Write a short evaluation of your experience of this course.
Select what you consider to be your best pieces of work to construct a portfolio.
Review your feedback and write about your successes and areas for development.
Reflect on how you have responded to this feedback and steps you’ve taken to develop your work further.
Write a short overall evaluation of your experience of the course that picks up from your learning log.
Summarise your experience as being a learner, reflecting on the ways you have grown as an illustrator from the beginning to the end.
Think about what kind of Illustrator you see yourself as in terms of the kind of work your interested in doing, your approach and your ideas.
A short statement no more than two A4 sheets of paper
Evaluation
I have enjoyed this unit and course very much, it surprised me how much it did. I like getting creative and using different materials and experimenting with mediums so this was something that I looked forward to doing.
I try to add in my own interests as much as possible not just what the brief tells me to do, as I want to get the most out of this course. I found the course good, although some of the links didn’t’t work when doing some of the research which can be frustrating.
I enjoy getting feedback from my tutor and its nice to see what he thinks of the work I’m doing and whether or not I’m on the right track.
My best pieces of work:-
Exercise 2.4 word associations
Exercise 2.7 Composing pictures
Assignment 2 Presenting your work
Exercise 3.3 Big
Exercise 3.4 small
Assignment 3 Movement
Exercise 4.2 Creative audit
Assignment 4 Themed project
Assignment 5 Personal project
I can only see 9 pieces of work I am happy with so far, but I think a few of the exercises have a few pieces within them, that I could pick out another piece.
Feedback development
Unit one:- be a bit more messy and less uniform in Assignment 1, look at Henri Michaux for research.
Unit two:- words to pictures: found it hard to create a scene with the separate illustrations, the man could have worn the coat, standing over the paint, hand came in off the page.
Word processing: cheating slightly on having images on pieces of paper taped to the wall.
Cut-ups collages are like mood boards, go back to collage artists you researched to get more advance ideas.
Work on critical review 200 word proposal.
Unit three:- Fast: add more work, who were the people you drew?
Slow: the painting would have had a better ‘story’ if stopped halfway, research abstract painter Robert Ryman.
Critical review: Leave out Beatrix Potter as less relevant, six is a lot of artists to discuss.
Unit four:- Themed project: Potential for more work in Assignment 5, what does the fern creature look like it needs more work, book progression:- Do they live alongside us like The Borrowers?, Is there a story that threatens their world, like property development or farming?, Would it be told in text as well as pictures? if it is told in text, who is the narrator, and what form does the text take? How many fern creatures are there and how does their world work?
Unit five:- to come
Feedback successes:-
Unit one:- Research is always good and thorough, idea of working on children’s illustration is good, work space is organised and tidy, responses to all exercises were good.
Unit two:- Comfort and non-comfort zone work was good and honest, mind maps are rich and full, research is very good, Composing pictures worked much better after the last cut-ups exercise, the images were fun and original. Assignment 2 was a good presentation and you presented it well.
Unit three:- Good continuous line drawing with paint, research was very good again, Panoramic photography was very good, the images were successful, origami characters were charming and used well within the next assignment, Assignment 3 was very good using panoramic photography in black and white against the hand drawn characters gave a very well completed piece of work.
Unit four:- Research and documentation was very good and thorough, good use of watercolour and the limited colour palette bought the illustrations together, good start to a story that has potential.
Unit five:- to come
Responded to feedback:-
I have tried to be a bit more experimental in this course and let go of any preconceptions I had especially with regard to collage which I am not the best fan of. I found if I let my imagination take over my work I get a better outcome, I felt quite stiff at first and become more loose the longer the course went on, the better the outcomes were.
I used word processing more in my creative process after the exercise, which also gave more unusual outcomes by stretching the mind maps further.
I got the hang of cut ups and collage after the second attempt, and throughly enjoyed this and found out how it could benefit my work process and outcomes I wanted to see personally, thinking differently about collage really helped me grow in this area.
I did find that some of my work lacked some information or visual pieces that would have helped my tutor see more of my work, but then in some cases I should have stopped short in some exercises to get a better outcome. I found that information to help the background should be thorough but the actual visual pieces may need to stop before they go too far, I felt I did this better in Assignment 4, where I completed a lot of research and thorough background information, but let the visual pieces stop at a certain point, where I knew I could take it further at a later date.
I felt my starting point of being able to create whole scenes for children’s books, has really developed extensively in this course, I have used the above response and also created some great photography and compositions which has really excited my imagination, and been able to work with some of my ideas from years ago to develop into something that could be a real game changer for the future.
The main points I feel really progressed my creative process in this unit was:-
1.Word processing and creating larger mind maps.
2.Collage and how to create unusual fantasy scenes and backgrounds.
3.Photography and how this can help composition.
4.Being more experimental and loose in general.
5.Experimenting more with different professional mediums.
6.How research into fellow illustrators can grow your understanding and information about your process and style.
7. How to work in both fast and slow ways, and how slow can be beneficial.
8.How to develop my character designs and make them come to life, origami processes.
I feel as though this unit has really developed my understanding and processes in how I can create scenes and background compositions for my children’s book illustrations, I will take this forward in developing my children’s story of ‘Bubble houses’ and develop my character design skills, experiments with professional watercolour paints, adding textures with acrylics and how I can use Surface pattern design as collage in my illustration work. I feel the course culminated into Assignment five and really pushed my work forward, more than I expected it too.
My creative processes have developed and grown immensely in this unit and I am pleased by how much I got out of this course. I have grown as a learner by being less rigid and finding out how processes I’m not keen on can really help me with my work, you just have to think about things differently. I have used my imagination more, and have learnt to understand the research I have undertaken and how this can benefit my process too.
I have developed from a Surface pattern designer painting one of motifs and illustrations and layering in Illustrator and Photoshop, to a book illustrator being able to illustrate whole background scenes with characters. I feel the processes I have learnt has helped me to grow in this area, and really pushed forward my knowledge and understanding of what it would be like to illustrate children’s books, there’s still a lot more to do and a lot more to learn but this has given a great head start.
ruthgoodwinsillustration.home.blog 