HOPES, FEARS & OPPORTUNITIES (PART UNO)

At the start of the term we were asked to fill in a form about our hopes, fears and opportunities concerning ourselves in the ever looming future. It was a chance to really think about how we can take full advantage of anything that comes about in the forthcoming months that we can benefit from. I hadn't really sat down and thought about it before but think it was an important exercise that I have benefited from that needed doing.

My biggest hopes for the future were that I would push my drawing skills to the next level and generally try a lot harder when working on projects. As well as this I intended on boosting the publicity of my work. Not sure if publicity is the right word to chose but I wanted to showcase my work to a wider audience through the means of a website. Finally, I wanted to meet more people in the art world outside of uni by going to more organised art talks and exhibitions, especially ones that were in Manchester.

So far I think I'm pretty confident in saying I can tick these off my list now as I seem to be slowly making my way through them.  I have definitely put more thought and effort in to the way I work especially when concerned with the last few briefs. I seem to be putting in more time outside of uni and drawing because I want to rather then having too. Having done more independent work I think I am beginning to benefit from the time I have put in as my drawing skills seem to be gradually improving so it just goes to show that practice really does make perfect. However I'm far from perfect yet and there's still a long way to go but I've got the ball rolling now.

As far as websites are concerned I've got two on the go at the moment. One with cargocollective (a template based site that gives you the opportunity to network with other artists/photographers/designers) that I'm pretty happy with and then another one with a paid URL that a friend helped me make. Cargo is a good way to ease your way in to something that was very alien to me and pretty idiot proof but it still can be quite confusing ha. The other site that I'm using still has a lot of work that needs doing so I'm treating it as a little on going project where I'm trying to get my head around HTML coding and other techy bits. Hopefully in the next few months it'll be up to scratch in comparison to other peoples.

Over the last few months, I've tried to juggle the stresses of multiple projects with a social life that I can gain from as I think its dead important to take time out from doing work. I've been to a number of social events in and around Manchester as well as some in Preston and Leeds. These have consisted of BlabMini, D&AD Lectures, Portfolio visits to name but a few. I think that as well as this its highly beneficial to have more of a social life that involves the work you're making so I've tried to get to places like Common and Trof at least once a week to meet other people in the same boat as me that could hopefully lead to job opportunities and possible collaboration work. It's also a good chance to moan about stuff as well to people that can relate to what you're rambling on about as well.

My biggest academic fear was that my grade would drastically slip due to my journal not being very good. I'm not the most confident writer in the world and found it a bit of a struggle when it came to writing a large body of text. It's not that I'm incapable, the ideas are there they just don't sound as good when down on paper. It was a daunting task as the last piece of work similar to this I did was probably my GCSEs.  There was also not having a strong enough portfolio of work but more importantly the fear that I would loose interest in briefs and not get work done.

I think that all the work I've produced since starting back in September definitely shows my progression as an artist and that I've enjoyed working on them. I think if anything I'm enjoying doing what I do more so then I have. Its been important for me to stay motivated and interested in the topics that I've been working on and feel that I've landed pretty lucky with the work set. My portfolio is starting to become much stronger as the more I'm producing, the more early work that I'm not happiest with can be removed. After having portfolio viewings with various studios I'm also beginning to feel much more confident about my work but still and probably always will, think that there's always room for improvement. With the journal, I'm still holding my breath on that one. I've got no idea how well/bad I've done but as always I'm trying to keep a optimistic head on and try to not let it worry me too much. It hasn't been handed in yet but my draft has been submitted so I'm waiting on feedback now. Fingers crossed.

The opportunities that I wanted to take advantage of most over the course of the year were going to more social networking events (as I spoke about that earlier I won't bore you by repeating myself), taking advantage of any free time to produce personal work and the biggest thing for me was to make the most of having a studio at uni that's available pretty much five days a week.

If I'm being truly honest, the spare time that I've had so far this year has been pretty sparse so any time there has been any free I'm usually trying to catch up on sleep. Come every September I seem to turn almost completely nocturnal and seem to work best after about 6pm. This had consequently lead to most of my free days being taken up with sleep, sleep and then some more sleep. In saying that I have had time to work on some personal work to keep me ticking over, perhaps just not as much as I would have liked to. There's plenty of time to do so over the Christmas holiday. I've been trying hard to get into the studio much earlier this year because I wasn't ready to work when 10am came around last year. The lack of sleep means that if I'm turning up to start uni at 10am I probably won't get started until about thirty minutes later. To turn this around I've been arriving usually a good hour before I'm timetabled in so that I'm fresh and raring to start the day. Having spent the last two years with a close group of talented and lovable people I've realised that it's not going to last forever (although I'd sometimes like to think it could). I'm trying to take full advantage of having a large desk with boards to work on whenever I need to for free and a good working environment. It can be hard work at home when your desk is in the same room as your bed to get motivated so I've tried to use uni to its full potential when it comes to enthusiasm. This lead me to thinking long and hard about my aims after I graduate.

My aims for the year were to have visited working practitioners with my portfolio and to think about possibly organising a group of chums together to get a studio together after uni has finished rather then leaving it last minute. As I mentioned earlier I love working in a social, friendly environment and couldn't think of many things better then getting a studio with my friends and working professionally like that. I tend to work best int he company of others so think it could have the potential to really push me as an illustrator.

As for the remaining months ahead of me, the most important thing for me to focus on now is my final major project. It runs over a course of 18weeks so I need to thoroughly think about the work I am going to set myself to ensure I don't loose interest during the long working period. I don't tend to work well on longer projects as I set myself too much work to complete so this is a chance to either overcome this difficulty or to break up the time through shorter pieces of work to keep my mind fresh. I'm dead excited about it and can't wait to start as hopefully it should be a collection of the best work I'll have produced so far. Bring it on!

LORD WHITNEY: PORTFOLIO VISIT NUMERO 3

Last week I went to visit Lord Whitney (see previous posts if you don't know who they are) in their cold but creative warehouse studio in Leeds. I was massively grateful to both Bek and Amy for taking time out of their busy schedule to have a look at my work so close to Christmas and a week before they were due to feature an installtion at the Dead Sea Mob night at Night&Day in Manchester.

The studio pre decoration stage and 70's style xmas tree.

As I mentioned earlier, the studio itself was situated in the top floor of a disused warehouse and man alive was it nippy. It was full of weird and wonderful costumes (including hand made signs, life sized landscapes and plastic pimped out crows) and props that made you feel that you could of been in the backstage of a film/tv set like the Mighty Boosh. There were a few gas and electric heaters to huddle round to keep warm but more importantly it was a good excuse to have cups of tea, which hit the spot. Thanks again girls! Having acclimatised myself to the conditions of the tundra like studio, like other visits in the past, I spoke about each project in my portfolio focusing on ideas generation and process. However, unlike the past two visits, I felt that I gained tonnes more creative feedback and left with lots of things to consider when working in future. It was a very relaxed few hours where we chatted about things they thought I might like/be interested in outside of the art world that could strengthen my work. This ranged from Victorian circuses, short stories, films and more importantly Hendricks Gin! It was dead nice that they did this as they could of quite easily looked at my work and left it at that but they seemed to get pretty excited about future prospects within my work.

As far as I can remember they were generally positive about my work and had nothing but kind words to say about it. It was a real compliment to hear that from a creative team that are doing so well for themselves and has made me really think hard about how I could benefit from working in a small team in the last few months of uni to prep me for leaving. They were also pretty pleased with the work I produced for the brief they set for us earlier in the month so this again has swayed me towards collaborating in the future as I worked with Jordan O'brien on it.

Overall, I had a most pleasant time with them (and their intern) and left feeling really positive and happy with my work but more importantly excited about cracking on with projects discussed. I've got a lot of ideas that I'd hopefully like to blast out over the Christmas holiday including a much more personal business all thanks to the creative input of Lord Whitney. I would like to think I could get in touch with them again about future work and they'd be just as welcoming about it. In conclusion, I feel like I gained a lot from this portfolio visit and can see why we're encouraged to seek professional advice about our work.

BLAB MINI 3.

On friday night, having rushed back from uni and grabbed a bratwurst from the German Christmas market I took a swift stroll down to Deaf Institute for the third BlabMini.

BlabMini is a monthly meetup where Manchester based creative types can meet up, have a drink and socialise with other artists (organised by Northern Digital). Its a chance to meet face to face with each other rather then via the wonderful world wide web and meet new people, clients and maybe land yourself a place, chance to collaborate or even job. They've also introduced guest speakers to come and talk about a designated topic for give or take 20mins. The £5 entry fee also entitled you to free admission for the 90's dance night upstairs and a free beverage of your choice. I had 2 though.

Anyway, this months theme was "Things I've Seen", where each speaker had to talk about anything the they considered to relevant to them.  Altogether there were five speakers consisting of Kate Towey, Simon Griffin, Jeffery Bowman, Katie Moffat and Jake Smith with sponsors of Eskimo Creative, Shillington College and Orchard. As well as this, they were raffles and competitions to win some awesome prizes (£50 of itunes vouchers won by Jordan O'brien) and the best competition was best christmas jumper where Dom came runner up. Sorry Dom. Yours was best the other guy just new more people. Back to the talks. Katie Moffat opened the stage with a short but moving presentation on the 9/11 attacks against the Twin Towers and how a competition was created for architects/designers to come up with ideas for a memorial site. This was followed up with Kate Towey making a clear point how much she disliked brown bananas then Jeffery Bowman's love for hill walking. Jake and Simon tied up the evening with a passion for film/music videos and how being unorganised and unprepared can work in your favour.

The whole vibe of the evening was friendly and festive, and an awesome chance to chat to working designers. What I enjoyed most about the evening was the generous turnout from current/post Stockport College students. It's not often that over the last three years we've met as a group outside of college so it was a great opportunity to socialise in the outside world. A few of us stayed around afterwards for a couple more drinks then moved on to another bar.

The fourth BladMini is to take place again at Deaf in the new year at some point. Overall, a brilliant way to spend a thursday eve with a good crowd.

MUSIC: PORTFOLIO VISIT 2

So as I mentioned earlier, when in Preston we had the opportunity to book slots with professionals to talk about portfolios. I managed to talk to Jordan, who works for Music creative agency based in Manchester.

As I'd briefly spoken to Craig Oldham when he came to Uni last month, and seeing he was completely sound I hoped Jordan would be the same. I was right. We were pretty limited with time so I think I only had ten minutes to quickly go through my work. I talked about each project explaining the fundamental elements of each brief and the reasons for me choosing to execute them the way I did.  

Having blasted through the majority of my work we started to chat about the target audience I was trying to appeal to as my work seems to have quite a morbid and dark theme to a lot of it. Having discussed that it was quite mixed but some was aimed at children he suggested either lightening my working style up a little or think about the intended audience in more depth (i.e changing it). He liked the illustrations I had produced for the Macmillan books but thought they were slightly too intimidating for smaller children. I had produced the work in the particular style because I was trying to make a book that I would have liked at that age but in looking back perhaps the weirder, older stuff appealed to me more.

Having taken his advice on board I think I've realised that rather then tackling a brief all guns blazing I need to break it down critically. Jordan mentioned that as he wasn't an illustrator himself that he could only give me his opinion on my portfolio rather then critical feedback but I think he managed to do this subconsciously a I feel I did benefit from seeing him.

 For future reference I think I'd also like to try and get a viewing with and illustration agency, this way I'm covering more types of the industry and not limiting myself. Overall it was a brief but positive viewing that left me with some good ideas for upcoming work.

PRESTON DOES D&AD.

Last week a few of us creative folk jumped on a train and made our way across to Preston for a most pleasant day that D&AD were putting on all around the university campus (which I thoroughly enjoyed). It was a great eye opener for what D&AD can offer students, as I didn't really have a clue what they were really about other then the awards but more importantly the whole event didn't cost a penny. The day was packed full of lectures, workshops and a portfolio surgery with helpful advice professionals that thankfully involved no operating.

I found the morning lecture really valuable as one of the D&AD organisers (Rianan I think) opened the talk introducing what they’ve done past, present but more specifically future plans including the White Pencil awards. It was pretty insightful to see the behind the scene side of the awards and just how much work and effort goes into putting the awards together.

Jack Renwick followed this up with an inspirational talk on how she’d worked her way up through the industry to become an art director, former creative director at The Partners and creator of a her own agency. It was nice to hear a talk from such a down to earth person that you could relate to. She gave advice on how to deal with clients and how to really push your ideas across and create a bond with them, working as part of a team being crucial and your working showing your personality. It gave me faith that I could hopefully do something similar if I’m dedicated enough and try hard. Even though she made it clear that she’d started from rock bottom and climbed her way up the mountain of job positions she made it sound like a pretty smooth process. I hope that when it comes to my turn, similar opportunities pop up so frequently for me. Jack is one of the judges at D&AD and has won awards herself in the past as a student and work associated with The Partners. 

Jack started out her career in the art industry by making wheelchair ramps and sign designs then moving her way up by getting work for The Partners (design agency based in London and New York). She talked about some of the projects that shes worked on involving typography, corporate design work and logo designs.

One piece that I really liked was a brief to create packaging for Indian flavoured sausages. As well as making designs for the outer packaging they focused on giving each indivudal falavour of sasuage its own style. They did this by printed onto the skin of the meat using an edible ink to look like henna tattoos. I think this work shows how to stand out against the rest and that they really pushed the idea as far as they could. In doing so they've created something thats pretty unique and shows they really care about their work and reputation. 

I found her talk really inspirational and the ideas used massive imaginitve. You can tell she takes pride in her work and puts passion into it and it definitely pays off. I look forward to seeing what the future holds with her new solo agency.  


Later on there was a workshop hosted by the Manchester based design agency WeAreThoughtful. Unfortunately, at this point I was dying of starvation and had to take a swift pit stop at the nearest Wetherspoons to refuel myself for my portfolio visit with Jordan from Music Studios (more to come on this). The portfolio surgeries were an opportunity for students from across the region to have a chat and gain some industry input from a gathering of great design agencies. The advice was offered from The Chase, Music, Because Studio and many more. It was also a chance to talk to other students that are completely in the same boat on how they’re coping with the trials and tribulations of third year and preparation for the future. It’s reassuring to hear that you’re not the only person stressing about the next steps that follow after uni. The designers on hand gave some good advice about how portfolios could be strengthened and what my work would benefit from with slight tweaks here and there.

Overall I thought the day had been coordinated very well making it hugely beneficial to all us post grads that turned up. There were plenty of speakers on hand concerning pretty much all pathways that were processional and knowledgeable but more importantly approachable. If D&AD are doing any other events in the near future I shall definitely be attending.  

RED SEA: PORTFOLIO VISIT 1

Yesterday I had my first portfolio at the talented Red Sea tattoo studio in Manchester. I had previously organised to speak with tattooist Dan Morris but ended up speaking with the owner of the establishment Laurence Stogsdill. I was massively nervous and worked myself up about it as I haven't shown my work to any professionals other then uni tutors.

I went to talk to Laurence during their consultation hour expecting to be in an out in about 15mins but was pleasantly surprised having spent a good 40mins chatting. I was a bit skeptical showing a tattoo studio my work, as the majority is editorial/live brief work slightly edging towards tattoo art in the work I'm producing at present. Laurence mad me feel at ease and relaxed throughout the duration of my visit and set a friendly atmosphere. He mentioned a few times that he didn't usually get the opportunity to see illustration students work, which was a nice change as it was usually peoples drawings of tattoo esq imagery wanting a job.

As well as taking my finished portfolio, I also brought along a printed version of the 8x8 publication that featured my illustrations and a sample of my rough ideas and sketches.

Altogether Laurence had nothing but kind words to say about my work and gave me some little pointers on how he thought bits could be improved and benefit from slight changes. A few pieces such as the Macmillan Books illustrations and some other first year work he said were very popular styles of working and even though he liked them thought that they didn't really show my personality that much. More recent projects including the freak show and Victorian superstitions and beliefs were a prime example of what I was passionate about and he could see this in the images.

A pointer he gave me was to try and illustrate some happier and up beat pieces as my work doesn't need to be all doom and gloom to show my potential. After going through my portfolio we discussed what he would expect to see from a person applying for an apprenticeship job as hopefully that is a career path I would like to go down. More sketchbook work showing initial ideas generation is what he likes to see to make sure the person isn't just a one trick pony and can think about imagery as well as just having the craft to execute it.

I found him a pleasure to talk to and feel like we got on very well on a whole. Unless I blocked out any negative words I'm pretty sure he liked my work and seemed to have enjoyed talking with me. I was annoyed at myself for not having a business card printed as i feel it would have been beneficial to have left one with him. In saying that he added me on facebook later that day so fingers crossed that I might be able to follow the visit up with something in the not too distant future.

BUT ISN'T THAT YOUR JOB?

The other day we had the privilege of a listening to a lecture by Craig Oldham (designer at Music studio) entitled But Isn’t That Your Job? It was a great incite into the relationship between how art director and illustration work with once another following six projects, each with different artists. The first four illustrators were part of a campaign promoting the rise of Manchester City football club through four posters of their key players.

The work was created by (in clockwise, from top to bottom) Michael Gillette, Chris White, Todd Slater and Shepard Fairey.

Craig came across as being a very genuine and down to earth chap from my side of the hill and definitely wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion. The talk opened my eyes to the role of an art director and cleared up any stereotype people might have of them.

He described the full ins and outs of a job stating with finding the right man right through to negotiating payment with either the artist themselves or an agency. He definitely showed that when an art company is picked to execute a job that they really care about the end result so that it suits the clients demands and not just their own. It was dead interesting and really informative especially at the end when he answered questions from the group and touched on the subject of presenting work to an art director.

We were all set a brief to design the lecture poster for Craig's talk with the chance to win a set of the Man City posters and some pretty cool books. The only limitations we faced were the usage of only two colours and had to include relevant typography. I decided to do some research by looking on Craig's website where there's quite an in depth section about his likes, dislikes and hobbies. I went for the standard weird approach and clocking it said he liked cups of tea, Prince and the fact he's from Yorkshire, I tried to combine the three together. My final image consisted of Prince rising from the steam of a cup of tea, with a Yorkshire rose in the foreground. It was me being a bit weird and didn't really turn out how I planned in my head but struggled with the hand generated typography. My poster can be seen below. Needless to say I didn't win but hadn't much hope behind it.

ILLUSTRATIONS DIGITAL FUTURE.

Whether we look it or not, the age we currently live among is one the most fast paced times man has seen. Swamped with technology and branding everywhere we look, various ports of advertising are appearing everywhere. The main source of this of course, is the Internet. People’s lives are constantly infested with tweets, pokes and posts. New ways of reading the news are cropping up at every turn with inventions like the kindle and ipad but is this going to put the final nail into the casket of illustrators and publishers? I came across a pretty interesting article on the BBC website about how the sales of books are decreasing due to electronic devices and the closure of high street shops such as Borders. It made me think about the future of work concerning illustrators.

It was inevitable that the next leap for technology would be a form of moving, digital literature (not quite as advanced as the papers in Harry Potter) and Apple seem to be doing a pretty good job by releasing the first of its type and now following that the ipad 2 with tough competition from Amazon’s Kindle.  The way we view literature seems to be changing into smaller bite sized chunks rather then, the sometimes viewed as off putting paragraphs and pages we were so used to seeing. So could the ebook be taking things back to basics in some respects by kick starting people’s love for reading where some would find it a repellent? The fad for new gadgets and what’s hot could give reading the boost it needs by using the ebook as a gimmick to get people back into reading literature instead of wasting their time getting square eyes.

As a designer (sort of), I think it can be looked at two very different points. When people discuss the work of illustrator 9/10 would stereotype the role being to illustrate book covers and imagery for storybooks. If the invention of digital reading is to carry on at the pace it’s doing so, could it eventually wipe out the use of tangible books and magazines? This could seriously affect job roles from all points of the spectrum involved in publishing. Sellers, illustrators and publishing companies could be hit pretty hard leaving only the writers themselves untouched so to speak.

Then again, this could give illustrators a real boost and chance to get involved in something quite alien to some peoples usual practise. With the ipad containing not only still imagery but moving GIFs and short animations, this could merge the boundaries of illustration and moving imagery together to create something new and exciting. With more and more people investing in these different types of technology it could be seen as a massive form of free advertising for the artists to gain more recognition. If the modern man is now too lazy to read bigger pieces of literature then they are perhaps more likely to be attracted to the ebooks appose to the real thing. Hopefully this might turn things round for the artists and significantly increase the exposure of their work in the public eye leading to a bigger client base?

I’m not overly sure about what’s in store for the future of illustration. I can be quite a tech geek at times and love playing about on my iphone but for me personally, I don’t think you can beat reading a nicely printed magazine with the smell of fresh ink on a good quality paper. My eyes start to boggle if I read for any amount of time online so I usually end up printing the article out anyway and reading on paper. I’m all for the traditional proccess of the printing press and much prefer the analogue way of reading but if us artists can gain from it then perhaps digital illustration could be the only option in years to come. I’m all for which ever will benefit the artist most and enough more people to read. Not sure they both go hand in hand though…

GRAPHIC GURU EVENT.

Yesterday afternoon the first (I think there’s more to come) Graphic Guru’s even took place in college, where tutors had selected a small number illustrators that had graduated from Stockport that are now working successfully in the professional trade of illustration. This talented bunch of people consisted of Chris Madden, Ben Jones, Liam Bardsley, Natalie Wood, Rose Lloyd and Pete Adlington. They’d been asked to talk to the third years to open our eyes a bit to what we had to come and share their tales of experiences in the real world working with clients and live briefs. If you haven't already seen their work, have a jump over to their sites as they're all amazing at what they do!

It was a really good experience to be able to go around and casually chat to each of them about what they were currently working on, previous work, what they were interested in and their inspirations and motivations. We didn’t really have massive amounts of time but I still gained some good tips when dealing with clients through their own personal experiences with studio visits and art directors. It was nice to hear it face to face from them and that sometimes it doesn’t always run the smoothest but you learn from the little mistakes and build up more confidence as time progresses (not too much though).

After working our way around each of the illustrators we were then separated into smaller groups and assigned to one “Graphic Guru”. I was incredibly lucky to be placed under the watchful eye of Chris Madden, which I’m massively happy about. As well as being  in reality, really talented he’s a genuinely nice, down to earth person that I’ve met a few times before and be full of quality advice along with …. Criticism. The idea of Chris’ role is to act as a sort of mentor over the next coming months that we’re able to contact in relation to our work, I shall try to my hardest not to pester.

I’m really looking forward to the remaining time in third year and feel that with the confidence of having a Guru to aid my pleas it should hopefully work out just nice.

I WISH I'D DONE THIS.

PDP (Professional Development Planning) is a aspect of the course where I'm required to complete several tasks about other artists and prep for getting a job via the use of my blog. So far I've done all my contact reports and a piece titled "Thing's That I Have Learned". I Wish I'd Done This, is a short piece of writing about an image I've seen that makes me wish I'd made it. Pretty self explanatory really.

 

There's a lot of work out there at the moment that makes me think I really need to pull my finger out if this is the sort of competition I'm going to be up against soon. Even more then that this piece in particular makes me think I really wish I'd made that. The sort of illustrations that usually grab my attention (for the time being) are digital pieces made up of different textures, hand made brushes and subtle colour schemes that make me question myself as to how they've been made. To be a bit different I decided to write about a painting.

 Thoughts of the Future was the first piece I'd seen by Lindsey Carr that made me wish I'd done it but to be honest I wish I'd done almost all of her pieces. Carr paints using incredible skill that captures detail effortlessly in a way that also gives character and personality to the animals she creates in her almost all of her paintings.

 I became fascinated by this piece mainly because of the huge attention to detail. One of the main things that stand out are the hairs on the monkeys head as well as the folds and stitches on the garment that make it look so realistic. I'm a huge fan of photo-realistic art but only if its done in a way that a camera couldn't.  The reason I like this painting so much is because it does exactly that, even though its not quite photo-realistic. The style of the piece reminds of me of old Victorian natural history books that have incredibly well illustrated images of various plants, animals and birds. The blank expression on the primate’s face gives the impression of death and taxidermy. With the flowers and foliage being arranged in such a peculiar way almost growing out of the head I could picture something like this to feature in a cabinet of a museum, in a glass jar filled with formaldehyde.

 When it comes to my work I tend to avoid working in a realistic way, as I don’t feel confident enough to achieve the standard I want. Instead I simply the things I draw especially figures by using harsh/straight shapes and lines through digital media. However when seeing work like this I’m always inspired to push the degree of detail in my work further and try to achieve a more realistic look.

 When looking at the piece it’s made me come to realise that lighting pays a huge part in making an image successful. Getting the balance of light and dark right can give the impression of depth, create texture as well ad different surfaces and make objects look three-dimensional. It helps that Carr has the ability to paint realistically but with the added bonus of using tones so well she achieves a quality that looks like you could reach out and touch it especially as I mentioned before the folds in the cloth. I’ve taken this on board when making my latest illustrations for the 8x8 brief where my main focus was to play with lighting to create depth to my piece. Even though I work purely digital I think its important to look at other methods of working and try to learn from them so I can use similar techniques in my work.  

 One of my classmates showed me the work of Lindsey Carr about a week ago but if I had discovered her before now I would have definitely liked to email her as part of my contact reports. There isn’t too much info on the web about Carr other then she’s a painter and occasional toy maker that lives on the south west coast of Scotland. I think after building up confidence through contacting other artists over the past few months I’m going to get in touch with Carr as I want to know much more about what inspires her and why she paints the subject matter she chose’s.

There's definitely a lot to learn from a piece like this and it's really inspired me to paint more in my spare time. The only way to get better at it is to practice and its evident that Carr has had a lot of experience.

ONE.TWO.THREE

Below are three pieces of advice I've been given/heard over the past year that I feel has helped and inspired me in my work from various faces around the world.

ONE.

 "Use the internet to your advantage" Kevin Dart

After hearing this from Dart it made me reflect on if I was using the internet for its full potential. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't ha.  It's opened my eyes to the amount of opportunities there are on the web to promote yourself and collaborate with other fellow artists through the means of social networks as well as getting in touch with design companies/agencies/publications. I think I ignore some sites like YouTube/Facebook/Blogger in the sense that I don't always use them to their full potential and need to realise how much I could benefit from then. In the modern age we live in I think it's important to take advantage of every possibility opening and I sometimes forget this and distracted.  Even though it sounds obvious, I'd also pretty much overlooked the fact that it's so easy to communicate with other people around the world so effortlessly. I've started to take this advice on board over the last few months by making myself a CargoCollective (online portfolio) and a Twitter account. I'm not the biggest "tweeter" in the world but I'm finding it dead useful for keeping in the know with whats happening in the art industry, upcoming exhibitions and things like limited edition art prints/underground competitions etc.

TWO.

"Do not seek praise. Seek criticism" Paul Arden

 I bought Paul Arden's "It's not how good you are, It's how good you want to be" sometime last year and it's been nothing but help in how I work. It's a book on how to succeed in life and includes an insight to the world of advertising with facts and pearls of wonderful wisdom. This one really stuck out to me amongst others and has helped a great deal. A typical situation for me when working on a brief is that I box myself and don't let people see my work until near the deadline thus leaving little time for improvement. I've learnt that it's important to get a fresh and more importantly honest opinion on you're work before it's too late.  There's no benefiting from polite compliments when what you sometimes need is harsh brutal criticism. From this you can get the full potential out of your work and push yourself to get better final outcomes.  

THREE.

"Don't get drunk of others work" – Me

Over the course of the last month when working on the 8x8 brief, I've come to realise that there's a point where you need to stop looking at other peoples work and focus on the your own.  I feel that I'm just starting to really understand how I'm most comfortable in working and that "my style" is slowly becoming evident in my latest pieces of work. Looking at too much artist influence has started to become a problem for me as I feel like I'm getting "drunk" off too many different styles and aesthetics. When I do see work I admire I tend to try and work in a similar method combined with my own process but its too evident that their work is making too much of an influence and my work changes depending on who I've looked at for that particular brief. I now limit myself to looking at others when working and its obvious that my own style is starting to appear and my work is slowly becoming consistent.