Study Task 2: Reflective Practice

Identify 10 questions that I want to know the answer to in relation to my work, my learning and my personal and professional practice

- What do I aim to learn by asking the question?

- What will I do in order to find the answer?

1. Whilst at university, what resources are available to my practice and me?

The more resources available to me, the more ‘tools’ I will have to use when approaching my own artwork and the less limits I will encounter when producing artwork in response to briefs.

To open up as many resources to myself and my practice as possible, I will need to be inducted in the many facilities and departments within our university building. I will also seek to join university societies, specific external classes and workshops that I feel will help benefit my practice and help me improve and learn new skills.

2. What jobs in the illustration industry are available to me?

It is really important to know what avenues are available within the illustration industry now, so that I can start thinking about what I would like to do after university and begin to tailor my practice towards that. It is good to be versatile and open to all avenues at this point, keeping as many options open as possible.

Researching jobs within the industry and attending exhibitions, talks and meeting with other illustrators will help me to explore the variety of avenues available to me and also help me make new contacts. I’m sure speaking with tutors and visiting practitioners throughout my time here at university will also help this process.

3. How can I begin to develop my own unique style?

I think it is really important to be new and innovative in the work I create as an illustrator and for me this means adopting my own unique style. Being confident in a certain area of practice and media means I will be able to create work that I am proud of and that best reflects my ideas creatively.

I anticipate that this will be a long on-going process, something that can continue to develop throughout my career as an illustrator. I can continue to explore as many techniques and styles as possible in response to university briefs and also in my own private practice, to help push my developing style creatively and open up other possibilities. Experimentation, trial and error are all key to thinking outside of the box.

4. How can I improve my ability to draw figures and the human anatomy?

Improving skills where possible is really important as a practitioner especially if you really lack confidence in your own ability in a certain area. For me this includes drawing figures and the human anatomy. It is something I have wanted to improve on for such a long time and I feel it will help me be more confident in my practice in areas that interest me and areas which I want to take further such as character design.

Self motivated learning is key with this because if I want to get better at something, I'm going to need to work at it. Joining societies and attending life-drawing workshops, character design workshops, speaking with other students and learning different approaches to figures and anatomy will really help and stop figure drawing being so scary and daunting. There are also a lot of online tutorials that I want to explore and complete.

5. How can I gain experience collaborating with other artists/illustrators?

Working with others really helps you to learn new skills, new approaches and areas of the illustration world. Individuals have interests in common but also get inspired by a variety of different things, which can in turn open your world up to new inspirations. Working with others is also a skill in itself, building contacts and learning to be accepting of other people’s processes and styles of working. Collaborating with other artists and illustrators with different skills from you can help push your own work in completely new and exciting directions that you otherwise would not have been able to explore.

I plan on making as many friends and contacts as possible whilst at university and living in Leeds, and take any opportunity to collaborate creatively with other people on my course and people on other courses studying at LCA. Joining societies and being involved in creative classes and workshops outside of study time will help me to achieve this.

6. What inspires me and informs my practice?

I think it is really important to take in what is around me and use everything available to me when responding to a brief or creating a new piece of personal artwork. Ideas that I am happy with don’t always come easy, so documenting and collecting reference material really helps me to develop new ideas as I have somewhere to go for reference and I have a body of random artwork, photos, writing etc that I am interested in to look through and become inspired by and also learn new techniques from that I may be interested in.

Sketchbooks, scrapbooks, online bookmarks, photo albums etc, are all important ways of collecting reference material and I plan on continuing to collect as much inspiring material as possible and as many trinkets, beer matts, clothes labels, tags and polaroid’s etc, that I can come back to and use to help stimulate new ideas in the future.

7. How can I manage the increasing workload and improve my time management skills?

Using time effectively is key to keeping on top of the briefs given to us, without missing deadlines and getting too behind and bogged down. This is quite an obvious one, but I think it is such an easy thing to get sloppy and let other commitments take over now and again. With good time management skills comes less stress and hopefully by the end of university I aim to have a more professional time management approach to working, similar to that of what will be asked of me in industry.

The work and its timeframe to do it in is doable, it is just a case of training myself to complete a piece of work in an appropriate amount of time and not, for example, spend hours tweaking tiny areas of finished work when no one but me will notice the difference. To do lists, reminders, calendars, diaries and notes all help with time management. I want to come up with some kind of filing system at home to store work, briefs and all of my to do lists, notes etc for each individual module, so I can keep on top of deadlines when we are given them.

8. How can I arrange/organise work placements, internships and work experience within industry and when would be a good time to do so? Are we encouraged to have a year out in industry? Is this even advised?

Experience in the workplace is so important when wanting to know more about an industry that I want to end up in after university. Work placements give a key insight into how different areas of industry work and how well I will fit into this choice in career.

Speaking with tutors and other students about the possibility of placements and work experience will help to see if this is possible and something that the course is encouraging. If it is, then they will hopefully be able to help me and recommend people in the industry I can contact for experience.

9. Whilst at university, how can I begin to publicise my work and get it out there for people to see?

Gaining confidence in the work I do is really important and having others see it and take an interest is all part of that. The more work out there, the more likely to get noticed and start receiving interest and hopefully job opportunities. Having work appear in exhibitions, in zines, on flyers, up on cafe walls etc must be such a buzz and really helps to gain experience and helps push illustration as a practice in exciting new directions.

Speaking with other students and my tutors about this will help push me in the right direction and hopefully inform me in up and coming opportunties to showcase my work. A lot of this will be down to me seeing an opportunity and having the confidence to go for it as well as contacting organisations independently and giving out digital portfolios of my work and having a website for people to browse.

10. How do I use digital media in my work?
New technology is being developed all of the time and with this come new affects on the art and design world and its industry. Confidence using digital media as a tool will help me to be versatile when progressing into this industry and open up new areas of work to me.
Being able to manipulate my images and use digital software as a tool to draw with really interests me and I plan on attending as many workshops as possible inside and out of university until I am more confident in this area. Online tutorials will also hopefully help me to gain new skills as I would really like to start using my wacom tablet sometime soon.

Study Task 1: Who am I? Why am I here?

Yulia Brodskaya - Paper cut

Identify 5 reasons why you chose to do illustration: 
I chose to study illustration as I have always drawn. My dad studied as a draftsman and went on to become a software designer/engineer, therefore I have always been surrounded by illustration, artwork and design including some of the great children's book illustrators which inspired me from a very young age.

Arthur Rackham - Watercolour, pen & ink

I enjoy learning new skills and I feel the more skills you have under your belt, the less limited you are when creating a new piece of work. Opportunities creative and visual should be endless and I feel illustration lends itself to the many ideas I have and holds few boundaries.

I have also chosen to study illustration for the obvious reason that I love to draw and be creative. It challenges me and I get a buzz from creating something that I feel is aesthetically pleasing and which others might enjoy looking at, interacting with and get an exciting experience from.

Claire Scully - Pen & ink

Identify 5 reasons why you chose this programme:
Illustration at Leeds College of Art is a new programme, therefore I feel it has a more current 'up-to-date' approach to illustration and I chose to study here for that reason. 

The programme is also part of a great independent art institution. I have previously experienced an illustration degree programme as part of a small department in a bigger university and it is not the same. Being able to feel part of an artistic community as a whole with the opportunity to collaborate is even more inspiring and motivational.

The facilities available to students whilst studying on this illustration programme are second to none and I feel I could create and do anything here and also branch out into different areas of study, not just design, in order to improve my skills as a whole and get the very most out of being on a creative course at university.

The creative design courses here at LCA have won numerous prestigious awards with big names graduating and moving on to do big things. This didn't go unnoticed when making my university choice and I hope to bring something new to this course and add to the universities growing reputation in the years to come.

Identify 5 skills that you think are your strengths:
It is hard to say what I feel are specifically my strengths as in my eyes all areas of my creative work can be improved upon. 

I really enjoy the use of line, pattern and etching in my work and have spent some time developing the skills to use line creatively. I'm also not afraid to learn new skills and enjoy incorporating multiple styles and mixed media into a piece of artwork. 

I think the use of colour and tone is really important within creative work and I like to think I have a good amount of knowledge when it comes to using colour and colour theory. The use of a lot of detail within artwork is something I find really interesting in other peoples work. Adding a real sense of depth to a piece through detail is a method included in a lot of my own work and I like to think I am improving this skill with every new piece.

Berni Wrightson - Pen & ink

Identify 5 things that you want to improve:
There are a lot of skills and areas of my creative approach to artwork that I would like to improve on and look forward to doing so during my time here on the course.

A few main areas I feel could be improved include lifelike drawings of faces and figures. I feel it is a really important skill to be able to communicate and draw everything from life accurately and this includes people. On the flip side of this, I would also like to develop the skill of character design. I really enjoy stories and story telling and feel a memorable relationship with a character is really strengthened by what they look like visually and how that links with the characters personality.

I really enjoy the use of any media I can get my hands on but would really like to improve on my painting skills. The variety of colours and depth achieved in some illustrators work makes the image 'pop' in a way like no other and I would like to be able to achieve this in my own pieces.

A lot of my work is geared towards paper cut, pop up and paper engineering. I really like paper and the idea of giving this 2D medium a 3D interactive quality without incorporating digital media. This is something I am always trying to improve on.

Daniel Merriam - Watercolour

  Identify 5 images that 
  demonstrate your interest in 
  illustration:
   The pieces of artwork I have chosen to include are a 
   reflection of the illustrators, artists and paper engineers 
   that influence me along with their unique styles and 
   approaches to creating visual work. 

   Yulia Brodskaya uses a wide variety of colour and strips 
   of 2D paper to create a 3D experience like no other. The 
   precision and attention to detail I feel really help capture 
   the composition within her images and help boost her 
   typographical work. 

   Arthur Rackham is one of the first illustrators that I came
   to love. His use of detailed watercolour and ink work help 
   create this almost stained, washed out look that goes 
   hand in hand with a lot of his fantasy story and faerie 
   work. I feel he is one of the masters and composition in 
   the above piece makes it one of my favourite 
   illustrations.

Claire Scully is a fairly new find for me but the skill in the detail of her pieces is like no one else's work that I have found. To me, the use of pattern within an image within another image, makes this work more than just an ordinary illustration. It makes your eyes work hard for the information and I am forever finding more and more detail the closer I look. Claire is also a Rotring user, which happens to be my favourite tool when creating a detailed illustration, and how she manages to get so much tiny detail into her work.

One of the first books handed down to me from my dad was Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', illustrated by the well known DC (and later Marvel) comic artist Bernie (Berni) Wrightson. Despite falling in love with this story, it was Berni's use of line and negative space that really brought the words to life for me. His skill in these illustrations became a reason to flick through this book endlessly, not just for the story and for me this is a sign of a great illustrator. The words and images really do go hand in hand.

Lastly I chose an illustration by watercolour surrealist Daniel Merriam. Having a strong imagination is really important to me, its where ideas grow and take on new unique lives of their own. Imagination, I feel, is the cure to boredom and Daniel's work epitomises this for me. His work is so busy in all its colours, layers, lines and fantastical creatures, and so much meticulous work has gone into communicating these perfect yet impossible scenes, that they are the furthest from boring. I look at Daniel's pieces and simply want to be there.

Student Advice

1. Carry a sketchbook around with you all the time. This will help you record things that 

    inspire you, get you mark making more frequently and more experimentally. It is also 

    useful for making notes, taking down ideas and thoughts as and when they come to you. 

    It is important to stay creative.

2. Keep all creative work, good and bad. Be critical of yourself and the work you create and

    be comfortable making mistakes. Its a learning curve therefore once a mistake has been 

    made, improvements can be suggested and explored and you can grow as an illustrator.

3. Keep up with your blog. Blogging everyday gets you used to the process and used to 

    publicising your work. It is also helpful to see all of your workings in one place which 

    you can refer back too and a place where yourself and others can access.