Research Task: Reflection on Stage 2

Stage 2 (of BA Illustration) as a whole was to teach me about different areas of illustration, different techniques of creating artwork, and exploring, experimenting, understanding what is out there for us to express. Moving into the last stage of Year 2, I must reflect back on the unit to understand where I want to lead my learning towards.

The success of my previous artworks came down to planning stages, the research and contextual understanding of what I was creating and what I wanted to tell. My feelings going into different tasks was to treat every part of the sections as if they were for a real brief given by a client or as my own-- especially going into 2.2: Global Perspectives.

I got to learn about different artists around the world, seeing how they create their work, the result of their work and the impact it had made. I found myself thoroughly enjoying tasks that involved narrative-driven illustrations, creating a manga, a zine on doom-scrolling, a comic; all of it really excited me. I found myself also enjoying learning and improving my artistic skills, I took up life drawing classes with 2bornot2b collective (collaboration with and provided with OCA) which improved my drawing skills.

On a personal level, 2.1 and 2.2 saw my work improve through the mental barriers that I started to break down, my tutors encouraged me when I became my worst critic-- hating everything that I was producing. With that encouragement, my work improved (in my eyes) quite drastically; I was able to see my work as something that could one day be a career.

With the last part of this unit, there are areas I would like to explore further. I'd like to look further into narrative-driven artwork, whether it's children's books, graphic novels, comics, etc. But I would also like to explore Book Cover Illustrations, which has recently peaked in interest; I recently bought a book called 'Paladin's Grace' by T. Kingfisher, the cover was designed by 'Anna Moshak'. The book cover (see right) was extremely eye-catching on the book shelf, it reminded me of renaissance paintings with a contemporary twist, which peaked my interest for book cover design. I would also like to explore illlustrative world-building; as a child I used to love books that had their own worlds writing accompanied by beautiful illustrations of dragons, faeries. Detailing the world as if it was real. The interest recently came back again after I saw a video of someone using their sketchbook in this way; and it also reminded me of Iris Compiet's Faeries of the Faultines, a book on faeries.

Developing my work further, the areas I need to focus on is persepective, detail and the render phase (colouring); I need to add more depth in my work-- it often feels a little flat and plain, so I really want to push myself to add more details (maybe introducing more mark-making). Understanding perspective would really benefit my work, I could make much more intricate backgrounds and create dramatic scenes with interesting compositions. Colouring stages needs a fair amount of work, rendering (whether it's digitally or traditionally) is my utmost weakness, and degrades the artwork; I've recently bought books on colour theory to help but I really need to apply it for this last stage.

Looking throughout my work that I've created within these stages, I would say that my 'golden thread', technically speaking, would be my use of line-making. However, I would say that my work is too inconsistent.