Wedding Illustrations

Follow Rebecca's board Wedding inspiration on Pinterest.

I produced some wedding invitations for my cousin and I was so happy with how they looked and really enjoyed making them! I would love to produce more wedding invitations in the future. Just need something I know to get married! haha.

Karoline Pietrowski

I really like how Karoline Pietrowski does't use a black outline around her work. A lot of my work in level 4 included me using fine liners a lot so as I start to use photoshop more this year, I want to try create work without an outline. Sometimes I feel as though my work doesn't stand out enough from the page without an outline but Karoline Pietrowski's work is so lovely I want to try bringing in more shape and colour in my own work. Also her use of colour is great!

Professional Facebook Page

Ahhh I finally made a Facebook page! I've been putting it off because I don't want to look stupid and not get any likes but I shouldn't let stuff like that stop me! 

Behance

I just set up a Behance. I haven't put much on it yet because I've only just set it up and still working out what to do! But soon there will be lots of lovely illustration on there.

Context of Practice 2 Evaluation

This module has allowed me to integrate and explore a range of research techniques to inform both a written and visual response. This synthesis, should then inform the work produced. During the briefing of the module, it was advised that we should research in to something that interested us. Something that I feel passionate about is the preservation of animals and wildlife. Knowing this, I decided to explore the subject further whilst also looking at the use of animal rights campaigning. With it being such a vast subject to investigate and with only 3000 words to discuss it, I refined the topic to focus in on society’s involvement in the loss of animal habitat. I easily found relevant books and articles on the topic to fuel my essay research.

Initially I felt concerned about my practical response as I struggled to form an idea that I was happy with. I explored a few different ideas before developing my final outcome. After producing and constructing my finish work and felt a great sense of accomplishment, particularly after the positive feedback I received during the final crit. My response to this brief has been greatly informed by the skills I’ve learnt in both my responsive and applied illustration modules. Responsive taught me the importance of presentation and professionalism, which I feel my response replicates. With applied illustration I have learnt about product, range and distribution. My response to my essay is not only a set of informative and fun illustrations, but also a range of engaging activities and products.

Writing is not one of my strengths, however during this module I have greatly improved. The vast depth of research in to my chosen topic has informed this. Both my practical and written work would not be as successful as the are would it not be for my research. 

My strengths lie within the end presentation and professionalism of both my written and visual responses. My practical work works well as a pack/set and I have vastly improved my understanding of catering design for audience. The success of my work was helped by excellent attendance and general commitment. Organisation was an important factor to me as essay writing is not a strong point of mine and there were a number of components to construct within my practical. I have not experienced any particular problems during production thanks to the foresight to print my final imagery a week before the deadline.

This module allowed me to show a range of technique, experimenting with applying to different formats and products such as badges and stickers, which I’ve never produced before. The overall imagery I illustrated was aesthetically pleasing and I am happy with my mix of analogue and digital skills. Similarly to the responsive module I worked largely digitally, which has vastly improved the speed at which I can create imagery in Photoshop.

A weakness of mine is that I am indecisive. This was apparent during the development stages of my practical response as I took a long time deciding what to do. Although what I produced is good, if I had a definitive idea earlier I could have developed my work further through possible magnets and other products.

Upon the opportunity to revisit the module I would make a bigger folder for my illustrations to make allowance for the badges as I feel they don’t fit neatly inside. Also I would suggest that my practical work could be improved if I added more informative text to the booklet I would also ensure that my essay and visual responses had a greater integration as I worry that although there is a clear link between the two, with more thought there could have been a much greater synthesis between the two.

To conclude, I am very please with both the written and visual work I produced for this module. My time planning and organisation has meant that I have not rushed either the essay or practical production, and the imagery is presented professionally. Although at times I had to prioritise other modules, I feel I have produced a sufficient enough work and spent enough time on CoP to produce something I am pleased with. My ‘Your garden, their home’ family information pack is both engaging and educational. The concept works well and I could visualise it selling as real product.

Business Card Ideas

I've picked some of my favourite pieces of work as I'd quite like to make more than one business card but keep the same format throughout. I've hand written my name which I'd quite like to use. They one's where I've been both the text and image on the front doesn't work as I can' fit much of my illustration on with the text there too so I think I will but all the text on one side and the image on the other. I really like the use of negative space in my chosen images.

Responsive Evaluation

During this module I have taken part in a variety of different briefs and these have given me an insight in to life as an illustrator after higher education. I found myself working on briefs that challenged me in both my method of production and with my time management. The briefs I engaged in were very different from one another and enabled me to investigate processes and formats than I previously had not had the opportunity to engage with, such as producing a set of wedding stationery or producing a pattern design. 

Until this module I had never participated in a live brief and I found the concept both exciting and a challenge. Throughout this module, my work has been primarily digital, from that have seen a vast improvement with the speed in which I produce illustrations on Photoshop. I have seen where my digital approaches have both worked and failed and have learnt from my mistakes. I have purposefully tried to push my digital skills in this module as it’s not my usual approach.

Throughout this module my time management skills have been tested as working to short deadlines showed me what I can achieve in a pressured amount of time. I have taken a more professional approach to the way I present my work as well as considering the specifications of each brief. I have definitely become more aware and critical of how I present my work, especially comparing my current boards to the boards I had to create for my first individual practice crit. Though presentation boards can massively improve the look of my work, they do take time; I need to make sure I account for this within future deadlines.  I’ve learnt how to apply my designs to products and applications, such as my J20 submission, whilst considering the audience, output format and colour.

Collaborating with clients has allowed me to experience working to their individual deadlines and specifications. Although I am used to stress that comes with deadlines, there’s more pressure working for someone outside education.

I found that by taking on a lot of briefs at once led to the decline in quality in some responses. For example, the font cover of my Alice brief response was fairly rushed towards the end as I felt quite overwhelmed with the workload, resulting in a submission that I wasn’t completely happy with. However, saying this, responses such as ‘BBC Radio 2 Artist in Residence’ submission were completed in a short amount of time, and yet I was very pleased with the quality of design.

One concern of mine lies in the collaborative brief that I completed with Adam. I’m quite timid when it comes to sharing my opinions and ideas and felt reluctant to instruct or suggest alternative routes due to my lack of self –assurance. Although Adam was a resourceful illustrator to work with, and I’m pleased with our final submission, I don’t feel like I got chance to evidence the volume of work I produced for the brief as the majority of this did is not prominent in the final design. For example, although I was available to work alongside Adam, I came back to college to find that decisions had been made and work completed work without consultation. I found that my skills lie in the preliminary design and sketch based work and decision making regarding colours and product content. For the final design I chose the colours and I produced the initial drawing for Adam to trace and clean up. Adam is more confident using Photoshop so naturally finished the design with me present. For future collaborative projects I intend to speak up more and make it clear I’m equally involved.

This module differed from others as I was producing work for a ‘real life’ client and prepared imagery for range of products. I’ve submitted work for nine briefs and I think a good quality and quantity of work comes through. This is helped by excellent attendance and general commitment. Due to the limited time I had to complete selected briefs, I was unable to produce a large body of development work and in some briefs, none at all. Although I was initially concerned because of this, I was surprised that I was still pleased with the quality of my final work. From this I’ve found that my technical confidence has improved significantly, I can now produce work faster and without losing quality.

Upon the prospect of revisiting the module I would benefit from being more organised. On a number of occasions I prioritised other modules above this one, resulting in me delaying work, as I was asked to produce illustrations for some children’s book and didn’t have time to do so in order to submit any for this module, however, this is a project I will undertake in the future. It would have also been beneficial to be more selective regarding competition entries, bypassing minor competitions such as the Cinderella brief, so I could spend more time on the large ones to ensure quality throughout.

Furthermore, if I was to do this module again I would keep a visual journal to explore development, colour and format. With the lack of time I had to produce some briefs, I didn’t have time for development work. I do not regret my decision to work primarily digitally, as it expanded my practice and sped up my work process. However, some briefs, such as my Alice submission may have benefitted from a more analogue or combined approach.

There are parts of my work which could have benefitted from more time and focus. I struggled with my time planning toward the beginning of the module, when I had a moderately more relaxed workload to complete. By working towards more professional briefs, this module has made me more confident as a creative by pushing me out of my comfort zones and forcing me to have trust my decisions.

Responsive Project Report

Matt Taylor

Matt Taylor is an illustrator and comic artist who creates Americana inspired illustrations with a nod to classic comic book art of the fifties and sixties. His work influenced me during my responsive module both in the collaborative and during one of my competition briefs. His work is now something I consider to be a huge inspiration in terms of his brilliant use of colour and shape. I think what particularly sets her work out against other practitioners who have a good eye for colour is that he's very brave with it. He uses very soft colours then uses a splash of a bright bold colour to contrast. His work is mostly line-less and uses a lot of block shapes and yet still manages to create shading and tone. You can see in his work that part of the image is made up of shape or a large area of block colour then contrasts with an area of vast detail. I just love his work and really want to try his way of working when I have more time in the summer.

This piece of mine was inspired by his work:

Children's Book Commission

I was contacted by a guy that has seen some of my work and wants me to produce illustrations for 8 children's books he's written. They're just small book he writes for children at the local school so not that impressive but I'll be getting experience and I'm being paid. Yay! I'll be working on them during the summer so I wont get bored.

Wedding Commission

My cousin is getting married in June and asked me to do the artwork for her wedding. This included the invitations, order of service and thank you cards. I've really developed my digital skills this year so most of it was produced digitally. The client is very happy with the designs and even let me put my name on the back so people know I made them.

Texture

I follow Domareen Fox on Tumblr and she recently posted this lovely illustration of different objects that I just loose. Recently I've really become interested in shape and texture using photoshop so this really stood out to me! The illustrations seem to me made up of geometric shape and I like her shape the edges are.

Professional Instagram!

I have a personal account which I sometimes post my illustrations on but felt I needed to make a separate one. Hopefully my work will get noticed more this way but we'll see!

Maps!

I was in Waterstones today and came across this book that's full of lovely map illustrations. It was such a nice book> I didn't have enough money on me at the time but I definitely want to buy it!