During this module I have tried to make sure i've completed a range of briefs, including commissions lives briefs and self directed briefs to best explore my practise. After struggling a lot last year in my personal life, I found it really difficult to put my all into my work; this year I have been able to manage my mental well-being much better, which has meant I have been able to focus more on producing work which I love. This has been a breath of fresh air to me, and for me this year has definitely been the best yet. My aims at the start of 603 were to try and experiment with a range of different processes and ways of image making to explore how my work fits into the illustration industry. I wanted to create imagery that I felt best represented me as a practitioner, and I wanted to produce work I felt proud of. I found that shape, colour and composition are probably the three most important aspects of my practise. I started off the year quite slowly, testing out some coloured pencil drawings, and found it did take me a bit longer to properly get stuck back into my practise, and I also found it quite difficult to manage my time when I was completing the COP module; though after this was handed in, this is where I really tried to run away with my practise.
Something I have become a lot more familiar with over this module has been screen printing, which is something I never thought I'd say. After having so many unsuccessful attempts and producing screen prints I wasn't happy with in the past seemed to really put me off; but I was determined to give it another go and now I feel it's one of the most important aspects of my practise. I have been exhausting my sketchbook and filling it with ideas and roughs while planning for screen prints, to make sure i'm completely happy with how it looks before attempting to print. I also made sure I gave myself enough time to carefully familiarise myself with the process to reduce the chance of something going wrong. I've learnt that to produce a good quality screen print you have to spend time on each and every part; cleaning the screen, mixing colours well and registering each layer, but it has certainly become one of my favourite ways of image making. Some of the work i'm most proud of from this module have been screen prints, one of them being my Batsford prints, so I'm hoping I am able to carry this on into my professional career after uni.
Another quite large chunk of my module was a collaboration I took part in with a third year graphic designer, Beth Ewens. The brief was to re-brand a small coffee shop in Leeds called Pump N Grind; and this was probably my favourite brief I worked on. From this I gained valuable experience collaborating and communicating with another designer, and we worked efficiently together to meet the deadlines we both set for ourselves. I explored processes such as vinyl cutting and mural painting which I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to do otherwise. I found myself fully invested in this project from start to finish, and seeing my work in the real world has given me a massive confidence boost.
Another set of smaller briefs I really enjoyed were some commissions I did for Banger Magazine; again, I learnt to manage my time well within these briefs as I had to work to quite tight deadlines. This has also been an opportunity to practise my digital skills and to see how my work fits into the real world, and seeing my work alongside other illustrators and beautiful graphic design in the magazine has been really pleasing. A brief I didn't enjoy was the Renewi brief, I didn't enjoy the ideas process nor did I like my final outcomes which put a bit of a downer on me briefly. I have learnt from this not to partake in live briefs which I don't think suit my practise, as I felt like I wasted time which could have been spent creating or experimenting with something beneficial to my practise.
Every piece of work I have produced, every mistake and every success, has led up to how I feel as a practitioner now. This is probably the first time since beginning uni that I have felt like an illustrator. Currently I'm in the process of exploring 3D wooden figurines which I'm feeling very positive about and is definitely going to be something I'm going to move forward with, and hopefully exhibiting in the end of year show. I feel confident in the fact I've explored composition, shape and colour within my work through this module, which is something I set out to do from the beginning. I also have some exciting commissions coming up which have materialised from other work I have created in this module, and I am hoping to carry on selling my screen prints.
