OUIL 406 End of Module Evaluation

Working in a group for the first brief has definitely developed my group working, communication and listening skills. It was interesting to work with other people who are interested in different things to me; I think we all had different ideas and having to plan ahead of time for group meet ups and discussions for the best way to tackle the brief, I believe has also developed my skills in time management and problem solving.

I feel I have developed three new approaches/methods of image making in this module. For the ‘That’s Pants’ brief, it was actually really nice to work with a camera instead of my usual pencil sketch/Photoshop combination. Making the gif was also beneficial to me as it gave me more insight and understanding into stop motion animation. Using the camera and making animated illustrations is something that I would like to develop my skill in further. I’d like to experiment combining the two, photography and digital painting, together in the future for a different kind of aesthetic that I am used to. 

The Illustrator brief was a long and challenging one; this was something that was relatively new to me and it took a bit of help, patience and practise for me to eventually get used to the programme and tools. The simplicity and limitation of detail that Illustrator allowed helped me to realise what actually is needed on the postcards and what isn't to communicate the idea/place and forced me to think back about my work. In the development process I had to simplify everything down, stripping away things that weren’t really necessary. Realising what is and isn't needed is something that I need to work on.

I think the professionalism and quality of my work is more consistent and evident throughout each of the briefs that I have been given due to the improvement in my time management. I've learnt more Photoshop basics; when picking colours I now know to use the colour displayed below the 'out of gamut' (exclamation mark) alert so that the colours of my prints are more closely matched with what is on screen. This and the employment of things learnt in visual language such as colour and composition, I think has definitely made my work a lot stronger and higher in quality especially my Marie Curie poster.

The downside to my body of work, like in previous modules, is my lack of experimentation with different medias. I really struggle with this part and I hope that one day I can be more experimental and open with the opportunities that are out there.

People of Note final outcomes

I'm glad that I've been able to employ more of my style of working in this brief; as a result, I feel more satisfied and proud with the final outcomes. I think that now my final outcomes work more as a set and I thank the feedback that I got in the last crit for that. With the amount of research that I have done, I think I have managed to create something that really tells the story of Curie's life, what she is known for, her attitude towards learning and discovering and her achievements. The aim of my work (more evident in my postcards) is to motivate and inspire people - to never give up - the most important lesson that my parents have always taught me! Overall, I have really enjoyed this brief - my favourite so far!

Responding to feedback

From the critique yesterday, my peers thought maybe the stamps don't work as well as a set with the poster and postcards because its much more graphical and the colour scheme contrasts to the poster/postcards. So I decided to make some adjustments to see what it'd look like if I had employed more of the things from my other works in the set:

Here I've changed the background colour to the same blue that I used in my postcards and made the shapes less graphic/clean to match with the painterly aesthetic of the postcards and poster. I decided to put everything together to see how they look as a whole:

 I think changing the background colour to blue makes the stamps work better with the poster and postcards. Decided to experiment some more with the colour for the symbols:

Changed the yellow to the light blue of the glassware with bits of yellow. Here, the colours are more harmonious, and balances out the more bright/bold reds and oranges in the postcards and poster. However, I still prefer the yellow one as I feel like the light blue makes the stamps, on their own, look a little washed out - not as fun and active looking as the postcards and poster.

New stamps and some mini prints of my large scale work! :-)

People of Note final critique

OUIL 404 End of Module Evaluation

I think I’ve really developed my composition and use of digital media within this module. I have learnt that I really like working with shapes, digitally but emulating that traditional/handmade look with textured brushes and scanned in handmade textures. This can be seen employed in my colour/value task and my 'People of Note' poster. I've never really given much thought about line of sight before, but since learning about it, you can really see that it has had an affect on a couple more of my recent work such as this one, where I have started to naturally think about it when thumbnailing.

I have really enjoyed studio brief 2 within this module and I found learning about composition, depth, line of sight, etc, most valuable. I have always been really curious about how people can come up with such exciting, dynamic and interesting illustrations, so with the second brief of this module, I felt I was more excited and motivated because this was exactly what I wanted to learn and improve on. Learning these compositional tools, I think has helped to clarify my ideas more and make my pictures more exciting. This brief has also allowed me to practise/employ all the things we’ve learned in studio brief 1 such as shape and texture, and make fully finished illustrations that tell a story or say something, which I really want to practise and do more of. I think overall my composition, story telling and eye for colour has improved tremendously since I started this course.

As usual, I think my one biggest problem is not giving myself the chance to experiment more with other medias other than digital ones. I didn’t really get excited with the work I produced at the beginning of this module that are purely analogue. I think this is because I’m still kind of fairly new to making pictures digitally, and whenever I feel myself improving or when I discover something new that I really like, it gets me all excited and more motivated to do it again. I'm really fascinated by digital artworks that have that traditional flair to them and I want to learn and better myself on achieving this kind of work. Although I guess I could still use a range of different medias instead of just pencil, in the early stages of making my final illustrations.

I want to be more dynamic with my viewpoints as I feel like I only draw from really basic angles which can get a little repetitive and a little boring at times. My human anatomy/figures could also be improved when portraying people from different angles and perspectives. In order to do this, I could go to life drawing classes, or just simply draw more from life, or draw more dynamic poses of people from photos.

By looking at, deconstructing and analysing other artists' work as a group, with the class, against the set of principles/skills/techniques that we've learnt about, I've found out that good illustrations don't just happen by itself. It's enabled me to gain a deeper understanding as to why such decisions were made about the chosen composition, colour etc. of that person's work. This has been really beneficial for me and has allowed me to actually start thinking more deeply about my own work when constructing it.

Marie Curie stamps

Want to keep my stamps quite simple:

I think as long as there is a link to the Marie Curie/radioactive/science theme, my work would still work as a set, even if different colours are used. So I'm going to use the radioactive, yellow and black colour palette for the stamps (link to her necklace in poster) even though in everything else, blue is the main colour. Also tried to give a bit of texture to it too, like the poster and postcards, but you can't really see it because it's yellow:

I like this one because it fills out the whole picture area

you can tell what its supposed to be because not much is cropped

This one feels a bit empty on the side

This one also feels a bit empty

Final Stamps:

Marie Curie postcards

I want to use the glassware that I've already done for my poster in my postcards. but because they're a little smaller/thinner than my 'test' versions, there isn't much space to have the quotes inside them anymore - so I've come up with labels/tags to have the quotes on. Also planning on maybe writing the quotes in a similar handwriting to Curie's and also having her signature on the bottom just to add something of hers to my postcards.

Signatures from Wikipedia

Would it work without the quotes? - probably, but not as interesting and personal as it could be without her quotes I think

I decided to use the quotes that were less science related / that anyone and everyone would understand and find motivating/inspiring.

Marie Curie poster design

From what I've read about Marie Curie, she was a very hard working person and she was very passionate about science. I want to portray this part of her which I've tried to get across in my thumbnails. I've also tried to incorporate some symbols associated with her - In some of the photographs Marie wore a necklace, so I decided to make the radioactive symbol as the pendant.

She also said that "I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory" which to me sounds like she was probably in her lab nearly most of the time and maybe even 'til the break of dawn. So I wanted to capture that bit of her by having my poster quite dark with the light focused on her - inquisitive, fascinated and concentrated - to show her willingness to do scientific work for the "beauty of science" til the early hours of morning, etc. - nothing could probably have stopped her from doing what she was so passionate about!

process gif:

I made the front glassware a little smaller to fit the whole picture frame, so I can later transfer and use in my postcards. Initially I was going to enlarge the two back to how they look in the sketch, but I kind of grew fond of them just the way they are because I liked that you can see the shadows created by the bottles - I think it adds to the lighting and depth.

I think my lighting could be improved for sure, but I am so proud of myself for trying! (this is my first ever piece where I've tried to achieve that dramatic sort of lighting). I also think that I need more practise drawing stronger/clearer facial expressions to get more of a narrative into my work.

I tried my poster out in black and white too, because all the photographs of Curie is in black and white - so the poster reflects the time period. I quite like it, but I think I will go with the one that other people/the audience prefer - which at the moment is the colour one.

Further development

I'm struggling to get the individual glassware in my postcards to look more visually appealing. So I decided to try out Victoria Ying and Mike Yamada's 'theory' about making things imperfect and asymmetrical in my Marie Curie poster for that 'handmade/wacky world' aesthetic similar to that of the poster designs by Pete Oswald:

I also decided to try out Don Shank's way of painting (texture and bold colours):

Also used his colours as a starting point; this is what I came out with - looks so much more interesting to look at, energetic/active, exciting and overall just less dull: