Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Branding update

I've been working to update my Etsy in time for leaving the course, so it will hopefully generate a bit of revenue. (I've made £30 in my first month) and realised that my branding for my Etsy needed to be the same as my website.
I've also realised that I am ashamed to give out my website because it's so outdated, so I really need to work hard on this.
I began by making them look the same.


I had some trouble with the colours of this, but realised that I had been saving everything as CMYK as most of the work I make is for print, it's not even something that crosses my mind. It looks kind of cool this bright, but it's not the tone of voice I want to put across, maybe if I was a little braver or used these colours a lot in my work.


Thursday, 10 March 2016

Painting at Fred Aldous

I teamed up once again with Bobbi to do some Live Painting in the Fred Aldous Leeds store. 
I did an interview for their website which you can read here, I was a bit scared about that as I feel self-concious and felt I sounded like a bit of a tit, but apparently I came off as real professional so that's good. 
It was tons of fun to create this canvas but we had a bit of difficulty and confusion about payment, we knew we weren't getting paid in cash but were promised a goodie bag to say thank you, the night before we went to paint we got an email from the shop manager saying she didn't have the authority to give away free stuff, and I assumed she'd been a bit over-zealous with trying to get people to come paint in store, a bit peeved I wanted to do it anyway as part of a studio brief for 603 and also just to test myself making larger scale work.

It turned out we were getting goodie bags, a few weeks later, which consisted of Fred Aldous branded stuff and free samples, so overall it cost them pretty much nothing for our 5 hours of work for them.
I realise that we knew what we were getting into, and free stuff is still free stuff, but I assumed as an art supplies shop they would give us a bit more as a goodwill gesture rather than things they get for free. 

In the end it was good exposure, I did my first interview as an illustrator and I've been getting people messaging me or sending me photos of my canvas that they've seen as they pop in store, so exposure is good, right? It'll look great in my portfolio :)


Monday, 7 March 2016

Portfolio struggles.

I'm struggling with my portfolio, as in, it doesn't exist yet and I don't like the vast majority of my work anymore.
It's at a point where I forget I have to have one, remember and panic, then forget about it for a bit longer.
I think this is telling to where my head is at the minute. Whilst I love drawing and making work, I don't see myself as an illustrator, I can see myself as a professional creative but not one with concept and strong portfolio talk-pieces, and I'm okay with that, in fact I am where I want to be. I am making work, I have lined up my career in tattooing once I graduate and I am enjoying painting and making mistakes in preparation for that, and getting better.
The one thing that is pulling me back is how this all fits into the Learning Outcomes of these two final modules.


This is probably the nicest piece of work i've done in a while, it combines my love of tattoo flash and getting better at it, and making finished work to take to print. 
The only problem is it has NO context, because a lot of tattoo flash doesn't, it's more about making it aesthetically pleasing and having straighter than straight lines because if you can't paint one, how can you tattoo one? 
Basically, I'm struggling to link all my shit together, in a tutorial with Ben he told me to go with it, make everything now about tattooing but then I know I'll get pulled up for lack of context and content. 
I don't know what to do, and what I need to do to not fail this course. 

Another gushy email to Meg Langdale

I emailed Meg Langdale, an apprentice and illustrator from Leicester. I find her work really delicate and beautiful, and was surprised that she was only the apprentice. I wanted to find out more about her experience as an apprentice and how she developed her work. I think it's good to get more female views on this too, as where I work is a definite 'lads club' and the industry as a whole is very male oriented.