The beginning of this module was a rocky one as it began with a day of drawing on location, which is something that I had never really had to do before and therefore was something that I was dreading. I began the module thinking that I was no good at drawing on location, and couldn't see how it would help inform my practise at all since I’ve always been able to work from photos or just draw from my imagination. After that daunting start we then got stuck into picking a visual subject and portraying that in different ways relating to line, mark shape etc. Since my subject was one I was able to choose and it was American wrestlers I felt a lot more invested and engaged with the subject which in turn definitely made it easier to keep focused on, however this has made me realise that this is a fortunate and rare circumstance, and I wont always have the luxury of drawing something that interests me on a personal level, and if I’m going to be an illustrator I will have to make the best out of some bad subjects sometimes, I need to work on focusing harder on things and not just giving up. A lot of this part of the course made a good amount of sense to me, in that we would have a seminar on tone for example, then we would do an exercise relating to tone, and then we’d be set work to draw our visual subject but in a way that dealt with tone so that we really understood what the lesson was on and how it could help inform our practise. I think that out of our visual language lessons I could then see the benefits of this creeping into my other work, as I started to experiment with different line qualities and ways of working, you can see that though process in my book cover from visual skills.
The collage and ephemera part of the module was definitely one of my favourites as I really like collage anyway and have used it a lot before, I made some collages of my wrestlers in the early stages of the module that I still really like as images and will aim to look at using again. This part of the module was also really eye-opening for me as we looked at college in terms of using found images from books to make our own images rather than just using cut paper. I took an image of Joe Lewis that I found in an Americana book and just started scanning repeats of it on a photocopier and moving them around into different compositions. After I’d done it I wasn't sure it would count as the 10 sheets of collage work that we’d been set to do but when I found out it did I was shocked as I felt like I hadn't spent nearly enough time on it. I was even more shocked when a few people pointed it out as a good outcome of the brief as its so different to anything I would usually do but this did make me realise that things don't always have to be fussy or intricate to be a good image, and theres something about the immediacy of simplicity that can make the simplistic images some of the best. I felt a similar way after submitting our 3D lens work and seeing that whilst I’d spent way too long crafting tiny food to use in my image, others had just used one prop and taken a simple image and it looked just as good if not better. This really made me realise that it is in my nature to over-complicate things, and sometimes what I need to do is sketch something once, step back from it, see which bits I can take out and keep on taking things out until its as simple as it can be whilst still getting the message across effectively.
The second half of the module was definitely where I started to see a massive improvement in my work and the thought process behind it, it was like all of a sudden the intent of the module just made so much more sense to me and I could start to put everything we were learning into action. One of the things that I think helped this was the hand-outs we started being given to annotate and talk about in class. Even though at first I found this extra bit of reading and writing pretty challenging to keep up with, talking about the principles of composition and frame out loud really helped to make sense of it all. Without realising I had been recognising these principles before, but not fully identifying what made then effective or not and certainly not applying them into my own work. In the last four tasks we were set in this project, I ended up a lot happier with the results and I can now see upon reflection that this was largely down to the difference in the way I was attacking the tasks when we were set them, suddenly I was able to identify what would make the most effective composition from the roughs that I’d made, I had a better understanding of depth and how to portray it on paper, and I understood and could deal with which parts of the image I wanted to make stand out and which could take a back seat. The two most successful pieces of work in my opinion from this part of the course were the elephant piece and the fan art poster, and this is because the principles we had been learning in the seminars had got me thinking more like an illustrator and therefore the things I was making were looking more considered and professional.
The end of the module saw us going to York for a day of drawing on location, which obviously at the beginning of the course would have been my idea of hell and I might not have even turned up because I was so convinced I was rubbish at drawing, but through a whole module dedicated to drawing and observing I had gained much needed confidence in myself and the way I portray things. Although I know that drawing on location is still something I will find scary and difficult I know I can do it and I know that the only way I’ll get any better is just by doing it more and thinking and reflecting on it more. Having the blog has really helped me to make sense of the value of it in my head and start to relate it to how it can inform my own practise. Although at the beginning of the module you can see my confusion over the objective of the tasks we were doing, I think over time it becomes more obvious that I am learning things I didn't know before and starting to incorporate them into my work, both in this module and the others. Not only this but I am understanding and recognising that I am doing these things and recording that process on my blog so that in future I can look back and hopefully identify what makes something a success or not. Even though I haven't come out of this part of the course absolutely in love with drawing on location, it is something I can and will do as I can see it has a positive effect on my practise and I now enjoy it and that is something I could never have imagined a few months ago.
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