Poster Chaos!

Today we created a group poster including half of my class and some of the illustrators the year above us (Level 6/Year 3.) Our tutor for the Collections module thought it would be a good idea to do a group poster, this was not compulsory but was a lot of fun. He used Gun Magazine (also known as Le Gun Magazine) as a reference for the poster (hence why it is limited colour palette, using only black and white.)

Gun Magazine is a magazine that consists of many illustrators that put there illustrations into one piece, combining their own creations with other illustrator's designs to make a poster that ends in chaos (in a good and bad way.)

Our tutor thought it might be a good idea to stick to some sort of brief, so we pin pointed a light source 

(even though there are 3 different ones.) The post consists of characters, sea creatures, animals, patterns and much more!

My tutor started by created an egg in the middle of the piece, from there we went to work, the left hand side has most of my creations on, including many sea creatures doing drugs, eyes with hands,legs and top hats and my dragon filled with my lace pattern.

If I took my project in a different direction?

'Laced-up' Characters 

If I took my lace chokers in a different direction, instead of using the lace as dragon scales I would use the lace to create characters, (mostly reptiles as the lace suits the fact they can become scales.) Giving them child-like features and making them more kid friendly, as well as having a narrative story for the lacey characters, I would've created a name/group for each individual lace character. It would have also had their own unique features.

I decided to keep the theme of using 'L' names as each of the characters names would start with Laced. I felt it was more suitable. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean by my characters, with the names and features.

Laced up Lilly

Laced up Larry

Laced up Lucio 

This character is inspired by Lucio from a game called overwatch, that my boyfriend was playing at the time. I thought he suited the theme with the 'L' characters too.

Laced up Lady Gaga

Laced up Little Mermaid

Aliens

If I didn't take it in the direction of having my 'Laced up' characters, I probably would have used my other collection, my alien collection that has built up over the years. To be more specific, I wanted to take it in the direction of creating a new Xenomorph. (Not talking about google-eyed aliens or UFOs.) Based from the incredible designs of H.R Giger, who has always been a huge influence in my life and would've made a huge influence in the project if I chose to do this.

After a second opinion on this idea to do each individual alien, in a group (this would mean 3-4 highly detailed xenomorphs) my peer thought that this would take too much time. Instead of creating a lot of them by drawing them, and spending a lot of time creating them I came up with a different solution of using my alien collection, and still keeping to my initial idea of only using xenomorhs. I have decided to combine my 2 collections using this one as well as my choker collection. Using lace pattern to decorate my xenomorphs, almost identical to the dragons I created with lace but this time would be aliens.

Positive

 Negative

I also thought using a wide variety of alien species, not just sticking to the initial idea of just using xenomorphs. This idea would consist of creating a species of alien, but having a wider range with it this time, so sticking to the same theme as alien, just giving it a wider range.

Photoshop Workshop

Today we had a photoshop workshop with our Tutor. Being an Illustrator himself he understands that most art (especially from Illustrators) is often done through using digital software. He showed us how to create images to almost make them look like prints, or to give them an 'edgy' feel. 

He recommended not using white as a background because it makes the colours too bold, he also mentioned that most the time professional illustrators will often using a slightly darker shade to white. 

We were shown how to create some 'printish like' images using photoshop, using a simple 3-4 colour method.

Here are the illustrations I made from the workshop...

I decided to use snakes as my first illustration because of the project we have been working on. I know that this illustration doesn't involve having lace around any of the work, but because I used dragons as my main focus for the project I wanted to stick with the same theme of using reptile like creatures.

I feel that the colours are strong for this piece as I tried to use slightly darker colours to fit the theme of reptile, as you don't normally associate them with brighter colours as they are can be very dangerous creatures. I used blue, a yellowy-orange (I didn't want to use a full bright orange as I felt it might strip away the other colours from the illustration) and purple. The reason the colours are slightly darker than they should be is because we were asked to use the 'multiply' tool in photoshop to make the colours overlap each other, to give it that print feel.

For my second illustration I again used something with scales, so this could fit the theme. I used slightly brighter colours consisting of green, red and purple, as my previous illustration was a little dark.

Exhibition #2

My final design was drawn up using pencil, then over lined using different coloured pens, after was scanned in and edited digitally. I chose to create my final design in many different colours so my audience has a choice of colour.

I chose to use a bolder, blocked red rather than using a rose or crimson red because I felt using a colour that really stood out would work a lot more effectively which I think this has been achieved.

I chose to use a lighter blue because I felt a darker blue would make it look a little too 'hard' and using this sky blue colour made the colours seem chalky.

I feel this piece worked really effectively, compared to my other designs this illustration has a lot more colour involved on the dragon, as well as the complimenting colours used. This piece reminds me of the Joker from Batman, because the colours used are very similar.

I used a slightly darker green rather than using a lime green, or a somber green because I really wanted to effectively bring out the white of the illustration, which I feel has worked well.

For this design I used a colour that was a lot brighter than the others, considering most of the colours I used were rather 'boyish' I chose to use a colour that I haven't really worked with before. I feel as if this was successful in the sense that there was more of variety of colour for my audience, as my chosen audience didn't have an specific age range or gender.

Zines, Prints and Dreamcatchers! (Things sold at the exhibition)

Dream Catcher filled with Chokers

Here is my dream catcher that was hung at the exhibition, it consists of a hand made dreamcatcher including ribbon, feathers and string. The items added to it are my chokers. To hold the dream catcher up I decided to use one of my elastic chokers so it would hang and move a lot easier.

This dreamcatcher was on display and none of them were for sale, as they weren't my own design and were purely there for inspiration to my project.

This is the dreamcatcher lay down.

And here it is hung up on a wall, with the chokers dangling from the dream catcher.

Zine #1

I also sold zines at the exhibition and the one shown below is the first one I made.
For this particular zine I wanted to use a variety of lace, dragons, and things associated with my project.

 I tried to use a mix of colours for the front page, I wanted to show my audience the different types of patterns I used for this project, so I created a front cover filled with colour and a variety of patterns. 

For the dragon eye I wanted to use complimenting colours as it has been spread over 2 sides of the book I really wanted the illustration to be subtle so I used colours that were very light (as well as using a lighter purple, even for dark colours I wanted to make it a little lighter.)

 For the first 2 pages I added a quote and dragon. On the third page I added in a quote (the yellow page) that really stood out and suited the image on the next page (the small blue dragon.) I chose to do a small, cute dragon to match the quote next to it. I wanted to almost bring it across as if its that dragon's quote. I also tried to use some bright and cheerful colours, using an aqua blue and a saturated yellow to really brighten up the dragon, with white lace over the top.

The page with the dream catcher on was creating because I wanted to associate dream catchers with my dragons. The reason for this is that dream catchers help you to catch nightmares and with dragons I feel like some of them could be reminded of a nightmare, as well as associating the fact that dream catchers help you dream, and from dream comes fantasy, from fantasy comes mythological creatures, which is what dragons are. I chosen to have the dragon around the dream catcher rather than have it intertwine with it because I didn't want to over complicate the design.

For the page next to the dragon around the dream catcher, I chose to do something a little different as in the sense of not being able to identify what it is right away and having to look a little further into the design to really understand what it is. I painted a white dragon over the top of a purple designed background. I wanted to do something simplistic, and to get a softer feeling for this page, so I created a white dragon to represent the soul of a dragon (hence why it has no eyes, or any patterns on it,) there is almost a narrative to this page in the sense a dragon has died, maybe could use it as a story for future reference?

Finally, for my last page I wanted to do something that represented me as an illustrator, fierce but cute, thats why I've created a dragon that is lying on its back with a crimson red and white. These colours represent romance which I think is cute which is why I chose those colours. I also added in URLs to my social media sites.

Zine #2

For my second zine I wanted to create something simplistic, something to be described as a bold illustration. So I created a chinese dragon filling every page with a part of its body. I feel this worked effectively as it shows only the illustration and makes it look striking. (As well as keep the colour palette limited and sticking with a 2 colour theme, I thought this worked well also.)

Zine Bags

I sold little brown bags with my zines inside them. I thought it would be a good idea to have the zines inside them so my audience didn't have to carry them around or accidentally damage them. The designs on the front of the bags are all associated with my project and all include dragon designs, followed by patterned lace.

Here are the same bags I sold at the exhibition, they were also followed by having rolled up high quality prints of my final illustration. They were sold at the exhibition also, the prints consisted of a variety of different colours (as shown in the post with a variety of different colours of my final piece, those are the ones that have been rolled up.)

For my first time selling things at an exhibition I was not successful in selling everything created but I have set up an etsy account so I can continue to sell them on there. 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/people/katejuryillustration?ref=pr_profile

Week 10 - Exhibition

Today is our exhibition, held at a cafe. We had the choice of either framing our work or mounting it onto foam board. I chose to frame mine because I felt it would look more professional and finalised.

The image below is of our poster for the exhibition, some of the class created and designed the letters while our tutor chose the colour scheme and added in the finishing touches needed to make it look more like a poster.

For my exhibition I decided to create something that was relevant to my theme of dragons whilst also associating the lace in it. For presenting my collection instead of laying out my chokers on a table, I made my own dream catcher. I didn't add any items inside of the dream catcher other than the string needed to create the middle of it because I didn't want to over complicate my design. I still added in the feathers because I wanted to keep the dreamcatcher feel to it. The reason I chose to present my chokers on a dream catcher was because for the exhibition I created zines. On the zine was a dragon wrapped around the dreamcatcher so I thought it would've fitted the theme within my zine.

After creating my dream catcher I added my chokers to them, at first I thought that weaving them through into the lace would be a good idea, but it was not successful as the pattern and the choker itself was lost within the dream catcher. Instead I clip the fastenings into the middle of the dream catcher to let them drop down the dreamcatcher and let them flow. As well as look appealing to the eye this meant that my audience/viewers at the exhibition would be able to pull forward a choker they liked and really look at the design of lace used on it.

The photo above is of 'small-shelving' (is what used to be a draw that contained ink pots) which holds smaller collections on each shelf, the shelves contain things like broaches, chokers and shells, each from someones collection. The lettering above is from our poster, cut out, and stuck onto the wall.

The image above is of my final pieces presented at the exhibition. I have 1 final design, and another 2 final designs (but in different colours,) swell as having a dream catcher to present my chokers.

The dream catcher on the left hand side is my created dream catcher filled with my chokers. (I thought it would've been more relevant having it hang next to my image so that my audience would be able to clearly see my inspiration for the patterns chosen on my pieces.)

The image on the left side (purple) reminded me of the Joker (batman,) so for this piece I thought it would've been suitable for young boys, as some are into heroes and villains, I almost chose to add more to the background of having some typography, but I didn't want to over complicate things so I kept it simple. I also liked the fact I have a darker background to the rest, but I still wanted to keep the theme of having complimenting colours (yellow and purple.)

The middle image (orange) is my final, final piece, hence why its in a bigger frame compared to the other 2, as that was the first design that was fully finished.

Lastly, the image on the right (blue) was only 2 colours, because I felt the more simplistic the image, the more powerful it was.

The reason I chose to do more than 1 final design, is to show that the image I created can be changed in more than 1 way and to keep my audience interested (as my intention of my audience was to not have a specific gender or age range, so I tried to have a variety of colour used.) 

This design was my final finished piece, framed in A2. 

The design itself I made using pencil, then went over it with pen and then proceeded to take it into photoshop and touch up the design digitally. This allowed me to take away any errors made with the hand-rendered media used. I also chose complimenting colours for my final piece as I feel they work more effectively.

I was really happy with the outcome and how it look on the wall, I think the image is striking and everything used within the piece is relevant to the theme I was going for. I got some really nice feedback and compliments on the piece which I was really pleased with.

If I were to change to do something different on this design, I would have probably made the lace lines a little thicker and used more vibrant colours to really make the piece stand out, but the composition and the design itself I am pleased with, and would not change it.

Creating my own brief for my project

This is my brief created for the project. It is part of the criteria that we do this is order for our assessors to understand the challenges we set ourselves. I was unable to upload the document as a PDF, so  instead I screenshotted it which enabled me to upload it onto my blog. 

The explanation throughout my project is explained clearly in the brief below.

Week 9 - Deadlines & Visiting Illustrator

Today was the deadline for our professional practise module. This needed to consist of a business plan and creative C.V. Here are my final pieces for the module.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Today we had Clive Hicks-Jenkins (and his dog) visit us, there he presented some of his work and illustrations, some of the quotes and advice that he gave within the presentation were helpful and seeing what he's accomplished through his life, really makes illustrators, like myself, want to pursever and really get my name out there. 

He explained about his life and how he came to be the successful artist he is today. He began by saying he had a completely different background to painting, he said 'I couldn't have foreseen my career, as my creative path went a different way to as I expected.' He started painting in his late 40s, and turned away most commissions as he felt he couldn't meet the deadlines required. He also mentioned that he has a borderline attitude for negative space. 

"Everything has to come from reality, but that doesn't mean I can't change them. Something that has to have meaning to me."

His explained that his biggest influence in his life was his cousin. Looking into George and the dragon, he went on to say how narrative illustration inspired him. He also looked into another story called 'Tobias and the Angel', he will more than often create art for this story because of the dog within it. Dogs are associated with rodents but in his case, he sees it to be more of 'man's best friend.' 

He recently found more ways of working graphically in doing so, he showed us some of his work. 

My favourite illustration during the presentation was the image shown below. It is an illustration based from a narrative story about a blind man who went on a journey, with his dog, his dog was eaten by a wolf, and God made the wolf realise that he is was in the wrong, and his conscious got to him, therefore him and the wolf became partners. 

For the full story, you can read it here; http://www.tobiasblanck.com/Tobias_%26_the_Angel,_the_story.html

I really like this piece in particular because the colours used are so bold, and the mixture of using such vibrant and neon colours makes the image come to life.

The link to his website is here; http://www.hicks-jenkins.com/

Week 8 - Professional C.V? Business Plan? (Holidays)

During the Easter holidays I considered what I should be thinking about with my brief and C.V I decided to take what I had from my regular C.V, and use that as part of a template for my professional one. I managed to download photoshop over the holidays also making it a little easier to create digital art. I went straight in with my C.V creating a little icon to represent me, a everyone knows I have an obsession with wolves, (as well as having one tattooed on me.) I wanted to create something simple but that also represented me well, I love the idea of silhouettes and how beautiful yet simple they are, so I did a silhouette of a wolf and mirrored it. This was the outcome.

I thought it looked a little plain and simple, so I added in some swirls to give it a little touch up.

(You'll be able to see them on my C.V)

I managed to finish my C.V and I'm very pleased with the outcome, this is my first time creating some professional like this digitally. I feel as if everything flows well, and looks sleek, slick and sophisticated. 

I decided that my personal info says too much about my private life rather than about me so I-redid that paragraph.

My brief is going to about chokers, but not necessarily the items on them or how they are formed, more of what kind of patterns are used to form them, like lace for example. The brief will have clear directions as to how these patterns will be used, I've decided to go along with idea as using a dragon for my final illustrated piece using different patterns and prints to form the dragon. The reason i chose to use a dragon as my illustration is because when the patterns on a choker are simplified, they almost look like dragon scales, and so I thought the design would look good within this mythical creature.

I also took to pinterest to find different patters and designs on chokers, and how I can maybe present my collection.

https://uk.pinterest.com/kjillustrate/collections/

After thinking about what the brief is actually about I wanted to simplify the brief even more, so piece by piece, I broke down the questions and asked further questions, to go in detail as to what I really want this to be about.

Business Plan
Unfortunatley I can't upload my business plan onto my blog because it does't let PDFs be uploaded.
But here is the front page of my business plan, I will upload the full copy when able to.

Week 7 - Formative Assessment

We had our formative assessments given back to us today, this shows how well I am doing within the set project, focusing on 'collections.' The formative assessment shown below is from my tutor leading the project.

I am happy with how my progress has gone in the project unfortunately I was marked down because I didn't show a certain part of the progress that was essential. It was about where I got the lace idea from, and as my blog is part of the progress in my project, I had one of the posts marked as a draft and not published. Hence the reason I was marked down. I also didn't show as much experimental creativity as I should've.

To improve this and my grade, I will make sure things are posted to the standard they need to be and that I have a wide range of art materials in future.

As well as getting formative assessment from tutors, we also had formative assessment from peers within our class, each of us doing 4-5 for different peers. We were asked to mark each other and give an estimate on where our grades are at the moment. Including comments on what needed to be improved and the requirements met.

The feedback I got was from different peers that wrote about the improvements I need to make and the requirements met for the brief.

Here is the first feedback I got...

The requirements that were met;
-have a good amount of research and analysis
-idea has been picked apart and self critiqued
-has considered who is target audience 
-explained reasons behind ideas
-has annotate samples showing what worked well and what didn't (shows development)

The improvements to be made were;
-a lot of samples, could be more experimental with medias

The second peer feedback I got was...
Good amount of experimenting and interesting approach to your choker collection. I think the lace could be really successful - maybe try digitally manipulating lace to get around/over your images. Great experimentation with colours - maybe try different mediums, e.g.. acrylic, pastels, chalk, etc.

Thirdly...
1. Researched artists who collect
Consideration of target audience-documented and thought through
Lots of development work-gives your work context and helps see how your outcomes have been aimed at
2. You may have done this on your blog (which I did) but a bit more commentary on what you feel was effective and less effective in your work flow
3. Strong adherence to your concept throughout and good evidence of experimentation.

I am pleased with the feedback I got from my peers, it encourages me to be more experimental so with this I will challenge myself by using digital art and creating my final piece using that media. For future reference I will make sure to do more with my designs and have thorough annotation.

Week 6 - Experimenting Digitally

After having thought about all the hand rendered laced patterns I had done, I decided to try out some photoshop. I scanned in my drawn patterns and sketched dragons, tidied the designs up and merged them together to create a laced patterned dragon. I tried a couple of different patterns, with a couple of different dragons. (These are only experiments, which I may take further.)

For this design I used a much larger pattern, which didn't work as effectively as I thought, the pattern completely distorts the Illustration, which is something that really bugs me. For my second attempt I will be using a much smaller laced pattern.

This design didn't work very well, as you can see I had some troubles trying to merge the pattern with the outline of the dragon, creating some sort of fuzzy, blurred boxes around the dragon. This may have been because I tried to enlarge the image and it did not want to co-operate. For future reference I will be scanning in much larger images that work.

This design work well, because the pattern and the dragon merged together nicely, the pattern itself is very small, with larger designs on them, cut off from the sides. I added colour to make the design 'pop' a little more. I also feel the colours work really well together. 

I asked for a second opinion on the designs, as to which one worked better, she said that the third one worked better because lace patterns are very small and intricate, they work better with more going on in the design rather than less. I took this feedback and looked into smaller lace designs, and dragons have more detail.

I feel as if the end result for this experiment worked really well, and the fact I had a second opinion worked even better. I am really pleased with how well the pattern and Illustration co-operated and the colours really compliment each other.

Week 5 - Glug

We took a trip to Birmingham to attend a annual event known as Glug.

Before attending the event we took a trip around the city and the area that the event was located at. We sat outside a cafe, inside the Custard Factory, and I noticed the massive copper placated scaled dragon on the side of the wall in front of us. I thought the image would be relevant and inspire me a little with the current project I'm working on.

The scales on the dragon are created use leaf-like shapes and wrapped around the actual sculpture to give the dragon that life-like feel with its scales.

We took a walk a little further around the city and we came across a vintage shop, this was the jewellery display within the store. It contained a variety of rings, necklaces, etc. As well as having chokers with a high quality material, some having leather straps and others having velvet. This could help me progress in my project as the owners of the store obviously think that kind of material will sell and looks better on display than using some wired chokers.

They also had a variety of different materials, prints, designs, etc, on the clothes in the store, as well as having many clothing designs with 'scales' on them. This was made a huge impact on how I see lace, and how such a small and simplified pattern can look so detailed as long as there is plenty of it. This made me think that when I come to do doing my final design that maybe I should use a more simplistic design as I don't want to over complicate the illustration taking the focus away from the created illustration and more onto the designed pattern itself.

I also realised with the colour scheme of 'scaled' patterned they mostly use darker colours, consisting of main colours like brown, red, green, blue and black. This also made me think about the colour scheme I should use for my illustration, I was thinking of using darker colours anyway, but from a public stand point it obviously seems to be the same.

I managed to find some lacey pattern through one of the shop windows we walked past, this design is very small, detailed and complicated, but there is so much of the pattern that it looses focus of the design itself. I don't want this to be the issue hence why I'm going to use a more simplistic design.

Further into the town centre we came across an old vintage 1950s salon, unfortunately it was closed, but we managed to have a look though the window. The salon is bursting with bright, bold colours and the lighting and style of it really gives off that 50's feel!

Somewhere around the location of the event there was some street art, this was one of the spray paints I came across that really caught my eye. I feel like the colours used really draws you in and gives it a kind of candy look.

There was a variety of creative artists that visited to talk about their work and what they do. The event was hosted by Lisa Hassell a creative director who specialises in illustration and graphic arts. There was  a numerous amount of successful creative artists, each with different presentations. Each had a presentation about how they started their business and the success of it today, the highs and the lows of their company and what they had to do to reach their target and make themselves so successful.

You can watch the video of the presentations here; http://www.glugevents.com/watch/2017/emily-forgot

Also the director and film makers link to their website here; http://www.craigdoesstuff.com/

Unfortunately we had to leave early because of my peers needing to be home, and having further to travel late. So we only stayed for the first part of the show.

The link to the glug website is below! Showing the line ups, location and whats going on!

http://www.glugevents.com/locations/birmingham