I just want to be good at making pictures

What is successful?:

Immediacy, being able to understand and identify with something as soon as you see it. Whether this is through a really clever idea, or really striking visual style, or both? Simplicity usually seems to be a good way to achieve this? Also anything that makes you feel something is a success in my mind, whether you can look at it and feel a sense of the mood the person was trying to get across in that work is really important but hard to achieve, its something I'm really struggling with at the moment. 

What is great?

The thought process and consideration that go on behind work are what makes it great, anyone can make something that is technically good, but it takes experimentation with different methods, iterations, roughs and mistakes to actually learn whether what you're putting together is the best it can be. I guess a big part of what makes something look good is selecting the appropriate way to tell your story to best make the point you're trying to make

How is this project exceptional?

At the moment, I'm not feeling too much like its exceptional, which is really making me sad. But I know is largely down to my rubbish mood and feeling so overwhelmed, and it really is a shame because what makes this project so exceptional is that we get the opportunity to tell someone Else's life story through our work any way that we choose. And more than that the people we've been given are fascinating and theres a lot of really amazing information to be conveying in our images. Whilst I've been seeing this as a really scary thing as it means the pressures on to portray as much information as possible in a short amount of time, also doing it in the most effective way possible and do this person justice, I do need to start seeing it as exciting, because it is. And just like with visual narratives which started off so broad and overwhelming, I need to look at what I can do to narrow down my area of research so that I'm only trying to show one small aspect that makes up this mans life. In my head I'm worried that no ones going to understand the outcomes if they're not these all encompassing, complex masterpieces which is ridiculous because we can be as abstract as we like. As long as there is a sense of emotion and feeling that reflects this amazing man and his life in the work I produce then surely the work will have succeeded? I'm just not sure if thats the same thing as it being great.

Feedback session (negative moodiness)

Today we had a very long and very scary feedback session for the work we'd done so far, which in my case was not as much as I could have done simply because I've been so stuck on this project so far. 

What I learnt:

• people really liked the analogue stuff that I'd done and didn't seem too fussed about the illustrator work, which is good because I also liked the way the analogue things looked and the general consensus seems to be that wet media works better to portray the feeling of being underwater
• however, even though people seem to like the use of gouache, and I really enjoy using it too, I feel like I tried to push the boat out with the digital work and it still hasn't worked out? Anything I could do on Ai I feel like I could also do using analogue media if not do it better. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what it feels like at the moment and I'm worried it looks like I've not experimented at all and always play it safe using the same materials
• the swimming pool idea has been a success and will 100% be the idea that I take forward, which is good because I've run out of time to think of trying much else
• I need to be more specific, honing in on certain feelings I'm trying to evoke using an image and focusing on smaller scenes at once and in less detail. REMEMBER, things can be abstract

After the session I went home and just roughed up a lot more compositions of a similar thing I'd been doing before but focused on a smaller section of it. I wanted to show the feeling of desperation and near death state that Nakamats would be in, and the oppressiveness of being surrounded by water:

The second version is a bit better in my opinion as it actually looks more like him, the skin tone is better and the gestures stronger. I've realised its really hard to show someones reaching really determinedly underwater, none of the arm gestures look strong enough so that's something I need to work on tomorrow. But in terms of composition and process I'm chuffed with this, its a bit more evocative than the things I was doing before which is something I'm striving for. Tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully this will all be less of a struggle then, I'm going to go in to the studio and work more on making this image say something important, and maybe the rest of the brief will start to follow on from that? really not feeling too positive about this project. Maybe its because its close to the end of term and I'm mentally exhausted or maybe this topics too broad for my weird organised brain but I'm really finding it a struggle to make anything I like and think of as good illustration at the moment which is very disheartening. I think maybe I need to rest on it, think about what I'm trying to do with this project and then try again tomorrow? ahhhhhhhhhh help

Visual Language Evaluation

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.

Illustrator Trials

Today I've mostly been in the mac suites trying to translate the drawings I did yesterday onto illustrator. This has proven pretty bloody hard, not even in terms of getting Illustrator to work, I think I've got that down now, its just getting things to actually look good compositionally that I'm struggling with. These are the final outcomes of today:

First attempt:

• This was actually my favourite drawing I did yesterday so I was massively disappointed when I tried to trace it and THIS was the outcome. It looks so rubbish, but I guess it was the first try of today so maybe thats why it turned out so badly. 
• I tried to experiment with the different thicknesses and line qualities you can use with the pen tool but now I'm looking at it thats actually just turned out quite tacky, maybe simple, more clean lines look better on Ai?
• Also for this first try I didn't stick to any colour scheme which I think makes it look pretty messy

Second attempt:

• After that absolute failure I tried the next drawing I'd done and surprisingly this turned out so much better! I think what worked here was the minimal composition to start with, with one very simple thing in the middle of the page it draws the focus in
• I also was able to remind myself to take a lot of the detail out of this one as well which is something I've kept trying to replicate after watching the Netflix documentary on Christoph Niemann the other day. I didn't feel like this needed the pool lines the other one had or any of the smaller details because you can see from the wider angle that this one takes place in a pool, so it immediately makes sense
• I also stuck to quite a simple colour scheme here which I think is something that translates much better on Ai than in paintings, it makes you focus less on the small detail and more on whats actually happening in the picture

Third attempt:

• This is a massive improvement in my opinion, still not as good as I'd like but better. I got the hang of using the pen tool and the charcoal effect to make the drawings look a bit more organic, and I think the simple colour scheme makes this look so much better
• Still not sure if its easy to understand whats going on here though, if it wasn't just me looking at this and you had no context I think it would be a struggle. 
• I think maybe my next step in this kind of work is too look at how I can compose this image a bit better and also look at how I can effectively give the feeling of being underwater in these images? cause at the moment I'm thinking they look a bit flat 

Gouache = God

Today I made a start on thinking through some of the swimming pool ideas in my sketchbook, and chose to start by using gouache which is something that I've really not used much before. I just did some simple ideas of what I imaged Nakamats must feel like when he's diving for ideas, also I really like the phrasing of that:

"Diving for ideas"

It sounds really ridiculous but that essentially the way he chooses to brainstorm his inventions. Like he's diving for treasure. Anyway the ideas I have so far are really simple but I've been trying to think more about composition and I think its paying off, the two ideas I've had so far are quite pleasing to look at. Also I had no idea how fun working with gouache was, I need to do it more often, I think I'm going to try to simplify the shapes I've used today tomorrow with paper cut but in future I'll be making an effort to go back to gouache.

 

Tutorial

Had my tutorial for narratives today and I'm feeling SO much more positive about the subject and the project itself, I didn't realise before I started talking about it out loud but Sir Dr Nakamats is actually way more interesting a subject than I first thought, I actually think his philosophies and spirit resinates with me. 

What to do next:

• I need to work out what I want to say about his legacy. Do I want to focus on his objects and the things that made up his life? Or do I want to focus more on the process he used to create those objects? Both are good but which one will I be able to focus on for longer?
• Sketchbook both ideas and see which one gets me going more
• Try and work out a way of experiment with using found objects in either or both subjects: floppy disks, swimming floats, old electrical equipment, goggles and anything else that reminds me of him
• ALSO: in the style of Christoph Niemann, SIMPLIFY. I enjoyed using illustrator last time so maybe try that again? The only way my works ever going to look new and exciting is by using new ways of working and not being boring
• GO SWIMMING! take a camera and get some first hand experience of how Nakamats would feel when he's inventing. (but try not to drown and maybe down wait until exactly 0.5 seconds away from death to come to the surface, could be risky)

Charlotte Ager

Charlotte Ager is an illustrator that I've followed for a while on Instagram but has recently been interviewed by Its Nice That about her practise. She will be graduating from Kingston soon but is already really prolific and seems like she's churning out great new stuff everyday.

Successes of her work (theres so many):

• she seems like a real grafter, constantly updating her social medias and her website, but also creating work for herself, commissions and her course. She seems to have some kind of way to balance the speed at which she's making these things and the precision she uses as well because its not like anything she's producing is mediocre. 
• she is really brave and experimental in her practise and I think thats probably what keeps it so fresh and engaging. In the article she described her style of messy, because she's impatient so likes to get things down quickly, I think this means her work has a uniqueness to it first of all, it almost looks like she's looking at whatever she's drawing continuously and not ever looking at the paper, just trying to translate what she's seeing. Also I think its by doing this that she is able to capture the energy and the movement of people and places
• her work is just so immersive, probably due to the reasons I've already mentioned, but when you look at her work you really feel like you're looking at something thats happening, or that you're there, its evocative and gives me that really weird feeling in the pit of my stomach (in a good way?). She says she also uses a lot of film and animation in her practise which makes sense, she does well at capturing things that are fleeting
• the one image that stands out over all of them (and its hard to pick just one) is the one of the train going by on a bridge, the moment I saw this was the moment I knew she was the kind of illustrator I aspired to be. I love that notion of taking a scene so average and making it mysterious and romantic, through use of colours and even the way she composes the image with the train being a line, un-assuming line in the middle of the page, amidst the big city

How her practise informs mine:

• Although we are at very different stages of our illustration careers I can already see the steps I would need to take in order to develop like Charlotte has, she has that part of an illustrator that ensures success in that she's really fearless and willing to experiment and fail sometimes. Her work makes me sure that the only way for me to improve is to keep trying new things and pushing my boundaries
• She also mentions in the article how the first time she was taken out location drawing at uni she was hooked, as it was never something she'd done before. But now that she does it everyday she cant imagine ever not having done it before. I currently find location drawing really tricky and know that its something I actively avoid doing, but realistically if I'm going to develop the way I want to I need to start drawing on location, for myself and my practise, to help make sense of the way I see the world and how I want to translate it on paper
• Her use of colour and dry media like pens and pencils also make me want to work more with unpredictable materials to get a more natural feel, I also need to stop being so afraid to just work directly onto paper, without sketching out in pencil before, it might end up less perfect but its still worth doing