times. This may seem like a recipe for disaster but it does make sense in my head. My main goal for the next couple of months is to just solely work on one project at a time, without any overlapping, and if I can do that I will be happy.

Another possible challenge will be with access to resources, especially when it comes to the last couple of months as a lot of the courses within the college will be trying to print or produce products for their own deadlines. This may make it harder to use the print room, the workshop, or the printers within CAAD. So as an attempt to battle this, I will try to produce everything earlier, at least within time for my own deadline. This means printing for my portfolio, producing merch: if I use screenprinting for t-shirts or tote bags, if I create another laser cut plate for prints, if I need to use the risograph. The closer it gets to the deadline I feel it will be harder to use these resources so I will try to plan in advance.

 

All images used are my own unless stated otherwise.

 

Design Philosophies

Thumbnails/Rough Sketching

  • I will always start my projects with quick initial sketches. I feel it is a good way to get initial ideas out on the page quick, then look back and start to develop the ideas from the starting point.

 

Research and Referencing

  • I mostly use Pinterest for inspiration, whether it is from illustrations, a colour palette, images of scenery or people.
  • If I need to find a specific pose/face to draw a person and you can’t/are too shy to ask someone to pose for you, Pinterest has a good source of imagery, I have seen a lot of dynamic poses for particular characters, but I mostly use it for reference images of people, you can check out my board by clicking here.

 

Including myself in my work

  • Enjoying what I do – if I am not enjoying the work I create, if I don’t feel enthusiastic about it, I do try to change elements so that I do like it, but if I have lost hope in a piece then I do not believe it is a good representation of myself.
  • If I do not feel at least 80% positive about a piece, with college work excluded, I do not show the work anywhere else. It may not necessarily be bad, but if I have no confidence to sell it then I believe I will constantly overthink the design and it will get worse and worse in my mind as I pick it apart more and more.
  • I would have said 100% but I don’t feel anyone is ever 100% confident about their work, there is always something they see that they think they could have improved on or changed, that no one else may be able to see.

 

Thinking outside of the box

  • Being able to work with a brief and/or client, giving them alternative options for the designs, possibly one that is more direct to the brief, one that is more biased to my own likes, and one that would be in between the two.
  • I always try to think outside of the box so that I am creating unique concepts, that can still link back to the brief, that would separate me from other illustrators/designers.

 

Problem-solving

  • Knowing my own weaknesses and figuring out ways to work around them, when I don’t have time to improve them on the spot.
  • Taking the time to learn from my weaknesses to create better work in future, potentially having fewer problems to solve.

 

Challenging myself

  • Whether it is with new techniques, mediums or programs I have not used before, or specific imagery that I am not used to drawing a lot, for instance, backgrounds or character work.

 

Final Checks

High standards

  • During college times, I feel I do hold my work to a higher standard than when I am working on personal projects at home, however, this is something that I am looking to change, so that I hold up all of my work to that high standard.
  • In the past I have had an ‘it’ll do’ mindset towards my personal work, especially when it has taken so long to create. Instead of taking a break and coming back to it later as to work on it further, I usually just say “its fine”, but I’m determined for this to end this year. When I am feeling the “it’ll do” moments now, I am going to take a break from the specific piece and just come back to it later; this will hopefully give me a fresh mindset and more energy when I come back to the piece.

 

Is the piece a good representation of myself?

  • Relating back to a previous point, if I am not confident behind a piece I don’t want it to be a representation of myself. Following the high standards point, if I have an “it’ll do” mindset to a piece then I should not be posting it as I know I can make improvements once I’ve taken a break and come back to it with fresh eyes. If I send out a ‘meh’ piece just for the sake of it, then ‘meh’ will be the response in return.

 

Does it communicate a specific message and does it communicate it effectively?

  • If I create a piece with a purpose to communicate a specific message then I have to be sure that it can be read and that the point will not be overlooked.

Screen Printing Class

When going into this class, I had did not have high hopes for it as the previous time that I had learnt the process, the outcomes did not come out the best, and the actual screen would fall apart after a couple of prints. However, in this class, we learnt a new process for making our screens, which did work a lot quicker and easier, and the screen actually lasted longer and gave better quality prints.

In the previous year, with our illustrations, we had to make them digitally and set them up within illustrator so that the image would be formed up of paths, but would be together in a compound shape. This was so that the design could run through the vinyl cutter, and it would recognise the paths and cut where needed. Once printed, you would then have to sit and weed out the sections of your design that you would want to be printed. I did actually enjoy this process, however, for time purposes, it wasn’t the best. When you had all the colour sections removed, you would then have to apply the vinyl to your screen by hand, which would often take two people to do as the screen was so big, and you would have to be meticulous with the process, making sure that there would be no air bubbles between the screen and vinyl, as this would potentially lead to your design bleeding when inked. Once the process of making your screen was complete, you would then place the screen facing down onto your paper but would have to use heavy weights or another person to hold the screen in place so that it wouldn’t move and potentially resulting in a bleed or smudge of your design. By working with another person, this also made it more awkward when pulling the ink down over the design, as it wasn’t just a smooth pull down, you would have to move around the arms that were holding your screen down. After all this effort, the screen would only last a couple of prints, at least in my own experience, as the ink would loosen the adhesive of the vinyl, which lead to some of my details falling off. Shown below are my results from this experience, which I hope show why I did not enjoy this experience and was not looking forward to trying it again.

HOWEVER, when beginning and learning this new process, it was SO much easier! When initially making the design, although I still had to make a monochrome design, as shown in my previous blog post, click here to see, I did not have to faff around with illustrator files, paths and compound shapes, I just needed to save my design as an A4 Jpeg.

When it came to creating the screen, we were all given frames which would be our own for the year. This would mean that we could repeat this process whenever we needed, as in previous years they have had a limited amount of screens, which could get damaged or take a while to dry after cleaning, so this would eliminate those issues, and if ours went missing, it would be of our own doing. With this frame, we were given a sheet of instructions to follow. Starting with it positioned so that there were two holes on the right and one in the top left corner, using double-sided tape, you’d then line all four sides. We were then given a sheet of mesh, which we stuck down onto the tape, making sure it was the rougher side facing upwards. This sheet acts as our screen and would be replaced from print to print. Using green tape, we then lined each side of the fame once again. This would ensure that the screen would not move during the process. With a craft knife and a cutting matt, we then carefully cut out the holes, the two on the right and one in the top left corner. Our screen was then ready for the design to be printed onto.

Using a new machine which burns the design onto the mesh, you would slot your frame into it, using the holes, then it would feed through, burning your design into the screen as it goes. I believe you do need to use a specific program for this to work, but it seemed simple enough to upload your Jpeg image and have it work. A couple of the other students did have issues with this process as they found the printer would glitch halfway through, but we discovered that this was due to the screen not being stable through the feeding process, as it would sometimes fall when coming out on the opposite side.

Below are images from the process of creating the screen, apologies if some are unclear as to what is going on within them.

 

When it had come to printing the designs, as the frame and screen were a lot thinner and lighter than the ones used in the previous process, it was no longer a two-man job to hold it in place, a couple of weights would suffice, meaning that when squeegeeing the ink down the screen, the process was a lot smoother.

The printing medium we had used was one part paint in the colour you wanted, I chose black as it fits with the style of work that I wish to create for the project, then two parts of acrylic medium. I believe the medium helped thin down the paint, making it a lot easier to transfer through the screen.  With a squeegee, you then put some of this medium in a line at the top of the screen, which should be faced downward on your page, then at a 45̊ angle, you then pull it down across your design. If you put too much medium, the print may bleed, but if you put too less, you may miss some details of your design. After a few runs, it is suggested that you wash your screen so that it does not get clogged, but once it is dry, you can go back to printing again.

This was unlike the previous process because if you were done with that screen, you would have to remove all of the vinyl, wash the screen, then you would not be able to print with the design again unless you went through the whole process of making your screen from vinyl once again.

Below are images of my results from this class, which as you can see I did experience a few learning curbs, using too much ink, or using the screen whilst it was still wet after cleaning, but I did get a few nice prints, and overall this class did give me a better perspective on the technique and process, and I do believe I will be using it again in the future. Potentially for final prints, but also for creating sellable products, as I believe it could be used to make good quality limited edition prints, bags, t-shirts, etc.

All images are my own unless stated otherwise.