Study Task - Areas of Illustration

The task from the group exercise was to find 5 images for each of our 5 areas of illustration. 
Visual Communication

 

Drew Millward's poster for a Soundgarden gig

 

Alternative movie posters by Tyler Stout and Grzegorz Domaradzki

Infographic by Stephen Wildish

Poster by Ellen Hochberg for the 'Who does she think she is?' exhibition, inspired by Barbara Kruger.

Fun/ Playful

Rose Wong, Mapache Salado, Craww, Yoko Furusho, Bryn Perrott

Responding to Issues

Solving Problems- For me this is solving a visual issue, or putting information into visual context. 

I know the above is animation, but I find the illustrations accompanying the talk by Ken Robinson aids the understanding by putting the information into a visual context.

Profession

 

Introduction- Why am here? What do I want to learn?

We were asked to spend some time writing about what we thought Illustration meant, below is what I came up with.
What is Illustration? What does it mean to me?
- Designing something for a reason/purpose
- To accompany or make clearer
- To adorn or enhance visually
- To make images with technical merit

Types of Illustration
- Editorial
- Fashion
- Gig Posters (Such as Drew Millward)
- Children's Illustration
- Narrative/Sequential

Illustrators
Yoko Furusho
Drew Millward
Liz Clements
Bryn Perrott
Kristyna Baczynski
Tyler Stout

We were then put into groups to collate our answers which were:
What is Illustration? What does it mean?
- It's a business
- A way of communicating
-To adorn something
-A limbo between Graphic Design and Fine Art
-Process, research, idea, drawing > Illustration
-Freelance, Commission, Studio, Clients, Collectives
-Visual communication through drawing and image making.

Illustrators
- Maike Plenzke
- Ashley Mackenzie
- Brodsky and Utkin
- Brett Ryder
- Alphonse Mucha
- Richey Beckett

We were asked to narrow these down to five:
Visual Communication
Fun/ Playful
Responding to Issues
Solving Problems
Profession

I think this is a good summary of what it means to be an Illustrator as it includes all the aspects from being a profession to having fun with it, developing your work through play.

Photoshop Tutorial 1

I attended the Photoshop tutorial on tuesday, in which we scanned and cleaned our drawings up on Photoshop using various tools. I had my own way of doing this already but I learnt a more effective industry standard process.

This was a sketch I did, I chose to trial this because it's most similar to the rest of my work, so learning how to enhance the fine pen work would be most beneficial to me. Below is the final 'clean' version but I may go back and try again because I think when digitising work some of the line quality is lost, I want to practice until I can retain the personality of my work.

Study Task 1 - Why am I here? What do I want to learn?

• identify and explain 5 reasons why you chose to study on this programme.
• Identify and explain 5 things that you want to learn during your time on the programme.
• Identify and explain 5 skills that you think are your strengths.
• Identify and explain 5 things that you want to improve.
• Identify and explain 5 ways in which you will evaluate your progress

I chose to study on this programme because:
- As an internal student I knew about the reputation of Leeds College of Art and of how successful the Graphic Design course is and how that would be transferred to the Illustration course.
-  Also because of my year on the extended diploma after transferring from sixth form, I appreciated how good the college was and found I could work better in the learning environment and the curriculum at LCA. 
- I love Leeds as a city, I knew I wanted to study Illustration and thought I would have to move away, when I found out about the new course it seemed obvious this would be my first choice. 
- I want to be an Illustrator, I'm not sure what area within the subject yet, I'm hoping after three years I will have more of an idea.

Things want to learn during my degree:
- I want to fall back in love with drawing, I've found that sometimes I go for weeks without drawing because of creative blocks. I want to be able to draw every day and enjoy it.
- I would like to refine my practice, I find it difficult at the minute to make a piece of work look finished and polished.
-

I think my strengths are:
- Although it's sometimes a weakness, I tend to think I'm doing worse than I actually am which makes me work harder (and possibly sends me insane).
- My need to better myself, I constantly look to contemporary illustrators and want to be at the point they're at but within my own practice.
- My pen work, I am most confident working in a 0.05 pen to create highly detailed pieces of work.

I want to improve:
- My time management
- My technical skills
-My drive for making images