Evaluation

Throughout this brief I have revised my rationale a number of times, mainly due to constantly changing my mind about what it was I actually wanted to be doing. Initially I had a number of live client briefs arranged, and wanted to work in a way that allowed me to get one completed every couple of weeks to produce a body of work displaying a variety of my design and Illustration skills. However, due to my bad time management and a lack of motivation in certain areas (which ended up proving to me exactly what it is I don’t want to be doing) I didn’t follow my work plan through in the way I had anticipated.

The first client brief I did was the Illustration for Leeds Roller Dolls. After getting in contact with one of the coordinators of the team and linking them to an online portfolio of previous work I set up, they asked me to provide them with a series of Illustrations that could be used in conjunction with any text and titles they wanted to add. I spent a few weeks sending them examples of work and emailing back and forth, making any adjustments they wanted to my images. However, when it came close to the deadline they had provided me with I stopped hearing back from them and when I did hear back, it was last minute to say they had gone with another artist’s work. I understand this can happen when working for unreliable clients, but I feel this knocked me back early on in the project and made me lose a lot of confidence in my work. Originally I had planned to take the brief further by screen printing a couple of the images even once I had completed the work for the team, but I scrapped this and decided to move on to something else.

After this I decided I didn’t want to work on client briefs just yet, and so screen printed a couple of Illustrations for Paul Price to sell at a craft fair in the Hifi club in the city centre. I found myself enjoying something again, and realised it’s because it was a more relaxed, open brief and I didn’t have to compromise my style and typical gruesome themes. I used the subject of odd ingredients and unusual food as a theme (as this also related to a photo shoot I had recently modelled for and helped come with the idea, for a third year Viscom student). However the fair they were to be sold it had a very poor turn out due to lack of advertising and a high entry fee, so it was closed early. This was disappointing as it would have been a good opportunity to see an audience react to my work, and find out how many I could sell.

Following this, I had a crit with Graham and he commented on how he would like to see one of my Illustrations to come to life as a 3D object. This made me consider the idea of trying my hand at sculpture and casting again, as I used to enjoy being more hands on with my work. I spoke to Oliver Frend in third year as I had seen his sculpture work before, and he advised me to take a sketch of the turkey stuffed with fingers I planned to make down to the tutors in the 3D room and ask them for help. Andy and Dom were both very helpful with advising me on the possible ways of casting and constructing my sculpture, and they allowed me to get on with it myself in as many ways that I could, lending a hand along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed the learning process of how to cast properly, despite having a number of things go wrong, and felt like I was learning some useful skills in an area I would possibly want to explore going in to in the future; prosthetics and prop making. An important part on completion of my turkey sculpture would have been to exhibit it and have some form of feedback to note down. However, as the deadline became close I had to accept that it wasn’t realistic to expect to have it finished and on display in time. So, rather than rush it I carried on with the various sculpting processes and have decided that I will carry on with this as a personal project over the summer, and plan to exhibit my sculpture in July/August time in Brighton. The exhibition will be with 3 other art student friends, studying at various colleges around the country. We have found a couple of possible locations, one of which is an independent pub called the Hobgoblin in Brighton town centre that attracts a largely art student based crowd. However, the feedback I have received is that of Dom and Andy, the 3D technicians. They have expressed how impressed they are with my final sculpture, and that I’ve been learning and putting in to practice techniques usually only mastered in third year, which is a positive reaction.

One of the main things these briefs have taught me is that I need to build up more confidence in my work and in my ideas. I also need to start recording ideas in sketchbook form, as I always let me myself down when it comes to putting ideas in to action. Time management has also been a big problem for me, as I have dedicated four days a week to a part-time job this term and I have noticed the negative effect it has had on my work. That is something I need to reconsider when I start the third year of this course. One of the positives that have come from this brief is that I have re-discovered a love for sculpture and casting that had previously been forgotten. I plan to take me gruesome food sculpture project on in to third year, and hope to improve my skills to a much higher level.