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.