INSTA INSPO

I really like the effect of the white and black reversed here! I never usually think to do this. 

The frame makes the sketch look like a finished illustration. I really need to think about frame in forming the illustration.

I like how this illustrator has used water colour and then drawn in pen over the top, it adds some depth and interest to the image- who's hands are they? 

I think the expression in the above image makes the audience feel sad/awkward/uncomfortable. The line work reinforces this. I need to think about mood and how everything can enforce it. 

I absolutely love the way she has used watercolour/ink to add colour it just looks so beautiful and delicate but also the cheeks look really strong and powerful. 

I just really love indian and other prints and materials. Their details are amazing and they all are so different. The colours are always so diverse and reflect the passion of the culture. 

I really need to start using ink more in my work. I have been meaning to create some fashion illustrations and when I saw the above work it motivates me more to have a go myself. I think she has used ink to create the black and then dropped bleach over the top of it to create the interesting gold effect. 

Ralph Steadman

OUIL402 PPP1 Study Task 1- Why am I here? What do I want to Learn?

Using the online resources that you have been introduced to in the module briefing, questions raised in the studio workshop and your initial experiences of the first few weeks of the programme:

Identify and explain 5 reasons why you chose to study on this programme.

1.  Learn from tutors experienced in the field. 
2.  Learn from being around other illustration students in a studio environment.
3.  Get to use the collage facilities and skills workshops in relation to illustration
4.  Learn more about how illustration works and the habits and methods needed in order to be successful in a career. 
5. Get to spend my time image making and drawing and thinking about creating work. 

Identify and explain 5 things that you want to learn during your time on the programme

1.  How to use Illustrator and Photoshop in more depth.
2.  Learn what direction my own work is going in and how it could fit in to the industry.
3.  Learn about managing multiple projects at once.
4.  Learn how to improve my own process of making illustrations.
5.  Learn about other influential and skilled practitioners; present day and historically.

Identify and explain 5 skills that you think are your strengths.

1.  Drawing accurately to an image or life, e.g. proportions. 
2.  A long attention span when drawing, so I like to spend a lot of time on an image.
3.  Creating lots of detail within my work.
4.  Manage my time well and prioritize work that needs to be done.
5.  Open minded to different ways of working.

Identify and explain 5 things that you want to improve.

1.  As said above... I am open minded however I find it really difficult to be satisfied with my own work if it's not in the style that I like.
2. I need to be in the right mood to create good work, so some of the studio based activities will probably not end up as good as if I were to do it in my own time. 
3. I need to venture away from reference images as once I start using them I often want to continue to stick to it to draw the rest of the image so it looks right. I need to make it mine and not just like the photo. 
4. After spending time creating a final piece I feel like all the work is done however I must ensure it is presented or printed professionally in order to make the most of the illustration!
5. I want to improve my knowledge about other practitioners and illustration as a career,

Identify and explain 5 ways in which you will evaluate your progress

1.   By recieving official grades and marks.
2.   By the feedback from my peers.
3.   By feedback from my tutors.
4.   Whether it fits the brief.
5.   Whether I am happy that I have learnt something from creating it or am happy with the actual work produced. 

OUIL402 PP1: Study Task 4 - Where am I now?

Ten things I have learnt about myself as an illustrator:

1. Colour is really important to me and I need to consider the effects of colour on my work before starting the piece. 
2. I need to explore ideas more and think about the concept clearly and symbols to portray the message before I begin making a finished piece. 
3. I really understand the importance of frame and composition now, it is important that I continually keep this in mind when creating work.
4. I really enjoy doing my own work so I will make time to just enjoy art without a brief. 
5. I really need to explore media more and make time for this. 
6. It is important to think about the key elements of the message and how to accentuate these in my illustrations. 
7. I definitely am not that interested in action illustration like comic books, even though I admire and am interested in some, for example Persepolis.
8. I am interested in patterns and illustrations that are aesthetically enjoyable/emotional/controversial to look at either by colour, media or content.  
9. I really enjoy the immediacy and portrayal of emotion using paint and so I would like to do some more larger scale paintings; perhaps make time for this in my own time (non-uni work).
10. I need to put more effort in the final resolution such as using the correct paper, media and scale to make it professional. 

Ten things I have learnt about my time management:

1. Need to work at the best times for me which is after uni or in the mornings. 
2. Leaving work till late is bad as it means I have less sleep.
3. I must ensure I have enough sleep otherwise I wont end up being as productive as possible the following day. 
4. Spend a small amount of time to blog daily. (Obviously spend more time on the blog work you need to write lot's of information on) 
5. Make sure I use my time wisely when in uni.
6. I work better away from uni, but it is good to see others work in uni and get tutor help.
7. Prioritize work that has to be done but spend longer on work I want to do and that interests me to produce an outcome I am happy with. 
8. I am overall pretty organised and I always have an ongoing list of things I need to do.
9. I need to dedicate some time to reading illustration books.
10. I need to dedicate more time to researching other illustrators work and careers. 

Fashion Illustration

I love Chico Baldini's work for its colour, it is full of atmosphere and feeling and I definitely will use his work as inspiration for patterns and colour. 

I like the way this artist has used negative space and blocks of colour in their fashion illustrations. 

I find fashion illustration really interesting and I want to pursue it especially using strong ink lines and pen and water colour, I also intend to buy some gouache. 

Some illustrations I have done in the past which link to fashion illustration: (in the future I will place emphasis on the garment rather than the portrait) 

This image focuses on the use of pattern in fashion illustrations although it is not specific to any. It was a practice piece to use my imagination to fill the page with pattern. 

I used a reference image from amass one for this piece. I used pen and then added a warm colour scheme of orange, brown, gold and added shadows using dark blue , with coloured pencils. 

I just used pen to draw the simple figures in this piece. I used a reference image of models off the catwalk but dressed in their Alexander McQueen dresses.

Another McQueen model. I found the reference photograph on the Alexander McQueen Instagram account and chose it because I think the model looked intriguing and held emotion in his face even though he was almost perfectly statuesque. I used pen and coloured pencil to add colour. 

I used a reference image from a magazine for this illustration. I drew it in pen using dots and then added parts of colour using coloured pencil. I like using coloured pencil as you are able to adjust the colour, strength and sharpness depending on how much pressure you put on.

I used a reference image from a magazine to draw this simple pen illustration of a model wearing an Indian headdress. I drew it directly onto the paper with pen as I didn't want to create any marks rubbing out pencil lines. 

I then used pro-markers and coloured pencils to add different colours to the portraits.

As some of my friends liked the Indian headdress portrait I used a website to upload and edit the image and reproduced the illustration onto clothing. 

I used collage and coloured pencils to create this illustration of Cara Delevingne.

I really admire Beyonce so I used a reference image and used collage, coloured pencil and wax crayons to create this vibrant portrait.

I drew Cara Delevingne again using pen and coloured pencil and changed the tips slogan 'ain't no wifey' to 'illustration 4 lifey' to show how cool illustration is :)

I started playing around with editing paintings and drawings with photoshop: here I used pencils and watercolour and then scanned in the image and added some tones and blurred to create the final illustration.

My friend requested a portrait so I drew her first using pencil pen and coloured pencil and then reworked it on photoshop. I added the girly butterflies and details as it fits perfectly with her fun personality. 

I drew out pencil illustrations and then scanned them in and worked on the using photoshop individually. I then put them together and combined the acknowledged patterns together. 

OUIL405 Visual Narratives - End of Module Self Evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL405 Visual Narratives	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME	Alice Dear

1.  What skills have you developed through this brief and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
Throughout this brief I have developed a range of skills. Thinking about composition and layout has been a massive part of creating and planning the illustrations for this book as page size and order is so important. Also deciding how wide or small or how many pages the illustrations should run through was something I had to keep in mind throughout the project. I think my decisions were appropriate in respect of the compositions I used and the layout of my book; especially as I had parts cut out which meant planning composition was essential. I have also developed my Photoshop skills such as using layers, multiply, texture and levels. These skills really helped me as they saved me time and allowed me to create illustrations with more depth, particularly when adding textures. I also learnt a lot by looking at other illustrators work using colour schemes. Beforehand I would have tried out colours that I thought worked together well and that looked right, but in this project I started planning colour schemes before trying them out. I looked at coffee shop colour schemes and how they used warm tones and I noticed that a lot of illustrators used multiple shades of one colour in their work. I effectively applied this in my own work as I used mainly just warm tones of red, orange and pink, to create a coffee shop atmosphere and to ensure all the illustrations felt like part of a set. I have developed skills within book binding and I now can differentiate between the appropriateness of each style of binding and also how to use Indesign to layout and print the pages for the creation of a book. These were applied when printing and binding my own book and I they were used effectively as my end result was accurate to how I had planned it. The pages were all in the correct places which was very essential as they had a specific order to allow for the cut out areas to make sense and to be in sync. In book binding skills were developed in order to use effectively the guillotine, folding the pages, making templates, making holes and stitching.
2. What approaches to/methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your concept development process?
My methods when approaching colour has developed and informed my concept development process. In this project I started planning colour schemes before trying them out. I looked at coffee shop colour schemes and how they used warm tones and I noticed that a lot of illustrators used multiple shades of one colour in their work. I effectively applied this in my own work as I used mainly just warm tones of red, orange and pink, to create a coffee shop atmosphere and to ensure all the illustrations felt like part of a set. I have also developed my methods when gathering research as I have leant to be more focused and precise in my collection of data, and in my concept development to keep in mind that simplicity is key. My concept development process was also informed by my choice to use cartoons, instead of using photographic reference to create realistic illustrations, this was an approach I decided to use in order to create characters that were unspecific, relatable and that would represent the range of society I intended to.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
The feedback I got in this project identified strengths in my more realistic illustrations so I will capitalise on these in future. However I do feel that there were strengths in my cartoons, particularly using less reference and more imagination as it made me feel free and this is something I will definitely try to do when creating work in future to add more of my own message to the piece. Other strengths I think were using negative space, and not feeling the need to add colour in every part of the illustration. This is something I did not plan when creating illustrations but this project has taught me to capitalise on these by planning out what essential parts of the illustration I want the audience to focus on and how to use colour or lack of it to do this. I also feel like characters are a strength in the way of atmosphere and emotions and I capitalised on this throughout the book by using different scenes and characters to create the atmosphere of the coffee shop.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
I think concept is something I really need to make simple and clear, so that the message is a strong one within my work. I will address this by trying to avoid getting distracted by too many ideas and too much research and instead have a clearer direction earlier on in the project on what I would like the audience to feel when looking at my work. Composition and layout is something that I need to address in future by practicing different options for my illustrations, I think some of the pages could have been composed more effectively. I think proportions and realistic elements could have been addressed in this work as I used almost no references for my illustrations, apart from the food and drink, which in a way was good as it highlighted the coffee shops products but I think the illustrations would have been more believable if I had used reference to make everything other than the cartoon style of faces, realistic.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? Plan composition and layout in my illustrations in more depth. This would make them have a less cluttered and more thought out feel and would draw the reader’s eye to the focuses of the pieces. Draw out the illustrations as many times as possible as this would lead to create the best style of that one particular scene or character and it would mean that the pen lines would all be joined and smooth to enable easier editing on Photoshop. I would also use more reference as this would create a more believable scene and characters, for example furniture and coffee cups. I would use a cleaner cutter for the cut out parts and spend longer cutting them out to gain a smoother and more professional edge to the paper. I would also spend more time trying out colour combinations and textures using Photoshop to create the most atmosphere, feeling and depth to the illustrations.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

A copy of your end of module self evaluation should be posted to your studio practice blog. This should be the last post before the submission of work and will provide the starting point for the assessment process. Post a copy of your evaluation to your PPP blog as evidence of your own on going evaluation.

Notes