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

Workshop with Fig Taylor

Today we had an Author visit our college. Fig Taylor is an author that writes books to help construct a decent portfolio when going into business. For the next 2 days (Wednesday and Friday) she will be giving us lectures and presentations through out these days.

She showed us presentations on how we should present ourselves as an Illustrator. She told us to be more proactive as an Illustrator, for example, to do at LEAST 30 minutes of research every week. I already spend about an hour or so doing research. She also included we should email Illustrators about our work and if we're going along the right tracks (email them our work and ask for advice on improvement or what they like about it.)

She told us about comic book commissions and how clients these days are looking for artists to 'breathe new life into old characters.'

She also told use to check the simple things, especially in professional practise, she said to make sure to spell check, especially on blogs, as people will look the other way. She also mentioned that an easy to access blog is better for viewers.
Fig also mentioned that not only should we be serious while presenting our work but we should also keep on at people, (keep constantly pushing until your happy) and we should post work on multiple sites and to always keep up-to-date exhibition things, I feel I have achieved this. As a have numerous Illustration accounts presenting my work like, blogger (of course) Instagram and a Facebook page.

We were told that our blogs are professional and that it can't be a 'teenage diary' because people will see it, a lot of us thought that not many people will look at our blogs but surprisingly Fig told us more than one person will be looking at our blogs, and it is vital to keep them up to date.
She also recommended being out wood facing, to shine a light in our creativity as we'll get more public notices.

She also mentioned that having a friend/relative that doesn't really know about you as an Illustrator and what work you do, to keep an eye on your blog and tell you about the negatives and positives of it (if any changes need to be made,) as well as looking seeing a progress in creativity, she also told us to think about where commissioners can see your work.

Tutors want to see you out of your comfort zone because they have more illustrators, they'll judge you on your work.
Clients will take you on face value. They'll ask you to do what you do really well, whilst having a weird perspective on it.

She mentioned a designer who brought in a portfolio and 2/3 of his portfolio was his own style and the rest was technical drawings of furniture, her point was that bring in a portfolio that represents you. Not what other people want to see. She said with certain portfolios you have to have a clear, stylistic and have a good body of work. Comissioners WILL loose interest if it is hard for the eye. She also said you have to be at least 87% confident with your portfolio, you will never been 100% with your portfolio.
Make sure you're always a happy illustrator and don't feel like you're not good, be a critic but don't be too negative on yourself.
Things to take out of a portfolio;
-weak
-stylistically misleading
-un-deliverable
-unenjoyable
-irrelevant
Just take out things that don't represent you.

They want the portfolio to represent you, to put it in Fig's words, she simplified it by saying 'This is what I do, this is how I do it, and this is how I show it.'

A style can be anything. Style doesn't have to mean;
-overly stylised
-selling out
-corporate prostitution
-youthful or youth oriented
-trendy flavour-of-the-mouth band wagon jumping
-only applied to one kind of subject matter

The most important thing when being an Illustrator is that you have to become your own constructive critic. You have to be critically honest with yourself and your work.

Week 4 - One day project

We were asked to do a one day project for the new movie 'personal shopper' starring Kristen Stewart,

Here is the link to brief and what is recommended within the illustration http://lwlies.com/articles/kristen-stewart-personal-shopper-creative-brief/

and here are the reviews for the project http://lwlies.com/reviews/personal-shopper/

Below is the final Illustration created for the competition, I decided to use Victorian symbols as the background, also sticking with neutral colours to keep the vintage feel, as that's what was required in the brief.

Here is my final copy of my Illustration for the competition, I added everything that was needed to give it a magazine feel.

My Illustration is currently up on the website, click on the link below to check out the website!

http://borderlinesfilmfestival.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/kirsten-steward-magazine-covers.html

Week 3 - Further research into what I'm doing

After having some inspiration spark from a previous visiting illustrator I decided to look more into the patters on a choker itself and how I can simplify the complicated lace designs. So I took one of my own chokers (on that had a little symbolic cat on the front) and used the lace around the neck as a design for the cat itself. 

I decided to go with creating dragons for my illustrations for the exhibition as laced patterns the laced patterns shown, can resemble dragons scales in a very similar way. The lace patterns I will be creating are simplified, making them look more like dragon scales. I decided to use a laced pattern from of my chokers I used for the previous illustration, (the cat shown above) and simplified it, this was the result.

I feel as if that simplifying my choker designs and creating something that resembles the lace works more effectively than try to do something that is complicated that requires a lot of detail, because having a detailed lace pattern takes away from the illustration itself and focuses on the pattern rather than what you want the audience to see. This is why I want not only the laced pattern to have attention, but I also want my audience to be interested in the illustration itself, and I want them to be curious to why I used these particular illustrations rather than using something random.