Pre field trip thoughts

For the setting of my book the most immediately suitable setting that came to mind was the sprawling expanse of Temple Newsam on the outskirts of Leeds, that I spent basically all of my developing years wandering aimlessly. I have always had an affinity with the place as I grew up just outside the forest that leads up to the park itself. 

The main reason I wanted to explore this place from an illustrative point of view is because of all the history there. Not only history in a historical sense (I think that makes sense, I mean in the sense of it being real old and home to some historical figures and events) but in a personal sense, and not only for me but for tens of other people who all define my memories of it. I want my book to tell the story of what I remember of this place and what others remember, because the concept of assorted memories that are all separate to one another but anchored to the same place fascinates me.

I also find the idea of unreliable narration interesting, as I am certain I don't remember each time I went out into the woods, and I am even more certain that some things that happened there have only been exaggerated in my mind since then. I also want to look at the narrative from various developmental stages, as my perception of the place changed as I grew up, I once thought of it as an endless forest of secrets and hidden routes to nowhere, but returning more recently I know where the forest ends and becomes a motorway, I know where the land stops and becomes private with electric fences and anti climbing paint, I know where that one hellish spider infested tunnel leads to and various other restrictions that no child notices or cares about when exploring. 

In a sense of narrative, a big part of my work in this book will be associated with ideas of being lost and being found in several different ways, as I see these ideas (for me anyway) as two of the defining states of growing up; lost/found, innocence/experience. As Temple Newsam has always just been a staple of my life as much as school or the fridge, I have never truly considered it independently from an art-focused standpoint, so I'm excited to go and get lost again in familiarity with a fresh set of eyes. 

One Week Book

I found this brief actually quite challenging and didn't like it very much, but I think the skills of really fast idea formation and the use of screen printing have been useful now the brief is done. 

Although I need a lot of practice I enjoyed screen printing, I love the solid blocky effect you can achieve with it, and I find the process is interesting and satisfying. I want to use screen printing again in future briefs, but the fast paced nature of this one week has taught me if I want to do that I have to be fast and focused in order to get it sorted out properly. Some of my prints have pages that are out of alignment, and while the jagged effect works on some prints I mostly don't like how it looks. This is my fault as I lined some of my negatives up a bit wrong when preparing for screen printing, but at least I know to take more care when drawing up negatives in the future to avoid this. 

I was ill on the first day of this brief but our groups book is focused on Leeds Market and a simplistic narrative of a boy buying a hot dog mainly because we thought the condiment dispensers looked funny as if they were weird mustard udders, and we wanted to play with that. Although I didn't really enjoy this brief overall as I feel I didn't have time to develop a more solid idea, I did enjoy working in a group as everyone's work is unique and expresses a different more raw idea, but all of it compliments each other and has the same source. This is that dynamic that I think makes the book work, as it clearly has many influences visually but is all a representation of the same idea in different people's heads. 

Overall I'd say that I appreciated the lesson of time management this brief taught me, and the need for proper preparation when screen printing, but I think my work was underdeveloped as I was focusing more on the final outcome rather than spending time exploring different routes to take. 

Shape Ideas

I'm sort of stuck on this task as I'm not used to/a fan of working with cut paper and collaging shape. These roughs are justsome initial ideas I had concerning thinking of an outfit for a character to wear, and how best to visualise that outfit and the nature of the character while only using block shapes. I don't feel that confident with more three dimensional tasks like this so i aren't sure how this task will go, but I hope I can use it to gain more confidence in this way of working.

End of Module Self Evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL403 Visual Skills	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME	Isaac Smith

1.  Whichpractical skills and methodologies have you developed within this module and how effectively do you think you are employing them within your own practice?
The main skill I think I have developed in this module would be my understanding and use of wet media, as it was something I previously had not really considered to include in my work. I’ve developed my use of gouache and ink in my work and I think that it works well for my work as its a relatively quick and vibrant form of creating colour, and thereby has allowed me to include colour in my work, which before this module I did only sparingly. I hope to develop these skills further in the future to better incorporate colour into my responses.
2. Which principles/ theories of image making have you found most valuable during this moduleand how effectively do you think you are employing these within your own practice?
This module has taught me the importance of having an interesting idea that provokes a response before even beginning to draw anything in response, because an illustration isn’t an illustration if it doesn’t have a message to send, a lesson to teach or a story to tell. Before this module I feel some of my work to be devoid of this element as I might have been more focused on design and aesthetics, but now I see the value of having a good idea before embarking on any response at all.
3. What strengths can you identify within your submission and how have you capitalised on these?
I think that my strengths in this module lie with my idea generation as I have tried to be quite exhaustive when coming up with ideas for responses, as the message behind the illustration is what I find the most interesting part about the work. I’m also proud of my blog as I feel that I have successfully documented my learning experience throughout this module and the changes in how I work and how I view other people’s work now.
4. What areas for further development can you identify within your submission and how will you address these in the future?
I hope to develop my uses of different media, as I have begun using wet media in my work to explore different methods of image making, but I haven’t used any digital methods really very much, so Photoshop and Illustrator are two formats I will be familiarising myself with in future briefs. I also think I should further my sketchbook use as I sometimes begin working out of it straightaway, when I should use it more to reflect on and refine my work.
5. In what way has this module introduced you to the Ba (Hons) Illustration programme? This module has taught me the meaning of illustration in a practical sense; as in responding to set briefs and concepts to create work with an appropriate message behind it. It has also allowed me to grasp the idea of blogging to constantly self evaluate and develop, and I think that I have used my blog quite effectively to tell myself what has and hasn’t been working throughout this module.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance		x
Punctuality		x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced			x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

·         A printed copy of this evaluation should be submitted with your work.

·         A copy of your end of module self evaluation should be posted to your studio practice blog. This should be the last post before the submission of work for this module and will provide the starting point for the assessment process.

·         You should also post a copy of your evaluation to your PPP blog as evidence of your own on going evaluation.

Notes for the Module Leader

Signature

Date: 15/11/2015

Do Judge a Book by Its Cover - final cover evaluation

I'm happy with my final cover as I think it works well to capture the exciting and dynamic themes I was trying to get across in my original roughs. I was considering using digital media for this but I decided against it because I wanted to explore more wet media after my use of gouache in the last brief, so I chose to ink the black areas with a fine brush. It was hard being meticulous with the brush around the electrical tendrils and the lettering as I'm not that used to working in confined spaces with a paintbrush but I think I did quite well to accentuate the white areas without going over any edges or inking the wrong area. I think the ink gets a bit splotchy in some areas which is something I can improve on in the future. 

I used a 0.4 electric blue fineliner for the electricity effect. I was considering gouache for the flat opaque effect but I couldn't work in that tiny a space with wet media without compromising the ink I'd already applied or messing up the designs I'd already drawn. I think I made the right choice as I've applied it sparingly on only the edges of the effect and it makes the white really stand out against the black in a stark contrast. 

I used smaller matrixes to draw my text, using the ones in my sketchbook as references, and I measured out a symmetrical grid on the cover for the allocation of each letter before I drew the actual design. I think this works to the benefit of the cover as the type is easy to read and fits well on the page alongside the drawing. To improve I would have further explored ways to fit on the subtitle and author name at the bottom of the cover, as I don't think they look quite as clean as the top, being as they're a lot smaller. 

Overall I'm happy with my cover as its allowed me to explore something that's more graphic design based rather than the character work I'm used to doing and have imbued in the other briefs. I'm glad that we got this brief as its given me another opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and work with a lot of factors that I've never really considered before (fine brushes, typography matrixes, symmetrical measurements etc) to make a piece that's very different from anything I would have assumed I could make a couple of weeks ago, but also I think, pretty effective. 

Do Judge a Book by Its Cover - development of type

I decided to commit to making the type as professional as I could by hand by ensuring that all the letters would be the same size and would fit into a series effectively by using type matrix grids. This is something I wouldn't have even considered if it hadn't been suggested during group feedback, so that exercise has been massively helpful in my development of ideas for this brief. I've tried to create a robotic kind of text with hard edges to allude to the science based theme of this book. Instead of making a whole alphabet I just designed the letters I'm going to need for the title itself, and I think that it's been really helpful in allowing me to explore my understanding of type and its importance within a design like this. I hope to be able to further explore this use of matrixes and custom alphabets in future briefs. 

Do Judge a Book by Its Cover - further development

Choosing to go forward with this electricity based 'zap' design, I have chosen to add a more complex representation of the laser blast and the surrounding electricity to get my point across about the exciting and dangerous nature of the word itself. I have also tried to begin estimating how I will incorporate the type into this piece, as I am probably going to use a grid to ensure that all the letters are the same dimensions and fit symmetrically with the drawing itself. I'm going to revise the actual thing shooting the laser as the hand I've drawn here looks weird from this angle.

I've also been watching clips from the Transformers Movie from 1986, as that features classic uses of lasers and laser guns in a variety of designs and differing effects. I explored a couple of different blast designs that I noticed in the film, but I think for the purposes of my cover that the electrical styled one works the best. 

Do Judge a Book by Its Cover - Roughs

I focused on arrangement of type and trying to create a sense of dynamic movement with this rough, but I think it might be too crowded for a book cover, which should be easy to read and interpret. It was my first idea so development from this point has been beneficial in the design of the rest of my roughs. I also feel that I should focus more on the specific imagery of the Ray gun for my cover as this rough is more dedicated to the type than the image. 

For this rough I again wanted to experiment with a flexible composition of type, but with less crowded arrangement and a more symmetrical alignment of each word. Every word in the title of my book has three letters, and from a design standpoint this is interesting to me as I'd like to use this brief as an opportunity to expand my understanding and use of typography in my work. 

This is one of my more successful roughs as I feel that it captures the essence of the book without being too crowded or overly complex. I took actual Ray guns and laser guns etc from old action figures that I have and studied their individual designs for this rough. I'm happy with how this came out as I feel all the guns I chose to include are recognisable and unique. I'm also happy with the composition as I tried to arrange the drawings in a way that would fill the page but without having to compromise the size or shape of the drawings to do so. I drew these out a couple of times to play with how each one would be presented on the page and how it would fit on with other corresponding designs. 

This idea was based on a thought I had when I was looking through the book and found a section to do with equations and studies of light by the author. I don't understand any of the science behind it, but when I saw the shape of the equation it made me think of a cartoon cannon, with the way it expands into a square shape at the far right and almost has a trigger shape in the upside down 'y' symbol (Im sure that symbol has a name but I really do not comprehend maths). I drew around the equation the shape I basically saw when I noticed it, with extra details added to properly represent it as a laser gun. I think this is a solid idea as it shows the viewer the dual nature of this book and how it literally explains the 'inner workings' of Ray guns. I don't think the type works on this particular design though and I'm not sure where else I could take this idea, so I don't think I'll be moving forward with this rough. 

This is the rough I'm probably going to develop for my final idea. I was deciding between this and my third rough but the group feedback we received on Monday helped me decide more in favour of this one. I've used the triple letter theme of each word in this design to make type that will hopefully be identical and symmetrical. I chose to have the 'zap' being zapped on the cover because it's an onomatopoeic word and it suggests excitement and danger, and it's the part of the title that caught my attention in the first place on the original cover. To develop this rough I'd alter the design of whatever contraption is firing the laser, and also alter the size and positioning of the text to make room for the authors name and subtitle on the front cover. 

Do Judge a Book by Its Cover - initial ideas

The book I've chosen is a study of ray guns and lasers in real life science and science fiction media, and while most of it is interesting, it is also full of heavy equations to do with things like light refraction that I will never understand. I've focused on imagery of science fiction for my initial ideas as that's the side of this book that interests me. I think that this is a good starting point for my roughs and I have a few ideas I'd like to move forward with, especially the thought of having a cover with ray guns from popular culture arranged around the title in a graphic design style. Id also like to further develop the idea of incorporating the mix of an equation and a laser gun into the design as it would represent the books grounding in both science and fiction. 

Line/Tone/Mark/Pattern

Sticking with the theme of classic Horror movie icons for this task I chose the figure of Robby the Robot from The Forbidden Planet for my tonal drawings. I thought the best way to get an understanding of how the character looks and his proportions and features was to first do a tonal study of him in pencil withvarying lights and darks.

I used this image as a reference for the rest of my drawings as I wanted to create a range of different tonal values on each drawing without just using images from the film as direct reference. I think this method has allowed me to explore and experiment within tone and not limit myself purely to pencil shaded line drawings. I used ink, pens, paint and sow pencils dipped in black ink to play with how different materials express light and dark in different ways. Although the pencil and pen drawings are more accurate to the look of the character, I think my ink drawings are stronger as they are a little more loose and I was focusing more on what the individual parts and mechanics would look like in certain lighting and setting rather than creating a super realistic representation of the character, as that's not really as interesting. 

I also tried expressing the character using no definitive like work and just using areas and patches of varied tone, and I think these work quite well as more expressive representational drawings, which again I find now to be more compelling than a straightforward shaded line drawing. 

A Day in the Life brief personal evaluation

At first this brief was really intimidating for me as I found the content very heavy and serious, and I initially had difficulty adapting my thinking process to how to handle these topics of pollution and death and corporate deception and political ignorance while still making interesting and appealing work. I feel that I found my feet once we had some feedback from both Matt and each other in the exercise following our roughs, as I found that everyone was having some difficulty adapting to the content of these articles and we just had to focus on our ideas and let our work be driven by concept and feeling rather than a dependence on "looking good" or being funny or anything like that. In this sense I have overall found this brief pretty eye opening to the world of editorial illustration and the task of representing my own personal response to an issue in a piece of work effectively enough to communicate that thought to others without the use of words. I also used this opportunity to experiment with different media and I have been carrying what I have learned in this area over to my drawing in visual language which I think has benefitted my development there too. I suppose my main thought at the end of this brief is that I'm glad that it was bloody hard because it's helped me test myself and pushed me in ways creatively that I might not have gone if we weren't given such relevant and important issues to tackle. 

A Day in the Life - 290mm x 105mm Editorial Evaluation

I think this piece isn't as effective at expressing its meaning as my other 200mm x 200mm piece, but I really like the overall aesthetic of it and the story I was trying to tell. After the evaluation of our roughs I decided that I wanted this landscape design to be a sequential idea that had a narrative running from left to right on the page. I chose again to take on the ideas of Volkswagens hidden dangers concerning fuel emissions and pollution and break the idea down into simple and recognisable colours and imagery. The first object I thought of when I thought of danger, without regarding the specifics of this story, was a gun. I decided that the immediacy of this visual tool was appropriate for what I was trying to accomplish with this piece. I wanted to work in the recognisable symbolism of Volkswagen but wanted to stay away from overusing their famous logo, so I chose instead to cartoonise (is that a word?) their most famous car, the Beetle. The Beetle has an immediately and universally recognisable shape with its curved edges and enlarged nose, so I thought it would be an effective tool in showing my audience who this piece was talking about. I was going to have the gun simply firing the tiny Volkswagen to communicate how dangerous these cars can be, but instead I chose to have the car break out of the inside of a bullet, as I wanted to suggest towards the company trying to hide the danger from us, but the truth getting out in the end. I was initially going to restrict the piece to duller colours to convey the theme of pollution, but I decided that really the theme isn't just pollution, but rather danger in general and our ignorance towards our self destructive natures. With this in mind I thought a harsh red would work as a sort of alert to the reader that these hidden dangers are real and, well, dangerous. I used Mars red gouache in limited quantity here to contrast with the duller effect of pencil. The gun and the bullet casing are representative of corporate structures masking the truth from us, and I thought what better colour than grey to communicate shady corporations. I think the gouache works well in this piece a I was working inside a limited space with it and it accentuates the piece more, whereas if I had used loads it would have probably taken away from the singular point I was trying to make. To improve this piece I would definitely consider alternative media; I particularly think that digital enhancement would have worked to my advantage as its possible to get much starker contrasts and much more accurate line work and shapes. I would also play with the composition and the angle of the piece perhaps to create more dynamism within the image.

A Day in the Life - 200mm x 200mm Editorial Evaluation

I think this is probably my most successful piece in terms of visual communication and immediacy. I set out to represent the ideas of both and elephant in the room (the elephant being the problem of pollution that everyone in politics seems more than happy to ignore) and the all consuming issue of pollution itself. I feel that the composition of this piece works to the benefit of this idea as I tried to dedicate as much space as possible to the elephant and as little space as possible to the man, to suggest the giant glaring problem of pollution and how it is figuratively and literally bigger than all of us. As I've been trying to move my work away from fineliner based on both tutor guidance and my own desire to experiment and not define any of my work in any kind of set "style", I chose to use ink and black gouache in this piece. I feel that these materials better communicate the imagery of smoke as they are more fluid and free formed on the page. I also think that they create a much more solid image that looks more whole rather than a composite of lines like a fineliner drawing. I also think that the compressed stance (stance? Crouch? Not sure) of the elephant works well to illustrate my point as well, as pollution is an ever growing problem that will eventually reach a limit and become unfixable, there is only so much space on the planet to pollute, as there is only so much space on this page for the elephant to fill up. As I'm not incredibly experienced with wet media like gouache I think I definitely need to practice to improve my use of a brush and probably with other colours too. I feel that the gouache gets a bit splotchy and uneven in some areas so extra practice with the media would be my first personal thought on how to explore making this piece better if we did it again. I would also revise my design and execution (not like execution like death, as in drawing it) of the coughing man as I feel he is somewhat underdeveloped as most of the piece is taken up by the elephant. Maybe I could have experimented with different colours to accentuate his presence in the pieve, blues could have worked to suggest his naivety to the problem facing him. Overall I feel that this is probably my most successful editorial as it communicates my ideas the best and has allowed me to test out different materials for future briefs. 

A Day in the Life: 105mm x 200mm Editorial Evaluation

The main point I was conveying with this idea was the deceit and two faced nature of the Volkswagen company, and also the deadly danger they have introduced by covering up their pollution emissions and allowing people to keep using their cars and pumping unsafe gases into the world for all of us. I'm quite happy with the idea behind the piece but I wasn't sure how best to visually explain it, as I'm trying to move away from fineliner work. To escape this I tried incorporating some collage into the piece, I cut out the heavy black spaces and put a coloured card background behind the image to show through. Initially I was going to use red but I felt it was a bit out of place and not very subtle, as red often screams danger and this piece is about the quiet deceit of the company. This is the piece with a red background before I decided against it:

I decided to use a black background in the final design as I felt it communicated the subtlety of the issue better and less glaringly obviously. Although I kept the skull in which could also set alarms blaring for poison and death. I think that the skull is appropriate though as it isn't too horribly exaggerated or very details but I placed it in the centre of the piece to communicate the central theme of my whole article, which was basically how pollution is killing mostly everything. To improve this piece in the future I would experiment more with other media as I have on the other two editorials, which I think are more successful than this one.

 

Day in the Life Roughs

I found the challenge of producing roughs very helpful in terms of composition and consideration of materials, as usually I wouldn't think to experiment and practice outside my sketchbook in the format of my final piece before making the actual final piece. This task also allowed me to receive feedback on my ideas that I found helpful when reevaluating my designs for the final pieces. From the feedback I received I have decided to scale back my use of the Volkswagen logo and only use it once in one of my editorials, as it was too prevalent in my roughs and I feel that I was leaning on the imagery rather than taking risks with the idea. For the landscape roughs I hve decided to create a more narrative illustration as I feel the layout lends itself to this style of idea. My landscape editorials will hopefully tell a tale from left to right that displays my personal opinions and interpretations of the message in our article. I have also learned that I am focusing too much on the pollution side of the story and not paying as much attention to the political side of it, which is an equally important section of the story. I have played with some imagery of ideas like "swept under the carpet", "a good day to bury bad news", and "an elephant in the room" in my sketchbook in response to the facts presented in the article concerning the government only releasing pollution based statistics on the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected labour leader, ie; a day where everyone was preoccupied and nobody was looking out for pollution figures. I find this element of deceit an itersestinf point to exploit so I will carry these ideas over into at least one of my final editorials. 

Day in the Life initial ideas

I have found this task quite hard due to the somber and pretty depressing content of the articles we are responding to. Whilst I faced some confusion in how to respond to them I realise that becoming an illustrator means illustrating things you might not initially want to, or think you can. With this in mind I tried to produce ideas in the vein of satirical newspaper illustration, as that's how I thought best to express my response to this particular article about air pollution and corruption. Although I think the imagery of the Volkswagen logo works well to enforce my point that Volkswagen has been deceiving the public and causing serious harm to the environment, I also think I may have relied on that idea a bit too much. I still want to do something with the imagery of that logo, as I find that the contrasting appearance of the logo which is often associated with 1960s values of peace and love, with imagery of poison and pollution works well as a representation of the deception behind the story in the article. I don't however want all of my ideas to be based on the logo so I am trying to focus on different areas of the article, such as the political deceit.