Weekly Affair - Week 10

Paul Nuttall - Named new UKIP leader

A slight change of subject matter for this weeks affair - UK politics!? I'm getting a bit bored of being recognised as the girl that paints Donald Trump so I decided to shake it up a bit this week. Due to the disaster of last weeks digital attempt, I've returned to my old friend gouache. I really don't think I could work any other way now, it always creates the outcome I'm anticipating and now I'm getting faster at it time management for this media really isn't an issue.  

APPLICATION! Finally I have applied my work to some context! Although I doubt the BBC would be interested in my work due to it's nature, I applied my work to the article where I sourced my information. From my feedback, the question of how my work sits in digital format was brought up, but I don't think it looks too out of place? I think the texture of the paint and paper adds more character to the illustration, whereas digital can be a bit flat and lifeless. 

For next week's affair, I think I should try and illustrate something that doesn't link to politics for once! I need to explore my subject matter in greater depth instead of pigeon holing myself which I know I keep saying and don't do anything about it but I will next week!!!

Why stick to editorial?

After researching for my COP3 practical, I realised that I shouldn't just stick to editorial as my discipline. I think I could also do publication, as my book for last years cop practical was a success and I'm currently really enjoying producing my book for this years practical... I think i'd be an idiot to ignore this, so I would like to try and produce a publication at some point for this module.

I also enjoy putting text with my illustrations anyway, so including my writing with my illustrations would be something that could be quite successful!

Weekly Affair - Week 9

This week I attempted to work digitally for my weekly affair brief, because it is far quicker than painting and quick turn around is something that is important in editorial. But, as you can see, it's the worst thing the human eye has ever seen. I didn't want to put it on my blog, so I put it as the smallest size image possible. Everything is wrong with this. It's so pixelated it makes it look like I've made it on paint. The lines are too thick and too wobbly it looks like a child has done it. And so because of all this, you can't even see what I'm trying to illustrate. Embarrassing.

I even tried extra hard this week because I actually found an article to illustrate instead of just a general well known news story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38016191

Article Title: Is this the PM's 'white heat' of technology moment?

If Theresa May's CBI announcement of £2bn for research is truly new money and depending on the strings attached - this intervention could go a long way to cancelling out any potential financial cost of Brexit. It would not on its own, however, make up for the possible loss of collaborations with EU scientists following Brexit.

So I saw this as money being taken from somewhere to found scientific research to kinda make everything look like it's okay. That's the kind of thing I was going for. I didn't find it hard to generate ideas for how to illustrate it. I wanted to explore using three different frames instead of just the one spot illustration, because it worked really well for my michael gove clown illustration I did a few weeks ago. That element isn't too bad, and i think i should try and do this more successfully in later illustrations. I also like the colours I've used, but that's about it on the positivity.

Next time I think I'll go back to what I'm master at and try again to do a newspaper article. 

Peer Review - 18/11/16

Feedback

 I found the feedback session helpful, it was good for some different opinions on my work as I feel like i've been looking at it for so long it's easy to overlook things. It has also been useful to see how other people have approached and presented the briefs that they have chosen. It has made me realise that I really don't develop my initial ideas enough and just jump into creating a final image which could have been so much better if I took longer to think about it. I also need to put my work into context instead of just illustrations in a folder, as much as I like them and I'm happy with most of them, they're not applied to anything (minus the stickers and election posters).  

6A3: Research -

>Illustrate a specific article/news story and then put your illustration into that context 

>Change the subject matter - doesn't have to necessarily be focused on Trump or even politics - what else am I interested in? 

6B3: Problem Analysis - 

>Choose an article which may be more sensitive and see how i can go about attempting it - I'm used to satiring everything, how would I go about a different tone of voice? 

>Try and explore formats - full page spread, spot illustration - how does it fit in an article? 

>Try digital? - in the editorial world there's a quick turn around - i can produce my work a lot faster if it was done digitally. Even if it doesn't work at least I have tried.

6C3:Visual Quality - 

>Digital Experiment - how does working digitally effect the way my work looks aesthetically? 

>More roughs to improve compositions - but this has already been brought to my attention and I am now doing more roughs

6C4: Technical Competence - 

>Mastered gouache 

>Place work in context - where does my work go??

6D3: Evaluation - 

>Make sure blog is up to date 

Weekly Affair - Week 8

Something a bit different for this weeks affair! Not the most interesting contexts - Trump is walking all over the world - but I haven't made a gif since first year so I wanted to try out something simple before I got ahead of myself... I'm glad that I did it! I think it turned out quite successful and works as a looped gif so that's a relief. I would make more gifs in the future for this project, but try to improve on the context of it because I don't feel like this illustrates much. 

Finding colours

This pickle advert just appeared on my facebook, but I really like the colours that they've used and it's inspired me for my own colour palette. I want to try and incorporate that pickle green along with the mustard yellow.

Gifs?

From what I've been thinking about in PPP about my market and realising that it's my generation which is heavily interested in the online world, gifs would be a great media to work with to create a buzz. I'm hoping that this would make a bigger impact to get people interested in my work and having the message spread!!! So I think for my next weekly affair I will make a simple gif and see what response I get from it.

Colour Schemes

My usual choice

Something different?

I have realised in my work I usually follow the same colour palette  of blue and pinks, but maybe I should try something a bit different? I quite like the more autumnal colours, introducing oranges and lilac into the colour mix.

These three are so very nice together, they're so pleasing to the eye.

1215.today Competition brief

This brief that Patrick sent out today is something that I'm very interested in and think it would be perfect for my practice, especially as this is something that I have been doing weekly anyway! I just need to try and jazz up my CV and hopefully will be appealing to them! But writing about myself isn't something that I'm necessarily good at either, so this is something that I need to work on! But luckily the deadline isn't till the 19th December so hopefully I'll be all good by then!  This would also be such an amazing opportunity to do a paid job in something which I feel passionately about and love doing!

Weekly Affair 9/11/16 Election Day

The world woke up to some of the worst news since Brexit, Donald Trump is actually completely definitely president of America. I was so sure that this wasn't going to happen that I printed a third of the amount of posters of Trump winning than him losing. I still just can't believe this is happening. But, this can't stop me getting out of bed and promoting my work, as I'm sure Trump is a true believer of freedom of speech. So this morning I printed off a load of A4 and some A3 prints of my winner poster and went round the unis publicising my work.  Annoyingly it was heavily snowing so I couldn't even try to put some of my posters up outside. At least I can try and get some good out of the complete evil that has been sprung upon us, and will also give me more opportunities for my extended practice in the future.

Weekly Affair 7/11/16 U.S Election Posters

I thought I would be an idiot if I were to not do anything for the U.S Election results, as it would be trending worldwide. But what Matt was saying about how I haven't really shown my work kept going round in circles in my head but still wasn't doing that much about it apart from stickers. So I decided to make two separate posters (obvs because I don't know who's going to win) and on the day of the results go around the art college as well as leeds uni and leeds beckett and put up the posters. It would be the perfect promotion, everyone will be talking about it and (hopefully) will be seen by most!  

After having the crit with Matt it made me realise how important making roughs are for my work, because usually i'd just draw the first thing that comes to my head, which doesn't necessarily communicate very well. It also helps for proportion of the characters and the overall composition of the illustration.

 

Winner          

Loser

Instead of doing an illustration of Hillary wining, I did it of Trump losing instead. This is because if she does win then people would be happy that Trump lost, not because Hillary is president because she's still pretty corrupt. I'm happy with what I have produced! Because I also listened to Matt's advice and did loads of roughs before I started to sketch out my final design which I feel made them stronger. I don't think they're necessarily perfect proportion wise, but far better than some of my previous illustrations. I also love the primary colours, linking to the colours of the candidates and also making the two work great as a pair.

Colour pallet 

David Foldvari

David Foldvari's work has made me think of how alternate angles of approaching the same subject can create such different artwork. Although his work is satirical like mine, by coming at it with a more angsty approach changes the outcome, which I actually like. I also like the use of type in his work which is something I haven't properly explored, but think it would be good to see how it would take my work. 

Weekly Affair stickers

After having a tutorial with Matt, it made me think about what I actually want to place my work, because right now it's just sitting in my folder closed off from the world. It's made me think about how I should promote and put my work out there and what works best for my material. I instantly thought about this image because I had already recognised how it would be successful as a sticker, so I made it as a sticker! I also put my twitter name at the bottom (which I'm now regretting because I have more Instagram followers and prefer that social media) but I am still happy with them. I'm going to put them around hyde park and hopefully will get some response from it! 

Weekly Affair - Week 6

This one isn't really an affair, but because it's the day of the dead today and Trump of course is notorious for hating Mexicans, I thought it would be quite fitting to paint him as a catrina. I really like this as a spot illustration and looks like it would work well as a sticker or just like as a symbol. I like how it doesn't need any explanation to know what is going on, because of this I think this is quite a successful illustration. I also love the colour scheme, the pastels and complimentary colours are so aesthetically pleasing. This is colour palette is definitely something that i'll do again.