Self Evalution

Presentation Slides

J R

I watched a TED talks video with an artist called JR, he used to be a graffiti artist in paris but one day found a camera and started to experiment with photography. he combined the two and started to paste the photos on walls around the city. he has gone one to post pictures up all around the world tackling difficult subjects in places that most outsiders would not dare to go. He pasted up pictures in Favelas in Rio of the mothers of people who had died in conflict with rival gangs and police. He covered buildings in photos of the women and when he finished he left without releasing any information to the press. He said this was to force the press to go to the favelas and talk to the women about their story. His Photos represented the women who suffer because of the violence in Rio but as well as creating a connection between his work and his audience he also made a connection between the media and the women in his photos. This created a dialogue where their story could be heard!

 This is a link to the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAy1zBtTbw

Eject

I have been looking at the work of a friend of mine that I used to spray paint with a few years ago. He works in a number of disciplines and media and has managed to create a successful market for himself decorating clubs, bars and restaurants around the country.

He has managed to create a market for graffiti artwork that provides him with a steady income and allows him to showcase his work to a large audience. he also has a clothing line and sells original art prints through his website. He uses humour and popular culture references in his work which i think make them more appealing and accessible to his audience. he works in digital media, spray paint, makes clothing and customises trainers. He has managed to apply his work to a large range of processes enabling him to increase his market and become a more effective illustrator.

Talking to him gave me a good understanding of working to deadlines and needing to be organised. He also highlighted the importance of communication when dealing with clients, you need to be able to clearly convey your ideas and be able to present your work through roughs. I need to become more comfortable talking about my work in a professional context.

Jay Ryan

Because I work all the times that I'm not in college I have really struggled to to make it to any exhibitions or events this year so have been looking through books of illustrators that I like. I bought a book by jay Ryan a couple of years ago that is still a strong influence on my work. he started out screen printing as a way to make posters to advertise his band. After a while more people started asking him to make posters for them and he became well known for his screen printed designs. I like the fact that he carved out his own niche market almost by accident through doing something he enjoyed. He now has work displayed at exhibitions and has published books of his work.

I really like his use of colour that is limited because of the process he uses. His colour palette is obviously carefully considered to highlight important areas of the composition. his use of borders and text is interesting, his text is hand dawn and loose but regimented enough to be clear and appear as a font. His borders are often made up of blocks of colour or elements of the composition and usually only frame part of the piece. By doing this he gives a feeling of a poster layout without the image feeling too generic. 

 

I think I could learn a lot about the use of texture in printing and how i can simplify my designs  From Jay Ryan's work. He works in a format that has a purpose to grab attention but also communicate a set criteria of information and he manages to do this and still make his designs appear charming, crafted and almost innocent.

Map 6

This is my final poster, I have named all the colours after areas of my practice I think are important. I tried to make the portrait section look like a Pantone colour swatch.

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to colour the image so that it was balanced and all the colour were easy to tell apart. I used codes similar to Pantone colour codes to act as a key for the painting by number. The first image I made is too complete, I was concentrating on making the image look complete rather than basing it around how I feel about my practice. As well as filling in the spaces will the things I have discovered this year I need to shrink the negative aspects that affect my work. I think the poster clearly communicates the information I want and is still interesting visually and making this has helped me prepare my presentation.

 

Map 5

This is my first mock up of my poster. I used the Pantone logo and the Crylon spraypaint logo to make it look like an official paint chart.I don't really like the black outline around the portrait and might remove it so that the portrait looks like its on a Pantone colour swatch. I think I need to use a more complex design to be able to apply enough colours without it making the image look too uncoordinated. I need tofind a way to add the colour chart in a way that looks official and is clear enough to easily understand.

Map 4

I wanted to test out some compositions for my poster. i think I should stick to the paint by numbers theme instead of using symbols and a key. I need to make sure the numbers don't overpower the line work of the portrait. I want the instructions to be clear as if it is a a real paint by numbers picture. 

Map 3

 I started working on portraits that would work as paint by numbers illustrations. I started out drawing quite loose portraits with felt tips and gradually fine tuned by designs into more detailed versions, I had to take into account how many colours I needed to make up my practice to decide how complex to make the portrait itself. I am thinking of adding branding from paint companies or colour charts such as Pantone to my poster to make it look like an official colour range based on me.

this final image is more complex and should allow me to use more colours to illustrate myself. I would like to be able to use some of the colours multiple times so that I can colour some sections of a particular colour code and leave others blank to show that i have begun to add a theory or methodology to my practice but feel I have more to add.

Map 2

These are a few of my ideas for my poster. I want to include all the things that make up my practice, my influences and my aspirations for the future. I tried come up with ideas that would allow me to iclude a large amount of information and illustrate how it applies to my practice in an interesting way. I think the crossword design is too plain, it could be interesting to use clues and not fill in all of the crossword answers as a way to engage the viewer but I think the image itself needs to be more thought provoking. The blueprint idea of a car or spaceship is a bit basic and obvious and has no real basis in my practice. The strand of DNA is a good way to show that the information in the image makes up myself as a person and as a practitioner. The idea I chose to explore further is the colour chart where the colours make up my influences, aspirations and things to avoid. I would like to combine the colour chart with a paint by numbers portrait of my self that is only coloured in in the sections i think are part of me at this point in time.

Map 1

This the map of myself that I made to help me create my illustrated self poster. I tried to find links between my personal life and my work. This year has been mainly about changing my perspective on illustration. I have been drawing for years outside of education and have become set in my ways. This year has taught me to take inspiration from a wider range of influences and to find inspiration in my life in places i would never have thought to look. i think that shared experiences can be a really powerful tool in communication and these can only be discovered by linking our own personal lives to our work.

Logos

for the visual Journal part of my COP module I looked at company logos and how they are used to signify a set of values. Once companies have built a reputation they can use these logos to communicate their brand and values to the public without the need for any other information. I started to to experiment with their logs to see if i could alter the message to my own while still maintaining the brand identity. By doing this i can use their preexisting set of values and brand identity to communicate my message.

The first image I experimented with was the KFC logo that features colonel sanders. I have used religious imagery to compare him to an angel. i think its interesting that that they share characteristics. By this i mean that both logos and religious icons communicate a set of beliefs or values using the viewers previous experiences. this taught me that i can use these same shared experiences in my work to communicate more complicated scenarios without a complex and possibly confusing composition.

These two images are both based on McDonalds logos and aimed to make people aware of the health risks of fast food. I think the bottom of the two images works well as the health risks are more clearly and graphically illustrated and the overall image maintains the brands identity. It seems to me that the logos work more effectively if they still look, even just at first glance, as though they are representing the company.

Pinterest Pictures 6

One of the Illustrators whose work i have been looking at a lot recently is Brett Parsons, he is best known for his work on '21st Century Tank Girl'. I find his work interesting because he work predominantly digitally but overlays textures that give his illustrations a hand crafted feel that is much more appealing flat vectored image. I read an interview with him where he was talking about the fact he used to work with vectors but stopped a few years ago. he said he realised there was no need for perfect sharp edges to his line work and that it was in fact detrimental to the aesthetic he wanted to create. I enjoy his work because he manages to create what appears slick and finished but does so with loose lines, I don't see many digital illustrators that manage this. The addition of texture to his work makes each layer of colour appear as if it has been applied by hand giving a feeling of depth and quality. This work particularly well because he takes inspiration from old posters for many of his illustrations which the textures combine with perfectly.

I have tried to work like this but I am struggling to work in such a loose way. I need to have more confidence and experiment more. over summer when I have more time I want to try and push the boundaries of how I work more. His choice of iconic films adds to the appeal of his work, I think his work would transfer well to clothing designs. Having produced a few clothing ranges myself I know how effective it can be to have your product associated with something. I know two designers who have done very well for themselves simple by creating an association between their brand and elements of popular culture. 

Pinterest Pictures 5

this image is an creates an interesting juxtaposition between classic print patterns often based around nature and man made technology. I like the introduction of the megaphone in this image, it challenges the viewers expectations. We often jump to conclusions before examining all the details of an image so compositions that mix two or more can trigger interesting reactions. 

This is a page from Chris Haughton's book 'Shh We Have a Plan'. Haughton is one of my favourite illustrators at the moment, the landscapes he creates make you feel like you are part of the scene, I think the scale of the background is a big factor in this. The landscpaes are made up of fairly simple shapes and textures which allows him to cover the entire page without it feeling cluttered. The full page print makes the viewer feel as though they are part of the wilderness he has created. The simple shapes also help the characters stand out even though they only occupy a small section of the page. I am impressed with the way Haughton is able to create a balanced composition that highlights relevent elements and creates a intriguing landscape with such a limited colour palette. I struggle to make compositions that highlight key points when working with an unlimited colour range. I would like to work more illustrating stories and think that Chris Haughton is one of the best to learn from. I am going to work more with cut paper and other media that force me to simplify my designs and find new ways to tackle problems. I think that adding constraints to my practice will force me to alter my approach and ultimately change how I look at my own practice.

Pinterest Pictures 4

I really like these vector illustrations of birds. The artist had created some really interesting shapes that I think help make these images appeal to the eye and differentiate from one another. I think these images provide a good lesson in simplicity, if any part of the illustration is wrong then it would be very obvious because of the very limited number of elements. This applies to shape, colour and the overall form of each bird. The limited colour palette opens up possibilities for a variety of meadi such as screen printing. These images could work as a range of clothing designs, a book or a calender. The colours that the artist has used work well, obviously they are based on the real colours of the birds but changes in tone can make a big difference. I have designed a few ranges of clothing before and always found simplifying colour difficult, I usually opted to print in one colour to avoid problems. I would like to work on some designs similar to these for a new clothing range.